So it's not like I'm thinking "leave him!" in my head
Tbh, sometimes the voice in my head screams exactly this. What was a quiet whisper, a tiny feeling of self doubt now yells loudly, he is a lying piece of sh!t, and you are worth more than this. You deserve better than this and you are romanticising the past. Happiness (whatever that might be) is around the corner if you would only open your eyes and your heart to it. I wonder (often) if I push if I have been pushing that voice away out of fear and have, through my own inaction, prolonged this limbo myself.
It does not help that IRL everyone tells me that he is a lying piece of sh!t. As my bf said the other day, it is time to rip the band-aid off.
Journalling
The house prep has taken a back seat this week and I think I am in a bit of a funk. Besides work there has been lots of GAL, binge watching telly and playing games on my phone. I had the kids a couple of nights last week, and tried to present when I had them, but I don't get in from work until after seven which doesn't leave a lot of time to do anything activity wise with them. There is just time to have a quick conversation, help with homework, tidy up a bit, and watch telly with them for an hour, and then put them to bed. It is worse with D13 who literally will spend an hour with me before heading up to her own room (normal teenager behaviour I think). I do have them this weekend and yesterday took them into town to window shop and run some errands. D13 was meeting friends in town, so I did not really spend time with her. Today we are going into London to watch a play - my birthday present from H (which is really a present for the girls) and will cost me more in transport and lunches/dinners than the actual tickets. Yes, what you hear there is bitterness.
H did bring up the mediation on Thursday right after his session. He had moved it from Tuesday, so actually, there was no delay in contacting me. He sent me a message at work asking me to call him so we could go through the details. I called and, as expected, it quickly turned into a yelling match down the phone. He is adamant about what he wants. 50/50 on everything with no child maintenance/support and no spousal. I told him (again) I was not seeking spousal (but reserved right to change our minds if either of our work sitch changed), was happy with 50/50 split of assets, but I would only support 50/50 childcare as long as the days he had them were fixed. If they were not fixed, then the ratio would go in accordance with whatever overnights he could do which were fixed and that we would use the government rates to decide how much he would pay. Anyway, it deteriorated until I eventually hung up.
The other big thing that happened this week had to do with D10. There was an incident on the WhatsApp group that the kids in her year have set up. She wasn't a part of it (in fact, she was away on the cruise and only saw it when her wifi kicked in) but the three children involved are children of good friends of mine. Basically two of the children were swearing and one called the other stupid and a d**k. It could be seen as bulling by an over anxious parent but from what D10 said, it sounded more like banter gone too far. It didn't sound malicious. And to me, bulling is systematic and malicious. Anyway an email was sent out, and H asked the children about it and then passed the info to me in an email. I spoke to the mum of the child who had been swearing because I thought she should know so she could a) deal with it however she wanted to, and b) she didn't get ambushed at the school. She spoke to the other mum and now a complaint has been raised about H gossiping about her and calling her child a bully. After receiving the email, H called me up to yell some abuse - something about telling me things in confidence, hoped I was happy, bringing the children into it blah blah blah. Unfortunately I was 3 glasses of champagne in at a friends 40th birthday afternoon tea, and I yelled abuse back then hung up him.
