Maybe I do need some closure

For whatever reason I've had a hard time letting shit go. I was about to type out a letter for no reason just to get thoughts out of my head and send it to an ex-bestfriend. In the past when shit went down I was the first to let it go. It would roll off my shoulders and I was all about "is it what it is and it was what it was." Of course I used to smoke a lot of pot back day in the day, too. I'm sure that played a big role in my free spirit, not remembering, la-dee-da attitude. Though my memory is about 75% since having my son, there are still some things that bother me. So, instead of actually writing to those that don't deserve my attention, I'll leave it here. If by some weird chance those from my past come across it then so be it, if not then no harm no foul.

Dear you,

I've been lamenting for quite some time whether or not I would ever write to you. I had always been one to fix things, right wrongs, or keep friendships alive. I am no longer that person. It bothers me that you bother me. I'm not jealous, mad, sad, or glad for or about you. One reason is because I know you never really cared about me. I was just another pawn in your little game of life to get to things you wanted. I look back to see how manipulative you were to others and never thought I would feel that hand but I did and it was for the best.

I think why I'm bothered as much as I am is because of how much I truly cared for you. I went above and beyond more than anyone had ever done for you. Knowing you, you probably don't see anything you've ever done wrong. You've never put yourself in anyone else's shoes. You just wanted what you wanted and no one was going to tell you otherwise. The sad thing was that I only ever wanted you to be happy.

I've thought about writing about all the little things from the beginning to the end of us but it doesn't really matter. Not then and not now, except for one little thing. Without me, your life would be profoundly different. From the beginning to the end of us, not one major life change in the last 17 years doesn't have something because of me. And for that I can die tomorrow knowing my purpose was greater than most. I can say that my mere little existence has changed many lives for the better and not just yours, and that's pretty neat.

From what you think I know to what you don't think I know, I hope you are not the person that turned your back on your friends so long ago. I hope for the sake of your children you've learned some hard life lessons that will make them better as they grow.

I've received some divine intervention through dreams with regards to you. God wants me to have some understanding, compassion, and caution when it comes to you and your life. There were times I've woken up missing my friend and wanting you to go running with. Other times I've woken up glad you were gone. Either way everything had to happen for a reason. You had to leave me to find my soul mate and start a brand new chapter with a whole different world. And I know was the same for you.

In the end I hope you got your ass handed to you. I hope it made you a different and better person. I hope that you've had to fight for all that you have because before when life was handed to you, you didn't appreciate it. I hope life is life. Good. Bad. Beautiful.

Sincerely, Truly Merry Ms Berry

P.S. the funny thing about this letter is that it can actually go to a couple people. I guess I had more learning to do that I thought. Yay me learn stuff!

Holy 2015 Chapters

I say "chapters", plural, because so much has changed in ONE year. At times it seemed like an eternity ago and at others it was just a blink of an eye. But here I am, a person that in this time on Monday I will be someone's mom.

I am 41 weeks pregnant and my little guy is getting served his eviction notice on Monday. Sometimes I think knowing the exact moment your life is going to change is more nerve racking then when it just happens with no preconceived notion of it.

In January, 2015 I have traveled to Puerto Rico, took 3 planes from 4 different airports to get there in the dead of winter when it was 3 degrees outside. A great way to start to rebuilding my marriage that hung by the threads of mistrust, pain and heart break. I recommend traveling to Puerto Rico in the middle of winter. The sands, sun and water were the perfect blanket of warmth to mend frozen hearts, amongst the alcohol fueled adventures and the passion filled rooms.

In February I became pregnant with our first child. My pregnancy itself was pretty great. I didn't go all bipolar, psycho, cry at every moment. On the contrary I found most things very humorous. Except the changes to my body. If you know any of the real me, you know that I'm vain, self conscious and slightly insecure about how I look and I prefer to be cute and fit. Well, add months of cheese fries and milkshakes and all that fit and hotness goes right out the window. So be it.

In June I had to put my best friend of 14, my fur baby, the one creature that loved me unconditionally, to sleep. I still cry at least once a week. I miss my Zoey beyond words. I am not going to go into details on why she had to go, but it was time. It came on hard and fast, and she was not going to suffer out of my own selfishness of wanting her around. Everyone she met loved her. For a dog, she had the biggest and silliest personality.

In August I sold my purple "brat mobile" Monte Carlo. 10 years and almost 200k miles, she was a ticking time bomb of car repairs and it was, also, her time to go. In her place we bought a 4 door, sparkly white, turbocharged mom-mobile. Her name is Snowflake. Though her personality is not as big as the "brat mobile's" she is a good, fast car and we look forward to making hundreds, if not thousands of memories in her.

In September I traveled to the desert to paint watercolor paintings in old silver mining towns.

From the most epic of baby showers to painting the whole house, my life has been a constant change. I am blessed in so many ways and yet overwhelmed with all that is about to continue to happen. The things that meant so much to me that began new chapters in my life, Zoey, the brat mobile, are gone but opened new chapters. I'm sad because I miss them but probably more so because the new chapters aren't written yet.

On a lighter note, I have been told numerous times that I don't look 10 months pregnant. Yes, 10! It's supposed to be a full 9 months, but in all actually it's 40 weeks which is 10 months.

I'm nervous, I'm sad, I'm scared, I'm excited, I am someone new that gets to experience a new life with no fucking clue what to expect. But the baby's room is beautiful so I have that.

I will be back.

Below is a picture of my contractions and little man's movements from a couple weeks ago. Funny how it's reflects the look of a rollercoaster.

Consistently changing, Merry Ms Berry

Sometimes it's okay to wander

Never in my 35 years alive have I not had a plan, a goal, a vision of what or where I thought I wanted my life to go, end up, and become. But here I am in place where, if 10 years ago you would have told me I'd be, I'd laugh in your face and probably be spilling my martini on your shoes in the process. Even now I have no concrete plan or ideas on what I want to do with my life.

I am currently baking a little man in the oven. I have a couple more months until he arrives and then the next chapter of my life begins as another whole new person. I've only been a "mom" to a dog, who I miss uncontrollably, but never to a little human. I've been a friend, enemy, business partner, employee, lover, fighter and probably a million other things that my "baby brain" won't let me remember, but never a 24/7, rest of my life figure head over something my body created with someone else. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around it, even though billions of people have already done the same.

Who do I want to be? Where am I going? What is going to become of a life I thought I had control over? So many questions and yet I have no answers. I want to be a great mom and teach my child to be the best he can be. Through trials, failures, successes and plain ol' fun, I want to help him mold himself into whoever he feels he wants to be. Isn't that what a "parent" is supposed to do? That's what my mom did for me. She wanted me to succeed but knew I had to fail to get there.

So....now what? What can I do with myself to show my son how to be awesome? What do I work towards or become to show him that life is supposed to fun, hard, messy, painful and totally worth all of it?

I had to throw my hands in the air and let the all mighty ruler of the universe lead me to this point, maybe I should continue to do so because I have no idea what else to do. Write? Paint? Draw? Speak? I always thought I had to control every moment and make things happen, but in the end it didn't work for me like that. So here's to NOT having a plan. NOT kicking ass & taking names. NOT knowing what to do. And NOT caring otherwise. Here's to loving the moment in a life, with amazing people and just letting the rest of it go.

Curiously yours, Merry Ms Berry

Trip, fall, shatter and give me the fawkin glue.

It's been a year and a half since I left my soul sucking career in a financial office. I've been to school for an insane semester, currently a nanny for 2 crazy spoiled children and working one day a week at a creative agency that I adore with every inch of my being. Within in that time I have fallen apart a few times and have to put myself back together. Not only fallen apart professionally but emotionally.

First it was the feeling that my life was a slew of experiences that mean nothing for a future I might not ever get to really understand. I have always held myself to a higher standard when it came to treating others and taking care of those around me. Time after time, job after job I have allowed people to put me down and take full advantage of me. Those same painful "career" experiences that recently spilled into my personal life. And when I say personal, I mean all over the fucking place. From "best friends" becoming enemies to wanting to leave a life I fought so hard to built. My life and my home fell to pieces. ...... again.......

But this is life...right?

One way or another life has cycles, eb and flows, peaks and valleys.....AND I WANT OFF THIS FUCKING ROLLERCOASTER RIDE! Now that doesn't mean that I expect not to have to duck and weave throughout life but I'm totally over getting put down, stabbed in the back and having my heart broken. With these situations happening I do what I only know what to do best, kick down doors, pack of my bags and tell people to go fuck off. Yep. That's how I roll.
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Revision: I wrote the above post sometime last year. I should probably start dating these things better. I think I kept it around to allow others into a small part of my life. I might write about unicorns and roses, but unicorns shit and roses have thorns. It's all part of life and I am not beneath trudging through my own mistakes and downfalls. I'm not one to roll over and just cry about it. I do cry. I do walk. I do fight. I do cave. I do break. I heal. I forgive. I learn. I move forward. Eventually I let the walls down and let those who hurt me back in. Why? Because that's what true love means. To forgive those you love to allow them the chance to hurt you again, but having some faith that they won't because they really do love you too. I hope I am able to teach my unborn son all these things, his father and I made it through to create him out of the love we have for each other.

Have you missed me?

It's been over a year since I've posted anything. I've thought about spilling out everything more than a few times, and yet never made it to here. So here I am.

In the past 18 months my life has been anything but smooth. As you know I left my corporate job at an investment firm to figure "me" out, what makes me happy and what doesn't. Well.....being a nanny didn't. I am blessed and grateful to have been a nanny to 2 of the craziest, smartest and weirdest little kids around. Their parents were amazing and it was close to home. I think of the kids as my practice run children for when I have my own.

Sometime last year my marriage basically fell apart. Lines were drawn. Hearts were broken. Many many many tears were shed by all but in the end it all fell back together. The old saying of "it has to get worse before it gets better" was more than true in our home. It was by far one of the most painful and yet fulfilling experiences in my life to date. The was some time in the middle of 2014. By the time the holidays came, things were slowly being put back together.

Enter 2015. We take a vacation to Puerto Rico to escape the bitter winter for some sun, sand and amazing fun with friends. We decided since everything that was wrong with "us" was pretty much fixed that 2015 would be a great starting point to "try" and expand on our family. We tried "hard" to make a Puerto Rico baby......but it was probably a good thing considering that amount of alcohol consumed in that short period of time.

When March rolled around and more and more of my friends started popping up pregnant, I had to come to terms that I might be getting a muscle car instead of a child. We were both in an understanding that we were going to try the best we could without killing ourselves, or going to a fertility specialist to get pregnant. We were okay with fancy toys and traveling the world. Little did I know I had gotten pregnant at the end of February. Yay us!

to be continued.........

enjoy my tropical Octo-baby!

Another one bites the dust.

Ya know how it's a bad idea to re-date ex-boyfriends? Well...I was just reminded that the same idea should go for best friends too.

Silver lining...?

Silver lining.....?

Hmm......I got it. True Love. Again. Yay me!

Long story short. My hubby and I went on a long weekend ski trip to Breckenridge, CO with another couple, one of the people being my "best friend" Blondie. Over the entire weekend she didn't say more that 5 sentences to either of us. By the time I had alone time with her to discuss how she was acting or to see if there was something wrong, I felt so out of place and uncomfortable, that I actually wanted nothing to do with her. Also, my body was so beat up from falling on my face down the mountainside, all I really wanted to do was enjoy my buzz in bed and watch some cheesy movies, while the mens did some night skiing.

The day after getting back from an extremely uncomfortable weekend I might have abrasively demanded an explanation for her behavior. I was extremely emotional, on edge, and disturbed by the whole ordeal that my execution of the discussion started off rough and ended up even worse. I put her on the spot and she threw a hissy fit and proceeded to read (type via text message) me the riot act.  She told me to grow the fuck up and turned the whole thing around on me. In the end I told her that we weren't the people we thought we were and to take care. SEE....I can take the high road too. Kinda.

Here's the thing about the whole situation. I only lit the fuse to the bomb that exploded that bridge. Blondie provided the dynamite. Problems started years ago. Tiny red flag after tiny red flag started to appear. Trying to be the better person and not let weird, little petty things come in the way of a friendship. A relationship that I fought to rebuild after she turned her back on me years before and I had reached out to her about 5 years ago. As the years went on I noticed her core values changed and changed in a way very different from my own. People change. I get it. Some grow with you, some grow away from you. We grew apart. Proof I wasn't really ever that important to her. Proving to myself, also, that she wasn't really that important to me either. In the end we should protect ourselves and our values. If someone isn't adding any sort of value to your life then what's the point of having them around? Isn't it counterproductive in the pursuit of happiness?

Okay back to the silver lining. If I hadn't pushed Blondie to leave her comfort zone and give this Minnesota man a shot she would not be engaged to him right now. AND I mean really had to convince her to give him a chance. I've always fought for the fairytale romance and look what happened. You never know what could happened and now I can sleep easily knowing that my purpose in this friendship was greater than us actually being friends. Yay me! I can say that this is not the first time it's happened, but that's not here or there.

I went through this once before with Blondie but it was me in the hot seat and her that walked away. Well.... I need to walk away and it's okay. It's in times of solitude is when we truly find ourselves. I hope she finds what she's missing.


Peacefully yours, Merry Ms Berry

P.S. I was accused of burning bridges but all I wanted to do was talk. She blew that bridge up and it needed to be done.

You tell me and you tell me NOW

It's Tuesday and I feel like I'm back being a bartender. People think, somehow, it's a glamorous life to be a bartender but it really isn't. I felt morally and ethically compromised being a bartender for a long period of time. With that said, I do not feel that I am compromising my morals by any means right now. I feel like I'm standing still, in an elevator, waiting for my floor of uncertainty to arrive and listening to the worst of Kenny G in the process. (Sorry mom. Easy listening is not easy to listen to for me).

So here I am. I have it really good compared to a lot of people and I'm not saying that to brag, I'm really not. I am saying that because something is missing. I feel like I should be doing more. Feeling more. Moving more. Experiencing more. Just more. But I don't know what it is.

I went back to painting for a very short period of time and it hasn't filled me up. I've had my highs and my lows. I've run around like a crazy person and I've sobbed in bed for a couple days straight. But where do I go from here. Where is my joy? How do I find it? Who do I ask? I'm emotionally laying low and incognito. I feel bipolar and almost ready to snap, then again it's almost numbing.

I am truly blessed with what and who are in my life, so why am I not elated? Why do I feel so empty? And why aren't the answers smacking me in the face?

I sold a painting and it was nice to give a little part of myself to someone who wanted it. Is that it? Am I not wanted? Do I crave necessity from a deeper place? Should I grab my notebook and painstakingly crave my grey heart out in poems that makes others weep for me?

I have found that my best works of anything have comes from the deep, dark, painful hollows of my soul. That place no one likes to visit, yet I know all to familiar. The place my rage comes from. hmm? Something to look into. If something is stirring, it needs to come out. If it doesn't, my anguish will continue.

I want to sleep for days. But alas, I cannot.

To the bat cave!