Maybell XXXIV: Expecto Patronum!

[Maybell]

I can't copy and paste the link to Towanda! On my iPad so I'll have to get back to you all with it later.

This week Divorce is becoming real for all parties. STBX received the settlement agreement and he is MAD. However, I don't care, as he has paid zero attention to the distress his three children feel over the uncertainty in our housing situation. He complained that I'm hiding behind lawyers when a two hour conversation between us could settle it all. Seeing as how he and I have never managed to resolve anything in a mutually satisfactory way ever, and that he broke every stinking provision of our informal separation agreement within a couple of weeks of proposing it, I'm not about to trust my and the kids' future to such a risky proposition. If he chooses to stay mad because I'm acting on his untrustworthiness, well, that's his problem, not mine.

The kids really have needed me this week to be ON and I've been there. It's good in that I do feel stronger and more capable; I have been the one to Show Up and the kids are beginning to reward me with more openness. S7 asked a silly question that turned into a conversation about trips we can take, and so now the four of us are planning a good one. I told them we'd have to give up some things to save up for the trip -- things like cable and eating out -- and they all jumped on that band wagon. That made me really happy.

My subtitle, Expecto Patronum, is a Harry Potter reference. Dementors are evil creatures that make you feel like all the happiness has been sucked out of the world. They destroy their victims by sucking the soul out of the body. Wizards repel them by casting Expecto Patronum, which requires the caster to think of the strongest, most profoundly happy memory they can and which manifests as a kind of spirit animal made of warm light.

I don't know what my spirit animal might be, but I do have a lot to be happy about. I feel like I'm gaining back a thousand little things that I sacrificed during the time of my marriage. Things like the wackiness of my daughter who loves me, and who I'm learning to see as her own separate self. Things like the opportunity to take trips because of a first-grader's chance mistake, and teaching the kids to invest themselves in the planning.

Also, I sort of hesitate to mention this because it sounds so vain, but... I'm becoming aware of myself as attractive. Before all this happened I barely thought of myself as pretty, and I certainly never heard that I was. STBX used to make fun of me for having no sense of humor (which I do regard as a dreadful failing). But now I hear how fun i am all the time, and how smart, and not only that I'm pretty but even that I'm "stunningly beautiful" -- all the time. Even my lawyers tell me (WEIRD!).

All I can think is that I've finally gotten out from under the shadows of my parents and STBX and that the efforts I've made to be my best (with the inside and the outside matching) have mattered.

It seems like I had more to share when I wrote this in my head, but this is enough for now. I do want to remind anyone reading this to carry the "save me" banner, not the "save my marriage" banner. You are WORTH IT -- and for the marriage to be worth saving, you must be your real, best self.