Hi PM and NW, Well...S11 and I went to look at the other place that was offered - and it would have been great if I were single and looking to live a bachelor's lifestyle...but that's not where I am...so we decided to go for the first place (sans pool) instead. My S11 preferred the first place, he said, because of the proximity to the pool and the calmness of the neighborhood...it's a very, very quiet area - which is good for when I'm working at home trying to write - and even more important when it comes to taking the kids out for a walk, etc.
S11 were just playing in the house - all the lights off - playing tag...and I walked into S2's bedroom to hide...and a photo of B holding S2 slipped off a bookshelf...I held it for a moment - and realized how much I used to love her...how much I would have done for us...but looking at the photo, remembering when it was taken, I knew that she was already lost to me then...and it made my heart ache just a bit to remember the reality of my baby boy growing up in two separate homes - of having that happen again...Looking at the picture I could see that B is a beautiful woman - but the picture doesn't say anything about how her anger or her way of treating my older son and me so poorly.
It's exciting to have the apartment - and I'm looking forward to being in a smaller place - though I have to admit that it is making me sad to feel all this just dying away...
I suppose I'm totally dark...though I've not explicitly said so before. I don't talk with her at all unless I absolutely have to - and that's only about my baby boy. Perhaps she is in a fog, perhaps she isn't, I just don't know any more - and don't take the time to think about it at all. She does what she does with her life and I do what I have to do with mine - and we talk only when it affects our son. So I still love her? Yes. I think I always will - but knowing that is very different from wanting to act on it or preserve anything with her. Since she dropped the bomb she's made it very clear to me that she thinks all of our problems stem from me - and she's always made it very clear that she doesn't want to be with someone like me. I've accepted that - and accepting it has also helped me see many of the ways in which my staying attached to her were so very harmful for me.
A smile in a picture cuts out the rest of a memory...along the edges of the photograph were the conflicts and the anger, the accusations and the distance...we don't take pictures of those moments...so we can't pick them up and see them so easily - but they're there...in me, in the space beyond the edges of the image...
I know you, my friends here, think I'm strong and moving through this with a lot of positive energy and strength - and I try to most of the time - and I think I succeed most of the time...but I do have my moments, like now, when the sadness of the situation just pummels me - and all I feel is the loss...though I guess that's how I process the loss, by feeling it and letting it go...there is no other way through it...and it is painful to lose someone we love, even if that person was unhealthy for us to love.
After I move and things get settled a bit more financially I plan on moving forward with the formal separation agreement. I had already mentioned as much to B, but she never responded - and never answered any of my questions about custody, finances, etc...nothing...not even my question to her about whether or not she would agree to mediation rather than a costly divorce...she has this habit of just ignoring anything I ask her that she doesn't want to deal with - it's very aggravating - and childish...
Okay...time to make dinner for my S11 and me...and time to put on some beautiful music to pull more of these emotions from my trembling heart...I'm okay...I'm just feeling the emotions I have to feel in order to let go of this home...and in order to move on with the next phase of my life...some changes can make even the most hopeful soul shudder.
Hi KenF: Seems we were posting at the same time...so I overlapped. It was a tough decision - but S11 helped me with it - and I also remembered that the better school district won't matter for at least a year - and by then I hope to move to someplace more permanent - maybe buy a place in the better school district...so whichever place we chose for now would be temporary - and temporary with the park, soccer fields, playground, farmers market and quiet streets easily trumped temporary with pool...My S11 goes to summer camp at the Aquatic Center at the Rose Bowl - so he gets his fill of pool time there...
I'm glad you're back on the board, Ken. Our journeys were so very similar for so long - we diverged a bit along the way - but I think the personal growth we both came to was something that we also shared.
Sounds like you did well with the time together at family day...
Keep working on you - making yourself the best man you can be - that's the best gift we can extract from this painful experience...since it's the purest way of giving to the people we love - and especially to those that turn to us for hope, love and comfort...our children.
talk about timing. the last couple of weeks have been very healing for me. i spent hours putting together the paperwork for the divorce, gathering up old tax forms, bank statements, etc. made the situation real.
had a great week at work. did a little light flirting with a cute co-worker, got a nice msg on FB from an old co-worker that admitted she had a crush on me, great little ego boost - i've spent so long beating myself up and getting down on myself. spent friday at work listening to Eddie Izzard on youtube, laughed so much i got reprimanded by my boss. hehehe.
all those things just carried over into a quiet weekend of cleaning and fixing up the place, changing some faucets, little improvements, all contributing to a clearer head. looking forward to continuing into next week.
one step at a time, slow and steady is how i've always been. i feel i've done my time with being sad, i've allowed myself to feel it without trying to cover it up with anything. i've hit my bottom, and now its only going up.
ok, gonna go dance with my daughter, have a wonderful night.
"In a ham and eggs breakfast, the hen is involved, but the pig is committed".
KenF - what a fantastic post to read of yours - Eddie Izzard is awesome...I keep hoping to catch him at one of his performances here...Him and David Sedaris.
What a thrill to dance with your daughter...enjoy!
We seem to be in a fairly parallel spot in our respective relationships - you are moving out and forward and so am I.
I know the sadness you are feeling. The end of the relationship is a slow death, and the pain, it is insidious, like cancer. We did not want to stop loving, did we? This was not our choice, it was foisted upon us and so here we are, doing the work, coping and learning.
You write that you still love B and probably always will. This is a tough question but I am going to ask it of you anyway - is that love causing you to hold on? On some level, are you still holding out hope? It is absolutely okay if you are, but you have to answer that for yourself. I am not saying you should not love the mother of your child. Rather, I am suggesting you suss out what kind of love it is. One can move forward and let go and still love, but not if that love is the sort that calls one back. If something is calling you back, you must answer the call - either to put it in its proper place in your heart and move on or to decide to work on things more. Only you know the answer to this.
I know she was abusive. I know you feel you have no choice, but that is your head. You heart does not always know what your head knows. You have to ask your heart, not your head. Once your heart answers, then you finish processing. At least, that has been my experience. It is only in the last month that my heart knows Z and I are finished.
This has zero to do with detachment; this is love. Our hearts feel all manner of love and we have to identify the sort of love when we are trying to let someone go.
As always, the answers are all inside of you. I know you have the courage and the strength to seek them and you will find them and with them, you will find peace in your journey.
Veronica, Thanks for your thoughts and for the reality check...in a sense, I feel like you're sharing with me exactly what you and Kalni have just been discussing on your thread - that moving forward doesn't mean that we stop monitoring and checking ourselves - and making sure that we're moving forward with a good measure of honesty.
Is love causing me to hold on? Holding on to hope? No...that's not it. It's just an awareness of the fact that I loved her in a very real way for me - it may have been unhealthy - but it was genuine and it was the best I had to offer until I learned to understand more about love over the last few months.
I am moving forward and letting go - and still know that I love her - and much of the sadness just comes from the pain of knowing that over the last few months I have begun a journey of learning and self-improvement that will stay with me throughout my life - and when I started here, I wanted to have that journey bring me back to B - so that we could continue to grow together. I remember telling her once, that we could improve our marriage if we both decided to improve ourselves - those words were met with skepticism and anger - and an assertion that she knew what had to change in me and that nothing had to change in her...what's changed over the last few months is that I no longer think of any of my changes and growth in terms of her - rather - I think of these changes in terms of what will offer me a more fulfilling life in the present - and how that more fulfilled present can build into a brighter future.
Yes, my mind knows that B is unhealthy for me...as I'm packing up boxes and working through the reality of dismantling our life - I know that I'll feel a lot of emotions - many of which were just waiting to surface - and I'm going to give myself the time and space to feel those emotions - since there is much to mourn at the end of my marriage. Unlike B, I do manage to remember the good things we shared and the happy moments we had - I just recognize them for what they were - and won't allow myself to hold on to those good memories as though everything else were fine before - because things were not fine.
While I have posted over the months about how abusive she could be with her words...I've not often gone into the other things she would do...how she almost bit through my lip once and shocked me into tears, how she threw plates and bowls in our home, how I would actually worry sometimes about sitting with my back toward her...worried that she would attack me...those memories are all in me as well...and they tell me that this was not a good relationship for me - since it trapped me, over and over, in trying to figure out why someone could love me and want to harm me - when what I should have been doing was looking into myself for what was missing - and finding a healthier way to feel complete - without the need to feel harmed with love...
I know that I'll be okay...I also just know that I've got a lot of sadness to work through still...
Much thinking last night and this morning...and woke this morning feeling like I just had to talk with B and clarify things. We've not talked once since she moved out - well, not talked as calm adults, at least...we did have those conversations in which she attacked me and threated to call the police again...but I'm setting that aside right now to focus on what I have to do....
I asked her to talk with me tonight - so that we can at least begin to iron out the details of what happens next. Long ago I had said that if she ever told me she wanted to get help and find a way to work on herself as I am working on myself that I would have given us a chance - it's now become very clear to me that she's not interested in finding out more about herself - and that she has settled into her way of being and is (perhaps, I don't really know) - happy with herself as she is.
I look back on our time together and see the joy, the sadness and the pain - I also see the extent to which I allowed our situation to get worse by playing into it on my own - and I recognize that the only way for me to have learned what I've learned over these last few months was to go through this dismantling of my life.
When I speak whit B tonight it won't be with the idea of trying to reconcile or to ask her if she's sure this is what she wants -that's up to her - I just want to let her know that I care about her, that I recognize the value of her decision to leave - and that I want to find a way to communicate with one another that ensures the best possible outcome for our baby boy. Right now, with her behavior, I worry that she cannot see the value of my role as his father - and that she just has to demonize me so completely in her mind that she just doesn't see the difference between who I am and who she thinks I am.
Over the last couple months I've had more glimpses of just how destructive her father can be - and the kind of black and white, harmful and dysfunctional world he inhabits...I don't like the man - in fact my pity for him often approaches a genuine disgust with him - and I used to wonder how B could have been raised under his specter and still come out all right...of course, I usually just thought she was okay when things were happy - as I had a great ability to let go of the ways in which she was/is far too similar to her father - and its those similarities that strike me the most these days...
She used to tell me about how her father would scold them at dinner if they didn't pass dishes around the table in the right direction (he had that direction wrong, btw, at least if he intended to go by the lead of the Queen of England) - and despite knowing that, B would always be harsh toward my S11 at the dinner table. She would tell me how he would treat her like an obstacle and a burden - which is how she treats my S11 - and also how she accuses me of treating her...(which is sad, because I sometimes did think of her as a burden...though I often thought she knew exactly what she was doing when her actions became burdensome).
And there's her anger...her father has a horrible, just a horrible amount of anger in him - and though he'll put on a facade for his customers and people that intimidate him - he'll unleash his anger in the most disgusting ways on anyone that works for him - or anyone in his family...and B seems to have taken a large share of that anger into herself as well...
I'm just clearing my head here...not trying to analyze or makes excuses for anything...just clearing my head so that I can focus on letting her know that I also recognized the best in her over the years. I fell in love with a wonderful person - and I married a great person - and that part of her will hopefully emerge as her more dominant self one day - It just won't happen with me in her life. Our love, our marriage, is, I suppose, the casualty of my growth and hers...though I don't know if her growth is happening at all, since she seems, instead, to be retreating into her role as the dutiful daughter to the enabling, manipulative and abusive parents...
So why am I going to talk with her tonight? Because I am moving out of this house...because I see this move as a statement of finality - as the end/death of our marriage - and I want to let her know that I don't hold it against her - that I'm not angry with her - and that I wish her the best. I hope she finds herself someday and finds a way to work through the pain that stifles her...
I think it takes a lot of courage to do what you are doing. I also think it can be very helpful to you in moving through the process and dealing with your feelings.
I was able to say those things to Z, albeit in a phone call, the day I told him I no longer wished to reconcile. As someone who has already done this, I would like to offer you a few observations from my own experience.
First, telling Z that I was not angry with him but that I was letting him go and the finality that that brought to me triggered some sadness that I had not anticipated. Not that this is a bad thing, just something to keep in mind.
Also, be careful not to have any expectations at all. This was easy for me to avoid because the conversation was very spontaneous, he called because I emailed about getting him to release my cell phone and the conversation just evolved, so I did not have the time to develop any expectations. Not to say you will, just a friendly warning.
Third, one can feel pretty empty when the conversation is finished, so having a friend to talk to once you are ready might not be a bad idea. A good friend was there for me right after the conversation and it really helped me a lot.
You obviously continue to move forward and through your process, not avoiding anything. Just keep doing that and everything will fall into place, in time.
I'm glad to hear you are interested in teaching again. We need good teachers and I myself am working hard to be an even better teacher than before after a year of not giving my all to my profession. Getting a divorce sucks.
You mentioned your sadness, and I think this is what I feel too:
Quote:
I still get pain in my chest sometimes - but it's not out of the loss of my M anymore...it's just the pain of rebuilding...and whenever I feel it I know there's something I have to accept, reflect on, process, perhaps mourn, and through that, I heal
I'm becoming more and more convinced my pain and sadness isn't caused by losing a woman who is destructive to herself and to me, but to losing my family. To losing my dream. To losing time w/my darling little baby girl.
That is the unbearable loss I'm feeling. Thank you for helping me pin-point it.
As for your W's father, it is sad what parents can do to their children. All we can do is learn and try to avoid their mistakes and make sure our children are always loved unconditionally whenever we have them.
Making ourselves better will help us to love them better.
I'm becoming more and more convinced my pain and sadness isn't caused by losing a woman who is destructive to herself and to me, but to losing my family. To losing my dream. To losing time w/my darling little baby girl.
Rob, You've said it exactly...losing all those things is excruciating. I've been finding myself in this strange kind of hell today - just torn apart in my heart - and have just been sitting here telling myself that I have to feel it to let it go - that I have to process what is real in my heart - and let it pass - otherwise I will never heal. It just hurts like mad at the moment.
A few minutes ago I was talking with my friend, and told her that I was surprised to wake today and go through some things and find myself missing B...I have to say that I actually hadn't missed her for the last few months...she had become so dark and negative and harmful that all that would come to mind with her absence was this sense of relief - so today this sense of missing her just left me dumbfounded....It felt awkward to bring it up with my friend, but she's been a remarkable person as I've navigated my pain - and I just felt like I had to be open and honest even about that emotion.
And so I've wondered today about what I miss...do I miss her friendship? Yes...I miss the joy she was capable of sharing with me...do I miss her laughter? Yes...I miss the playfulness...and yet underlying all of this are the memories of what things would get like when we weren't laughing or enjoying ourselves on her terms - and how resentful and angry she could become...and that I don't miss at all...am I just going through the process of mourning? I guess so...that's certainly how it feels...like something is breathing its last breaths...and it is so very sad to be a part of this death.
