August | 2013 | Fancy Stephanie

I’ve had this quote pinned to my secret “Divorce” board on Pinterest for a while. It was good inspiration, especially in May-June, when I was considering leaving Matt, and I was super conflicted and depressed about it.

See, it was not all bad with Matt. We definitely had our good times. But there were also a lot of really scary bad times, too. Things happened that are not okay in relationships. Ultimately, it was the scary things that led to our break-up, as it should. Some things you should not live with.

But I have never been the type of person to lick my wounds and retreat into a shell. Too many bad things have happened in my life, and what I’ve learned over the past ten years or so is how to pick up the pieces and keep going. I’ve never let getting fired, break ups, having a baby, getting kicked out of school, or even having my bank account closed on me* keep me down.

I remember my mother once told me that she liked how I never gave up in life. I think that’s one of the nicest things she ever said to me.

What it comes down to is that I cannot change the past. I can learn from it, sure, and I learned a lot over the two-and-a-half years with Matt. But what’s done is done, and there is a bright future to look forward to.

I’m a hopeless optimist. I never stop believing that better things are going to happen.

Because better things will happen. They always do.

*Shout-out to Gina for bailing me out when Chase decided to close my bank account on Tuesday, because they thought I might eventually defraud them. Yeah, they suck, and I’ll be opening a new bank account next week. But Chase is holding my $511 hostage for about a month, which really sucks. Anyway, Gina is seriously the bestest friend in the whole wide world for helping me out.

Someone posted this on Facebook today.

It seems innocent enough. “Oh, haha, kids these days, so disrespectful. In my day, my father would have gotten me good for mouthing off!

Except it doesn’t say that the author would have been punished. It doesn’t say that the author would have been grounded, spanked, placed in a naughty spot, or had privileges taken away.

No, the author says that they would not be here today.

I know that lots of parents joke about killing their kids. “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it,” is a well known saying. Most parents wouldn’t dream of harming their children like this. Most parents would never punish their children to death. But some do.

***

Let’s go in another direction for a minute.

What would you think if you saw this? Would you think, “Darn right, wives better respect their husbands, or they will get what’s coming to them!” Is it appropriate for a husband to punish his wife because she does not respect him, or she acted disrespectfully – even for a brief moment?

Of course not. That’s domestic violence.

***

I don’t see the difference between the two pictures. I don’t see how threatening to kill your kid – even jokingly – is okay, while threatening to kill your wife is not.

Maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. I hope it’s not just me.