Episode 3 - Life happens! Adulting is a trap!

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https://youtu.be/vfJEq99-jiQ?si=lC98o70VNpe_Z4-w

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Transcript

Joei: 0:00

Welcome to Calm Your Grits podcast. I'm your host joei Allen. I'm just your average stay at home mom, homeschool mom and wifey Who loves all things sparkly and anything DIY from party planning to interior design, Basically just a crazy Pinterest Mom. Oh, and I've also recently, jumped into the pageant life because why not I'm a self proclaimed expert at nothing other than hanging on by a thread. I am living my best life, during what I can only describe as my midlife crisis. This podcast is about nothing and everything. So whether you're here because you can relate or for some comic relief, my hope is that you'll walk away learning something new or at least feel a little less weird about the voices in your head and the decisions you've made in your life Do you remember back when you were excited to become an adult? Only to find that adulthood is actually a trap. Join me as I share the early highs and lows of my adulting journey in episode three: life happens. I moved here when I was 18. I had no idea what to expect. It was one of those things where I just wanted to move here and my mom knew better than to try to talk me out of it. That's the short version. Moved here, my cousins were my roommates it was off to a crazy start, or at least it seemed like it was a crazy start. I didn't realize that life was about to get even crazier, my thought process of moving here was I'm going to go to college. Then I learned this the whole thing about residency, you have to live in the state for it not to cost a gazillion dollars and I did not have a gazillion dollars just laying around. So I was like, alright I'll wait a year and then I'll go to college. My first job was a cashier at Harris Teeter that lasted about two months. I was like, no I do not like this whole cashier thing, paper plastic is just not what I envisioned my life to be. I also couldn't really tell you what I envisioned it was going to be like, but I just knew that wasn't it. Then I finally got my first real job that I absolutely loved. It was at Ross distribution center, for an 18 year old it was the coolest thing ever. I'm pretty sure the reason I got it was because I spoke Spanish, but hey, who was I to question why they were hiring me? So I got my dream job, I got an apartment in the hood. That's all I could afford. No shame. I ain't afraid of no ghost. At this new job, I met a guy fell in love, got knocked up at 18. Definitely not how I planned things, but you know, want to make God laugh, make a plan. So at first I was like, Uh, no, like I, this is not how I wanted to have a kid. I'm not married. I'm not gonna say a surprise. I knew where babies came from. I just didn't think that I would get knocked up for some reason, I don't know. So anyway at first. It was very much of a no after a lot of soul searching and thinking we were just kind of like, all right, We're doing this, we bought a house and we talked about getting married. Telling my family that was hard. That was really hard, nobody was happy about it at first, I feel like that's kind of normal. There are plenty of people that have kids when they're young and at first it's Oh my God, what am I going to do? And then eventually, people come around and all the things, but yeah, we had decided to buy a house. We were under contract about to move, it was in November I was six months pregnant, 24 weeks and my water broke. We went to the hospital there were no explanations on why my water broke, but basically because it was at 24 weeks and a day, baby was viable. The plan was for me to be there until I was full term. They started steroid shots and all the things that they could do to intervene to make sure that if she came early, that, she would have a better chance. And then I don't even know that I could actually explain why the emergency C section happened I probably blocked a lot of it out, but from one minute to the next everything was fine. And then everything wasn't it was okay. Something's happening. Hey, we have to do a C section. And then next thing I remember I was like yelling out in pain and there was, there was this little button, it was for morphine and I was like, this button is broken and nothing, they were able to like, kind of calm me down, they sedated me. Then the next morning, I had no idea what had actually happened for some reason. I thought I was still pregnant. I didn't realize she had been born. I kind of remember coming to and my boyfriend telling me she's in the NICU and part of me was like, well, when, when, when did I have her? Then, logically I was like, all right, must've been knocked out put under or whatever and had her. So, she went to the NICU and she was in the NICU for 18 days. It was a long 18 days and I'll spare you the day to day stuff, but ultimately it was just, it was just too much. She was a pound four ounces, just teeny tiny. And they were trying to regulate her heart. She had tubes everywhere. And Melina was like teeny tiny and yeah, it was bad. So I got strength from who knows where and I signed a DNR her oxygen level to her brain had been lower, lower and lower. When I signed the DNR, it had been like six hours and In case you didn't know, being without full oxygen to the brain for, minutes causes all kinds of damage. So somehow they're able to keep her heart beating and breathing, that's not quality of life. Like I'm not going to do that to her. So lost her devastated. It was a blur, but I do remember having to pretend like I was okay because everyone was so heartbroken around me, had to keep acting like. I'm okay. I'm okay. They try to give me medication and at that point medication was just not something I was comfortable with or really understood because. As a young, now was 19, she was born November 12th, which is exactly a month after my birthday. And at that point, I just, I don't know, I'm from Ecuador. We don't do, we didn't do mental health over there, especially not medications. So I refused them and I just tried to move on and try to deal with grief on my own, not knowing what grief was. Naturally, two kids who had an unplanned pregnancy, then tried to completely shift our lives to be parents. And then the rug gets pulled out from underneath you. Um, grief pretty much turned us against each other and There was also like this part of me. I, again, in the moment I did not realize, that felt like I failed because my body was the one that couldn't keep our baby safe and grow her to term. We just broke up. Now in hindsight we were both probably. Thinking if we're out of the relationship, then we can pretend like all of that never happened and that was our way of grieving. Nobody teaches you how to grieve. We broke up and five minutes later I jumped into another relationship I'm assuming I was craving stability I was just craving someone that loved me and so many things going through my head, so many feelings, whatever. So jumped into another relationship. Fast, I want to say we dated for three months and then we were engaged and I could sit here and try and explain why I did the things that I did, why I jumped into another relationship. It was probably a mix of my defense mechanism, just putting walls up and not allowing myself to be loved and very, very immature. I mean, I was 19. And then all of a sudden this new relationship comes along with what at the time seemed like someone who absolutely adored me and was, I think seven years older than me, which at that age is a big difference. I felt super loved. I felt safe and I craved that security. I craved being able to almost prove to everyone else that I'm okay and so in, in my mind, I was like, okay, we're going to get married and then I can have some stability and everyone will just get off my back and quit worrying about me. Crazy way of thinking, we don't say crazy. So actually, the day that my ex proposed, I called my dad to give him the news. He didn't pick up. I left him, a message on an answering machine. If you don't know what an answering machine is, Google it. And then I went to work the next day, had a meeting early and I got pulled out of the meeting and I was told that my dad had passed away. So here I am, like, this guy that I was like so in love with had just proposed and I was going to get my fairytale wedding and all the things. And then my dad passes away same day. Yeah. So. Devastating news. I went to Ecuador for his funeral. I was there for about a week, came back, and I feel like I was almost trying to do that thing again, where if you just pretend like it didn't happen, and you don't deal with it, then it and it didn't happen, right? So that was my way of dealing with grief. I was no expert But I wasn't even over the grief that I had just dealt with and now here I am I lost my dad and I was super focused on planning the wedding from when we got engaged to when we got married. It was six months. So I planned that wedding pretty fast I can't remember why it was so rushed, but here was that like the illusion of stability. My family came for the wedding, everyone loved him. It was that stability that I was looking for. Then things settled down and so finally, I was like, all right, I'm gonna go do this therapy thing that everyone's been telling me to do. Here I was thinking I was going to therapy to deal with losing my dad, could you guys picture how that first, session went? You call, you make an appointment and the reason behind it is my dad just passed away. And then after 30 minutes, I've unloaded everything else, from moving here by myself to, unplanned pregnancy all of that. And this poor guy probably thought he was just going to, help me deal with grief and yeah, whole bunch of crap, surfaced but I kept going and it helped. I got to a point where I felt okay. But I couldn't be married. while I was in therapy and I was actually getting to know the person that I I realized that we just weren't, our, our values and our principles didn't align and we were just different people. Even if I could say that he's the one that rushed, he's the one that did all that at the same time. I also said, yes, and I also went along with it and there was just a day that I remember being like I can't, I'm not saying that I was ready to get a divorce, but I knew I needed to deal with all the feelings and everything. So I remember Telling him how I felt like it was just one day like word vomit I felt like once I got it all out there, and we had been having issues I mean it wasn't like oh everything was great, and then one day. I like hey by the way No, I mean it was it, it was clear, it was just It's a matter of time and a matter of who was going to say it first, so yeah, we legally separated per the law and You have to wait a year before you can file for divorce While I was going to, Therapy and separating and all of that. I loved my job. It was my focus. It was what I cared about the most at the time I think again probably jumping in headfirst to stay focused on something and right around the time when I moved out they sat me next to the most annoying, loud. New Yorker, loud, annoying. Did I say loud? For those of you who know me, you know who I'm talking about. For those of you who don't know me, I'm talking about my husband, Lucas. So call it perfect timing but they sat us next to each other right around the time we were both going through separations I don't know, God works in mysterious ways. I was at a point where I had dealt with a lot of grief done the therapy done the things so I truly believe had I met him a year before I was a completely different person and so was he again, perfect timing he was so easy to talk to he talks a lot, too and We became friends And I was so out of his league. I still can't believe he had the balls to ask me out, but he did and I was like, okay and that's all it took! Yeah, I think it was like by the end of our first date, or maybe second date, it didn't take long. We had both laid everything out on the table and we were really into each other, but we didn't want to rush and be crazy and repeat cycles that we had done in the past. We both never really got to experience the, the grown up party life. Like he went to college, he did his six year plan, but then, he was all work, work, work, and he felt like he had never gotten to party, which is BS. I actually never got to be a kid. I moved here when I was 18. Got knocked up, uh, married and divorced. So anyway, we agreed that we were going to move in together, move uptown, after the second date, it wasn't like we were like, oh, let's move in together. I can't remember what point in our relationship. I think we had been dating at least a few months. At least it was more than five minutes, which was big for me. Our plan was let's move uptown, let's have fun. We weren't trying to go and, live the uptown single life. we were past that. We knew we wanted to be with each other, but what's the point of rushing, let's take our time, let's not be crazy. October of 2009, he proposed. It's a really cute story. I'll save that for another episode just to not go too far off track. So engaged and then a year later, we got married. By the time we got married, we had 2 years, side note, we really wanted to have a fun wedding. It's not often that a guy is like, Oh, I've always wanted to get married at Center City or uptown and have this kind of thing. I always joke that he's groomzilla someone that me that loves planning parties and loves planning everything and is very much into that kind of stuff, I was very surprised at how much of a groomzilla he was. He wanted to have an opinion about the color of the dresses. I was like, you know what, he's actually saying that he's always dreamt of having some kind of wedding. Why am I going to argue with him, we wanted to have that open bar. I remember he got a part time job to cover extra hours because we both knew what kind of wedding we wanted to have. So we set a goal and it was a great wedding, but two weeks before the wedding, find out I'm pregnant. At this point it had been years since I had had Melina. Keep in mind that there was no reason why my water broke and why any of that happened. They were like, it's one in a million chances that it would ever happen again. So when we found out, I was pregnant two weeks before the wedding, we were so excited, we were ready for that. I remember all our family was coming for the wedding and, we planned like how we were going to tell them, cause again, we were, we were really, really excited about it. We got these little picture frames and it was like, I love my grandma, I love my uncle, all, all the things. We got brought them all over to our condo and We were like, Oh, we have gifts for you guys. All right. Everyone opened them at the same time It was literally like a bunch of dum dums opening gifts at the same time. They're looking at it and they're kind of looking at each other and like, no one got it and then finally, my mom, she like looks up and she's like, typical for my mom she starts bawling and then everyone else caught on it was really funny. I really wish I would have filmed that. Anyway, irrelevant. So we told everyone, happy a big bummer was that whole, amazing wedding we had planned with the open bar and all the things. I did not get to partake in the open bar, which I was fine with, I'll take a kid over that and got married. It was amazing. We went on our honeymoon. It was great. Life was amazing. We got married in September. Fast forward to December, my water broke and I was five months pregnant at this point. You have to be six months for the baby to be considered viable and for doctors to even intervene to try to do anything. So yeah, uh, here we go again, Her name was Abigail Josephine. I tried again to keep the Joe going because it comes from like my great grandfather's Jose, and then we have Joseph and my Grandmother is Josefina, my mom's Josephine, Joei, I wanted to keep the Joe going. So Melina, Melina Joy and Abigail Josephine, Abby-Jo, which is, yes, it's very Southern, but we thought that was funny with us being basically the complete opposite of Southerners. He's a loud Italian, New Yorker, and I'm a Latin British girl from Florida. Abby Jo just sounded really cute. Anyway, once again, I was in the hospital for like a week and because of the way Melina was delivered through an emergency C section, my body could not go into labor because for an emergency C section, I'm not trying to get graphic here, but on the outside it's like this, but once they get inside, they have to cut your uterus and, and stuff up and down so they can get to the baby faster. You cut the uterus that way,, it heals, but there's a very high chance that if contractions happen that your uterus can tear and that's bad in case, in case you didn't figure that out. That's bad. So, when my water broke with Abby Jo they gave me all the medicine and all the things to stop me from going into labor. The catch 22 was they stopped me from going into labor. We knew they couldn't just deliver her normally because of the risk we were basically at a point where we had to get a D& E. Oh, but wait, my doctor didn't believe in doing D& Es, which is, essentially, it's an abortion in the second trimester. I'm not even going to go there. We had to accept the decision and drive up to UNC two days before Christmas and had to do a D&E, uh, dilate and I'll look it up, doesn't matter. Two days before Christmas, that really sucked. Also, the day my water broke was December 5th and December 5th had been the date of my original baby shower that was planned for Melina, my first daughter, which actually ended up being the day of her funeral. So December 5th, yeah, real shitty day. So with Abby Jo, that's the day my water broke. So yeah, so here we go. Guess what? Grief, grief, grief, grief and at this point, I feel like I could get, I could have my master's in grief, but no, you can't just turn a switch on and deal with stuff. You act a certain way, you think a certain way, you feel a certain way. People can tell you till the cows come home that it's grief, but good luck believing it. When I went back to work, during, my pregnancy and all that, like I loved the job that I had and I came back to the same company, but everyone I guess knew what was better for me, so put me in this, in a role that I absolutely hated. So it's not like I could have work to distract myself and get my mind off of how much everything sucked at the time. Then to top it off, uh, March. My cousin that was like a big brother to me, that had just been at our wedding that everyone met, commits suicide. I'm barely hanging on after losing Abby-Jo, and then more devastation, more grief. So, as you can imagine things weren't great in our relationship because it was just the way that I dealt with stuff. I've just shut down it was my body that had failed again, We'll call it you know walls went up Defense mechanisms pushing away, how could this person possibly love me? I can't do anything right. I hated my job. It was a lot. So, our marriage was being tested a hundred percent. And I remember the lowest point we had gone out for, and we, and we never missed the bar crawl when we lived uptown. Remember how I said that we had decided to move uptown for a year that ended up being three years because when we got engaged, we're like, well, why are we going to move to the suburbs now? Let's continue to enjoy this time during our engagement so we renewed our lease, and then when we lost Abby, we renewed our lease again, anyway, we lived uptown, we went to every single bar crawl out there. We did everything we were living the uptown life. It was fabulous. The partying life, not life in general. Life kind of sucked. So drinking was a great alternative and a great way to cope. I remember one of our lowest points was, St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick's Day is my husband's favorite holiday. My New Yorker, Italian husband, who is Irish who knows? It's his favorite. Part of me was kind of like, I probably shouldn't really drink because I have so much stuff inside that. I don't want to wake the beast, sure enough. I was like, oh no, but it's his favorite holiday and I was trying to think about him and how, this affected him too, everything that we had gone through. And so my dumb ass went out and got drunk and I remember throwing plates, but it escalated over a couple hours, but when we got back home, I was just a complete crazy drunk mess and yeah, we had no idea like what was What the answer was what we were going to do or anything like that. He went for a walk the next day it was a Sunday Stumbled upon Elevation Church, if you're not local to the area it was uptown, so he went in there I guess, he heard some sermon that really spoke to him. I remember he came back and he was like, Hey, I don't know what the answer is, but want to go to church. My relationship with God had been, very rocky because I never understood, like what kind of God would let me go through all the things that I had gone through. So it wasn't like I didn't believe in God, but I was like, the best way to put it is I was a little mad. But at this point, I'm like, why not let's go to church. And that brings me to the end of the episode, backstory is going to be a two parter I've already seen that I've gone way off of what I wanted to say and just gone off on my regular Joei rants, which I fully expect them to happen a lot. So I will continue with part two of Backstory in the next episode, until next time, thanks for listening.