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
That is a very sad story. From what deep reserves do the two of you get the energy for this kind of fighting? I sit back and marvel. It's like watching the Olympics of arguing. My only thought is, you are too deeply entrenched. She won't let you out. You are her sparring partner, and she needs it to let off steam. You have answered my question. The falls were very close, and there was no steering away.
Ah, SP, the emotional rollercoaster! Someone should have reminded you that any time there is a big swoop up, it is always followed by a big swoop down.
Hindsight being 20/20, your story is the primary reason I have pretty much kept my moments of confiding to individuals I knew wouldn't hold it against W - never mutual friends. But, I learned that the hard way - it always comes back to bite you.
However, I'm fairly certain that I'm relaying information that you were already fully aware of.
What I will tell you is that you have reached a point of control. I heard someone say on here, many moons ago, "They who care the least about their marriage or relationship controls it." My sense is that this is where you are, and I'm right with you.
A part of me deeply, dearly loves W - but most of me simply wants her to go away and take her anger, and bitterness, and inability to reason with her. Another poignant observation is that you go through the phases of wanting to save your marriage, to hurt, to anger, to disappointment, but you know you're done when you reach the point where you're a little disgusted.
I've personally cut all communication at this point - I don't want to reach the disgusted point. She is, after all, a woman that I loved more deeply than I can even put into words, and the mother of my incredible children.
I'm not sure if I can offer any assistance other than to say that I empathize - a small part of me wants to assure you that setbacks are normal, sometimes it's one step forward, two steps back.
However, sometimes there is a point where it's time to embrace that new future, move on with life, and if W wants to get her head on straight, perhaps there will be room for her.
Thanks for the update; I think we were starting to get concerned, as you're normally so communicative.
It sounds to me like you finally got to "disgust." That, I was told, is the last emotion you get to, and that when you DO, then you're done. Not that you may not eventually come back from your Done-ness, but for now, you are done.
* 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.
Damn Straight! O'Dog feels the only way to recover is to let it all go. Get back to nothing. Get clarity.
Some awful things transpired over the week. How dare she bring the kids into it. But for some reason someone keeps kicking the beehive. Seems like mostly her. If she were truly over it then she wouldn't care. If she truly had awareness she would stay quiet. But she has to have the last word. Just walk away and leave her screaming like an idiot.
"My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand." Thich Nhat Hanh
Oh she's not done, not by a long shot -- not anymore.
Note to LBHs -- when she says she's done? Don't believe it.
No one was more persuasively "done" than Mrs. SP, and if I'd wanted to I could have talked her down the aisle this afternoon.
But that's the rub -- I don't want to. I may be the Done One this time. It's an open question. I'm not thinking about it. I'm not trying to answer it. I am Present.
Couldn't let Last Night go -- not when I kept seeing the look on The Boy Himself's face over and over, every time I closed my eyes.
So sent her a long, long email, a real SP special. The email was entitled "endings."
She responded thoughtfully, kindly, openly. Full confession of some things she'd long denied.
This morning she dropped the kids off at school, and I invited her in. Let her cry. We talked a bit of this and that.
She's so jealous of The Other Woman. Envious. Of course she's constructed an Other Woman Relationship right out of Hollywood -- if I had anything remotely like that going on, I'd be the King O' Swing, but whatever.
It's not the fact that there's OW. It's that OW and I talk, instead of f*ck -- which is what she did with OM.
Somehow -- I'm sure the ladies can explain it to me -- a Talking OW (not an EA, mind you -- I mean, WAW gets every bit of my feelings -- but a talking relationship, as in, "what an interesting conversationalist you are") is much worse than a F*cking or S*cking OW. "Bodies are bodies," as WAW says.
So I did some talking, some DBing, some bringing up of things I've internalized from my reading in the DB'er's Library, from the past 7 months. "God, you sound so healthy. I was actually better off when you were all emotion, no thought," says WAW. Meaning, SP ain't nobody's fool no more.
Lesson to New DB'ers. Hat tip to @Forrest Gump. Do the work.
In any case, I laid down some Law. There can be no more Last Nights. No more fights in front of the children. I told her that, yes, in fact, I still have love inside me for her -- how could I not, when I see her every time I look at our daughter, who looks more and more like her every day, and who was carried and borne by WAW?
But having that love inside is not the same as "loving her" -- choice or no choice notwithstanding. So another marriage? Don't know. Full disclosure: Not likely.
But let's talk reconciliation. "What?" Sure, I'm happy to work towards reconciling.
That is, towards Definition 1(a) of "reconcile" from the Merriam-Webster: "To restore to harmony."
She didn't get around to canceling Fabulous MC#2 because she got rope-a-doped at work, so FMC#2 and the sitter are still on the books.
I told her, last night's declaration to the contrary, I will go, as long as MY agenda is THE agenda -- what will it take to work towards the restoration of Harmony?
I don't know what Harmony will look like. I'm not going to define it up front. Could be friends, could be lovers, could be domestic partners, could be enemies, could be frenemies. (I have another term, but I'm holding it in reserve for the Great American Divorce Book -- but you guys'll like it, guaramanteed.)
Why? Why do it? Harmony is the only good outcome I can assure for the children right now and it is, at present, the only -- ONLY -- outcome I am willing to consider with WAW after the Last Night Escapades.
She conceded. And that is that.
Divorce busted, after a fashion. The legal proceedings may continue -- will continue -- but the end-state is not "divorce," per se. It will be Harmony.
I don't know where that will take me. But I'm keeping a weather eye out for any white ships on the horizon....
