The One Thing I Had

I signed the marriage dissolution agreement today.

Like the first time I signed divorce paperwork, I felt nothing.  

I've come a long way since dreaming of him every night and waking up in disbelief and heartache.  I've come nearly all the way in my mind, believing again that I am so much better off and most certainly better than him.  

I saw him on the 4th of this month.  I had made it 6 months without him, and I grow stronger by the day.  I always told him that I could not make it without him, in an effort to reassure him; but it was never true.  He knew it, too.  I was always too strong for him.  And the one before him.  I am unrelenting when it comes to my children.

Yes, it is the hardest time of my whole life just like he said It would be, and I am utterly abandoned but not alone.  I grow strong from the incredible women around me, my mother and my sister.  It was always us.  It will always be us.  And now my children, too.  When I think of that brief time in my life when I felt, completely, in love, I remember that the cost was at my children's expense.  I could never do it.  I never did.  I never will.

He asked it always; he threatened it, really.  What would I do without him?

I still play those conversations in my head: what awful things his family must say, the way he's spun his side of it.  Oh to be a fly on the wall after our mediation when I stormed in with my dark hair and my demands.  And I got everything I asked for, immediately.  My mother said it best, "who exactly does he think he is fucking with?"

Today is our anniversary.  We were married by a Justice of the Peace in our Chuck Taylors on the day the world was supposed to end (again).  It just worked out that I signed the marriage dissolution today.  And still, all these painful things before me, I just kind of felt nothing.

There was a printed email waiting for me after I signed the MDA with all the account information he had that I needed.  I walked to my car and looked it over...he refers to me in it as his soon to be ex-wife.  Yeah, I bet he can't wait.

The one thing I had was that I felt nothing.  But he feels glad. 

Some Day This Pain Will Be Useful to You

The mediation is tomorrow.

As the Days Turn Into the Nights

I've now moved into the part where there's no fear that the phone will ring, no hope that the phone will ring.

I'm trying desperately to make peace with the idea that there's no love- in that way- for me.  I am loved completely in my life, and I tell myself everyday.  That this way is even better...I do what I want the second I want to do it, there's no hassling with others' old boring stories that drag on and on, no mind fucks, no more "there's nothing wrong (I just need space)!"

I loved him to my soul and getting over those way down deep whimpers is the hardest part...I loved him all the way down to the place where I would have jumped in front of a moving train, would have committed any crime to save him.  He was my family.  I was certain we would have each others' backs into forever.  He betrayed me in every way; I remained loyal all the way down.

Knowing everything now that came to pass, knowing now how the end was written, I believe less in my delusions of what it was and more in the facts.  My son is seeing a psychologist again, and that has everything to do with being abandoned by the second father figure who said he would never leave.  I'll never understand it as long as I live so fuck the memories of him tucking me into bed and telling me I'm his princess.  Fuck the feeling of being safe in someone's arms.  Fuck being loved during the holidays.

Our mediation is in one week.  It's been six months since he left.  I'm terrified to see him.  I dyed my hair dark.  I think I'm going to be a huge bitch, and then the kids are going to have a great Christmas.

Going Numb

The mediation is on December 4.  I don't want to see him; it should be pretty awful.

Everyday is just getting by.  

An Open Letter to My First Ex-Husband

Our son is sick.  It's been going on for awhile now, over a month.  He's missed a lot of school.  I'm doing my best to keep him caught up, but it's been a lot.  He has an upper and lower endoscopy scheduled for Wednesday.  It's pretty twisted that I am hoping I don't hear, "the results are normal" again because I just want to know what's wrong so we can fix it.  There are those, too, that have questioned whether this is psychological so I've made another appointment with the psychologist he saw two years ago.  I know, though, when it's so late at night and I am rubbing his back to help him go to sleep and find him relief from that pain, that there is something wrong with our little boy.  Again. 

The first time he was sick, he was only moments old.  All those machines all over our baby and how they sedated him and transported him to a hospital an hour away: these are things I never forget.  And I've never forgiven you for making me beg you to take me to see him.  When we went back to that hospital, when we made the trip again in fourth grade, because of all his trouble in school, they still had your old insurance in their database.  I've been fighting for him all this time.  Where the fuck are you?

It was less than 24 hours after our baby was cut out of my body that I was released from the hospital to go see him. To this day, I wear this fact like a badge.  I fought for five years to get him his IEP for school; I've attended every meeting, sent every email, shed every tear.  I have never given up on him.  I have been an advocate for our child.  You are nowhere to be found.  

I hope he grows up to be a great man having had no role models to emulate.  I hope he grows up to be the "man" I am.

An Open Letter to My Second Ex-Husband

I want you to know that yes, it's a lot without you.  Just as you said it would be.  Right now, it's a lot between the first six weeks of the school year (when you left, I imagined life as far ahead as parent/teacher conferences, and that's it, and now we're here), my son now suffering from what's being referred to as "chronic pain" because it's gone on so long (due in part to this divorce?  Psychological factors?  I don't know, and it's killing me), as well as my daughter's insane high school schedule.  

But I'm doing it, asshole.  I'm doing it all.

You didn't think I could, but you left your wife and her children so who cares what a shitty little bitch thinks.

Mailbox

I do play out the scenario in my head: he doesn't know what he was thinking, how could he do such a thing, he would do anything to have me back.  It happens, always, with a phone call.

But even in my dreams, I have to beg him to come back mostly.  I've given hell to his mother and his sister there, but I always give my pride away easily to him in my dreams.

I know the phone won't ringing.  I know he'll never talk to me as a person.  He just slinked away like a snake.

I'm getting back to that place where fuck him, who does he think he is, anyway?  I GAVE myself away to him, and he never deserved me.

Sure, I am strong of mind and will.  Sure, I don't give in when I really really stand for it; but my fight was always for my kids.  There's no way I'm the asshole.

I tried so hard, though, this second time around.  I did try so hard not to make the same mistakes.  I did not take him for granted, I never betrayed him not even for a second, and I loved him the best I could...I tried to change myself.  I did.  I heard what he said, and I changed myself.  And I was completely fooled into believing that I was loved in return.

And then I was left

Which is really cruel, truly.

So fuck that dude.

And time has passed now so I know in my heart and ****soul**** (he didn't believe in souls...red flag...) that I was left by a cowardly bullshitter...so who cares now.  I'm almost there to 100% believing it.

But still play around with the idea of getting a phone call.

There's just silence there though.

He went to see a lawyer before ever even talking to me.  No big blowout.  Just decided he was "done" and left without eve so much as saying goodbye to the kids.  (Gosh, I must be pretty scary for him to run and hide to his mama.)

You know, every relationship is complicated, but the least that can be said of me is that I gave him the gift of honesty.  Maybe I was too real; but I believed in our till death do we part.  I was real because it was VERY real to me.

I think that's the residue that exists in my dreams.  I think that's the thing that makes me wonder what I would even do if the phone rang, after everything.

Another correspondence from the lawyer today.  I knew that would pop back up...the lawyers have been handling it...my lawyer said I'd hear from her when I hear from her...  Lawyers tend to draw things out.  I've checked the mailbox everyday ready for it.  I only saw the corner of the letter and knew that today was the day.  It seems the mailbox is getting all the real action.

He's Really Sick

My son has been ill for going on two and a half weeks.  He goes back to Vanderbilt  (there's a clue to my identity...but I write the NAME because it's not the local hospital but the one we have to travel to; it carries weight to the significance of the thing) on Tuesday for an ultrasound of his liver and more blood work.  He's been feeling wrong and complaining of vague stomach pains for so long now.  I can't seem to help him, and he's just suffering while we dissect the sickness, doctor by doctor.  I feel myself aging with the worry of it and with the explaining SOMETHING IS WRONG and PLEASE HELP MY CHILD to each of them, more specialized as we go.  I have had a bad feeling this whole time, and it grows with the days.  I tell myself I have to think differently and will another fate into existence.

This thing with my son sure has taken my mind off of my divorce.  I think my (ex)husband is feeling it and living the reality of our divorce/his choices more than me; he's practically dead to me now.  There's just no room in my heart now.

The poster child

The back of my eyes hurt.

I have no time to write.  I'm drowning in work because I've been to the pediatrician, the clinic (x2 trips), the ER (in the hours of 10 pm-3:30 am) and to a specialist for my son all since 8 days ago.

I'm the poster child for when it rains, it pours.  But I refuse to lose my sunshine.  I want to be the poster child for mother fucking hope.

We're going to get my son well again.  It's been 2 weeks, and this specialist is going to have figured it out; and there will be relief for my child.

I'm going to close this entry, and I am going to rock this pile of work down and get enough sleep to survive tomorrow.

(And tonight when I go to sleep I'll think about that cute ER nurse that looked at me just like so and touched me just like so...)

And this trend where the weeks get harder ends here.

I'm the poster child for turning it into an opportunity to be a badass.  I got it all, LIFE, and I carry optimism in my heart.

"Life is 10% what happens to, 90% how you deal with it."

Holy Weekend

Five years ago, this is the weekend when our love began.  Again.  We referred to it as "Holy Weekend" in the years that followed, and oh god, there were moments when I felt perfectly in love in this life.  Loved.  He had me believing- completely- that I was his Sweet Baby and we lived for one another.  He was my second husband, but he was my first true love.  It happened in '98 when we met.  It happened again instantaneously five years ago.  As swiftly it came in, it's now all gone up in smoke.

I know he's thought of me, and that helps.  But only in a way.  He must miss me some on our weekend, on the first since he left.  But he was the one who did the leaving.

The thing I tell myself is that I chose my kids, and now I live for them exclusively.  But the truth is that he abandoned me, and he's left me utterly left and unwanted.  The greatest love of my life fizzled up and died in just a few short years.  Just past pathetic, the two and a half years of our marriage can only be classified as...sad.  Our Holy Weekend was a phony, a sham, a gimmick, and a lie.

He never really loved me.  Never.  Not with the kind of love that sustains.  Not really.

I wasn't hard to deal with.  I didn't expect much, and I asked for even less.  I just asked for room to be me.  I never lied or pretended to be someone I am not.

I am strong.  I will fight with all my heart for what I believe, for love.  For what's right. 

If I could be different, I would have been.  I would have done it for him.  I would have let him "be the man."  I would have let him discipline my kids in the too-harsh ways he wanted; but it never was my choice to make.  He wasn't the greatest love of my life.  I had already found it when he blew in with the hope of autumn five years ago.

This weekend is for my kids now.  The hope remains, and I will still feel completely loved.

Joy

I had to wake up at 5:20 on a Saturday to get my big girl to school for a band trip.  I'm so excited for her; it's been a lot of hard work.  I'm also pretty sad to spend a weekend without her.  I just prefer having my babies close.  My little ducklings following closely behind.

(That's two fold: 1. missing my daughter 2. waking up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday)

It was a long week, and I got less sleep as I went.  The beginning of the year is so hard for teachers (and students).  To aggravate the situation a little more, I work at a Title I school with limited resources and its own set of challenging situations.  A student assaulted me at school this week, and it's just not that shocking in a school like mine.

He slammed the door on my wrist in anger on the way out of the classroom.  It got very swollen very quickly.  I'm pretty tough, but I was very encouraged by the many many teacher-moms around me to file for OJI.  (I never go to the doctor.  Really, never.)  The doctor sent me home with a bandaged wrist and a slight enough concern to schedule a follow-up appointment for a week later.  I really thought I would end up canceling it.  But I'm having trouble in my hand now, and it's just not right.  There's a pinching and sickening feeling there.  Of course, it's my right (writing/typing/guitar playing) hand.

This child that hurt me is having so much trouble.  I've had special students before, but this one takes the cake.  Of course, this is the year of my second divorce.

My son is having his own trouble at school.  He always has.  There's just no way that any of these years (7 left) will ever be different.  I've always waited for a break with him; I know now it's not coming.  I've emailed his middle school teachers every day, and I imagine we will be progressing to the next level of meetings soon.  They aren't abiding by the IEP I fought like hell for, for all the years leading up to now.  They have no idea who they're messing with.

For the past couple of days, he's been getting sick, too.  I've been struggling with allergies, literally barking up a lung.  It's hard enough when we're all healthy. 

When it rains, it pours.  It pours on down.

The laundry isn't all done.  It just never is.  The floors need to be cleaned.  And I blew through too much money this month, especially eating out two nights this week after the injury.  I got everything else done, but only just barely.  I thought I would make this look easier...

I don't come home to the black hole my second divorce has made, though I feel the threat of it.  I've been coming home to my kids, and I work my ass of for them because it's not their fault.  I try to find time to play my guitar and dwell in possibility.  I will not be defeated. I will not lie down but instead rise up to become the most incredible version of myself.  I choose to grow strong from this life.

I still have my joy.  

(And every once in awhile, life throws you a bone.  I got a letter in the mail this week from the District Attourney's Office.  Child Support found #1!)

Telling My Lawn Guy Way Too Much

It wasn't very long after, and our lawn guy showed up to mow.  He told me that he had been paid.  I talked to him about dropping the service down to 2x monthly; he already knew about the divorce.  My husband had said more about it to the lawn guy than he had said to me.

#2 paid him for the month of May.  I assumed he mentioned the divorce to let our guy know he wouldn't be seeing him again.

That awkward exchange: the lawn guy saying it was none of his business and he wouldn't take sides.  That terrible moment when I had proof that he was telling people he would never be my lover nor my friend again.  It hurt me so bad.

Today, late with my check, the lawn guy showed up again.  It's been that kind of week, and I now know it's not going to all go seamlessly.  I had bigger dreams this summer for the way things would be.  I told myself to get a stamp and send a check and not make that man think I can't handle my shit.  But there he was.

I paid the man and apologized, and he was very nice.   He asked about things randomly.  Was the divorce final?  He didn't seem to be partial to my husband after all.  He said that when he paid him last, he said he might still see him.

Wait.  What?

And in my stupid heart, I felt that flutter of hope. It was the same flutter that I feel when the phone rings.  The flutter that fuels my dreams.  

Did he think he would be moving back?  Even for a moment?  Was there ever any hope?

It only took a moment and it occurred to me, of course, he did not know if I'd stay.    He was preparing for the possibility that I would be moving...not that he would be coming back to me.  

The lawn guy breaks my heart every time.

A New Year

School has started again.  August is the toughest month.  Tougher than even May, and I didn't know how bad it would be.  I'm getting through it on my own.  I don't have a choice.

When my best friend was here, I could breathe again.  Inhale, exhale; I remembered myself.  It helped to laugh with her about what a fucking pussy he is.  Screw him, after all, you know!?  I was a good woman fed a thousand lies.  I've survived a thousand broken promises now.

When she left, though, and I was alone again, the bottom dropped out once again.  But only for a moment...here I am, managing everything all by myself.  Every dinner, every packed lunch, every trip to the store; the kids have everything they could need.  I am handling my son's special needs with a peace inside me I've never had: we will make it.  Forever now I will know I was only down and out in my bed, wallowing with this pain, for a single weekend.  I've been the best version of myself since he's left.

There's things though that I can't admit to anyone...like the dreams I still have that tear me apart.  The home phone rang yesterday and it was his generic company number on the caller ID.  It could have been him: they all show up that way.  My heart raced straight out of my chest.  The aftermath of the adrenaline made me sick.  I answered it so quickly.  If I'm honest with myself I know I wanted it to be him; and I would have given anything to touch him again.  He's not quite dead to me.  He's just been dying for three months.  Almost there in this brand new year.

This is What it Feels Like to Move On

My best friend is visiting from out of state.  She's been here for a week, and she has a week left.  It's been good to be reminded of the person I have been for 22 years.  There have been many years without him.  It has been good to make new memories that don't include him, with someone who has known me better.  With someone who has loved me better.

The Second Divorce is Very Much Worse than the First

This is the most pitiful of all stories.  I'm so beyond Bridget Jones and Diane Lane movies.

It's pretty humiliating and awful to have two failed marriages.  The first can be written off as a foolish mistake.  The second one is chronic failure.  

#2's sister's husband cheated on her frequently during the time I knew his family.  He was generally a smuck, even making me feel uncomfortable around him on occasion.  It was pretty pathetic watching her continue to take him back over and over.  I didn't respect her for it.  #2 had this vision that she and I would be super close, but I just couldn't.  I didn't respect her.  When asked about their constant separations and whether or not she wanted more for herself, she's say, "but it would be my second divorce."

I understand now.

Dreams and the Parking Lot at Walmart

I had a terrible migraine so I went back to bed after dropping my little girl at high school for band camp.  School is starting soon so I go back to work soon, and it's probably been the hardest week since the first after he left.  Life goes on, and in so many ways, I'm stuck.

What I should remember most from now until forever is that he walked out on me. He left.  He couldn't deal, and he turned his back on me, leaving as he did in a huff and saying he only "did" love me.  And that's it.  For the rest our lives.

But still, from the pain in my heart and head, he appears in my dreams.  At first, I'd beg him to come back or just fall into his lap in a puddle of tears and he'd stroke my hair.  Relieved mostly to be near him again.  Now, though, he sends me texts in my dreams, saying he's so sorry, what a terrible mistake, and that he should never listen to his mother.  It only comes when I sleep because I hope for it every single time my phone makes a sound.

It was so much easier to lose someone before text messages.

There's also looking for his vehicle everywhere in town.  I think I parked in front of him at the Walmart that separates us.  I was school shopping with my son, getting it done and generally being more on top of it than I've ever been because fuck him: these will be the happiest years of my life up ahead...but tell it to my heart when there's no notes on my car, and we're still divorcing when I wake up.

So It Has Come to This, Again

#2 came swiftly back into my life in 2010.  All it took was a single text.  We dated briefly in 1998, had a falling out, and reconnected on Facebook in 2009.  It had been 12 years since we dated.  He got under my skin as quickly as he did the first time. 

I must have written fifteen poems about him in the aftermath.  He left, and I didn't understand what I did wrong.  It tormented me.  All the unanswered questions of being left.  I loved him and it hurt so bad.  I remember laying in the floor listing to "Pretty Hate Machine" on repeat.  It took so long to get over him.

Before
You couldn't wait to leave,
to leave me.
You walked away cold
with electrifying pace.
I stood in awe of your speed
as I  swept my tears
from the floor you tread on.
I thought you were a believer
when I told you
these hidden truths of me.
And your words had meaning
before
You couldn't wait to leave,
to leave me.
-1998, I was 21 years old.

I saw a meme a year or so ago.  Having married him at this point, I thought it was wrong.  But then saved it to my phone anyway.

Closure

I woke up so sad, wanting to talk to him so badly.  After all of this and all I know now, a terrible black-red hollowness in my mind still threatens to eat away at its edges until there's nothing left but wanting him.  It'll be over 100 degrees today: the kind of day we hate, with the heat/humidity haze stuck in the air, even at 7 o'clock in the morning.  I replay all the things about our life together every single night.  I woke up hardly able to breathe.

But, I woke up anyway, and I made breakfast for my daughter before her first day of band camp.  I packed her last check for camp, her medical release, a water bottle, and a snack.  I put last night's dishes away while I made coffee for us.  I fed the cats and got her to camp on time. 
 
I live now to take care of my kids, but this is who I've been all this time.  This is where I find unconditional, never-ending love and my reason to keep getting up. 

Our biggest issue was the way he treated my kids.  From the very start, I couldn't ever be silent or let him "be the man."  He couldn't forgive me for it, and it just got worse.  I thought things would be so different.  In his past, his step father punched him and gave him a scar on his face that he carries with him to this day, and his mother stopped him from calling the police.  I was never that woman, and I always made that clear.

He pushed me down and screamed in my face several times over the course of our nearly five years, and I could forgive it.  

But it was different with the kids.

He resented me when I called him on the threats of violence he made to them.  He slapped my son on the back of the head, and he said it was nothing; I was over-reacting.  He would mock me and say that I was never scared in my house, and he should be praised because he was nothing like our fathers.

A week or so after he left, I sat in the floor with my daughter showing her my old poems and journals.  I was checking in with her because she doesn't seek me out to work out her feelings, and I worry about her most.  We talked for some time before she told me about the time in recent memory that he slapped her face for having a bowl in her room.  She thought I knew because he said he would talk to me.  He never did.  He knew that wasn't going to be ok.  If nothing else, it's this that stops me from calling or texting.  It's this that gives me closure.  It would have just gotten worse from here.

Why It's Going To Be Ok

This was a note I started on my iPhone a couple days after he left, as I started to heal and learn to live a different life.  For my post today, I'm moving it here.

Why it's going to be ok

I thought he was my best friend, my partner, and my future.  There is a void here now like a black hole where the cosmos could fit inside my gaping, broken heart.

I'm not the wallowing type though.  I'm a doer.  I'm going to tell myself the truth.  There will be a new dawn for me.

The truth of our relationship is that some loves just fades away after too many problems and not enough compromises.  He gave all he could.  He said he had much more, but he didn't.  I see now that I drew his real self out of his unintended lies.  I love him so much still, but it did start to change for me too, realizing with time that his words don't match his actions.  

It's the love that we shared that makes me hope he has a long, wonderful, happy life and has everything amazing and good, still.  I hate him and love him into this place in me that just wants to let him go.  I only want what is fair for my kids and me.  Not his version of it, but mine.  

I was devoted and loyal and never disrespected him or said a bad word about him, and that doesn't just go away.  I never betrayed him, but it seems, his family had full knowledge of our marriage as I feared.  Every time his mother made an underhanded comment, and I questioned him about it, he was never honest either.  I could never compete with them.

For me, for my part in the wrongdoing, our love always had to take a back seat to the kids.  It wasn't ever a choice I had.  My guy told me to defend them.  So strongly.  Now I feel vindicated.  He ended up hurting the kids in the worst way, and it's unforgivable.  He did the same thing my self father did to me, something he said he would never do.  It's unconscionable even.  He'll say I drove him away, not letting him be the disciplinarian it was his right to be.  You keep your promises to children, and you don't make excuses or pass the blame when you don't.  

I'm not sure he ever really tried to fall in love with the kids.  He held them to standards he would not hold himself.  He demanded respect rather than earn it by example.  He acted out of annoyance and frustration and not out of love.  He questioned me at every turn and did not respect my role and my history with my children.  He said, "I never felt like their father anyway" as he was running to his mother but did not consider what the children thought.  He wasn't the man he said he was.  He left us.  He left us.  Whatever he says to his family and his friends, and his coworkers too, the simple truth is that he left us. That's not my man.

I did not do anything to justify it.  He betrayed me.  He got aggressive with me and my children.  He has no grounds for divorce other than not being able to deal.  Last summer, when his mother expressed how badly she felt for him, I couldn't understand it.  Because he was 41 with a family he took on?  He said he wanted to, that we were his world, that he loved us so big.  How was I to know he didn't?  Now I know I'm not meant to understand.  And it just doesn't matter.

He left his ring in the most dramatic fashion and the gifts I gave him and the presents I made for him.  He left all the pieces for me to put back together on my own, in our home, to run home to his mother.  He was not my man.

It's going to be ok because there's no other choice for the children...and for me.

I keep thinking about his face the night before he left.  He said, "can't I just do what I want?"  What a strange thing for a grown-up to say.  It's like he thought the demands of family would one day end, and he was surprised when it didn't.  I tried to tell him when we were dating, but he always thought he knew better than me and never conceded anything.

When I think about our history, I know he was not my man.  He did not fix a single thing or want to do anything with my friends or family while expecting me to spend every holiday with his.  He did not hear me when I said that this was an issue; he just resented me and ran to his mother. 

I don't understand why there had to be this drama now: instantly defriended by his sister and my nephew, moving out in a hissy, making all the decisions without consulting me, and especially leaving without saying goodbye to the children.  Could we not have had a conversation?  I take responsibility for my inability to love him the way he wanted me to, and I own who I am and how it has conflicted with his needs in our marriage; but I still remember it being mostly good and the happiest years of my life.  I don't understand why it couldn't have been handled differently, more respectfully, more maturely.  It's going to be ok because in my future, I'll either live with a real man or none at all.

Mad is the Way Back

There were moments in the years we were together than I actually thought I could die happy.  I remember feeling that I would have lived a great life because I loved him so much.  He was the one.  He was my sweet baby.  He was my hope, my poetry, and my future.  Our love was so big, it's all I ever wanted.

And he fucking left me.

Hit and Run

I remember the exact moment he told me that he loved me for the first time.  I wasn't ready for it.  It made me uncomfortable.  I didn't want to use that word so soon.

But he kept saying all the right things over and over and convinced me that all he wanted for his life was to take care of us, rescue us.  We were doing fine, but I let it happen.  I let him in.

Because of love.

And from my lips came years of I love yous, adoration, and praise to anyone who would listen.  He was our hero, and how he shined in our eyes.

Then one day he just left.  His promises were not easy to keep, I suppose.  Marriage is hard work, but I did nothing wrong.  I was a good wife and loved him so much with all my heart and was faithful and true.  I tried so hard.  I worshipped him even and never lied.  I never cheated or betrayed him in any way.  I let him in, and I was all in.

Because of love.

My lawyer informed me today that he filed divorce papers on July 9.  He truly doesn't want me.  No second thoughts, no regrets for breaking all the promises he ever made.  He doesn't love me. 

It was just a word.

And he was only a hit and run.

Foreshadowing

If I am honest with myself, I knew he couldn't handle being a father and a husband when we were dating.  And I was strong then and not yet covered in the binding haze of love, and I knew it.  If I am honest, I knew it was too much for him because I know it's so much, and I should have shut it down when I still could.

I wanted to believe him more than that quiet shouting inside me.  When he said he could take it on, I told myself not to be hard.  When he said that he WANTED to take it all on and be a family man, I was sold.  He wanted to be like all his coworkers, like his siblings.  And what did a man pushing 40 have in this world if not a family of his own?  If I'm honest, I knew very well that he didn't know what he was talking about.

I got pregnant when I was 23 years old.  It wasn't a choice except that I was doing all the things to make a baby, with no foresight whatsoever.  I was two years older than my mother was when she had me, but still, I was so much younger than she had been.  I was a foolish and impulsive child, leaping heart first toward whatever felt good in my own ocean of self obsession and sadness.  I was unmarried and terrified.  I had entertained thoughts of aborting the baby, but after I confessed the pregnancy to my mother, and went back home to her 600 miles away, I became a mother, too.

And everything was very different.  Then there were no more options for me.

That was over fourteen years ago, and I have spent every day trying to be woman enough to put my children first, like my mother before me.  My father cheated on her, my step father fled.  This is what they do.  Someone has to carry the weight.  I knew he was not strong enough to share my burden.  It was all pretend.

For the last year of our two and a half year marriage (together nearly five), #2 joked on and on that he wanted to buy this shed that we passed on the way to his sister's house.  He was going to turn it in to his "man cave" to get away.  He joked about it with his family, with me.  It came up in conversation frequently month after month.  I asked him why he needed it, but he said it was only a joke.  Was he trying to get away from me?  The kids?  The noise?  The mess?  It's a joke, he'd say.  But now I know we were only an option; he was always going to run away.  If I am honest, I think I always knew it, too.

The Teenage Poet

Maybe I should explain myself.  I've gotten 8 page views (5 may be from me!) so someone may have read something I've written.  It's time to explain.

I was once a teenage poet.  I still wrote in my early twenties when the world was all about me in my own mind, and I called myself a WRITER.  Now, I've known so many "writers" from my generation (X), that I feel like a fraud if I join their ranks.  Because they are frauds. 

I put some poems on Facebook after my first divorce.  It's how all the "writers" use Facebook now.  To be seen.  I surprise myself that I could not do it ever again because I still retain the teenage poet I was, desperate to be heard.  It's much too easy now.  It feels like cheating.  I sometimes think I understand Emily Dickinson most of all.  I want to be heard but not seen. 

I don't know if it's possible now to make good sense or to write well.  There's so much to feel all at once in the aftermath of my second husband.  Layers.  I just need it to go somewhere  I'll do better at blogging when it unravels itself. 

The Sound A New Email Makes

Every time I hear the sound of an email coming in to my phone or iPad, I feel my heart sink into my stomach.  Part of me dreads it and part hopes for it to be a message from him because he was everything not so long ago.  We haven't had any contact whatsoever in over three weeks now.  He went to a lawyer only a few days after he left.  There was no discussion.  He just made all the decisions and said they were all for my benefit.  I had a divorce agreement at my mail in a matter of days (that's the day I took my wedding ring off...well, moved it to my right hand).  Before this silence, his emails said that our home was always more mine than his, and now all he wants from me is to get on with his life.  All the while, I have said NOTHING, and he never asked.

There was no big blow-out.  He just left.  Sure, he had been cold to me for two days: trying to push my buttons and make his little comments.  I refused to fight with him.  Then, on a Friday morning, he wasn't home.  He stormed in some time later and told me he was moving in with his mother.  He made a big dramatic scene about taking his ring off and slamming it down in front of me.  "I'm DONE."

I asked him if he loved me.  He said he "did."  I asked then about the kids, and he said he never felt like their father, anyway (though he let them know over the years, time and again, that he wanted to adopt them, they'd never lose another father, and they called him Daddy).  He told me he would be back with his sister to get his things.  Then I just let him go.  Because fuck him.  We had talked about this, about putting the children first if we didn't work out.  He broke every single promise he ever made to us.  He can send an email that says that all he wants from me is to move on with his life, and there's no part of me that feels I owe him anything anymore or ever, ever again.

When he came again later that day, the kids and I hid in my daughter's room.  I stroked my son's hair while he sobbed in my lap.  #2 packed up his Xbox, the new TV,  the steam mop and vacuum (WHAT THE HELL?!?!- he left the house and all the furniture but took the steam mop and vacuum!), his clothes, and his comic books (in that order).  He left every present I ever made or bought for him.  (He also left all his important paperwork, family photos and winter jackets...we all have our priorities.)

I had been far too safe and comfortable.  This was bound to happen, I suppose, when you give someone so much- at least, that's what's always, always happened in my life.  He said that I didn't trust him.  But I was once a fourteen year old girl, listening to the sounds of my step father leave, including the sound of the door closing shut with not so much as goodbye.  The sad truth is that I trusted him far too much.

There's no emails coming in.  It's all lawyers now and waiting.

Just Days

I'm a teacher so I've decided to blog anonymously.

Writing has always helped.  I need that now.  I need it all out of my head.  I want someone to know.  And no one to know.  So maybe the teacher thing is just a good excuse.

I've shut down all my social media pages because I can't see the "unfriends" right now, or maybe ever again.  The very day #2 left, his sister and her kid (former nephew, I guess :( ) unfriended me IMMEDIATELY, and it crushed me.  A big swift kick while I was already down.  I couldn't bear that heartache again.  His leaving was oh so very much...sometimes now I'll hear a great big CRACK in my dreams like the world was hit by another planet suddenly and without warning.  I think its the aftershocks of that morning when he left.  I've got enough to work through without Facebook's help.  But some part of me wants to document this incredible mess I've made/the mess that his actual running away from our marriage has caused.  

I counted days for awhile.  I thought about what I would write on day 1, day 2, day, 24, the longest we had ever been apart...but the best I could do was get through those days and focus on my poor children who lost so much, too.  Right now, it's about a month and a half in.  Enough time has passed that I don't know it in days now exactly.  Time has its peculiar medicine.  I thought I would have to count the days for much longer than I did.

But here I am now.  This is how I choose to write my story.  I am a single mom of a preteen and a teenager and a school teacher, but I am going to do my best to devote a little time here everyday to put the pieces back together and to call his bluff.  He broke my life, but I will remake myself better than I was with him.  Little by little, day by day.