Maybell 40

[Maybell]

Mr. Fantastic's sister's family is coming up for Thanksgiving. I'm going out of town with My Guy for the week but will be back the evening before they leave to get my kids. D13 wants me to arrange to spend some time with my former SIL. She's even offered to put it together for me. I am not averse... but I don't know how to do it, because I don't want to include Mr. F at all. And I don't want to spend a whole meal with my former SIL, partly because I will have spent about 10 hours that day driving and partly because, well, it's been 2 1/2 years, with one phone call and a few FB messages in all that time, and I just don't feel the need to stretch for her.

Mr. F's family took the news of his desire to split very much in stride, in spite of all the reasons they should have had to question him. My former SIL called me the week before he moved out and listened to me sobbing on the phone and never once followed up. I love my daughter and I don't want to hurt her, but really, it is too much to ask that I maintain a relationship with people who were ok with my being thrown over like a piece of moldy cheese.

That being said... I have been really looking forward to Thanksgiving with My Guy. Things with him are cooking along pretty nicely. We had one big argument over Halloween which we patched up the next day. I like that our arguing gives me the opportunity to see where I'm being unreasonable (and therefore to grow) and also gives me the opportunity to say, This is really important to me and here's why. I don't know if he's my One but I love being with him and the relationship thing is becoming more comfortable.

D13 will be starting with a therapist tomorrow. Three weeks ago things got REALLY bad and I threw in the towel. I saw the therapist myself a week and a half ago and liked her. Today I broke the news to D13 and said, this is necessary because we can't be fighting all the time for the next five years. We need to know how to get along with each other. That's why we're doing this. Some of the time it will be my girl and some of the time it will be me and some of the time it will be the two of us together.

Work is sometimes easier and sometimes harder. I'm trying to create more systems and routines for making my life work more smoothly and some pieces of it are coming together. My next area of focus is exercise. I haven't been exhausted to the point of debilitated in the last two weeks so hopefully I'm turning some kind of corner there.

Not sure how to close this... I want to kind of shout "I'm in love!" But on the other hand that's not exactly how I feel. I am in love. But it's this very nice, quiet kind of love, companionate and also passionate at the same time, fun, but supportive. Not even the way I wish it could be but our situations are totally uneven because of the kids. So I'm doing the best I can. Which is not bad at all.

I may change my tag line back to "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well." That was my first tag line here, and back in 2014 it was a statement of faith and hope, not of conviction. Now I'm starting to see that it's true.