This is one of those posts where I ramble on about things that really make no difference in the end, so feel free to skip it
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Good God I feel like I'm on my own private rollercoaster. I was up, now I'm ... down? No, it's more like a corkscrew ... not sure whether I'll be high or low when I come out of it.
Wife's working now, Christmas Eve. Putting the kids to bed tonight I kept having those denial thoughts. "What about our plans for the future What's she thinking? This can't be happening!"
After the years we have put into PAINstaking raising of the kids to give them the best possible life, I can't believe we're doing this. Like, we have these little doll elves. The come from the north pole every December 1 and stay until Santa takes them home on Christmas Eve. In the meantime they get into mischief.
What this means is that practically every night for three weeks we fish the elves out of the kids' beds, and create some scene, like unrolling a bunch of toilet paper down the hall, or hanging them from the ceiling fan. It's great fun, but to go to this much trouble to make our kids' lives special and not take care of our marriage?!
I should have said STOP a thousand times. Actually, I did. But I should have done whatever I needed to to make sure our relationship came first. I didn't.
So here I was tonight, going through the motions of all these little things the kids love thinking "what they really want for Christmas is for their mom and dad to be happy together." It makes me numb.
And then there's the rejection flaring up again. S6, who's the most vocal about the separation said "Mom says she doesn't want to sleep with you so will you sleep with me tonight? I think she thinks that would be weird because you're practically divorced." He's so matter of fact about it, but he seems to think about it all the time. I mean ALL the time. I would never ever have wished this on my kids.
It is so frustrating to see my worst nightmare being played out before my eyes, and to realize that the only way to truly stop it is to go back in time and make better choices.
But I will stick with the plan. I can't change her. I can only change me.
