Brave Little Gerda Faces the Cutting Winds

[Gerda]

Thanks, DnJ and Gordie, for the verses -- from deep to lovely to funny back to deep. Enjoyed those a lot.

Have had a crazy few days and I need a dose of Job tonight.

My H had this big meeting with an academic he has worshipped since his college days when we were first dating. It was a big deal meeting and it ended up having some big implications for him (I mean, it would if he came out of the MLC fog enough to actually finish writing anything at all), and I had been able to be kind of kind/normal around him lately so I actually texted him to ask how the meeting went and he wrote back something surprising so I called him, which I never ever do. We ended up talking for 45 minutes and then more when he came home, all about that, and some more the next day. It's not like I thought he was going to call off the D, but it was so nice and he seemed to want to talk to me so much that I thought at least... well, some form of expectation anyway.

Then this morning my L finally gets his response back to the custody proposal and in it his L again asserts his demand that I not be allowed to "call and interfere" when he is with the children because of my "abuse" of this privilege. And a bunch of other stuff that was to be expected but that really stung.

Keep in mind that my H is NEVER with the children -- even this morning my D asked him to pick her up from school today, and Fridays were the day he asked for, and he still said no. So I couldn't call him when he is with them because he never is! But even if he were ever with them, I NEVER call him! The call described above was the first one in ages other than once in a while some emergency with the car or something. I don't even call him with emergencies with the kids.

So that response after the two days of really nice talking and me showing so much interest in his work/life, which he accepted and then some -- and most especially what he allows his L to say to me in such a nasty way, it just really piqued some grief and rage in me. He appears to have left town again but I don't know if he will come back and have been binge watching Shtisel so I am pretty out of it but I was so on edge that tonight when my daughter whacked me in the nose by mistake when she was pretending to be asleep and I kissed her, I started hysterically crying in front of my kids, another thing I never do. (I just run to church or my room if I have to cry so they don't know.)

It is very hard to go dark/grey when you live with the person divorcing you and there is no sign that he will leave anytime soon. I find that it's upsetting for my kids and that it's better for them if I don't ignore my H in front of them. Not that I seek him out, but I try to act normal.

But I really need to take some dark time for my sanity.

So I was thinking about leaving him a note of just a line or two trying to lay out a boundary that would allow me to go more grey.

But everything I started writing seemed ridiculous.

So I started thinking about what Job might say to me at this juncture and I had a couple of ideas of what that would be but i thinkI would rather go straight to the moderator's mouth and ask you, Job, what you think!