making it about me...

[Rita]

Sjohn, it was kind of a treat to see such a long post from you. I just wish it wasn't a sad post. However, your sadness here is proof of your goodness, not your weakness. I explain below.

I am going through something similar (go figure) but mine is about six hundred and seventy million times more repulsive and chock full of Covid risks and outright evil. So it might help to know that it could be way worse.

Now the other thing I want to say is that this story proves YET AGAIN that you are a good man with a true and loving heart. Unfortunately, when you are a good man with a true and loving heart, it is going to hurt when someone does something to hurt you.

For a bad man with a false and unloving heart, when someone hurts you, it doesn't hurt. Or it does, so you go crazy (at the time or maybe thirty years after the hurt) and leave your wife and kids. Or get wasted. Or kick a dog. Or shoot heroin. Or…. You get the idea. If you didn’t feel what you feel, you might start on the list above in order to feel or not feel something else.

What I mean is that there is nothing wrong with your response and it is a good and right response to feel sad, unsettled, like something is off. Something is off!

You should be going together on that trip.

You should have your time with your kids.

If your W is going to change timing, she should let you know a month ahead. If she had to change it last minute, she should let you know as soon as she knows and be very apologetic and ask if it's okay with you to switch and offer you an extra few days off her next week.

If she knows the memory of that particular place is going to hurt your true and loving heart, she should let you know extra early and include a note about how she has many happy memories of being there as a family and hope you won't mind that she wanted to take the kids there again and hopes that you will have something just as wonderful to do while they are gone.

A man being sad over a memory of a time spent with me that he can't have anymore is the dream of every lady on this board so again, keep in mind, that is the right response from you even if it’s the wrong response from your was-wife. (That works better with “was-band.”)

But if she doesn't do these things, and if she left a good man with a true and loving heart to begin with, the right response is that you feel pain. Pain means your heart is alive.

What folks do with pain who do not have any kind of faith practice, I don't know.

Well, actually I do know one bad thing to do. I used to really enjoy cigarettes when I felt like that. I also liked to cry my head off. I still like to cry my head off but I usually do it while praying so I am crying directly to Someone who then comforts me. I really do feel that comfort after.

You’re doing it all right, Sjohn. That’s why it hurts.

Also (Sam) thanks for the nice thing you said in paragraph one. Those little things are quite a life raft for me these days as per what I wrote on my and Gordie’s threads. I read that about fourteen times to do battle with the various bullets flying into my mind of why that wasn’t true. Gerda has a few demons of her own, clearly.

So now that we’ve figured everything out – what can you come up with to do while you are alone this week that is really awesome and amazing. Write a short story? Turn the garage into a tiny house rental? Mow the neighbor’s lawn? Plant apple trees in the yard? (I have an apple tree out on my city street. Someone stole two of the five apples but I am still hopeful. Everyday I push the leaves around them so no one can see them growing so that me and my kids can each eat one. If you know where I live you can know that this is a true exercise in impossible faith.)

I just took off way too much time from work to write this.