I don't know what her lawyers counsel her to do. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, maybe they counsel her to do just what she's doing.
All I know is I'm tired of it. Nearly at the point of moving away -- even from Themselves -- just to produce a modicum of stability. I don't see that splitting time is doing them much good. Maybe there's something to the old Disneyland Dad model. I don't know.
What I do know is I hated being in "her" town last weekend; I hate the sound of her heels klick-klocking up the walk to drop the kids' things on the porch, the *bing* of the e-mail indicator on the phone when she sends another nastygram, and if I never heard her voice again it would be too soon; I hate that I'm full of hate and not living the Thich Nhat Hanh ideal and that, if I had to be honest with myself, I'd admit that I sort of wish she was dead; I hate that it's all come to this, that two decades were squandered on a spiteful, uncaring woman who never took any interest in what I do, who secretly harbored a genteel loathing for me, and who held a million secret conferences in her head about my myriad and sundry failings as a husband and as a man and who never thought that was information that might be useful to me.
I used to want to think good thoughts about her, to "know" that she was "in pain," to be compassionate -- at a minimum, to respect the fact that she gave birth to my children -- but that ship sailed a long time ago. In a nastygram today she said flat out she categorically refuses to negotiate with me, categorically refuses to authorize her lawyer to negotiate with me. She wants it all or she wants to destroy it all.
And to think that once-upon-a-time I thought that staying married was better than not. What a putz.
