Out of that crash came darkness, and I heard the shrieking of men and of things which were not men. From the East tempestuous winds arose, and chilled me as I crouched on the slab of damp stone which had risen beneath my feet. Then as I heard another crash I opened my eyes and beheld myself upon the platform of that lighthouse whence I had sailed so many aeons ago. In the darkness below there loomed the vast blurred outlines of a vessel breaking up on the cruel rocks...
And thereafter the ocean told me its secrets no more; and though many times since has the moon shone full and high in the heavens, the White Ship from the South came never again.
I returned from Big Midwestern City, where Running Buddy and I had our last long run before the marathon, learning the course, to a sh*t-storm of epic proportions. The details are so complicated, yet so trivial, that the best I can do is set them out in bullet-points if I want to make any headway at all.
* Early in the process, WAW and I worked hard at hurting each other in fights from time-to-time. As many -- many -- of the female DB'ers hereabouts noted on my threads at that time, the notion of the WAW leaving the children was hard to get the skull around; a number said, as Mother SP had done, that a woman leaving her children in some sense was an insult to womanly motherhood generally. WAW would not, it was predicted (and accurately), find much sympathy among other women.
* One such woman was, as it happens, Former Friend. FF and Mr. FF lived near us in Coastal City. We'd known them nearly 10 years. Our children were at school together. We all took a family vacation together to a Cabin In The Woods in the summer of '08. FF was supportive to WAW while SP was in Iraq.
* FF didn't get how WAW could walk-away from the children; her own mother had been a WAW but, as FF says, "she took us with her!"
* Apparently, at one point, FF had said something snarky about SP's entitlement to alimony, which WAW gleefully repeated. I shot back with, "Well, that's odd to hear, given that she's said she doesn't understand how you could have left the kids."
* That sat there, undisturbed, until yesterday.
* In Big Midwestern City, where Mr. and Mrs. FF have moved, I ate breakfast with the FF family. FF said she'd emailed WAW four times and got no reply. I explained that WAW declared I had "got" the FF family in the divorce. Apparently FF was unsatisfied with this, and emailed WAW again.
* This created a 4-iteration nasty-gram-a-thon between WAW and FF with SP in the middle. Okay; they're Big Girls.
* But WAW broke the rules. The one, Bright Line, Inviolable rule. She brought the children in to Adult Stuff. This morning, apparently, she poisoned the children against FF -- whose children are very close to Themselves -- by saying that FF said Mommy is a bad Mommy AND she's trying to get Daddy a girlfriend.
* How do I know this? S10 Himself confronted me with it when I picked him up at school today.
* WAW called. I was cold. She asked why. I refused to answer. She probed and pressed and I...let it all out.
* And WAW? Defended. Justified. Rationalized. "Well you did this, and you did that, and you shouldn't have started it [3 months ago, mind you] by telling me what FF said."
* "What difference does it make if I told you or not? That is not for Children To Know."
* From there she transitioned to Foreign Female Friend. "I see you have a photograph of 'Her' in your bottom desk drawer."
* "How do you see what's in my desk drawer?"
* "I opened it, and there it was, right in my face!"
* "You opened my desk drawer? And I cleverly 'put it your face' by storing it in a desk drawer?"
* "You left the drawer open just a bit, because you knew I'd open it."
* Well how do you deal with that kind of Crazy? So it went on like that, with some kind of logic known only unto the WAW. She's jealous; you better believe she's jealous ("Hah, don't flatter yourself!"): "All that so-called sadness; you replaced me in months!" "Why would I 'replace' you? 'You' didn't work out so well for me, if you recall -- why double-down on failure?" "Well it wasn't hard for you to get some!" So I twisted it in, because I was tired from traveling and running 22 miles and p*ssed, "Hey, can I help it if your backdoor man dumped you the minute you told him you were leaving me? And wasn't it you who told me to get some, since it would 'take my mind off of you'?"
* And the yelling began, with the kids in the house (the first time that had happened), and there was much crying. And, to be honest, there were many, many flashbacks to Smiley's Person's own 10-year-old self.
* So out she stormed, but not before declaring that she was p*ssed because "no one is giving her credit" for what she's done, which is so great, by not kicking me out of (our) house or selling her interest in the house out from under me and by paying her share of the bills on time -- all this she's done, and neither man nor beast gives her the credit she deserves for such Greatliness.
* It can be told. I do not want that...creature...back. Fabulous MC#2 is no more. WAW has gone so far as to terminate her end of the email account we'd set up just to use for separation and divorce communications.
* I don't have the energy for this. Not anymore. I'm tired. It's all expenditure, no return. No return on investment. I need to finish my book. I need to run this marathon. I need to raise my kids. I have nothing left for WAW. Let her Bring The Crazy. Tempestuous winds from the east. I will crouch down on my stone. And wait.
* And the funny thing was, the idea of "taking her forward," of exploring the new possibilities, was having more and more appeal.
But now? Not even 'no' -- oh hell no.
The White Ship carried away the last of my feelings for her, lost in the chasm, leaving behind "only...a single shattered spar, of a whiteness greater than that of the mountain snow."
I am full of thoughts now. Thoughts of new futures. A future both real and unreal, distinct and obscure, that might be but might not. It was merely a cloud in the sky, this idea that WAW might someday return. And, like all vapor, it has vanished.
Quote:
"The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky...They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky...The sky both exists and doesn't exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn't." -- Haruki Murakami
