Episode 3 - The Divorce Awakens

[qt4x11]

In the past few days I’ve noticed that I’m not as bogged down with feelings of sadness, regret, and guilt over my divorce. I also feel like I’m moving further along in accepting the fact that we are headed towards divorce. My thoughts around this right now are - what can I do, I love my wife still, but if she doesn’t want to be with me and is pushing divorce despite everything, then I have no choice but to try to rebuild my life, and continue working on making myself a better person. I think focusing on what’s in front of me - work, the legal stuff around the case, my kids, etc. - is helping. Also I’ve been focusing on doing stuff like - going to meet up groups, working on my side business, exercising as much as I can at this time, and playing guitar again - that helps.
If I think too much about the situation around my divorce, I’m so sad I can’t even function. I have to focus on getting myself together, and getting back on stable footing in my life right now. Being around people at work is tough right now. There is the usual office tension of ambition and competition, I’m not in a good enough place right now to be able to deal with it. I have to remind myself that I’m going through a divorce right now and I’m extremely sensitive to every little emotion. In order to function it takes active effort for me to ignore whatever turbulent feelings are going on inside of me so I can focus on my responsibilities.

——-


I read about the celebrity divorce of Miranda Kerr and Orlando Bloom. Miranda is now dating the billionaire founder of Snapchat and Orlando is dating Katy Perry, so I think they are doing alright. I read an interview with Miranda regarding coparenting their kid with Orlando - she said ‘they’re now a modern family’. I’ve heard the term ‘modern family’ a lot - is that what we’ll be? I think divorced people describe their situations as ‘a modern family’ because it normalizes things and makes them feel better about a broken family.

——-


I had the kids over the weekend, I took them to the park, took them to Toys R Us, played video games, watched movies, we got together with my family - and on Sunday I took them to a birthday party for one of their friends. I miss them right now. When I’m with them I try to be cheerful, but I feel like they can see through me, they know that I really want to put our family back together.

——-

I hit my 90 days of sobriety more than a week ago, and I hit my ’90 12 step meetings in 90 days’ goal a couple of days ago. No fireworks, I’m still the same person, but I’m at least a little calmer and more accepting of my situation, and I feel at least in some ways I’m a much better person than I was 3 months ago, with more clarity. When you smoke weed you choose to live in your own ‘self defined world’ - I think a lot of people like me have trouble dealing with stress in their lives and with their own emotions. It’s a way of hiding from yourself. The problem with this is - you are also choosing to cut yourself off from the good things in your life, your wife and kids, your friends and family. Also there’s a spiritual law - whatever you ignore, comes back to you eventually. In my case, all of the problems around stress and self esteem and conflict avoidance I’ve been hiding from all these years - really came back in full force. Look at my life now.
After one 12 step meeting I stayed after and was talking to a lady who has 30 years sobriety. I said - the issue is, now that I don’t have the option of retreating from my emotion with drugs - I have to find a way to deal with stuff like work stress, relationship problems, etc. That stuff won’t go away, in fact I have a lot more stress and relationship problems right now than ever before - and I’m intimidated with having to deal with it. She said - the way to deal with that stuff is - you just have to walk through it.
On top of the huge list of problems in my life right now, I’m being sued for $6k. It is a long story - about 8 months ago I got out of a cab on the wrong side of the street. I got in an accident - it was my fault for opening the door on the wrong side of the street. When I opened the door a car flew by and scratched the door. There was a lot of damage to the cab and the car. When the police showed up and took everybody’s names he said - don’t worry, cab company’s insurance is so good they will just pay this out and the issue will go away. So I showed up at traffic court and nobody else showed up - not the cabbie or the other driver. The case was dismissed. Now 8 months later I got a letter from the other driver’s lawyer - they are trying to get me to pay for the damages to his car. I thought the case was dismissed and his damages were paid by the cab insurance? I have to deal with this, it’s the last thing I need right now in my life.

——-


Here are people’s attitudes towards me, post divorce filing:
Mom and brothers: we love and support you, but you need to focus on yourself and stop talking about it (Easier said than done, it’s like they don’t want to hear about my pain anymore. And they used to love my wife - and now they hate her.)
My wife’s friends and family: you’re dead to us. (Great. You know there are two sides to every story right? Despite how I’m being painted I’m not a villain, I just made some mistakes.)
My kids: my kids love me, it doesn’t seem to affect them very much right now, but I’m worried about how this situation will affect them in the future. Right now I lean on my kids for love, although they are a reminder to me of what is lost, and being around them is always tinged with sadness.
Society: over %50 of married couples divorce, you’re nothing special, get over it. (Great. This is the worst pain imaginable that anyone should have to go through. I think it’s worse for me than my dad’s death. And society is minimizing my pain? I can’t turn off my emotions, as much as I’d like to.)