Gonna Get Me A Mojo Hand

[AlexEN]

I'm not sure what it was, precisely, that caused the disk in Number 46 Mojo Butterfly Valve to fail, stuck in the valve seat and thereby allowing an unrestrained flow of mojo to escape the system, but while pushing my trolley through the Sanctified and Hallowed Halls of Modern American Supermarket, I suddenly found myself profoundly sad.

The proximate cause was a bit of WAW-mail -- nothing in and of itself particularly bad, mind you -- that mentioned the need for scheduling the Time Over Target for the delivery of Kid D-bomb.

I'd been disjointed all day, feeling overwhelmed at a comparatively simple list of tasks, mostly relating to my trip to Capitol City day after tomorrow. The overwhelm came from the disjointedness, I think, rather than vice-versa, and the disjointedness came from the looming mission, Kid D-Day, sitting there at the end of the calendar, hideous banshee grin, licking its chops, ready to devour my offspring.

And I mentioned in my reply to the WAW-gram that I was feeling disjointed, and WAW asked why.

Why?

This is, very nearly, the first time she has asked after my feelings unbidden. So I told her. And what ensued was a 7-round e-convo that was open, honest, sympathetic, non-judgmental, and....good. It resolved nothing -- there being nothing to resolve -- and it changed nothing, yet it somehow changed a lot. I was struck by the wisdom of The Jody, DB Coach Extraordinaire, who pointed out very early in the process that the only True Common Ground shared by WAW and LBS is Children (assuming, of course, there are such creatures in the house).

I wrote this:

The very idea of what we're about to do to the children we created, and who depend on us to give their world meaning.... It's incomprehensible to me. As much as this divorce has taken over every aspect of my life, knowing what's coming - wondering what the looks on their faces will be, what the ache in their little hearts and tummies will be, how confused and frightened and abandoned and betrayed they're going to feel - that's just some next-level sh*t to cope with. And as much as I "get" all the things you've said about me failing you, I just can't get my head around this part. I feel so inhumane, so profoundly guilty that my acute case of dumb-ass man syndrome in terms of your adult needs also has to be so terribly, terribly destructive of their child-needs.

To which she replied:

I feel the same way and, like you said, everything that happens once I walk out that door is on me. So you should give yourself a break. I know you won't, but you should.

To which I replied:

Perhaps, perhaps, but at the end of the day I can't escape the basic responsibility that is mine and mine alone as the author of this narrative. It's inescapable, as are the effects: because the most robust studies of the effects of divorce on children suggest that what they will feel this weekend will still be producing repercussions for them as far into the future as year 2045.

My failure to love you the way you deserved to be loved, in other words, translates directly to a failure to guard and defend the hearts and innocence of my own children.

And regardless of which side of The Door you're on, the fact remains that I was the carpenter. Avoiding or trying to absolve myself of that responsibility is inconsistent with the path I've elected to walk until my sand runs out.

And it continued along. Openly. Sharing. Feelings.

It was almost as if we were married or something. But the Doing Of It, what with Number 46 Mojo Butterfly Valve stuck in the valve seat, has exhausted me. My mojo reserves are at the critical point. It's a good thing I'm leaving town -- it will make it that much harder to backslide.

I'm exhausted. I need to go to bed. With my mojo hand. Black cat bone and gris-gris, too.

Smiley,

Your words are so eloquent and so fully capture the biggest heartache of this all -- how it will forever influence the lives of the precious innocents. For it is true, while we as adults may well have failed each other, the bigger failing is in how our mistakes (which, as you pointed out, we as the LBS believe are "fixable") will forever change the lives of the ones we created. So, even if the WAW says it's on him or her, we know that's not entirely true... We DID contribute, and in that sense, we have failed. It's a terrible "truth" to face and one that is, as you are feeling, exhausting...

It's when we KNOW we are right, but that given the Paradox, we cannot right... We know the better bet would be to "work" on us for their sake, but the more we try to convince, the less likely is the WAW to see what we know is true for, as you pointed out the other day, they are just as sure that they are right... This is the tragedy of it all...

In very stark terms, we KNOW it matters on a macro level... Wallerstien and others have shown that...

A study released in July 2002 done by Linda J. Waite, Don Browning, William J. Doherty, Maggie Gallagher, Ye Luo, and Scott M. Stanley titled “Does Divorce Make People Happy? Findings from a Study of Unhappy Marriages” analyzed data from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Family and Households, and came up with some interesting results.

The study analyzed 645 spouses in the late 1980s who said they were in unhappy marriages. Five years later, they were re-interviewed.

AmericanValues.org, in its executive summary of this study, lists the following three conclusions among others:

1. Unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married. Even unhappy spouses who had divorced and remarried were no happier, on average, than unhappy spouses who stayed married. This was true even after controlling for race, age, gender, and income.

2. Divorce did not reduce symptoms of depression for unhappily married adults, raise their self-esteem, or increase their sense of mastery, on average, compared to unhappy spouses who stayed married. This was true even after controlling for race, age, gender, and income.

3. About two-thirds of unhappy spouses who avoided divorce ended up happily married five years later. The unhappiest marriages experienced the most dramatic turnarounds: 78% of adults who said their marriages were very unhappy and who avoided divorce ended up happily married five years later.

Despite our "truth", these truths just don't matter on a micro-level and the irony is that this "logic" only pushes the WS further away, a conundrum that forever changes the "Ghosts of Christmas Future".

Best,

AlexEN