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.