I gave myself a huge pep talk at 3 am a couple of days ago, and wrote several pages in my journal. I was frustrated because I have sacrificed every single thing that is important to me to spend forty hours a week at this job where I feel like I am really not making a lot of headway. I am angry with myself because just a few months ago I was so grateful to have it and now I am so resentful of it. Partly it's because the owner of my company is not the woman I thought she was. She is not compassionate. But she wants to get herself credentialed to be part of the "divorce industry" and I am triggered by it because she has been so enormously unhelpful to me. She hasn't thought it through -- she's just collecting letters after her name. But I've been assigned to pull together a lot of the resources she needs to make it happen and it makes me want to vomit. I've had to figure out that I need to do it in 15 minute bites in order to stay functional through the day. Otherwise I just get too upset to think. It was cruel and thoughtless of her to ask me to do this.
I am suffering from a lack of exercise, and I feel like I need to make some goals for myself that have nothing to do with work or parenting in order to feel like my own person again. It's like the days of my marriage when my whole life centered around the home and other people's needs. I can't continue to function like this.
STBX has been taking the kids only every 3rd weekend since April -- he claims because of work travel but somehow his plans always seem to change in order for him to be home on the weekends when he should have had the kids. He missed one of his weeknights for travel and another I had to attend a work dinner so my down time is pretty much nil. One of my tasks for this week is to figure out how to build back in my running & yoga practices, and to make time for my own professional development efforts (can't be done during work hours) without sacrificing too much of my actual down time. I need to own my life. I feel depleted. And it is impossible to not hate STBX while my life feels so shackled. I'm working on it.
His dad had a heart procedure this week and I felt badly for the whole family. He's young for these sorts of health problems. STBX's younger brother & his wife are expecting their third child and the brother Facebook friended me and said he missed me, which was kind. It's not detached to wonder how these developments land in his brain with regards to me. But then I remember that THIS past Valentine's Day, while I was attending kid events and feeling seriously sick to my stomach, he went off and had an overnight date with some woman in another city. He can do that, even while he's fighting me over the settlement and nowhere near to legally divorced (not even close). Quality guys are not like that. I deserve quality, and I owe it to my kids to make sure that the adult men in their lives are quality too.
I keep thinking how horrible it is that the greatest damage done to me in my life was by a person who promised in front of God and everybody to protect me. Whose main responsibility in life is to care for us (in partnership with me, of course). I'm struggling to not say I won't forgive him -- but what I think I mean by that is that I am currently angry with him, and I need this anger at the moment to power through all the challenges in front of me. And I fear letting go of the anger, because I think it's masking a huge well of grief and I'm afraid of what it will feel like to face that. Maybe while the kids are away with STBX for his family vacation I'll dip my toe in it. For now I can't afford to. If I crack a little I am worried that it will turn into too much of a break to bring myself back together quickly.
The kids are being more open about missing their dad. They had a kid achievement last week and S9 asked several times if we could all eat out together after "because it had been so long since we'd been together as a family." Later that evening I told him that I was hurt and angry by things his dad had done, and just as he sometimes needed to be away from his siblings when he is angry with them, I needed to be away from his dad. I was careful to say that that was between STBX and me, and that the kids should feel whatever they felt about him without worrying about if that was OK with me. I said it was important to me that they be happy with their dad and that I don't want to get in the way of that, but that for myself I needed space from him. They smiled when I said it and I think it was OK. I hope it really is. I need that boundary. I can't be around him. I have no respect for him. If he were an acquaintance I'd met, the dad of one of the kids' friends, for example, I wouldn't want to be around him either.
I hope it wasn't because of me, but when the kids had another end of year celebration that he'd considered attending (not during his scheduled time), he told me the day before that he had decided not to attend.
If it was because of me, I can't control that. It is his choice, as was all the rest of it. But in my view he is missing an important part of who his children are growing up to be.
D12 had an episode with the babysitter in which she was VERY snotty and disrespectful. After I got the sitter out the door I had a long talk with D12. It was the sort of episode that previously would have turned into a huge fight, but I remembered what a few people have said to me about the power of silence, so I employed it, and lo and behold, she opened up about some stuff. I will say that she was right in what she was initially angry about, but because she was so very disrespectful her point was utterly lost. We talked about that some, and we talked about compassion too. She wanted to say that she would give respect when it was earned, but I said, no, you give respect to all people just because they are people.
My sitter is not an easy personality either, but she serves an important function in our household and she has had a very difficult life (she's in her 60s). D12 said, yes, her life is difficult, but she doesn't always make good choices. I said that may be true, but that you never know how you're going to react in a difficult situation and we all do the best we can with what we know. D12 is still pretty skeptical (which is appropriate on many levels), but I think the lesson got in. What she does with it is up to her. I can't believe I stayed so calm. It's like a miracle.
As angry and hurt as I am by this turn in my life, I will agree that it is a kind of a rebirth, and one for which I am grateful. I think even before he left, I felt a certain kind of regret at things my life was going to lack in order for me to sustain the marriage. Now those things are possible again, and I do appreciate that. But in this time of uncertainty and HUGE effort, it is hard to keep those intangibles front and center. I can only hope that the end is approaching so the effort becomes more manageable. I feel weak compared to the many women who are utterly abandoned and have to manage their families on multiple minimum-wage jobs, but as strenuous as things feel right now, I am indeed grateful for a lot.
Final thing. In two weeks I leave for a "vacation" with my parents and brothers. My brothers have been fabulous. My parents have been completely absent. Here I am with all this work and anxiety on my plate, and they have been completely disengaged. I'm less important to them than a step-niece's wedding. They are ZERO help, except in passing on the second-hand advice they've gotten from their new friends in their retirement neighborhood (which tells me they've been gossiping about my situation). It makes it hard for me to want to call them. I don't need to be the center of the universe, but this has been the most demanding, painful thing I can imagine ever having to go through, there are a TON of physical and logistical challenges involved, hurt, rejection, self-examination, etc., and my mom's general attitude is that she doesn't want to come visit me because I don't say, "Yes, Mom, it would be WONDERFUL to have you come visit." She doesn't seem to understand how difficult it is for me to muster up that kind of enthusiasm about anything.
I have been considering starting my St. Johns Wort again. I didn't realize how much it helped me through the thick of all this last year.
I am struggling some, but I also am doing better than I was a week ago. I am anxious to be through this part of my life. I just want to settle into a place that is mine and move forward.
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
