I was born and raised in New Mexico. Have lived here most of my life. I have lived in Chicago, Phoenix, Lake Havasu City, Austin, and a small town in Maryland outside of Annapolis. I have life experiences. I have an education; a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and a Master’s in Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management. I am a self starter, a hard worker, learn many things on my own, and can’t stand people that go to work wanting their paycheck by doing as little as possible. I am a single mom, but don’t think I am doing it right. I let my parents influence too much of our life.
Right now I work for a company where customers treat you as if you are beneath them, but I still “own” my job. I work as if I were working for the original owner and take care of every customer I can. I do my job (my boss can’t do my job at all) and also help out every where else in the building. Yet, I never get thanked. I don’t get recognized for what I do at all. My efforts have grown the sales numbers for my job, so much so that we were number 1 in the entire company for this job (I am sort of a personal shopper). The new VPs are coming to give us a barbeque. Yet the General Manager thanked my manger and told him to share with me about the barbeque. I don’t know how to stick up for myself but did tell my manager thank you…then he thanked me. I told him it wasn’t right that the GM thanked him and not me. I know that I need to find a new place to work, but that is another part of the story.
I can say about myself that I am stupidly trusting, wildly accepting, greatly loving and hopelessly romantic.
I know I complain too much. When I get frustrated at work, I can’t help myself not to complain about those that just don’t work very hard. But wouldn’t you know, those are the people the managers are always with and the ones that get Employee of the Month, or are recognized for jobs well done (I guess it is easier to see when someone does a job over and beyond when they only do it once). I am not a butt kisser. I don’t befriend managers so that I can go complain to them and walk around with them not working. I am told over and over it is retail. Maybe so, this is the first retail job I have ever had. It is now also, the longest job I have ever held.
I am a great listener but I can tend to be a gossip (but not what l lend my hear for someone to unload about). Maybe I’m a terrible friend. I don’t know. I haven’t had a friend in the same city in over 10 years. When I was a flight attendant I decided to try something. I didn’t make the call, send the email first, reach out to anyone for a month. I quickly learned that I was the one holding on to strings of friendships from college that must not have been meant to last. I haven’t had a good friend since then. Don’t get me wrong, I make friends at work, but they don’t carry outside into the real world.
I had this “friend” for over 10 years. When we met I was a flight attendant and he worked for the same airline, but at the airport level. We met at the gate he was working in Orlando. I instantly fell for him, but didn’t let him know for months. I went out to visit him 4 times, as friends, before I told him I was in love with him. He was everything I had ever looked for. He was a perfect gentleman. He was kind and compassionate. He wasn’t looking for a relationship, was still hurting from being cheated on. We didn’t talk for sometime. It was awkward after I told him I was in love with him (he had also said he couldn’t afford for me to visit again for awhile, as he always insisted on paying for all the food and things we did). After that, he would always reach out to me after a relationship ended. We would talk and chat as if no time had passed. After that last time I visited him, 5 years went by before we saw each other again. He had moved from Orlando to Kentucky, and was on my route home when I left my fiance in Maryland (another part of the story). It was a night I didn’t have to pay for a motel room. About 5 years later, he finally clicked when I told him I thought we were soul mates. I had just started my job I have now, but was still looking anywhere for a good job. He had told me that Mr B and I could come be his roommates for as long as it took to find a job and my own place. We decided we needed to see each other. See if we could maybe have something. I took time off from work and went out there. Seeing him in the airport was weird. He had changed so much, but I was also very very nervous. The hug was awkward, for me there was too much pressure from why I was there. The last night I was there he told me it wasn’t going to work for him. He didn’t feel a spark. He couldn’t even kiss me to see if there was one because he just didn’t feel it from that first hug. (He doesn’t feel he has now rejected me twice, but it has ruined our friendship.) We barely ever talk now. In the last 4 years we might post on each others walls on Facebook, and that’s it. It is very sad to me that this is what it came to. That even to him, I wasn’t good enough. That I no longer even have this friend to talk to.
In college, there was this guy, the one I consider the one that got away. He was my “dream guy”. In 2.5 years we never got really serious but I also never told him how I felt about him. In Austin, I met a guy. We ended up living together, engaged and moving to Maryland. But his daughter had issues with the move and was doing things I didn’t think a child should know how to do (like draw a picture of her killing herself) and I decided I couldn’t handle that and/or bring my 2 year old into that unstable life. So I have now lived here just shy of 9 years, and the worst 9 years of my life. Other than these 3 men in my 40 years, or 24 years of being allowed to date, I always end up with the bad boy. Not always on purpose. There has been a lot of leading me to believe they want relationships. I did mention I am stupidly trusting. Maybe a little gullible. A lot of it is I also get attention after years of not having it and believe I am finally good enough for someone and don’t see the signs. Not always though.
What brought this all on? There is this guy, for almost 3 years he has been a friend/not a friend. He makes me feel small and hurts me a lot. I finally told him to stop talking to me, then I stupidly start talking to him again. I know it was dumb. He tells me the other day I can’t rush it (love). I am 40 now. What I am rushing he couldn’t say. When I question why at 40 he was already divorced and living with his second girlfriend, who left her husband for him, why wasn’t I allowed to have one man, he couldn’t answer. What was I rushing? He said those women found him, like that made a difference. I think I need to permanently delete his number. Even where the iPhone holds deleted numbers.
What started that conversation was he asked about my new friend. I had said once I had a crush on the soccer coach. With our sons, we had gone to the movies and to eat several times over a 2 month span. We were chatting almost every day. I saw it as a friendship that could become more. I wasn’t rushing anything. Suddenly he stopped texting back. Not even answering the question days later. Then he tells me he is taking this woman and her kids with them on an over night field trip and going skiing the next day (a drive he didn’t want to make with me just for the day). He thought I knew who this woman was. I am pretty sure they are dating. That’s cool. Don’t need another (really new) female friend in the picture with a new girlfriend. But I thought he was different. Considering he can’t just tell me any of this, that he just stops talking to me, makes him no different than all the other men I let into my life. This makes me question myself. What do I do wrong? What can I do better? I meet a nice guy and still can’t hold on to him (taking it slowly). So maybe I am just not meant to meet someone.
I know this just sounds like, poor poor pity me. But I can’t help it. I need to get it out there. I don’t have a friend to talk to about this. This is not stuff my mom and I talk about (she is not a friend, she told me that once). Dating absolutely frightens me, so maybe I don’t put myself out there. Living with my parents, going on 5 years now, really makes me not want to put myself out there. I don’t want the questions. I want to get to know someone on my own.
Which leads me to another topic. Living a life with my son. Without having to completely rely on my parents. I hate that I can’t just be his parent without them overstepping me. Or questioning me. Or not asking for my permission. Or thinking I am not doing what I should be.
I moved back into my house December of 2013, but knew it was just to see if we could make it work or to fix it up to sell it. I had been renting it for 3.5 years. It ended up being way to far away from my parents, or brother, for me to be able to leave Mr B home to get himself to school. If there had been an emergency, no one could get there quickly. So I sold my house, as I have said before (by real estate contract). I put an offer on a foreclosure in July. 1st lender told me she could do the loan without a co-signer before I put in this offer. Half way through the process, after signing papers, she said I needed a co-signer because of the house being in a real estate contract and not payments not being made for a year yet. Walked away from that house in August when the selling realtor would never tell us if they would fix the floor they trashed after they accepted my offer. Found another house. Made an offer in August. Was accepted. Found out it was a HUD property. I had to take care of getting the house re-metered in order to have utilities turned on to have inspection. Knew there was a roof leak. Was also working with lender #2. Whom I walked away from because he wasn’t disclosing all numbers. In order to get houses re-metered, you have to have a plumber, electrician and the city do inspections. Things were found wrong that needed to be fixed in order to even be re-metered. HUD can not make any changes to a property while under contract. My #3 lender would not do an appraisal without utilities, especially since there was a roof leak. And I couldn’t afford the loan that would put money into escrow so we could close and then have these things fixed. I decided that was all a blessing in disguise.
So I made an offer on a short sale the end of October. I haven’t wanted to talk about this house and the plans I have for it because I have had to walk away twice, just days before closing. And it is disheartening, knowing I am so close to having my own place. To freedom. To living like an adult. To being able to be my own parent to my son. And it all slips away. In the meantime, I have only looked at 1 other house, and that was because I tell my realtor (my brother’s friend/business partner) I want to see it. But it was my old house but older and yuckier and I wasn’t about to spend that much on something that needed work just to look somewhat like my other one when I moved in it. I need a new realtor but that isn’t really an option with the ties to my family. And we still owe him for the utility inspections on the other one. He won’t tell me how much, probably so I can’t walk away. He finally hears from the selling realtor the end of January, that the bank approved the short sale, we will close April 6. I sign papers to this. Weeks go by. I want to know what we are waiting for. Why haven’t we scheduled inspections? Finally find out we are waiting on a second bank to approve their share of the short sale. If only I had known that is had two mortgages they had walked away from. I can’t stay away from short sales or foreclosures because that is all I can afford. But I highly recommended staying away from HUD. They are pointless to work with. And make sure the short-sale doesn’t have 2 mortgages on it. So, here I still sit in my parents house.
I want to apologize to any of you that are still reading this. To all my followers for me going way off my beaten track. There are no photos to share. I actually hate photos of myself. I think I look fat. Not very pretty. I have, though, made a few digital scrapbooking pages of pictures with me and Mr B. 
When we first moved into my parents’ 5 years ago, I never imagined it would be this long. I don’t make enough money at my job to even afford rent around here. I need to live in Mr B’s school district so that my dad can easily pick him up for school, or he can catch the bus. Middle school is next year. I often think about moving away, getting a better job elsewhere, but Mr B would be lost without his Nana and Papa. It is still something I think about doing for high school though. He needs to be in a state where he has a better college option.
In the beginning it was very depressing for me. I still couldn’t find a job that paid well, I was losing my house (to renters), and I was having to lose my freedom and live with my parents. My mom didn’t understand my depression (slight as it was) and made me see a “life coach”. She even booked the appointment, knowing I wouldn’t. 4 sessions in, I was feeling guilty that my mom was paying for me to talk to this lady and it was ending up all about my mom. I also learned she wasn’t a life coach, she couldn’t help me find a job. I told her I couldn’t afford her and a career coach. Went home and told me mom that wasn’t cool of her to send me to a psychiatrist telling me she was a life coach. She asked what was the difference, why’d it matter. I told her it mattered because I was depressed from needing a job and not knowing what to do. I needed career help. This lady not being a life coach meant she couldn’t help me. (I never told my mom that I also felt guilty talking about her while she was paying for it.)
I went to a career counselor. Though she taught me how to write a better resume (didn’t help) and had me take lots of tests to find where my skills were, ect, she was a waste of money. She could only give me the resources, wasn’t really a life line. I needed connections, a network I did not have. This better resume, sent all over the country, didn’t get me interviews. I ended up taking the job I took because it was really the only one offered to me. Up to that point, I had been told they couldn’t pay me what I was making as a GM, they couldn’t pay me what I was asking for ($12 an hour didn’t seem like too much considering my skills and education and experience), what was I doing the year and a half since losing the GM job, ect. But no one ever had a problem about me being fired, at least not to my face. I left out that it was a sexist thing and told everyone it was a safety violation they didn’t want to address and it was easier to let me go.
Interviews are kind of like dating, very nerve racking and hard to sale myself. But always got myself there until now (or 5 years ago). Now I am stuck in this job because I really don’t know what to do with myself. All the jobs I find are the same as what I have and I would lose pay to start over. The jobs that I am qualified for are the same ones that wouldn’t interview me before. I am stumped. I really want to start my own business, but since I am trying to buy a house the money isn’t there. America is failing me. Being educated is hurting me and not helping me get jobs (and I have the experience to go with it).
Add up that I don’t have a person to be there for me (friend or man), can’t figure out a career choice without going back to school (I am still paying on the second student loan), feel guilty that my parents are all I have to rely on (when they want to), and don’t get any recognition at work…I am all messed up inside. 
Usually I just keep trucking along. It is just at the moment, the thing about the barbeque just happened at work. The man I became friends with stopped talking to me just last month. The other man told me not to rush love on Friday. And it all gets me all jumbled up and feeling under appreciated/unloved/not liked. I promise I am not always a hot mess, but when it comes to the love/relationship/can’t find a man, that is always right there at the surface.
I want to be loved for myself, not have to change for someone. I can be an awesome/reliable friend. I can cook/bake/paint/hammer/craft and other lovely things. I love to take pictures and capture the little joys. I can’t sew to save my life and using a saw scares the crude out of me. I appear strong and act like I can do it all alone, but I have a soft side and would rather cuddle up on the sofa with someone.
My purpose in life? To be there for someone. To be helpful and reliable. To love. That is where my missing puzzle is. That is why I need a man. But no pressure or anything. LOL.
I have not forgotten my word for 2015: renew. I am still there.
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