November 19th, 2013: The Day of Divorce

Today obviously made more of an impact on me than it did on him...

I woke up at 7AM and bathed and got ready. I polished my nails and did my makeup. I chose my clothing with care, remembering the care I took getting ready for our marriage. I wore my blue silk blouse and my black jeans with sparkles.

He wore a brown shirt and jeans. His hair wasn't even brushed. As I struggled to fill out last minute papers, he played Bejeweled on his phone.

We pretty much approached life from radically different places and this was a clear example of that dichotomy.

It is finished...We are divorced...

I loved him unflinchingly, unfailingly and completely for 22 years and 11 months, from our first brief kiss at Mr. Gatti's in Austin, Texas.

He hugged me, I touched his face, we walked away. Sadness engulfed me.

~~~~~~~~~~

So, now I build a life for myself...Not that I thought we'd ever be together again & not that I haven't been "building" a life these past 11 months, because I have been...But today I am divorced...no longer married...single...my own person...free to be what I want to be, whatever that turns out to be.

Stand against "To Train Up A Child (In The Way They Should Go)" parenting books!!!!!

Silent stillness...

The pool of silence threatens me
Deep and black and still
Beckoning my soul to take a dip
In emotion cold and old
I stand frozen with longing
My heart burning with pain
And then I force myself to turn
To walk away again
Knowing that a better life
Cannot be found therein...

Life...

 

Life has a tendency to go on…whether you want it to or not, whether you are ready or not, whether it hurts or not. And my life has gone on…

I have a rhythm…up at 6:30AM, work at 8:15, off at 5:15ish. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I go to water aerobics…Saturdays I take the soon-to-be-ex the car. The way we are doing the car exchange pretty much guarantees I don’t get to go anywhere on my days off. This is frustrating to me but there seems to be nothing I can do to change it, which is a tad discouraging. 

I met a man at work. We went to coffee and he talked for about an hour and a half…I’m thinking we won’t work as a “dating couple”. 

There were a couple of really trivial things I didn’t like about him (he didn’t brush his hair before coming to coffee, he just put it back in a ponytail all matted on the side; he unbuttoned the top 3 buttons of his button-up shirt, showing his chest hair, which I consider icky, and one thing that really bothered me…He had a great job with the city and because they asked him to learn to use a computer for his inventory, he chose to retire early (from a job he stated he LOVED) rather than learn this new technology. To me that is an indication of a set-in-his-wayness that I don’t think I could handle. And, he down-talked his boys to a degree that made me uncomfortable.

One of my friends said, “Give him another chance, you might be wrong and “anything is better than being alone forever.” I was a tad floored by that comment. To “settle” for whatever because one might be alone indicates a fear of being alone that I do not share. I haven’t minded being alone, per se, although there is much about being in a couple that I miss…So I am not going to date someone simply because the alternative is my own company.

I am a tad spoiled, having been married to a vibrant man 20 years my junior that shared my love of sci-fi and technology. I know this will be an issue for some men my own age…Sigh. Not that he had a “young” body, per se…He was kind of soft and squishy…that isn’t what I desired, it was his essence, his spark, that which called me into passion. I am not sure I will ever experience that level of passion again. That is a thought that makes me a tad sad…but I’m not going to rule it out. It might be out there…Mostly I miss kissing…I miss it very, very much. But most men will not be content with just a kissing relationship…they will want more. And it is this “more” that I’m not sure I am ever going to be able to give again…

WARNING: Geeky Blog Post

I just rewatched "The End of Time" episodes where Dr Who as David Tenant dies and regenerates to be Matt Smith...and I was just sobbing my guts out because this was OUR show and this was OUR doctor and, like him, our marriage suffered a fatal dose of radiation and it was like a shredding, ripping, wrenching death...but then I started thinking that, like The Doctor, I am regenerating, albeit more slowly than the Doctor...

And, like The Doctor, I don't know what I'll look like/be like on the other side...Allons-y!!!

9 months...

After declaring that I would not be involved in seeking or paying for a divorce I did not want and months of up and down, back and forth, in and out involvement with my husband, things finally came to a head last month...Almost against my will, on Monday, August 12th,  I went to the courthouse with him to seek a divorce waiver to help pay the cost of the divorce. He makes too much money, so I knew that I would have to face the judge and beg, and so I did...crying. The judge decided I made just over the poverty level so I was given a 90 day deferment instead of a waiver. I broke down 3 times just getting the waiver and had a small panic attack while leaving the courthouse.

Then on August 19th, I went alone to the courthouse to file the divorce papers. Although I cried again this time, I managed not to have any level of panic attack. They decreed the final hearing will be November 19th at 10:30AM. After I filed, I fled to the river to pray and cry and scream and journal.

I am continuing to survive. Some days I breeze through. This week has been rather emotional and trembly. There is something so very final about filing papers. That life, that 22 years you lived and loved and shared is so irrevocably gone when you walk out after filing papers. I stood, looking at my river, knowing I will truly never ever be the same again. I am profoundly changed. Profoundly bereft. Profoundly sad. I often feel like an utter failure. Somehow I was "not enough". A deep theme that runs through almost every relationship in my whole life. Humans fail. I fail. We all fail. It is a human condition. But it still hurts beyond belief...

My daughter, Bethany and I were talking last night...

And we got on the subject of forgiveness and compassion and how we learn them. I told her I wasn't as compassionate in my teens as I am now and I told her that she and her siblings are a lot of the reason why. I taught them as a mother, but oh how they taught me as my children. And here is the email I sent her this morning:

It is only when you experience the absolute trust and love of a child that you love unconditionally, no matter what, that you really come to grasp the essence of GOD. Once you have a child in your life, you can no longer believe in a judgmental, angry, condemning GOD because if GOD is any kind of parent, it's a better parent than we are. And we can be pretty amazing parents.

Parents love and forgive their child of so many small and huge things. It is through this forgiving that I came back to being a Universalist, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is NOTHING you guys could ever do that would make me stop loving you and striving for you and praying for you and wanting you near me. I know parents with children on death row who visit and write and pray and send whatever gifts they are allowed to send. Parental love RARELY ever gives up.

And looking at punishment, my punishing you hurt me as much as it hurt you. I know that GOD could never endlessly torture people for simply "not having right beliefs" because that's simply ludicrous. An all-knowing/all-loving GOD would know the very depth of what a person has been through and would understand the break that leads them to do horrific wrongs. That's why I know that if there is a hell at all, it's redemptive. Like a kiln finishing the clay or a smelter burning off the dross from the gorgeous, precious metal, leaving the purity of soul on the other side. Only that kind of GOD is a parent GOD. All other concepts of judgements unto torture are our own puny minds putting human bitterness and resentment and "he'll get his"-ness onto our concept of GOD.

So that is why I said, you will lead him and he will lead you all and you all will be better, more compassionate people, for it.