tell the old man that i love him.

i often remember the man who raised me as a shadow; a dark figure who went from my nightmares to my reality.  he wasn't always my boogeyman - i remember one time that he drank pretend tea that i poured in his cup.  i think i was 4 years old.

so i would venture to say that freddy krueger wasn't always everyone's nightmare on elm street.  he may have been a seemingly normal man at some point, but that just isn't how we remember him.

the first time he hit me i was 8 years old.  i can still feel the cold kitchen floor beneath my feet & smell the fresh spring air outside.  i can see the look on his face, plain as day, & hear the disgust in his voice.

i called my freddy krueger 'dad' & waking up from a dream didn't erase him from my world.  growing up in that world wasn't always easy.  johanna was sick & mom was her healthcare warrior so i stayed home with dad...a lot.  i was dad's little girl by default & as little girls do, all i wanted was for him to love me.

so i hugged the cactus i called dad & i learned that love hurts.
love is mean.  love is ugly.  love is selfish.

& then jay miller found us.


never-wanted-kids-tough-as-nails jay miller became step-dad to a pair of 13 year old damaged girls;  two broken, unloved & lost teenagers.  he had his hands full & we had no idea what we were in for.

it wasn't always easy, being a step-anything is difficult but i've learned that sometimes it can be the most rewarding job.  i cautiously learned about him & listened to his wisdom.  he slowly learned how to be a dad - setting curfews & drying tears.

          he emptied his train room so i could have a place to lay my head at night.

          when i got pneumonia he spent at least $200 on my medications.

          he learned how to make my favorite after school snack.

          he scared away all the boys i wanted to date.

          he'd hand me his last $20 if i asked nicely & smiled really sweet.

& over time i realized that this is what daddies are supposed to do.  having a daddy shouldn't hurt.

all little girls have a father.  not all little girls have a daddy & my daddy walked into my world when i was 13 & i've never been the same.

i often feel guilty.  its not my cross to bare, but i can't help it.  i just feel guilty.  he was robbed, my daddy was robbed.

daddy & me.  2009.

he didn't get to hold me on the day i was born, wrapped in a pink blanket & crying.  he wasn't there when i got my first tooth or when i learned how to walk.  he never saw me play dress-up or pretend to be a princess.  my daddy didn't teach me how to ride a bike.  he wasn't there to kiss my knee the first time i scraped it.  he'll never know what it feels like to hold my tiny, 3 year old hand in his as we cross the street.  he wasn't there to tell me how pretty i looked when i got into mom's make-up.  he didn't take me trick-or-treating & he didn't put that swing set together in the backyard.  he never danced with me to the song on the radio.

he missed all the fun of having children; the growing up part.  he knows the woman i am today, but he doesn't know the little girl i used to be.

all the things a daddy should get to do were stolen from him.

& i'm going to spend my life wearing a face that resembles the man who hurt me.  i want my daddy's blue eyes.  i want his crooked nose.  he's written all over my heart, but no one can see it on my face.  i would proudly resemble that man, but i wasn't given the choice.

so i fill out medical history forms and when they ask about the paternal side of my family i have to think about it twice.  father is blood.  daddy is everything else.

daddy is the man who taught me how to change a spare tire.  he's the man who taught me how to drive.  he was there for my prom, to tell me how pretty i looked.  he packed up all my crap & moved me on campus for my freshman year of college.  he bought all those medications when i was sick & he didn't care about a price tag.  he's the man who insisted on shaking hands with any teenage guy who came to his front door to take me out.  he rescues me from mechanics who try to swindle me into spending thousands of dollars.  he fixes the trinkets that i could easily fix myself because i ask him to.  he drove a u-haul 1,000 miles because i wanted to live in arkansas.  he answers the phone & talks to me for hours when i'm heartbroken & crying.  he's gone to bat for me more times than i can count.  he's shown me what i'm worth.  he teaches me about life & love.

dad & his daughters.  thanksgiving 2012.

& he's wrapped around me & johanna's little fingers.
we may not have put the sun in his sky, but i'm sure we're the light of his life.

& i have his temper.
& his impatience.
& his weird sense of humor.
& i drive my honda like its a race car.

so when my world is falling to pieces he's the man i call.
he's the man who can piece my heart back together with his super glue & his welder.

he's the man who never had to love me.

so when he doesn't respond to my text message or answer his phone i simply text my mom:

"tell the old man that i love him"

because love is the least i can do for the daddy that he didn't have to be.

accidentally healthy.

december 2012.
i'll never forget the first time it happened.  it was late in the evening on december 26, 2012 & i was sitting on the couch with my mom in raleigh, nc.  i was in town visiting for christmas & was really hopeful to head out of town the next day.  i had already been stranded an extra day due to some extreme weather heading through.  i love my parents, but about 6 days in their house is enough.

so i was on the couch with my mom, watching a movie & my head started to itch right above my left ear, not far from my temple.  i could feel a small bump & thought to myself

well i must've gotten bit by something.  

it was the dead of winter so there weren't really bugs with bite out & about but my parents live among trees & wildlife so i just told myself something bit me.  i headed out of town the next day without a second thought about it.

about a month later, the itch returned & it was starting to spread all over my scalp.  i call it "the itch" because that's what it mainly was & it was bad.  all day, every day.  itch.  i tried head & shoulders, tar shampoo, new shampoo, old shampoo, a new hair brush & nothing changed.  the itch would come & go every couple of weeks.  sometimes i would get three weeks of itch-free life before it would return with a vengeance.

it was embarrassing.  i would be out with friends & there i was scratching my head like some 6 year old with a lice problem.  it was horrible.

i waited 3 months to go to the doctor.  

i was living in south carolina & working for the state which means my health insurance sucked.  i'm a generally healthy person & i was paying medical bills pretty much the entire 2 years i lived there.  the state insurance covers no preventative care.  they'll cover everything if you get cancer but they don't cover the test for cancer.  so i started using the health department for my yearly physicals & birth control & avoided the doctor at all costs.

march 2013.
3 months of living with the itch & i had enough.  i knew it wasn't going to be cheap but something had to be done.  i went to the dermatologist at the cost of $100 a visit.  the first time, she said she had no idea what it was.  she thought it might be an infection of the hair follicles so i left with three prescriptions:

• 150 mg of doxycycline (oral steroid): 1 tablet a day with food indefinitely
• ketoconazole shampoo: use 3 times a week as shampoo replacement
• clobex spray: spray on affected areas before bed every day

now the bill at the pharmacist was a good $85.  the dermatologist said to try this for 6 weeks & come back.  so that's exactly what i did.  

may 2013.

went back to the dermatologist at the cost of another cool $100.  the itch had finally started to subside, but was still around a little bit.  it was kind of like that bad hamburger you eat in the cafeteria - you eat it & its gone but it still hangs around.  it follows you around all afternoon & taunts you.  the itch was like that.  it taunted me.  so the dermatologist had a new plan...kind of:

• 150 mg of doxycycline (oral steroid): half a tablet a day with food indefinitely
• ketoconazole shampoo: use every other day as shampoo replacement
• clobetasol propionate shampoo: use on the off days of the ketoconazole as shampoo replacement

so i was basically using prescription shampoo every single day.  every day.  my hair definitely didn't smell like roses.  the dermatologist wanted me to come back 6 weeks later but i got the job in arkansas & hit the road.  

september 2013.

6 months of being on the steroids & i was over it.  when i would stop taking the steroids the itch would return so i would start taking them again.  it had now become a vicious cycle.  i was riding on a carousel that i never intentionally bought a ticket for.  

one day i just stopped taking the pills.  

i realized i had been on an oral steroid for 6 months & i'm not about that life.  

october 2013.

arkansas is this amazing state where you can take your birthday as a paid holiday & going to the doctor is like christmas.  

so i found my way to a doctor of internal medicine, who referred me to a dermatologist, who tested me for a staph infection.  that was his initial thought.  if it was a staph infection i might be able to rid it from my life forever.  it would be difficult, but it might be gone. 

staph infection results: negative.

so i have scalp acne & i'll have it for the rest of my life.  the itch is my new best friend.  GREAT.

i don't run around telling people this because i still find it rather embarrassing.  

the dermatologist wanted me to go back on the steroids.  he said that was really the only way to manage the problem.  it wouldn't be every day, only when i had a flare up, but i was flared up most of the time.  sooooooo pretty much every day & i told him no.  

i'm not sure when it happened, but i started eating salads at lunch.  the u of a gives the coordinators an awesome meal plan & something clicked in my head.  instead of using my meal plan to eat crap food, i should use it to eat healthier.  i should use my meal plan to improve my health.  

december 2013.

anyone who knows me well, knows that i am a serious creature of habit when it comes to food.  when i find something i like i stick to it.  

iceberg lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, broccoli, carrots, cheese, sunflower seeds, croutons, bacon & ranch with half a chicken breast & a glass of water.    

& i pile it high.  my salad is always overflowing in my plate.  i love every minute of it & i started looking forward to my salad at lunch.  

then i went to visit my parents around the holidays & something happened.  i wasn't eating salads for lunch; i was going out with my mom & eating nc bbq for lunch, bojangles for breakfast & mom was making steaks & pasta for dinner.  there were cookies & cakes, soda & hot chocolate.  not only did i gain 6 lbs, but for the first time since late october the itch returned.  the first time i scratched my head i realized that it hadn't itched in months.  

light bulb moment:  eating better was improving my skin.  

january 2014.  

i stopped making new years resolutions.  i just don't do it anymore.  i just want 2014 to be a good year.

around the middle of january i found myself making a huge mistake.  i watched "hungry for change" on netflix & i instantly wanted to start shopping organic.  that expensive urge passed & what stuck is one of the doctors who said:

"as i got older i saw that my hair was getting brittle & my skin was getting blotchy & so was the hair & skin of my patients.  so i started eating healthier.  i wanted nice skin & hair."  

& that's when i realized that i was on the right track.  if i could have salads for lunch & dinner i might be able to clear up this whole scalp acne situation.  i could divorce the itch.  that would be amazing.

february 2014.

i went grocery shopping on february 1. 

i bought a ton of stuff to make salads at home.  i bought chicken that i can just throw in the crock pot with a little marinade & have with my salads for dinner.

saturday & sunday nights were both chicken & salad nights for dinner.  i feel like i'm off to a really good start.  i'll have to learn how to spice it up - add some variety, change it up a little bit.  i'm sure that'll come with time.  

i feel so much better throughout the day when i eat healthier.  i don't get that afternoon slump anymore.

the itch is my motivation.  i can't take it anymore.  

i'm not doing this as a diet.  i'm not doing this to loose weight.  

i want this to be a lifestyle change.  

i want to be a better me.    

this is where i wanted to be.

this april will be 2 years of living the single life.  i'm not going to lie - i've loved it!  the last 2 years have been about me - where i want to go, who i want to spend my time with & how i want to live.  it's been a solid run of the stephanie show & i am not complaining.

Christopher
We Dated Aug. 2010-Apr. 2012

my last relationship wasn't the best.  christopher & i met at a wedding & we were long distance from the get go.  it's not like we met & dated for 6 months before he moved away - it was always that way.  if i'm honest with myself, it was really good for the first month.  30 days of goodness.  the rest was a fight - a fight for weekends to see him, a fight for him to make me priority, a fight about money, a fight about his house, a fight about my job, a fight about his involvement with the freemasons.  pretty much anything was on the table.

all of my friends from college were engaged.  i felt like i was getting left behind, so i clinged to the next guy who asked me to dinner.  when it was good it was so very good but when it was bad it was really ugly.  we just weren't good for each other.  with everything in me i wanted him to be the one.

i gave it everything i had.

he said we weren't engaged because i was messy so i learned how to tidy-up my apartment.
he said he wouldn't marry a woman who couldn't cook so i learned how to cook.
he said we weren't engaged because i was high strung so i learned to keep my feelings to myself.

& he took me to pick out an engagement ring twice.  he took me to get my ring finger sized 4 times.  he knew who he wanted to officiate & who his groomsmen would be.  he did everything except actually ask the question.  so i held on & i hoped & i promised.

i became someone else to be with him & i hardly even noticed.

i'm not saying i was perfect in the matter, i definitely played my part.  i felt neglected, unappreciated & unimportant so i was ugly & i was mean.  i'm often surprised that it lasted almost 2 years.  & at the end i was shattered.  i was hardly a resemblance of the woman i was before him.  i was in pieces on the floor.

learning how to put myself back together was a valuable lesson.

the journey through reconstruction hasn't been easy.  but i've learned so much about myself, about the people around me, about life.  i've spent a plethora of time exploring these questions:

why is everyone else around me happily settled down & i'm single?  why do the men i date day dream about marrying me, but never follow through?  why have 2 of my 3 long term boyfriends taken me to pick out engagement rings but never asked?  how did i get here?

the answers are complex & strange.  it's funny - the dating choices i make haven't reflected who i am at all.  it's like some other person makes these choices & i go

"alright, cool.  yea he's cute.  do i love him?  yea i think so."

& once i drop the l-bomb i'm in for the long haul.  i don't drop the l-bomb & then walk away.  that's me; in it 110%.

now, if i wanted to do a complete man-history of my life, it would include more men than anyone has time for.  we don't really have time to talk about jose, darren, michael, thomas, jonathan, garret & all the other random dates, month-long-boyfriends & guys-i-shoulda-left-alone.  most of those relationships lasted 6 months or less, they're super trivial.  when i think about the other significant boyfriends i've had it's an automatic: jeff & joe.

i finally started to notice a pattern in all of my significant relationships: i'm a huge fan of unavailable men.

jeff was a high school student, a star on the soccer team & he owned his own business.  he was busy.  he wasn't really available.  joe was divorced & didn't want to get married again.  young me thought i could change that, change him.  he wanted someone, he didn't really want a relationship.  he wasn't available.

i can even go back through & tell you by name the guys i went after because they had girlfriends.  that when a guy would say to me:

"i don't want a relationship right now."

what i would hear is:

"come on.  try me.  i dare you."

when you look at it that way, it makes sense that the men who actually end up dating me aren't really all that available for a relationship.  i've found exactly what i've been looking for.  that's why i'm here.  this is where i wanted to be because loving someone & trusting your life & your heart to someone is a huge risk.  it's scary & it's unpredictable.

i'm single because i wanted to be single.
i'm unmarried because i wanted to be unmarried.
i'm here because this is where i wanted to be.

wow.  saying it out loud & seeing it flow from my fingers to my computer screen is so weird.  i finally said it out loud.  now i can't pretend like it didn't happen.

i'm here because this is where i wanted to be.

there's truth in those words, but i'm finally ready to make a change.

life lists.

before you even start reading this post know that in order for you to really understand my point, it may require that you take the time to read both of the blog posts i reference.  i'm not one for summarizing.  i'm not very good at it.  so...

a couple of days ago one of my single friends posted this blog post on facebook. the writer talks about people getting married right out of college as a way to hide from the world.  you can figure from the title that it's going to include a to-do list; 23 things to do instead of getting engaged right after college.  now my first thought was:

ah!  this is great!  as a single-almost-thirty-something i'm not really going to fill my time with pinterest, a jar of nutella & making out with strangers but i do get her point.  live life before committing your life to someone else....FOREVER.  take time to find out who you are, what you want & what you need before walking down the aisle.  i should be friends with this person; she gets me.

then today a few of my married friends posted this blog post on facebook.  this serves as a rebuttal to the blog post mentioned above & again its a list of 23 things you can only do when you're married.  the writer talks about marriage & the happiness that comes with it.  finding that forever partner.

they both agree that divorce rates are a problem.  the rest feels like an argument.  maybe i'm wrong, but that's what it feels like.  it feels like the battle of the lifestyles.  i don't like that.  this argument implies that there's something wrong with the opposing side & there's not.

i think both writers are just saying that we need to commit to life 100%.  if you choose single, be super single.  if you choose marriage, be super married.  you can live, explore, tattoo, and nutella single or married.  you really can if that's what you want.

it sounds to me like the first writer is is simply saying:

take time to figure out who you really are before you promise to be someone's person.  i really think that's all she's saying.  no one is saying that you have to eat nutella if you hate it.  just gain experience.  see what the world & life has to offer.

this doesn't mean find the person you want to spend forever with & make them wait 10 years so you can "live".  that's silly.  we all find out who we are & what we're made of in different ways.  if you're ready for marriage at 22, do it & if you're not, don't!

live your life.

so instead of a "instead-of-getting-engaged" or "only-when-you're-married" list i'm proposing a life list.  live your life 100%.  do what makes sense for you.  be who you want to be.  love who you want to love.  it's your life, just know what you want to get out of it.

my LIFE LIST looks like this:

1. get a dog.
2. move away.  really!  get out!  go somewhere that no one knows who you are.
3. make friends.  
4. find out who you are when you're 1000 miles from everyone you love.
5. get involved in the community around you.  join a church.  volunteer.
6. experience life.  take it all in.  do everything & do nothing.  

i live life at 110 mph.  i want to do it all, feel it all, see it all. make your own life list; married or single.  just know what you want to get out of life.

being single is great!  being married is a true blessing!  let's not argue about which is better.  let's live to the best of our ability.