What's the difference between a Blog name and a URL?

Me, to myself, "I think I'll start blogging again.' Googles blog sites, picks Blogger... and then the hard stuff starts. Nope,,not the writing because that - you will soon learn - comes with little to no effort, because I just say what comes to me, and I process it as I'm writing. To be fair, some folks get lost trying to follow the tracks of my thoughts, but I'll try very hard to leave breadcrumbs. But NO, the hard part, was picking my Blog name and my URL. 

My blog name, "Middle Aged Musings" seems appropriate. I am almost 47 years old, that definitely qualifies as middle-aged, right? It actually just dawned on me, that I am officially going to be "in my late 40s" next month. 

I distinctly remember thinking in my late 20's that I can't possibly be closing in on my 30's. When I turned 27 ***HOLD ON, BREADCRUMB INCOMING--- Take a decade of age -- 20's seems easy as we are already here. How do we differentiate between early-mid-late? Ugh, MATH. Early 20s = the first few years of it, right? 20-23. Mid 20s = 24-26. Late 20s = 27-29 That's how I look at it, anyway, but math was never my strong suit. *** Ok, anyway, when I was turning 27, I was home with kids. I had a newborn, an almost 3-year-old and a Kindergartner at home. To say I was busy, would be an understatement. I was also in a horrible relationship with their father-- it was abusive in every way possible -- but even worse, I was in a horrible relationship with myself. I didn't know myself and because of that, I didn't trust myself. I was experiencing post-partum depression heaped on top of my regular anxiety and depression. I was lonely, almost completely segregated from my family. I lived almost 2 hours away from my parents and brother. I was not close with my cousins, or aunts and uncles. Shame and embarrassment kept me from opening up to anyone, especially my family, about the life I lived behind closed doors. We didn't always have hot water, and many times I would have to warm water on the stove or in the microwave and fill the kitchen sink to give my kids baths. Have you ever put a 5-year-old in a kitchen sink? At the time, we lived in an old Carriage House that had been converted into apartments -- 2 of our neighbors were his (we'll call him T) cousins, and 1 neighbor was a family friend. If he hadn't alienated anyone that week, I could "trade" a tubbie or two for a ride to the grocery store, an afternoon of babysitting, or something equally insignificant to them, but left me feeling even more ashamed and less of a mother.  Only a year later, having moved from that apartment into a hotel room and eventually into a mobile home we (and by we, I mean *I* because he wasn't trusted) rented from his parents, I had had enough. After finding out T was cheating on me with my 'best friend,' after they stole my car from my parents' yard one of the very few times I spent time with my family, I went home, confronted the both of them (this was after having them arrested for taking my car without my permission, and risking some serious repercussions) and decided to be done. The night before I left, T and I had an argument about what, I cannot remember. But what I do remember is the sharp sting of my lip splitting, the taste of blood and the absolute cold fury I felt from deep within when I looked at him and said, "I would rather die in my sleep than have to wake up one more day and look at your mug." As luck would have it, I didn't have to wake up the next day to his mug. He'd spent the night out, doing who cares what with who cares who. I put my then 1st grader on the bus to school, dropped my preschooler off at her school, and did my best to entertain my one-year-old while I packed everything I could squeeze into my Ford Taurus. It was Columbus Day weekend, 2003, and I was ready to discover my own New World. I remember thinking my 30s will be better than my 20's, they would have to be, just by sheer definition of how horrible my 20s actually were. I spent the next year or 2 living with my parents, working dead end jobs, and dating some real dead-end guys. My parents were pushing me to go back to school, and my trauma response to being told what to do, was to do the exact opposite. So instead of going to college and trying to improve my life at 29 years old, I moved to Indiana. That's another story for a different blog. That might actually require an entire loaf of bread, not just the crumbs. But stay tuned, I'll deliver it. 

Ten years later, I was back in NH, had just moved out of my parents' house with my kids, I'd gone back to college. I had a decent paying entry-level job in the field of my education and was quickly proving my worth with the company. My kids were 11, 14 and 17. T was never part of their lives after that last lip-splitting incident. I had gone through the process of terminating his parental rights, and my kids were MINE. For the first time in their lives, they had my last name and there was no one who could claim them on their taxes except ME. We struggled; I won't lie. There were times when I had to go to the local food pantry to get through an exceptionally rough week financially. We relied upon the kindness of strangers and my kids went to sleep-away camp for a week every summer. I'd scrimp and save to make sure Christmas was good for them, even though deep down I always felt like it should be more. My daughter cheered, the baby played baseball and the oldest, well... that's an entire bakery of breadcrumbs. I was turning 37, had been single for several years with no hope of that changing. I was alone, depressed, and getting fatter by the day. I didn't deal with the demons left behind by the trauma of an abusive relationship, or the trauma of the death of someone I loved, or the trauma and stress of raising three kids alone, in a 2-bedroom apartment, sleeping on a futon in the living room every night. IF I slept at all, that is, because by then, I was a decade and a half into a raging sleep disorder.  And I was about 25 years into an overeating disorder. I didn't starve myself; I didn't binge and purge. Nope, not me, I ate. If I felt sad, I ate. If I was overwhelmed, I ate. If I was angry, I ate. If I felt hopeless, I ate. My mother would express her concern about my weight. I would nod and make excuses to leave, and I would go home and eat. I was almost 37 and weighed over 300 pounds. I couldn't walk more than 100 yards without my back screaming, and my lungs burning. All the hope I had for my 30s being better than my 20s. Bah. While it was true, I was no longer in an abusive relationship with someone else, I was in a much worse abusive relationship - with myself. The light that was at the tunnel of my 20's was gone. And in its place was a rock wall. Much like Wile E Coyote plowing face-first into the rock wall that the Roadrunner had painted a tunnel onto, I could find no path out of my self-made darkness. I remember the fear I felt in my late 30s as I saw 40 looming on the horizon. So, what did I do? I ate. SPLAT!

Fast forward 10 more years to today, my late 40s in sight. Life is much better. That's not to say my 40s have been easy - nope, no sir, certainly not the case (you'll see the dots connect as we move along). I'm not afraid of my 50's, in fact, I welcome them. I stopped dying my hair a couple years ago, and I am not freaked out by the new strands of glitter that pop up randomly anymore. I would, however, love for those pesky little black hairs to stop popping out of my chin OR I'd love for the random pimples to disappear. I don't care which, but I think it is supremely unfair to make me deal with old lady whiskers AND preteen pimples. I have also gained this "annoying habit" (as my daughter calls it) of looking for the silver lining, the shred of hope in every single bad situation or occasion. I don't mean blindly claiming "Oh, everything happens for a reason," because that's bullshit (mostly). I mean in the absolute worst moments; I contort myself bending over backwards to try to find even a molecule of good to hold onto with everything I have. This is how I have learned to find and accept hope, and to have a little faith in myself. I now know that no matter what comes my way, I will make it through. It's finding that little ray of hope that gets me through the dark nights, until the sun comes up and shines its light on the shadows, making everything just a little warmer, and a little less scary.

So, yes, we will have some Middle Aged Musings here, but more importantly, we will also find little rays of hope. 

Stay tuned.

~Rae