2010: Summer of Suck?

According to some, the summer of 2010 blew.

Then it asks, was it bad for you? And in my rushed state of frenzy to produce a paper this morning, I bookmarked the article and deemed it as a perfect segue into the post that's been brewing in my head for the past week but for which I lacked inspiration for.

It's September 2, my birthday, and in three weeks or so I see Fall Begins on my calendar, which means the Summer of Suck (did it?) is over.

I won't lie. My summer was rough.

I lost my best friend. I still cry over her. One week I dreamt about her three times and in every case she was so happy and wiggly to see me. It made me happy to "see" her like that.

I was sick a lot.

And then, the bombshell.

My step-father left us. Again. What started in May with him gradually leaving and never coming home ended in him filing for divorce in June (or was it July?) We were relieved. We can now buy as much ice as we want and not have to worry about e-mails being sent by him from across town of our list of wrongs.

It's shocking, isn't it, how one person who used to be so a part of your life is now the furthest thing from it? Probably what's even more shocking is that I don't miss it. For a lot of reasons. But I won't get into those right now. He might be blog-stalking me and I'd hate to start getting texts from him (he has no balls) or worse yet, an e-mail. Thank heavens we don't have to worry about those damn e-mails.

For the past six or seven years, I can still hear Mom's voice, "I got another e-mail from John." And our hearts sank and we let it sit in the inbox for awhile before anyone worked up the courage to read it. I remember sitting on our front porch steps and asking him (over the phone) to please stop sending the e-mails. He promised. He didn't keep it.

So in June when I was in the kitchen and Mom was at the computer and she said softly, "Holly, I just got an e-mail from John," my heart sealed itself into a teeny-tiny ball and was forever closed to him.

John could never understand that we were with him because we loved him. He selfishly thought it was because we needed him and his narcissism never allowed him to see past that.

We've moved on from John and his West Texas kingdom. We're living the life we want to live now; the kids are going to a school they chose, we're working jobs we love and we have the lifestyle we enjoy. We're fulfilling OUR dreams and pursuing them faster then you can blink an eye at.

More importantly, we are with God and he is with us.

He's with us because he loves us and wants to be with us for who we are, not what he can do for us or what we can do for him.

So.
Did my summer suck?

Parts of it, yes. But overall, it's a part of our journey, our adventure and sometimes there's only one thing you can do...

....throw your hands in the air and scream at the top of your lungs on your way down.