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.