facing a dark road again

I seem to spend a lot of time going without knowing where. Here I am again though. Facing the unknown. Scared as hell. I have great hopes though that I will find a path. My schooling is halfway done. By October I should be an LMT. Then I will make a mighty leap into the future and hope for the best.

I'm not dead... Just busy

I feel like it has been forever since I last blogged. My life is such chaos as of late. I am halfway through my schooling to become a licensed massage therapist. I love it. The people aren't always fabulous but I love the knowledge. My seizures have been kicking up which sucks but I guess it's reasonable since I haven't been sleeping well and I'm stressed. You'd think that getting massages every week would be great but not all of my classmates are exactly gifted so I sometimes am more sore after than before. I'm also taking Massage Theory, Kinesiology, and Anatomy and Physiology. All very cool in my opinion.
My girls are great. Difficult and stubborn, but great. I love them so much and they are still my greatest joy. As always, I often question my ability to parent in the face of so many challenges but so far they seem to be turning out pretty good.
I am selling my house. It sucks. I waver between loving it and being nearly consumed by sadness at losing what I had hoped would be my home for the next 15 plus years and looking forward to a change, moving closer to friends and family, having a more manageable size home. In all honesty this house is too much for me. The yard is huge and so is the house. I love it but my health doesn't often support me working on it daily and that is what it would need. I think the girls are OK with the idea of moving. They will enjoy being closer to grandparents and close friends. I've been thinking about looking for a place in SE Portland so I can be close to Shannon. I would love to live within easy walking distance of her.
I have made some new friends at school. Some will be life long friends I expect but others will drift away when school is over. A few of my classmates palpably dislike me. This is always hard for me. I suppose like everybody else I want everybody to like me. I have such a hard time dealing with strong dislike. I want to understand it almost as if I could convince them that they did like me if only given the chance. Not true or based in reality I know. My shrink is fond of reminding me that I'm there to get my LMT license not to make friends but still its hard. It often feels like high school all over again which was kind of a nightmare for me.
I'm smoking again and I hate that. It is my usual fall back stress reliever. When all else fails... Light up. My parents, husband and kids know. I sat down with the girls and said I wasn't proud of it, I wish I wasn't but I was smoking again. I told them that I didn't want them ever to feel like I was lying to them or being a hypocrite. I'm addicted. I feel a nearly overwhelming pull to smoke. It is so hard. I guess everybody says that though. I envy people who can just walk away. I told the girls that they could nag me about it, throw my cigs out if they see them, whatever and I won't do anything. There will be no punishments involved with their efforts to get me to quit. I don't know if that's the right thing to do or not but that's what I'm doing.
I miss my friends and distant family very very much. I am a social creature. Isolation doesn't sit well with me and living on this side of the river is like living on the other side of the grand canyon. I'm trying.
Well there's a brief summary. Once again I am going to endeavor to write more frequently.