Hey, kismet! Tell me about it. Geez. Could you take one off my hands, please? But since it would be way too hard to decide between the two, we'll draw staws...or play rock, paper, scissors. I'm just kiddin' guys. I could handle you both prolly. Did I say that out loud? Sheesh. What's the world coming to?

Journaling
I've always believed it, but it's more and more clear to me every day how the universe works in mysterious ways. Being only four months into this journey (or one month, if we're counting from the second bomb), I'm still in that frustrating stage of thinking/wanting to come up with some bogus excuse to pick up the phone and call H. Don't you *hate* that?? It's almost like I want to see if his voice has changed any, or if it's still full of hate. But what would it matter, regardless?

Anyway, for some *really* unknown reason, I had it in my head that I was going to post a question here about whether I should just sit down with H again and tell him that I don't want to go through with the whole court thing. It seems soooo easy to me: He and I can work together on this ... we don't want drastically different things. And being drug in and out of court the last three months of my pregnancy isn't what I want. So I guess in a nutshell I was feeling today like I could probably persuade H, if I sat down with him, just to back off a while, and we could compromise between us. And the "deal striking" truly wouldn't be done for totally selfish reasons on my part. I don't want to go through court because I don't want to *take* things from my H. I don't want a judge to slap him around for what he's done. I don't want to watch my L, who my H loves and who he has a tremendous amount of respect for, absolutely tear into H in a courtroom. I don't want to see how hurt I know my old H would be to be on the receiving end of that. And I don't want to watch our once-beautiful M turn into a spitting match. Truth is, I don't want to watch my H self-destruct any more than I already have.

Of course I knew it would be a mistake to call H, because the more smart part of my brain said, "Oh he11 no, GF. We've given him opportunity after opportunity to compromise. We've given him *warnings* of what's to come if he doesn't work with us." (Seriously ... my brain talks like that sometimes ... but only I can hear it. )

I realized it had been a good couple weeks since I last spoke with my H, and I realized that was likely the biggest factor playing in to me wanting to call him. In other words, it wasn't really about getting him to compromise with me, though that would be nice. Instead, it was me, wanting to protect my H again. It was me, wanting to see if he was still the a$$hole he's been the past month. It was me, wanting to hear something different from his voice this time. Since then, I've thought of a *million* reasons why I could or "should" call my H.

But instead, I called my L to get more details about what's going to transpire in the coming weeks -- namely, how long it'll be from the time we file our papers on Friday until we go to court. And he gave me some semi-good news: Calling for/scheduling a hearing won't be up to us. It'll be up to H and his L.

That's great news, because it means H will *know* what he's getting himself into. And it means I don't have to protect him anymore from the possibility of getting chewed out in court. If he wants to go, we'll go. If he doesn't, he can settle with me sometime after we file this week. I had originally thought that my filing on Friday would automatically push a hearing. But that's not the case. H will have to be the one to call for that.

So, no more excuses for H ... and no more reasons for me to feel the need to call and "warn" him about what he's getting himself into. If he wants to walk into that fire, I'll meet him there.

Isn't it interesting how things work out?