JUST ANOTHER DAY

This morning I called the lawyer.  I wasn't able to get an appointment yet, but my call is officially in, and he can't use him because I got there first.  Not that I'm actually winning any contests because of it.   I took down the box in my closet containing my yellowed, yucky, 20-year-old wedding dress.  I always meant to get it cleaned but it was too easy to forget about, so maybe I'll do that and have my mom keep it at her house.  The week after this happened I put my actual gold wedding ring and the white gold version we bought at an antique store into a small black bag for my mom to put in her lock box.  I figured each kid would end up with a ring that way.  When I think of all the "marriage" things I have around here that I have to go through, I get really sad, but I almost feel like I have to do it quickly.  Everything in my house is a physical manifestation of our life together and I have to figure out how to make dissolving it less painful.  I cried a tiny bit this morning when I was just curiously looking for area divorce support groups.  Only a tiny bit.  I felt the weight on my chest sporadically and briefly throughout the day, but I tried moving my treadmill workout to afternoon instead of mid morning so the endorphins would kick in later in the day.  I'm not sure if it helped or not, but it's 6:30 and I haven't felt the crushing weight that has usually had me sobbing from around 5 until 7 every evening.  I don't think I can put off the treadmill until afternoon every day, though.  I don't really enjoy waiting to shower until 5 p.m. 

After the treadmill, around 3:30, he showed up to get the car.  I had just sat down to study a little more, which is causing me trouble because every time I open that binder I get flooded with memories, good and bad.  I had fun there a few times (the middle was kinda crappy but the beginning and the end was fun). It was the last place where my life was still the same back home.  Anyway, he showed up and stood there looking around, seeming a little irritated that I wasn't being friendly.  I didn't want to look at him when he asked me a question.  I tried to focus on my book and my notes. Then when he walked down the stairs he said goodbye and I said nothing, and I felt the tension wafting back up the stairs toward me.  Get over it, buddy. You're not my friend right now.

HUH.

The heavy weight on my chest started early today.  It was the first family get together without him.  I thought at first it would help me to have somewhere to go and someone to be with, but it really just drove home the fact that I'm on my own now. 

So after filling out another online job application, which is so rough because I have to deal with things from my past and dates in the past and typing our last name over and over again, I headed for the bathroom and I ended up just standing there looking in the mirror.  I don't like the baggy-eyed, tired person looking back at me.  She needs sleep.  She needs peace.  She needs to get a grip. 

That being said, the biggest thing I admitted to myself while I looked in that mirror is that I'm at fault too.  I mean, I knew I was, but I have been so wrapped up in feeling sorry for myself over having my husband leave me that I didn't really think about it.  I know I took him for granted and took advantage of him.  I've probably unwittingly taken advantage of his job all these years, dropping mine when money problems even out or because I just want to be home with my kids.  I really should have thought ahead and cultivated a career for myself, but I honestly didn't think we'd ever REALLY break up, or that if we did it would probably be my doing.  I should have been more self reliant, or at least more considerate of the fact that he could always be the one to leave me.  Looking back, I probably started worrying and nagging about our future--his need of life insurance and my need of a separate IRA (never happened) outside of the retirement he always said was for both of us--around the time when things really started going especially sour in our marriage a few years ago.  I would wake up at night thinking about it.  I pushed him to at least get SOME life insurance, and now I see his reluctance was probably because he knew he was going to leave me.  I completely and totally nagged him about his weight and apathy about the things he put into his body.  I nagged him about the amount of time he spent at work.  I think I ignored my intuition more than I should have, and maybe that will help me in the future.  If something doesn't seem right, do something about it from all angles, not just the obvious one. And now I have to figure out what to do about realizing I shouldn't have taken him for granted.  I feel kinda bad about that, but it won't change anything, huh?  Huh.

GOOD GRIEF

I started to write last night but I got sidetracked by the pain and started doing something else, and then suddenly I was exhausted and it was 10 p.m.  But I wrote the title above because it kept running through my head-- "good grief"--and the actual meaning of it.  I know it's just a silly expression, but I'll have to look up the origin.  I'm in two minds about it.  On the one hand, grief is painful and awful and lonely and hopeless, so there's nothing good about it.  But on the other hand, grief is something that gets you past the pain eventually.  I truly hope so, at least.  If I was talking to a friend who lost a loved one I would never in a million years tell them to stop dwelling on the grief and move on, so I don't know why I expect myself to stop dwelling on the death of my marriage and move on already.  But it hurts SO bad, and I am SO lonely, and already tired of all of the feelings related to it and I'm praying for a release all the time. 

I know a lot of it needs to be letting go of the bigger picture and trying to concentrate on small things, but that's never been my strong suit.  I want to know what's going on in all areas so my bigger picture makes sense.  I've driven across the country without knowing what hotel I'm stopping at each night, and even that made me incredibly nervous.  I wanted to get out the atlas every morning and find a reasonably sized town to stop in at the end of the day, which also meant knowing just how long to drive each day.  When navigating unending, winding miles in Montana, driving until I'm tired and stopping for the night just anywhere isn't really my cup of tea.  If I know it's 10 hours to Bozeman and it will be 9 p.m. in 10 hours, I'm fine.  So yeah...I'm not really currently one of those "simple joys on the road less traveled" sorts.  Happiness in the little things is great, and choosing alternate paths is great, but actual JOY in the small things?  I need to get back to that.

I've sort of deviated from my main theme, I guess, of whether or not I'm in the stage of experiencing good grief or just excessive self pity and pain, but I guess I've made a little progress in knowing that this isn't going to be as easy as I thought.  It's going to hurt.  A lot.  To risk sounding extremely melodramatic, there are times when I feel like my heart is actually being sucked out of my chest, and I need to put my hands over my heart to stop it.  If I don't check myself the tears well up in no time and I'm sobbing.  I can lie in bed literally writhing from the pain and the uncertainty. And then I tell myself this can't last forever, and that I'll get over it. It's those unknowns that sneak up and get me freaked out every time.

WELLER?

I suppose I feel a little better.  Not great, but better than yesterday.  The period finally showed up, so I think the emotional roller coaster might have leveled out a tiny bit.  Not that I can actually DO anything about it right now.  I took a tiny baby step toward "something for myself" by texting my friend that I would start working some Saturdays where I used to work.  I'd love to tell her I'd take ALL the Saturdays, but then I feel like I ruin Friday night AND Saturday by doing that.  But who am I kidding...I have no life, so what's another ruined Friday night? 

I've been trying to study but my brain is still so scattered and the pages in the manual seem to make so little sense.  I don't know if I'm getting anywhere with it or not.  I tried to find some more sleep labs in the area and I looked at the list 'he' sent me yesterday.  I have to laugh at some of it.  Lafayette and Jasper.  Really?  Would HE drive to Lafayette or Jasper to work?  No, so why would I?  I won't enjoy it, but I would drive an hour at the most, hopefully two days a week or less.  I can't imagine trying to drive that far home after working a 12 hour shift. 

The studying is making me miss a friend I made in Atlanta.   Big, ugly, gloppy, stupid, pitiful, annoying sigh.

A PITY PARTY CAR RANT

All that crap about feeling strong and positive absolutely flew out the window the last few days.  I'm trying, I really am, but sometimes I can feel myself slipping into that void where I'd love nothing more than downing an entire king-sized candy bar and sleeping as much of the day as possible.  I try to cook for my kids but not for myself so I'll be forced to eat salad.  I really don't want to start baking again.  It doesn't help that the weather is frigid and icy, which is exactly how my body feels.  I feel cold from the inside out.  My period is 16 days late and I'm 16 x more emotional.  I sent him a text last night, sarcastically thanking him for his home-and-marriage apathy over the last few years so that he could go stay at party central with his friend's family, with no real household responsibilities and built in company, leaving me alone to take care of everything here.

What's the female version of be emasculated?  I suppose it would be effeminated...so it really doesn't sound all that bad, actually.  Whatever the correct term for it, he forced me to be the one to take care of everything around here, even if sometimes its just the delegation of which kid does what, and he did it all while leaving me no car and no self esteem.  Everybody says I'll feel better once I get a job, but will I?  Will I feel better when I have to cry myself to sleep at night because I'm lonely after a day of working at a job that barely pays me anything, leaving me very little time to do anything with my kids or my deteriorating house, only to wake up the next day and get ready for it again, and probably have to beg a ride there from my estranged husband or my mother because I don't have a car?  I never thought I would care this much about a stupid car, but I do.  I NEED a car.  I NEED to be able to go do something when the mood strikes without having to arrange a ride.  I feel like a child when I have to beg for rides, and a prisoner in my house when I don't.  If he left me and the kids and the pets and the house behind, why does he get my car?

I know I sound awful.  I still have a sense of humor, really, but it's a little dormant right now.  I don't like that feeling because I ALWAYS have a stupid sense of humor and can make a pun or a joke of anything.  When I can't it means I'm depressed, and I don't want that.  I know it will get better.  I do.  But when it doesn't feel like it is or I don't know how it will or when, it's no fun.  Strength, courage, and peace.  Strength, courage, and peace.  String cheese, currants, and peas....

NO MORE COUNTING--JUST A BAD DAY

I cried in front of him today.  I really didn't want to, but once I started I couldn't stop. Circumstances collided to make me feel like I'm a premature member of the Red Hat Society.  I'm hoping my heightened emotion state means there are physical changes afoot, but only time will tell.  However, I'm feeling regional isolation, cut off from people I really want to talk with, like I will never meet someone worthwhile ever again (here), like it's a cruel joke that I was able to feel the easy comfort of being married for almost 20 years and it got ripped out from under me, and a little like things are all done for no reason at all.  I know it sounds cryptic, but I can't elaborate right now.  My brain feels too addled.  I thought I had a decent week, with a few good days there toward the end, but I sort of feel like every good thought was for nothing, and My Life will be spent amongst my pets and their expelled hair and my kids' dirty dishes.  I'm not ready for that.  I know toward the end of my marriage I really wasn't getting out much, but that wasn't my fault.  I'm extremely out of practice on how to behave in society now! Today I'm just feeling very old and sad.  It isn't a constant, but feeling it at all stinks.  It probably doesn't make a lot of sense to say this, but in a riddle-y way I was fine with doing things alone while I had a husband.  Now doing things alone makes me feel ALONE.

DAY 6 FINANCIAL WOES

My thoughts and feelings have run the gammut this week, and I'm ok with that.  They have to.  I'm trying to focus on studying and trying to stay on top of household chores, but I have trouble focusing on the studying.  It's hard to study when you can't remember what you're supposed to be studying and why, and I end up reading and looking up terms/abbreviations I've already forgotten most of the time.  Then I read job postings for polysomnography technicians and trainees (sleep techs) and my heart is in my throat because they want someone who has done a two-year respiratory course or at least 9 months of experience.  I'm caught in that age-old vicious circle:  Everyone wants someone with experience, but how do I get experience if no one will hire me?  So I'm still waiting on the call from the local hospital and hoping for the best, and next week I'll try to branch out and send my letter and resume to a few more places within a small radius.

I balanced my checkbook yesterday and wrote down all the bills I was going to pay.  I honestly, seriously, totally and completely do not understand where my "husband" thinks he will get money for another car and an apartment.  I mean, I may have $700 left over after bills today (which is really a LOT compared to normal), but that's not including gas, groceries, various household things like laundry soap and fabric softener, dance class and costume fees, the upcoming car insurance, and yeah, the makeup I need.  I know that sounds petty and vain, but dammit,  I need eyeliner and foundation and I have sensitive skin and can't just use cheap Cover Girl stuff from Walmart, and I refuse to walk around all splotchy and scarred because I can't afford any.  We have one tube of toothpaste for 3 people and the kids both need new toothbrushes (please tell me, WHEN did toothbrushes get so expensive??).  The car needs a tune up.  We need a new furnace filter.  So you see that the extra $700 is easily dwindled down to maybe $200, and that's not including whatever he will decide he thinks he can afford, like eating out and going to the movies, because that's what he always does.  So really, if that becomes the norm, he may realistically end up with $400 a month.  Unless he's planning to get an apartment and a car in 1972, he's screwed.

DAY 1 SUCKED!

On Saturday, February 12, 2011, my husband of 19 years essentially broke up with me via text message.  Kind of.  It sounds cold and callous, so I like to say it that way at least. 

The night before, a Friday, I returned from a week-long trip to Atlanta where I was in a class to learn how to perform sleep studies.  I had been bouncing around from job to job the last 20 years and decided to make one last ditch effort for an actual career in something that I thought would be lucrative and interesting.  My kids are growing up, the education was relatively quick, and the school relatively inexpensive, so I decided to go for it.  I'm 40, after all, and I'd already set out to make as many changes as possible during the monumental year.  But I digress...

My husband had to pick me up from the airport Friday night, and this was where I received my first indication things were really, really wrong.  He knew my week had been stressful and that I was suffering from several different stress-related health issues, including feeling really weak from not sleeping as much as I should and what I guessed was some sort of electrolyte imbalance.  My flight arrived around 8:50 p.m., and by the time my luggage finally came out of that stupid chute, it was probably about 9:30.  I walked out of the terminal into the absolutely frigid air, which I hadn't felt for at leat 7 days and had obviously forgotten.  I waited.  And waited.  I texted him where I was standing.  Finally I spotted our car and him slowing down to pull over.  Silly me, I thought he would put the car in park and come help me lift my 48 lb bag into the bag seat of the car, but he didn't and I had to do it myself in my weakened condition.  It took a few tries and some inertia, but I finally shoved it in and slammed the door.  When I got in, he just sort of looked at me in his robot-face way, and I leaned toward him a little, just as a test, and I got nothing.  No hug, no greeting, no kiss, no peck on the cheek, no "how was your flight?"  Nothing.  So I maneuvered my seatbelt on and said, "hi."  I think I got a half smile.

I jabbered incoherently for about 45 minutes, from confusing stories about things that I tried to learn at the school to the rash in my arm pits that I'd suffered for almost the whole week.  I told him about a couple of the men I enjoyed joking with during the class (sometimes I can connect better initially with men than women--don't always trust women at first!), etc.  I didn't get much out of him on the ride home, not that I ever did anyway, but it was less than usual.  I figured it was because it was late at night and we'd both been up since 6 a.m.  I decided I was hungry and had him stop so I could get something quick.  In the drive thru I leaned over toward him and looked up expectantly, and he turned to give me a very hard-lipped, pursed kiss.  It was cold and chicken peck like.  Yuck.  I fell asleep after that. 

Fast forward a bit and I wake up in the middle of the night, maybe around 4 a.m.,  to realize he wasn't in bed and my bedroom door was closed.  It occured to me that the closed door was a bit odd, but I'd been sleep deprived the last 8 days and didn't feel like investigating.  The next time I woke up it was light out, and I was hearing the garage door closing.  I thought it was strange, but that maybe he was on call, as usual, or maybe we were out of coffee or something, and he was going to the grocery store.  I got up, did the usual morning rituals and tried to unpack a little.  Around 10:00 I decided I would text him to see where he was. 

Not giving the conversation verbatim, this is basically a condensed version of what was said. 
MY INITIAL TEXT:  Where are you?
HIS REPLY:  I had to get away to think. 
MY REPLY:  What?
HIS REPLY:  I need to clear my head.  I didn't miss you while you were gone.  I checked out of our marriage a long time ago and I need to figure out why.
MY REPLY:  Because you stopped caring about me and everything else. 
HIS REPLY:  I know.  I just need time to think.
MY REPLY:  I'm sorry I'm so horrible to be with. 
HIS REPLY:  It's me. 
MY REPLY:  None.
HIS REPLY:  I had to get away to think.

Now, what you don't already know is that this isn't the first time we've had this sort of conversation.  In 2003 it was me wondering if I loved him the way I should.  (Editor's Note:  There were a few incidents that came to light during this brief separation that I have chosen to refrain from discussing.  I do believe it's important to note that I didn't just suddenly decide I wanted to leave all by myself.  However, the realization that I SHOULD did happen suddenly while I was driving down the highway and passed a big yellow road sign that said, "Rough Crossing Ahead.")  I scheduled myself a 3-week trip to England to think things through.  While I was there I met a man I'd been talking to online, he was horrible, I became even more depressed and stressed than before, and I really started missing the comfort of home and a stable, caring relationship.  I told the husband I wanted to come home and start over.  We moved across the country, away from all of my family to the place where his live, where he promptly told me he didn't think he loved me anymore, and I found email exchanges with someone he worked with.  Things were bad for a very long time.  I can't remember exactly how long, but I lived on eggshells for months, feeling like I had to be on my best behavior at all times even though I was stressed out trying to make friends in a new place and deal with in laws I hadn't ever lived around before.  He never actually left, but every now and then he would say that cliche line, "I just don't know what I think."  Eventually I started seeing a counselor, which was painful but probably a good idea, and eventually we went into marriage counseling.  Things felt a little better even though he never told me he loved me.  I felt a little more stable when, for some stupid reason, we decided to buy a house out there.  I faked my way through being extremely unhappy living there, trying to make a happy home for our kids even though the town scared the living daylights out of me and I missed my family immensely.  I tried to get a job but I couldn't.  Then I planted the seed about moving back to my home.  It eventually worked out, and we did.  We bought our current house. I got a part-time job. Things were fine for a while.  Economic strains developed and my hours were cut to next to nothing.  It didn't seem worth it to even have to get up and get dressed for a few hours of work every week, so I quit, thinking the two other women, whose husbands struggled with lay offs and slow work, could get a few more hours in their paychecks.  I converted to Catholicism to make a more cohesive-feeling family.  Then our house started to feel like it was falling apart around me.  Everything seemed to be falling apart at once and there was no money for fixing it up, but it was more than that.  I realized he was working more.  A lot more.  Home maintenance flew out the window.  I started to feel like the house and the apathy surrounding it was a metaphor for ME.  He just didn't want to put the effort in.  We started to fight even more.  I told him I wasn't getting any emotional support that I desperately needed.  Then I signed up for the sleep study course, and on the day I had to book my flight I sat in this computer chair and cried uncontrollably.  I'm not a fan of flying, I've rarely left my family and pets for a week by myself before, and I felt like every tiny decision from where to fly from, which airline to fly, which flight to take, which seat to choose, was all a life-or-death decision.  He knew I was struggling and crying, and he never came over to me to put a hand on my shoulder and tell me it would all be fine.  When I asked him why, he said it's because it was just something that had to be done, so there was no point in getting emotional over it.  I finally booked the ticket, yelling, "Fine, I'll do it just because I know you want to get rid of me."  I called it, didn't I?

Back to the texting.  All of this took place in the morning.  What he didn't know was that I was calling and texting several of my friends and family, telling them I was getting a divorce.  One friend, who is in the middle of divorce proceedings, was actually in her car on her way down here.  She had planned to contact me later to let me know she was coming down to see someone else and that she wanted to see me.  I hadn't even talked to my husband yet to know anything for sure, but I knew there was no returning from this.  This is the third time we've had this problem, and the last time, before we moved home, I told myself I would absolutely not ever go through that again.  I was not going to put up with a flake out every 5 years, with months of trying to put things back together again, only to have it happen AGAIN.  He finally texted me back that he wanted to talk in the afternoon.  He walked in, said something I can't remember, and sat down.  I stood up, started washing dishes or clearing away some clutter or something--I can't remember.  All I remember is that intense need to NOT look at him, and I told him I couldn't.  He sat there silent and sullen.  Finally I sat down in my usual chair and looked over at his sad face and he said, "I just need time to think."  I believe the next words out of my mouth knocked his socks off, or blew his mind, or kicked him in the gut...or probably just made him really, really happy.  I said, "About what?  I am DONE.  I'm not doing this again.  I want someone to love who loves me and wants to be with me.  If that's not you, I can't make it BE you."  And that was pretty much it.  We decided to take the Band-Aid approach with the kids, just telling them immediately instead of pretending all was well for a while even though they would know it wasn't.  He told our daughter and I told our son.  It was a living, heaving, sobbing, soggy hell.  But it was done.  I got on facebook and unfriended his friends and family from my list, explaining to them it wasn't because I was getting rid of them, but because I didn't want anything to be uncomfortable.  I didn't want to be silent and secretive and hushedly tell a few friends, "oh, we're having problems.  We may get a divorce."  No.  We definitely are this time, and the more people I tell, the less likely I am to wimp out and take the easy way because I just don't want to be alone.  But I've been alone and lonely a lot in the last few years of my marriage, so I'm finally ready to tell the truth, as quickly as possible.

So he's been staying with his friend, and I've been here at home in our falling-apart house, trying to hold up some semblence of normalcy for the kids.  And you know what?  I think I'm doing a damn good job.  The first couple days I couldn't stop the tears, or the fear and the shaking, but as for now it's not as bad.  I realize that could change any time, but I'm going to enjoy the fact that I feel a little stronger every day right now.  I make sure to blast the Shawn Colvin song, "Sunny Came Home" and sing it at the top of my lungs at least 3 times each morning.  It's silly, but it helps.  So does my pre-travel mantra, "Strength, peace, and comfort."  It's strangely soothing.  I'm struggling with some other issues right now, ranging from feeling safe at night to what will I do when he wants to fly my kids across the country to visit his family without me, to how will I ever find someone to date when I live in such a small town, to how will I find someone to date that I won't be afraid of?  But I'll save that entry for another day.  Maybe tomorrow, or later, depending on when another need for a cathartic soul bearing shows up.