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.

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.

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!)

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.