Pinning down a few thoughts

Thought I'd post another pin for my loyal readers before venturing into the black hole that is my random thought processes. I've uploaded the rest of the pins that I have scanned to my Etsy shop. My sweetie is taking Mica to visit her grandparents for a while this evening so that I can lock myself out in the studio and try to get some more work done. If I have to be miserable, there's no reason that I can't be miserable sitting at the torch for a half-hour or so.

I've been sick since New Year's Day. (I'll spare everyone the details...) I'm calling the doctor's office first thing tomorrow morning to let them know (as I was advised to do when I went in for a follow-up with my doctor mid-week) that the anti-biotics do not seem to be helping with my illness. We really cannot afford for the consistent wage-earner in the household to take off more than a week from work because I am too ill to care for the baby. I'm averaging about 16 hours a day in bed. I wake up every time I cough, my breathing is labored, and (because I can't breathe through my nose) I'm snoring loud enough to drive my beloved downstairs to sleep on the couch. All told, this means that (as if I weren't feeling miserable enough) I've spent way too much time inside my own head this last week.

I want to thank Maryellen, Jennifer and Cinnamon for their feedback on my crisis of self-worth. It really **IS** comforting to know that I'm not alone in my experiences with the untimely endings of valued friendships. It makes me feel a little less defective, a little less as though there is something inherently wrong with me that makes this type of disappointment inevetable.

As the bio on my website says, I grew up in a military family. This meant that, in addition to wonderful travel opportunities, my family moved frequently. I never formed the kind of lasting friendships that people who live in one place their entire lives take for granted. I moved away from my friends and had to make new ones every 4 years. I have always envied people who have friends that they've known since elementary school. Intellectually, I know that these life-long friendships are rare, that they are the exception and not the rule. That doesn't change the fact that, on some level, I have always hoped that maybe one of my adult friendships would develop into the type of profound, unshakeable relationship that I have envied from the outside.

As a consequence, when one of my friendships ends, (especially if it ends badly) I'm always sure that it is my fault. I'm certain, on some level, that I lack the tools to sustain a friendship. Did my nomadic childhood somehow train me for friendships with a limited shelf-life, rather than enduring friendships which could weather the ups and downs of real life and still survive to nourish the spirit.

The idiotic thing is, I have been fortunate enough to find one of those solid, unshakeable, profound friendships. I married him. I wake up beside him every morning... (Unless I'm sick and he's gone downstairs to sleep on the couch to escape the deafening snores...) We're raising a beautiful baby girl together. And I should really be more appreciative and grateful for my good fortune than I have seemed lately. So, that's where my week of talking to myself in bed has gotten me... I've realized that the friendship I was grieving was far from perfect and has taken the route that it needed to take. I am ***NOT*** defective and unbefriendable. And my creative life owes far more to a husband who works 40+ hours a week at a job that he does not love to provide a steady income, health insurance, and security so that I can work in my home studio for as many (or as few) hours a week as I can tear myself away from our beautiful baby, than it ever did to a friendship that was obviously more flawed than I wanted to admit before it ended.

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