Blue Skies and Gray Skies

In my line of work, we operate in both "blue sky" and "gray sky" environments.  Gray skies typically get the most coverage - tornadoes, floods, earthquakes.  It's always a challenge to get the blue sky activities noticed in the public - our preparedness programs, our services to the armed forces. Gray skies make better stories, and they dominate our attention, but as the communications director, it's my job to market both.

Often times my blog is dominated by gray skies, because it's in the gray skies that I feel the need to explore and purge my negative feelings. This leads to the impression that I'm living my whole life under gray skies, when the reality is I'm happy most of the time.

Getting divorced is the grayest my skies have ever been. Scott and I would both agree though that at the bottom of this, we feel we are doing the right thing for us. On the worst days, when my thoughts are their darkest, I want to write, I need to cry. Yet on my best days, and even my normal days, I'm too busy enjoying my kids, enjoying my friends, enjoying my job, enjoying life to make time to write. The need to write isn't so great on those days; and those days are the norm.

So today, I want to write about my blue skies.

The kids and I had a good day yesterday. Sure they were kind of awful in the morning when I told they had one hour to get their rooms clean or I was coming in with a garbage bag and throwing away anything left on the floor. But I spent that hour getting the rest of the house clean and then helped all the kids finish up their rooms before the hour was out. We watched a movie together on the couch then ran errands. (Haircuts and new shoes!) We had beans and toast for dinner - easy and certain to please! We put on our jammies and watched Harry Potter. Jaguar fell asleep curled up in my lap; it was sweet. The girls went to bed with no complaining. I then stayed up until 2am watching Switched At Birth on Netflix while finishing up all the laundry. I had a great day!

Last weekend was my first weekend away from the kids. I spent the first night - Friday - in Oklahoma City, eating pizza from Sauced on Paseo and watching hours of CNN. I spent Saturday with my high school bff Devon and one of her friends, grilling out, drinking gin and gossiping around a campfire until all hours of the night. I went to a play the following day with another friend. I had a great weekend! There were sad moments as we three newly single women talked about the disappointments, the regrets and the losses that come with divorce, but we had a lot of laughs and a lot of perfectly bad ideas regarding how to keep the campfire going in our somewhat inebriated state.

I talked a few days ago about my fear of being alone and the negativity that I can heap on myself while alone. I honestly feel that way some days. What I don't get around to saying though is on other days, I look forward to getting to know myself, spending some alone time learning to appreciate the quiet solitude. Last weekend after spending all that time with friends, I took myself to a movie I've been dying to see and loved going by myself. It was a movie based on a book that dramatically impacted my life and was a movie I didn't want to see with anyone else. Watching it in the cinema alone is exactly how I wanted to see it. This morning, I've even gone so far as to allow my kids to go to church with my mom (shock! horror!), so that I could revel in the silence of an empty, clean house, writing this blog and appreciating the me-time.

I recognize that I've never been very good at being alone and I've never really been good at knowing what *I* want. Before Scott, I had a very serious boyfriend that I spent way too much time trying to please, trying to be what he wanted me to be. Before him, I had a boyfriend that liked me so much just as I was, but I felt the relationship wasn't what God wanted me to be in so I ended it. Scott always allowed me to be me - he's incredible that way and this point needs to be reiterated loud and clear because he NEVER asked me to be anything other than who I am - but the moment after we married, I moved to another country and became "Scott's wife" to everyone else, and a few short years later, Fifi's mum. I did everything for the kids, was everything they needed me to be, and I don't regret that for one single second. But they are older now and don't need me like that so much, and Scott and I are splitting up, and I am back in America where people remember me as just Lori Arnold, the girl who had an obsession with mooning everyone and an equal obsession with Tripping Daisy, and you know what? I look forward to just remembering what I like and who I am all on my own.

A few weeks ago I had a night all to myself. I almost felt afraid to leave the house and go out on my own, because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had a few options, but all the options included me going alone. I was supposed to be meeting friends, but they all canceled for one reason or another. I drove around aimlessly for a while realizing I don't know what I even want for myself, what I even like to do, what choices I should make for myself. I'm generally happy to go with whatever everyone else wants to do; I'm not picky, I just like to hang out. Left with making decisions for myself, though, I was at a loss. I picked a restaurant I wasn't terribly excited about and ate dinner by myself with a book. I texted my friend. She encouraged me to just "do me" that night, whatever the hell that might look like. And you know what? I decided to follow my gut and do exactly what I really wanted to do, even if it meant doing it alone, and I did. And I had a fantastic time! I realized I AM capable of going places alone and having fun and making friends wherever I go, and that excites me.

Scott and I as a broken couple also have our mix of gray and blue skies. But it's the blue skies we're focusing on. It's the days when we can just talk about what we're going through and what we want for the future and how we can best love and care for our kids and still be a family. It's the days we can hug each other and know that deep down, we will always want the best for each other and root for each other's happiness. It's the times we can still laugh about things and roll our eyes at the things that annoy us both and quote Scrubs and know that the other person knows we're quoting Scrubs. We will always be in each other's lives no matter what, so why dwell on the gray skies when there are blue ones to smile through?

I have a lot of blue sky days. A LOT. I have gray ones too. The gray ones get the limelight, but as a blogger, I'm making it my job to share about both. I may not love being alone, but I know I am strong enough to make it work. I'm an extrovert. I need people. That won't change. But I don't need to be codependent. I want to learn the difference between needing to do things with people and being able to do things alongside people. I can face the fact that I'll never be the kind of person who chooses to hike the Pacific Crest Trail to find herself, but I can and will be the kind of person who will travel to another city by myself and hang out in bars and meet the locals and see the sights and take photos to post on Instagram and text with friends while I'm off doing my own thing. I can't do complete solitude, but I can just "do me". I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be happy. :)