FYI

    Being divorced is worse than being in jail....wait hold the fuck up....you want to run that logic past me again? So because I tried for so long and so hard to hold the ragged seams of my marriage together.......only to have it fall apart anyway.....this makes me worse than a common criminal/felon, do I have that right? Standing up for myself and being strong, looking my emotionally abusive ex in the eye and saying "Enough, I refuse to be your punching bag anymore," this is somehow a mark against me and makes me less of a woman? And so therefore has spoiled me, making me undeserving of respect or love? Building my life from the bottom up again....makes me what? Lazy? Lacking backbone and work ethic? Right. So when was the last time you had your world fall apart and then have to scramble around to find the pieces and put them together to make some sort of semblance of life and at the same time rationalize what the hell just happened? That I get alimony, ordered by the Navy, from an ex that cheated on me repeatedly....this is what less acceptable than if I were to beg and mooch off money from my Grandparents in the twilight of their life? Nobody would bat an eye if I told them that my Grandparents were paying to put me through school......but because I am using my alimony to put myself through school.....and replacing stolen dreams with new ones.....this is unacceptable? Let me tell you what is unacceptable: Stereotyping a personal situation and jumping to conclusions that are incorrect and taking them as the gospel truth.......now that is a true crime......

Yes, this is a real conversation that I had.....

FYI

So much has happened over  a short period of time. It is mind boggling and confusing and I have not had time to really analyze how I feel. I know just under the surface is strong emotion and if I were to tap into it....joy, sadness, bewilderment, change. I am not going to lie, its hard so hard. I miss my friends in Sicily, they are my family, my support. I was watching videos I had taken of at my old house (it feels weird to call it my old house) and just how in a matter of a few months, it was all stripped away and replaced with something new and foreign. I was watching videos of my friends and I and just remembering how it used to be. I really like Chicago and my new roommates and I think given time I will find my niche, but right now at this moment, I am homesick,  after four years Sicily became my home. I don't associate Minnesota with home as much as I used to.

A question I get asked all the time is why Chicago why not move back to Minnesota. When my family heard that I was moving back stateside, they wanted me to move home and you know what? I just couldn't, I absolutely could not and would not. I would rather live in a strange city with people I barely know and  this is why:

When my mother divorced from my stepfather, she moved back home from Texas with five kids in tow and we lived with my Grandparents (which long story short is part of the reason they raised us). She went back to Minnesota and she got stuck and was dependent on my Grandparents for everything. Sad as it is; she never got back on her feet and consequently became the black sheep of the family. The family grew to resent her and would trash talk her (mainly my aunts and uncles) in front of my siblings and I at family gatherings. I am not saying it is fair or right, personally I think it is fucked up but there you have it, it is what it is. We were not allowed to speak up or defend my mother (and there were many times each of my siblings and I tried but it would back fire and we would become the target). I swear we were viewed as the spawn of Satan and bad seed and the evil had to be stamped out of us. Maybe you can now imagine how my family feels about the current life choice I have made. Which adds more incentive for me to stay away.

So this is why I refuse to go back. I refuse to let the family brand me a failure, a word they love to throw around a lot. I refuse to go back and let my Grandparents rule and dictate my life. And as much as I love my mother, I refuse to go back and be her nursemaid. I refuse to go back and depend on my Grandparents because in the golden years of their life they should be allowed to enjoy their retirement and all that they have worked so hard for.

Life Is Certainly Strange.......

I swear I am living in some cheesy chick flick.  To start with I lived in Sicily for four years and then move to Chicago and get a studio. I think that sounds more glamorous than it actually is...... To top it off, once I finish school and get some experience in my chosen field (Interior Design) I plan on getting a working visa and moving to London. If I can hack it in Chicago than London should be easier right? As I see it the next three years will by my "training" for London.

Here I Go Again On My Own

It is a bitter sweet feeling to look back and remember all the things that have happened to me in the past two years. If I allow myself to let go and give myself over to emotion I can recall events as if they just happened moments ago. I get emotional when I ask myself if I took all that I could from those special moments in life. It is a tangle of time and emotion and I find myself trying to wade through it, hoping to make sense of it all. It is a hard road that I must travel now and I will have all these wonderful memories to sustain me. I miss my friends something terrible, they are my family. Nobody is immune to time, it marches on and waits for nobody, cherish the ones that love you.

DNA Results Are In!

A couple months back I did the Ancestry.com DNA test. I am really pleased because what they came back with supports the Genealogy research that I have done but with one added bonus: Native American. 

This is something I have been suspicious of for some time and had to take with a grain of salt because most people claim Native American heritage when there really is no evidence to prove so. I had heard some rumors that there was a possibility that we had some Cherokee ancestry; as I had no proof at the time I had to discount it, that is until now. 

Awhile back I did a post on my family tree:http://shortsweetstories.blogspot.it/2013/01/modern-day-tess-of-durbervilles.html 

Anyways so here are the results. They really are self explanatory.

February Movie List

~Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb.

~Citizen Kane

~A Star is Born

~Scarface

~Great Expectations

~Murder on the Orient Express

~A Streetcar Named Desire 

~Laura

~Seven Samurai (Shichinin No Samurai) 

~The Adventures of Robin Hood

~ My Left Foot (I watched this before but Daniel Day Lewis is just that good!) 

~Willow (I've seen this as well, one of my favorites) 

Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond

Can I just say how excited I am so see this?! Many men have had the privilege to play bond: Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig, Sean Connery, and Sir Roger Moore to name a few; each has brought a different twist to how they portray the character. Now we can add Dominic Cooper amongst the ranks… albeit he is playing the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming (if you didn’t know this, you break my heart).  Cut from the upper crust of society, Ian Fleming was a journalist, author and Naval Intelligence Officer; which incidentally supplied much of the fodder for his James Bond novels.

I am very much looking forward to seeing Cooper’s portrayal of Ian Fleming. Critics will duly note that he does not look a bit like Ian Fleming, which in all honesty really doesn't matter. What will speak volumes will be whether or not Mr. Cooper can capture the essence of Ian Fleming, and relate his story to the audience.