Echoes.

It seems that most of my posts revolve around marriage at the moment and that’s fine.
There’s not much going on elsewhere – questions about where I am and where I should be that constantly pop up in an adult’s mind as they go through life.
For instance – I’m supposed to move back in with Mom and Dad in order to save up money for a house down payment – after all, Nick can’t move in with someone else so we’re not paying for two residences… there’s no one there!
So that burden falls to me.
Not that it’s really that much of a burden. I love having my own space – mostly the pain is giving up that bit of mental freedom and feeling of responsibility and self worth that goes along with it. I suppose it won’t disappear – I CAN support myself and my daughter. I just am choosing to sacrifice to have a better option for my entire family later on.
I need to remember that.

So I need to pack, to make sure that my lawyer still believes what I’m doing is okay, and I need to do it before December.
Ah. this hurts.
I want so badly to be in a home with my husband and child before Christmas, to celebrate my first married Christmas with them as it should be.
But life is life is life.

Ben’s lawyer quit on him a few weeks ago. The reasons are known but shall remain unmentioned on the internet, as my battle was never with her. Though I didn’t think much of her class considering her strategies.
Still, doing your job isn’t the same thing as having a flawed character, most of the time.
So I wish her the best in her uphill battle.
I don’t know if he’s gotten a new one yet.
I hope that the new lawyer is less effective at upsetting my parents. They’ve given Ben and I so many chances that it seems entirely unfair to put them through such hell when the consequences may end up being not great for Abbey and my family.
The guilt.

I’m questioning my career. I think the people you work with change how you feel about your job. And it occurs to me that working with women is not necessarily what makes me happy.
I don’t tend to like working with women much. They’re rather gossipy and the judgmental attitudes! Empathy seems to be an endangered species here.
Men, however. Men I can work with. If you do your job they tend to get along fine with you. In the south they tend to treat you like a queen as well.
I like that.
So maybe I need to find a job that challenges my mind and allows me to work with men. Real men, not metrosexual office boys who worry about their hair and get manicures.

Abbey’s convinced her dad is having an affair again. I never entirely know how to respond to her when she brings this up. Knowing Ben and hearing things around town makes me think it’s likely. I just don’t want to speculate and cause my daughter more problems. Things have been relatively benign on that front and I’d like to keep it that way.
Abbey still complains, but for the most part she’s been handling the chip on her shoulder more maturely – or, more likely, confiding to her friends instead of her mother.

I can’t fix that though. Could never fix Ben – am too disinterested in the effort now to even try. It won’t work. He won’t change. And why waste my breath when I have a wonderful family just waiting to make sure her needs are taken care of?
Still, she clutches every single second spent with her father to her as thought it were a crown jewel – his greatest weapon in this battle as well as his achilles heel.

As far as Nick and I go, well, we’re happily married.
It’s hard not to be when you’re this far away.
Our conversations are fewer. Arguments about wedding plans are nonexistant, so what do we have to talk about once the day to day catching up is over?
I feel very solid in our relationship. Happy. I feel like things are unfair that we can’t be together right now. I’m ready for that portion to start. Scared of that portion starting and more than anything, I pray every day that the three of us will end up in the same household.

I deserve that and so does he.
But mostly, Abbey deserves that example, that effort and that stability with ME – the person she already uses as a mark to define her life and her surrounds and sense of self worth.
That’s a lot of power I hold in my hands. A lot of responsibility.
And nothing on Earth seems as worth it as that job title.
I believe with me is best. I really do.

But the whims of a 13 year old weigh in. And I’m a guaranteed person in her life. Her father is not.
I don’t know how to compete with that.
Love is a lot, after all.
But love without a foundation, without realistic expectations of a person and a relationship, well,… it’s doomed for disappointment.

Ben’s not going to be more of a father because she might choose him.
But there’s that hope.
She knows what she gets with me.

still, there is something to be said about stability.