Sorry!! I have been MIA for way too long!! Sometimes life throws you curves you don’t see coming and you just have to roll with them and see where they take you. My latest has actually been a wonderful and also crazy, scary and fabulous one! I moved with my boys into a new home!
This was something that was totally out of the blue! I had no plans to sell my townhome which I loved, it was on the water and I had amazing neighbors and we all had many great times out on the boats together. It truly made me sad to leave. However, sometimes the best plans are the ones you never planned for and you just make them work as you go. I found a house that I lovingly call the “Ugly Duckling”, it has an amazing open floor plan with great windows and for being 20 years old is pretty modern in design which is totally my style. It also has a half acre yard for the boys to play in, a bunch of kids in the neighborhood for them to play with and is in walking distance to their school! I found this house a couple of months ago randomly and though it needed TLC it just felt like the perfect place for me and the boys to start a new home together. The townhome on the water I had bought before I got married but lived there with the ex and still had a lot of memories, some great like bringing the boys home when they were born and some horrible bad dreams come true memories. Once I was out of that house, “our house”, the one he cheated on me in, lied to me in, told me things I couldn’t even imagine to me in, it was such a freeing sensation. It’s hard to put it into words exactly and though I cried when I walked out that door for the last time it also gave me a sensation of a heavy heart being freed and a feeling of excitement of having a blank slate to start my next chapter in.
I have been in the house 6 weeks and the hours and hours and hours and hours of cleaning it, repairing it, ripping out carpet and putting in new floors and toilets and painting it have been long and trying and overwhelming and also have been amazing and freeing! I admit I don’t think I have averaged more than 4 hours a sleep a night to make it happen but its happening and its mine! And it is HOME for the boys and me and they are super excited about a new home and getting to paint their rooms whatever colors they want and decorate them how they want and let me tell you they picked out some very bright colors! And I love their passion and creativity!! It has also been very fun to decorate the home! I want to truly make it mine because for way to long I lived in a world trying to make it all “perfect” for him and scarified myself and my ideas and voice to do so – That will never happen again! I actually said to the ex several times when I felt like I was living for him not us, “It’s ****’s world and I’m just living in it” and he did not take that as a bad thing nor did he when I said “I’m your wife not your employee, I need a husband not a boss” he never saw anything wrong with that either because he thought, and told me, he knew better than me and what was needed. Don’t get me wrong someday I hope to find that amazing love of my life, but it will never be to live for his dreams and his life, it will be to dream, create and build our life together and our epic love of life and love life together hand in hand. Finding that person that each of you are great on your own but make each other amazing together is the relationship I want. And hopefully he likes my taste in decorating! 😉 If not we build a new home together and make that ours too.
The people who bought my house also wanted my master bedroom furniture and my living room furniture and I let them have it. My realtor asked really – it’s nice furniture – and I told her it was all just things and I can replace them. Plus, the bedroom set was one the ex and I bought with our wedding present money so there was something freeing about leaving that behind with the house and getting a new mattress and new master bedroom furniture. Breaking those ties of the past felt amazing. It also felt like good karma to leave that all behind and start anew. It is amazing what you can turn the “disaster” part of your life into if you never stop believing the best is still yet to come and you will “dazzle” again!
It was hard when the ex told me that he will give our boys things I can never even imagine because of his financial status (with the mistress now wife and now business partner) and honestly it pissed me off. As it did when he found out I was looking to move and asked where I was moving and when I told him and his first response was “oh, are your renting?” and I replied no I am buying and he said “oh – well good for you”. Yes, I can buy my own house! I did it before and I can do it again and yes, this time is all on my own without his help. He may be right, I may never be able to give the boys what they can money wise, but I plan to give them a life of unconditional love, happiness, joy, peace, discipline, amazing times together making memories and lead by example to show them that no matter how much others may not believe in you or put you down, you must believe in yourself and that will make you unstoppable. You and you alone are responsible for your own happiness and your reactions so make them ones you will be proud for your kids/family/friends/strangers to see.
I will keep believing in me, working my ass off, I will keep dreaming and creating, I will keep moving forward and I will make not only my boys proud of their mom but also myself proud of ME. When it comes right down to it that’s what really matters, being able to look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of standing up for yourself, your voice, your ideas, your dreams, your actions and your outcomes. They may not all turn out “perfect,” but I will keep going until they are perfectly imperfect for me. I will make our new “Ugly Duckling,” house an amazing home for my boys and for me. I will make my spirit and soul, that was almost broken by someone else’s treatment of me (and I own my part of letting it happen and promise myself not to let it happen again), the most amazing women, mother, sister, friend, business women and lover I can be. Like the Phoenix from the ashes it is time to rise and create the life I desire. The time of feeling like the Ugly Duckling is over and the time for the beautiful, graceful, amazing Swan to take over has come!
Live, Laugh, Love Life!
Jodi
From Diamonds - To Disaster - To DAZZLE! 