The Aughts: a retrospective
My, how things have changed in my life in the last 10 years.
2000: I was 18 years old, working at Taco Time as a prep cook, engaged to my ex-husband and wanted desperately to be an adult. I quit college to get married, quit my job to make a baby, quit making sense.... The wedding was big and elaborate: the reality of the life that followed it was anything but.
2001: The year that brought the birth of my son and the confusion and pain of postpartum depression, the denial of the state of my relatively young marriage... but I was stubborn, to say the least. I persevered and although things didn't get better until a few years later, I survived it. We spent those early years in a tiny 2 bedroom townhouse apartment in a complex that received atleast two visits a week from the local police. Our neighbors were loud, angry, on drugs, and unloading things from furniture rental store trucks on a regular basis. The girl in the apartment next door was the older sister of someone I knew from school. Her baby was a little younger than Silas and her babydaddy was a very dysfunctional individual. The next apartment over belonged to a 20 year old girl and her boyfriend. I was also twenty that year... but she had 2 children and was pregnant with her third. I had the gall to judge her, even though I was making equally stupid choices in my own life, simply because I believed my choices were "God's Will".
2002: The sham of a marriage between two stunted children continued, the wee baby grew and starting crawling and scooting and eventually walking, though not until the very end of the year. My boy waited until he was 15 months old to take his first steps, lazy little stinker. He knew he could get there quicker by crawling and that if he smiled at me with that ridiculous grin of his, he'd be picked up and carried. I didn't have a license or a car at the time and got everywhere by walking and pushing Silas in our giant stroller. I grew quite adept at loading an entire cart full of groceries into a backpack and a stroller basket to walk it 2 miles home.
2003: My ex-husband spent the majority of this year unemployed. We were still in the apartment in Port Angeles and living off $186 a week in unemployment. Silas also attended speech therapy through the local school district that year. When he started in March, his vocabulary was less than 30 words. When the school year ended in June, he was uttering a few sentences. From there on out, his speech improved at an alarming rate and grew to the point that no one would have even known he had needed help at the beginning. It was also around this time that James and I stopped going to church completely. We were having to walk or depend on rides from friends since the public transit didn't run on Sundays. At the time I was utterly and completely crushed, afraid I'd upset The Lord and was going to lose my faith. Well... it was a turning point. Once I was out of that environment, I started to view my religious upbringing with a more critical eye, which eventually led me to better knowing myself and not seeing everything through a conservative-christian-filter.
2004: This year was big. A high school acquaintance had heard about our lack of a car and gifted us with a 1989 Geo Storm that she and her husband weren't using. She couldn't have known it at the time, but her generosity helped get me on my feet and helped me grow up. That car pushed me to get my license and start taking charge of my life. Also, James found a job in Sequim at the beginning of that year and we moved 20 miles to a two bedroom duplex, a vast improvement from the apartment in PA. My parents managed the local speedway that season and my mom hired me to run the concession booth in the pits. I only worked on Saturdays from noon to 10pm, for minimum wage, all by myself... but the freedom it brought was something I'd never tasted before and I really enjoyed it. We took a roadtrip down to Claremont, California that summer to attend James' family reunion, drove to Idaho to attend and be in the wedding of our friends Devon & Lexi, and generally had a pretty good year. Things were looking up. I thought my marriage was awesome and that I had somehow beaten the odds, that getting married so young had worked out fine and not been a mistake at all. We fought all the time and often it got physical, but I really convinced myself that was just "how we were" and that it wasn't unhealthy or a problem. Coincidentally, this was also the year that I first sought psychiatric help on my own. I went to a public clinic on a whim and told them my whole deal and got myself put on anti-depressants. I didn't take them more than a few months, didn't give them a chance to work, but the wake-up call of being put on them was enough to push me into some kind of action, which brings us to 2005...
2005: This is the year that changed everything. I got a job in the shipping and receiving department of a local store, put Silas in pre-school, and bought my Subaru when the Storm died. That year James and I started talking very openly and honestly about how unhealthy our relationship was and how our marriage wasn't working. In June or July we considered getting a divorce, but staying together. We'd deluded ourselves into thinking that maybe it wasn't our relationship that was the problem, but the pressure brought on by the title of "marriage". My goodness, we were so stupid. Thankfully that idea was abandoned pretty quickly and we split up formally. Literally weeks after we'd made the official decision to end our relationship - I met a boy on myspace who lived in Port Townsend. He had shaggy hair and had a Douglas Adams quote on his profile. We talked online for about a week and arranged to meet for drinks and dinner in PT (I was working at Aldrich's at the time, in Port Townsend, so it was pretty convenient). That first date was hilarious. He was lovely and sweet and nervous, it was the first date he'd been on in over a year, as he'd pretty much given up on finding the right girl. Thankfully, I was aggressive, assertive, and unrelenting. It was technically my first real proper date, as well, since I'd never really "dated" before getting married. I spilled beer on him while having dinner at Water Street Brewery and was genuinely worried he'd never call me again. Not so. We were pretty much inseperable from there on out. On the second date I mauled him quite mercilessly and asked him, "Am I your girlfriend, then?" The rest is history.
2006: In January I moved into the room Seth was renting from our friend Luke, searched non-stop for a job and an apartment, and generally kept myself busy. Everything was up in the air and I didn't know if I could find work or a place to live permanently so that I could bring Silas to PT to live with me. Then Seth asked me why we weren't just looking for a place together. I had no good reason... sure, we'd only been together for about 4 months, but our relationship was amazing, especially compared to what I was used to. The more I thought about it, the less scared I was of moving so fast and taking that step. By the end of February we'd found a place. In March I found a job. In April Silas came to live with us full-time. I followed my gut and it paid off. Si started Kindergarten that fall with Teacher Molly. It was up and down, and I should have realized that public school and him were not a good fit early on, but I really thought that with time it would get better... so we watched and waited.
2007: Silas was placed in Peter Braden's class for 1st grade. Peter was an amazing teacher and seemed to actually understand Silas and knew how to work with his idiosyncrasies. The job I had found the previous year was as a barista in a Starbucks kiosk in Safeway. I enjoyed the job quite a bit and dove headfirst into finding out everything I could about coffee and drink making and the company as a whole. I even read Howard Schultz's book, I was that much of a nerd. It paid off. I was promoted to assistant manager and spent much of my time writing orders and schedules, working opening and closing shifts (the two hardest shifts, for real. One involves set-up and prep work, the other is chock-full of cleaning and taking things down), training new employees, running the Green Apron program for our store, setting up most of the promotional materials, etc... I was friends with the manager and genuinely wanted to make her job easier, she sometimes took it as me trying to usurp her authority. One moment we'd be friendly, the next she'd be accusing me of trying to steal her job. I started to get really paranoid in all of my dealings with her and work started to get stressful and headache-inducing instead of fun.
2008: Grandma Dorothy died. My world stopped turning for a little while. She had developed Alzheimer's 10 years earlier and hadn't really been mentally or emotionally "with us" for a long time, yet her physical death hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm just like her. Out of everybody in my family, she is the only one I truly identify with, the one I understand. Not long after her memorial I stepped down from my assistant manager position. I wanted to move on and have her be proud of me. I contemplated quitting work entirely and going back to school, but instead ended up switching departments and becoming a checker in the main part of the store. That job was stressful, but fun. I liked the repetitive tasks and customer service side of things. I did NOT like having multiple bosses who all wanted different things from me. it was impossible to keep up with what I was supposed to be doing and when, since every manager or supervisor told me something completely different. As long as I was in the checkstand, doing my business, I was happy. Every time I stepped out of that box someone was there waiting, wanting something from me or wanting to reprimand me. Earlier that year we had outgrown our small apartment and decided to move into town and we found the place we're still in. James found a new girlfriend (the 5th or 6th, I believe, since we had split up), who turned out to be a genuinely and sincerely nice girl. She was kind to Silas, reasonable in her conversations with me (a quality none of his previous girlfriends had possessed), and willing to drive his ass out here so that Seth and I no longer had to take care of ALL of the transportation of Silas going to his dad's on the weekends. They're getting married next year. I never thought I'd be excited about his remarrying, but he couldn't have settled down with a nicer girl. She may be young and naive, but she's sincere, and that goes a hell of a long way.
2009: My my... what to say about 2009. Silas' trip to the ER, pulling him out of school to unschool at home, me quitting Safeway entirely to pursue my passion and run my Etsy shop, Seth asking me to marry him, us buying a house, working towards a more peaceful and equal partnership with Silas... It's been an amazing year. Frankly, though, I'm so glad it's over. It's also been a tumultuous year full of ups and downs and back and forths. I'm ready to settle into 2010, I'm ready to conquer all that this coming year will bring. I'm ready to move forward, put the past behind me, learn from it, focus on my own mental and emotional well-being, as well as that of my son and my partner. I'm ready. Bring it on.
Posts
