(no subject)

I'm tired. I slept well, and will probably lie down to sleep some more before too long. But I have no physical reason to be so tired. I discount emotional exhaustion, although I frequently suffer from it.

I didn't do jack SHIT yesterday. Picked up a few items at Big Lots, then headed to my mother's house, to get my child in order. Mother, daughter and I proceeded to Billy Bob's Pizza, where we spent four hours getting to know Jeff and Jennifer. Four hours watching my mother grow more comfortable with them; four hours watching my daughter loosen up and laugh at her father's antics; four hours admiring the beauty of the woman who made this possible.

She really IS beautiful. Am I jealous? Not as much as I might have been a year ago, before I became comfortable with my own looks. She's sweet beyond reason. She loves Jeff, and she will love Scarlett, already does on many levels. She loves me, too. She's full of love like few people I've ever known. I like her, and I trust her. I would send my child home with her without blinking an eye.

I was reminded several times last night why I was attracted to this hulking man to begin with. Now I will not pretend to have fallen in love with him when we met, nor will I pretend that we knew one another well. But I have ALWAYS been a snap judge of character. When I met Jeff, I was lonely, and looking for a husband. I always slept with men before I got to know them, because I used sex as a tool to draw them in, and while my performance was remarkable, this technique of sex first has never worked properly. (I know, DUH!) But I was a horny bitch back then, much as I am now. My values were twisted, and I had no self-value at all. But that's not what we're discussing here.

I talked with Jeff about a week, and then let him come see me. We spent a few hours in bed, and at the time I rated him only fair. (Sitting at the table with him last night, I questioned that rating, but I'm not about to ask for a rematch.) For the first time I could remember, I was uninterested in seeing a man again after he left my house. When Jeff left, I didn't pine after him. I didn't call him, I didn't hunt him down, I didn't lay awake at night wondering how I could get him to come back. And I'm not exaggerating here, that was the FIRST time that had ever happened.

But after I found myself pregnant, despite his pussy behavior, I would have taken him in my life, even considered marrying him, if he had shown the slightest bit of interest. I loved my baby, and by osmosis felt great affection for her father for making her. I saw a lot of him in her, physically; and any behavior traits that she had which I didn't identify with, I attributed to him.

No, I wouldn't take him now. The number one reason is I would NEVER do that to Jennifer, I care too much for her. The number two reason is he is a wuss, and requires frequent pushing to do what he needs to do. Evidenced by the fact that Jennifer pressed him from the time they started dating to do the right thing by me. And its taken him almost three years.  I CAN'T HANDLE THAT IN A MAN. I end up with very little respect if a man needs pushing from me. So I would have become a nagging bitch if I had taken him on, and I'm glad we didn't go there. Now, I see his behavior a bit differently, more as a slowness of thought, a need to analyze and re-analyze everything before making a move. He's tried to prevent himself from getting his feelings hurt, and I imagine that he's slow to decision in most things that he does. That's just the way he is, and there's nothing inherently wrong with giving things thorough thought before following through. (Don't try to say that out loud. Your tongue will fall off.) No, I 'm not defending his lack of action where his daughter is concerned. He was WRONG to avoid contacting us. PERIOD.  But he knows it, and as I have said to many people this weekend, he will kick himself in the ass every day for the rest of his life because he made that mistake. And THAT is why I am sweet and accomodating to him. Because I know it will make him regret his actions that much more. Someday he will say to me "If I'd known you were going to be this easy to get along with, I would have done this sooner." And I'll be able to say "I know. I'm only nice to you because I know it will eat you alive." See? I. Am. EVIL.

So anyway, I suffered a lot of self-doubt on the way home. I can't tell you exactly why I feel the need to equate my self-worth with who I have in my life. All I know is its buried so deeply in my psyche that I cannot easily extract it, and instead I must try to retrain it, to force my self-worth to take a different direction.

And while the self-doubt always dissipates in the light of the morning, I am giving my next course of action a great deal of serious thought. I'm not certain that I'm ready to analyze that here, because I haven't told you all very much about what is going on in my emotional life. I've just been dropping hints. I know that some deeper self-analyzation is in order. I'm just not sure when.