It's been a long time so thought I would pop in to say "hi" and see how everyone is doing these days and managing their post-divorce lives.
My life is full of ups and downs, as per usual. Still single and actually a lot more okay with it than I used to be. While I am still on a couple of dating apps, I haven't been actively using them for at least six or eight months. I've been more focused on living in the moment, cultivating gratitude and working on becoming the person I ultimately want to be. I think I am making progress but, as always, there is still much to learn. Having said that, my 55th birthday is fast approaching so I expect I will give OLD at least one more college try sometime soon.
Lately, I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos of people who have had near death experiences (NDE's)...trying to make sense of a world that so often seems random and unjust. This new obsession was prompted by a phone call from XH a few weeks ago. We've talked on the phone maybe two, possibly three, times since I found out about his affair in 2017 so I knew he wasn't calling just to say "hi". I almost didn't answer but then curiosity got the better of me so I ignored my inner feeling of dread and picked up the call. Sure enough...as soon as I heard his voice, I knew something was really wrong. I also noticed that my first instinct was to take care of him. I would say old habits die hard but I've since come to understand that having compassion and empathy for others is just who I am at my core and when I live my life that way, I feel like my best self. It's taken me awhile to regain my equilibrium in that way but now that I have, I am grateful for what I went though because I think it has made me an even better person in that regard.
Anyway... turns out XH's wife's body has been slowly rejecting her transplanted liver. They were hopeful she would be able to have another transplant but apparently have been told, once and for all, that it isn't going to happen. She is in end stage liver failure and they have been told that time is limited. The pain she has been enduring this past year has been taking its toll on her mental health and this is even worse now that toxins normally filtered by her liver are freely roaming throughout her body and attacking other organs which includes her brain. So life has been very difficult on days when she is not herself and XH was calling me to let me know as, of course, this has been impacting our kids despite his best efforts to protect them from it. So now, after finally getting past the grief of my marriage ending, I am in the strange position of grieving the eventual death of the woman who played a big part in it (she and I are in a good place and even text each other as well as have a group text with XH) and trying to figure out the best way I can support my kids and their dad who is barely holding it together at this point. His phone call was pretty devastating and I've not thought about much else since. I think I said it before but I really wanted them to be married for 50 years so that everything we went though made sense somehow. But it's only been five years since I learned of her existence and they've only been married a year so it's been hard to reconcile how this has played out. The only thing that makes sense to me at this point is that she needed him to help her get through this last stage of her life and that he needed her to start to become the man he had previously only pretended to be. Maybe that was the purpose?
I briefly talked to him last week when he dropped the kids off and we talked a bit about life and lessons and my recent obsession with NDE videos. He told me he has watched a few too...probably for the same reasons. I told him I was happy to see him stepping up and being such a good partner to his wife. We also talked about what I went through with my parents and my experience grieving the loss of people who were still around as well as the guilt I had felt during my moments of self pity (because it is so, so hard to watch someone you love deteriorate over time and you are powerless to stop it). I think he now gets what I was going through the last two years of our marriage and what it feels like to have to hold it together for everyone else around you when all you want to do is collapse into a little ball and cry your eyes out. I always thought it was an important thing for him to understand for his own growth as a person but definitely didn't want him to have to figure it out this way. His wife is only 41 years old. Way too young to be facing something like this.
In other news... house project is still on hold due to rising interest rates, supply chain issues and worker shortages. We're putting it off one more year with the hope that some of those things will even out a bit. If not, there is a chance we may just decide to sell the property in which case, I will buy my own house. I can only live in my sister's home confined to a small bedroom with most of my stuff in storage for so long. I don't want to be still living there when my kids graduate from high school.
I'm going to Vegas at the end of February to play in our pool league's world championships. My sister and I managed to get 8 of our ten nights comped so are only paying about $110 for the hotel. That makes it a pretty cheap trip provided we don't gamble too much. We are also in the midst of planning the three-week trip to Croatia with her, her husband and two other couples that we were supposed to go on in 2020. I was hoping I would have had a plus one by now but I'm not too upset that I don't. I'm kind of used to being the odd person out so it doesn't really bother me anymore. I know I will have a great time regardless.
One other tidbit of information. I took a five-day mini vacation with XH1 at the beginning of September. We had a great time. It was surreal to be hanging out with him (platonically) after divorcing 20 years before. I am truly blessed to have the kind of friendship I have with him and I know we will be in each other's lives forever. I will probably plan a visit to his neck of the woods this summer. I took the kids for a visit last year and S15 has asked me if we can do it again.
So that's it for me. Just wanted to stop in and let you guys know I am still alive and working on living my best life. I hope 2023 is good to each and every one of you. (((HUGS)))
