First, let me greet you a…
I know we’re so in the second month already of the non-Chinese calendar year, but hey, it is just a few days after the Chinese New Year 🙂 I hope 2016 is treating you all well, so far, better than 2015 did, regardless of whether it was already a great 2015. We always have room for greater things, don’t we? 😉
2015 for me was…for lack of a better term, weird. Weird in the sense that there were stuff that really made it great, and there were parts that made it worse. The good thing is it wasn’t worse than my 2013: The Depression Era. 2015 was a year of highs and lows, gains and losses.
Let’s see…
Last year started great — I got hitched! Yeah, it wasn’t at church, and it was pretty inexpensive and all, and there were several glitches along the way, but it was the happiest day of my life! You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Five more years, or at least, sometime in the future, we’ll probably tie the knot in church this time.
One year after, I gotta say it hasn’t been all-smooth sailing, in fact, it’s been more rough than smooth so far, but I have never, for a second, ever regretted my decision to stick with him through thick and thin. And I don’t think he has either. He’s been very sweet and loving and understanding of all my mood swings and shortcomings…And I just checked his Facebook message for me just now after typing what I just said and I am teary-eyed, and that’s a good thing 🙂 You should see our daily text messages, it’s like we’re still singles in a relationship 😉
Well, January 2015 also brought in something wonderful in our lives. We conceived and we didn’t even know until the second month…Sadly, we didn’t meet her after nine months — she had to leave us in March. I’d like to think it was a she, but really, it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t, if only our Jamie survived.
The miscarriage brought in more problems financially-wise. If not for the good people who helped us and are still helping us, my friends and my officemates in particular, there would have been more problems. We are very grateful to them to the nth level.
My medicines did make it tougher to save anything. I had to take this and that to recover. I wasn’t the type to just pop in a pill for anything bothering me so this was kind of a lifestyle change of sort. But while on my two-month recovery, I still got sick at one time, had to visit another OB for that, then got to visit a cardiologist for possible hypertension. That meant more meds.
To make my “vacation” more interesting, for the first time in my entire life, I decided to take on someone’s dare for a physical fight. *GASP!!!* It would be too long to elaborate why, but I was willing to fight for my new family’s honor. I wasn’t going to let anyone wrongly accuse my new family, much less bully or threaten us because of such a lie or false accusation caused by her malicious son. I also did that to actually avoid more trouble — rather than have her husband make good her threat and challenge my husband, I thought I’d dare the woman instead for a one-on-one between us. After all, she was the one looking for a fight and putting everyone in a bad situation. We weren’t in good terms before, but at least, they just passed by our house and we let them walk.
Take note, I was still somehow in recovery stage. The funny thing was, for all her loud-mouthed personal insults on me, even trying to hurt my feelings by saying I would never have my own child–I wasn’t hurt, by the way–the more I advanced towards her as I challenged her, she kept telling me to come over but she kept retreating. Ha!!! She was all-talk, no walk. Well, she was more like run-away. My poor husband had to keep telling me to just stop it because, of course, he was worried. I know it was not a wise thing to do, but it was better than to just shut up and let them walk all over us. I think I won the battle that day.
What do I mean by “new family”, though? By that, I mean my husband and his kids who have come to live with me. The kids are nice kids, but I admit, they are quite a handful. I have learned what kind of mom I would be — strict. I could be the coolest given the chance, however, current situation calls for a no-nonsense, no-pushover mom. I have learned how hard it really is to be a parent, a stepmom at that, to try to balance being lenient (the kids translate that to being good) and being strict (and that translates to being bad), to try to understand yet not tolerate. Honestly, it’s currently a no-win balancing act, but I’m–we’re–learning. We are forced to a place where we don’t want to be, but we’re trying to find the best way we can. People, especially those around us who are supposed to be the first to understand, can put us down, judge us, talk behind our backs, shout at our faces, but we will not let them break our family…
Let me stop here for now so as not to bore you and to be able to finally post this (this has been a draft for almost two months now!). Will continue…
******************************************************
This is my “T” post. Can’t believe it’s almost a year already since I began this challenge, but those who’ve followed me and become my friends here can understand why. Thank you always, guys!
UPDATE (April 1, 2016): Due to my very recent experience, I have honestly lost interest in sharing and the energy to share Part 2 of this post. I wanted to save the best part of 2015 for last, but that best part, my baby, left us just last week. So I think you will understand why I have decided not to continue. Thanks again…
The End Justifies the Journey 