Made My Skin a Little Thicker

Well, that's long enough of a hiatus....  Can't have folks forgetting about me or anything.  I think that's my Middle Child Syndrome in full effect.  I am the new Jan Brady after all.

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha...

I just needed a little bit of a break, more mental than anything, to figure out why I do this damn thing.  And while I've had time to get my poop in a group, I decided I needed to get back to my blogging roots.  I started my alter ego as a therapeutic outlet.  I was hurting and I needed a place to try and make some sense out of the clusterfuck whirlwind of my life after discovering my ex-husband having a long-standing affair with a family friend.

Just saying.

There were only a handful of readers, all who knew me personally, tuning in to read how I managed to try and keep it together during that time.  Sure, I was airing very private information, but it was therapeutic.  It was cathartic.  And it somehow kept me sane... between living with my alcoholic mother, working full-time, navigating single parenthood, and dating a compulsive gambler of an overgrown man-child with serious mommy issues.  That's blog fodder for years right there, but I was struggling the most with the fact that I was betrayed by the person who stood in front of our family and friends and swore to love and protect me until his death.

That hurts.

Even though I am in a better place in my life and am happier now than I ever pretended to be while I was married, those scars left by my ex-husband run deep.

We're all a work in progress and every day it gets a little better.

But every once in a while, I have bad days.  Debbie Downer days.  Where the stress of everything gets to me.

And that's where this little monster called Nancy Clue comes in.  This is my space where I can let it all hang out.  I like to bitch and piss and moan here.  I need to reclaim my sanity saver and remember why I started writing... it all boils down to doing it for me.  Writing as therapy.

Not to say that I don't appreciate the fact that people read this, but I was worrying way too much about what others were saying about me.  It hurt to hear someone call me "a little trashy" based on my blog content.  I was deriving pleasure from the number of comments on a post or how many little hearts I got on an Instagram photo.  I was finding myself consumed with stressing about what "the readers" may think or say about a certain post.  I have cried over comments.

Like this one from a certain no-reply blogger commenter on my last post:

And I need to stop.

So I'm going to pretend that nobody reads this (and it's quite possible that no one does anymore... as I'm pretty sure I've scared folks from commenting ever again).  I'm rewinding and returning to my blogging as therapy roots and writing for no one else but me.

And I put up that one post that I took down when I was a pansy and got my feelings hurt.  That way everyone can draw their own conclusions.  Yes, it's safe to say that I was overly sensitive, but I just did not want my legitimate feelings glossed over by folks who have not walked in my shoes.

I took a break and realized that I missed this little corner of the internet that I've carved out for myself.  It is a way to document my life in real time - the triumphs, the successes, the pain, the anger, the ridiculousness, the stress, the love.  It's a place to express myself, to keep myself accountable, to record my feelings.  So that one day, when I am a badass nurse and my hands don't shake like Michael J. Fox when I'm holding a syringe, that I can scroll through and laugh at what a little bitch I was in nursing school.

Say what you want about me... Think what you want about me...

Pretty sure I'll be right here, not giving a fuck what anyone else thinks: