Category: Divorce

Divorce, Humanity

Right Here.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

right here.

I think I wrote about this ages ago, when my dad died. BUT that was another lifetime ago, and I just tried to go look it up and find where it was,  and reading that stuff was too hard, and too foreign. The lifetimes having slipped far away down that river.

when my dad died, I was wrecked. Not only was his heart attack in my backyard, and my now former husband was giving chest compressions that kept him alive long enough for all his kids to get there to see a living body…  but the suddenness of the loss and the incontrovertible NO, HE WILL NOT MAKE IT. . . there it was, there it all was.

I found my mind racing and racing and racing, and I couldn’t get back to where I needed to be to function as myself and as the mother and householdrunner that I needed and wanted to be. it was memory, and memory and more memory world-shift and fear and grief welling and complete detachment from the people I was sharing a house with.

and oh, the racing. the fucking racing of my mind. pinging from wall to wall. a highspeed badnews montage, looped.

Quickly after the death, I drew a hand and wrote ‘RIGHT HERE’ and I don’t know if someone suggested it to me or if the HUBSJatthetime suggested it, but I hung it on the cabinet door next to the stove. I saw it multiple times a day.  and I physically put my hand in front of my face multiple other times per day. I smelled my skin. I closed my eyes.

Here I am. Here is my skin. This is all that there is, RIGHT HERE.

the circles are small. the physical space I am is all that there is. when the quakers say ‘center down’, this is how I feel, all the energies bringing me back to the RIGHT HERE.

I kept it up there during the long and painful divorcing process. Really helped when I put out the wrong number of plates, or when all I could hear was his disapproval, even after he was gone.

Somehow the hand fell off the cabinet, or I replaced it with another missive. Its been quite a few years now.

And, this week, I noticed it moving from place to place in the kitchen, showing itself in my new time of need. In this new sadness that is so familiar.

so, i’m going to put it back up. because…

HERE I AM. HERE IS MY VERY OWN SKIN. BLESS WHAT IS RIGHT HERE.

 

Right HERE hand Unwifedmotherexpletive

Divorce, Humanity

Pitchfork…

Lovelovemotherexpletive
  • into this space please insert all the things i cannot and willnot leave behind for posterity about the many things i feel about the man who I divorced. let that be as powerful as saying I married him. why should i keep valuing one over the other?
  • i’ve got pizza sitting next to me that crisped up in the oven and i’m debating very seriously whether burning the roof of my mouth is worth it.
  • i’m planting things but have zero faith that i will ever get them into the ground because they are so spindly. and i am thrilled that the word ‘spindly’ is still around.
  • plus, how many carrots will my kids eat, realistically?
  • i wish i really drank, like on the regular, so that it was part of my life. isn’t that an absurd wish? now, when stressed or emotionally stretched out, i don’t have an easy fix… or if i do have a glass of wine, i have a headache before i even feel a buzz. so. that seems a miss. but i miss it, that brain shutdown, what we call the fall of ‘inhibitions’ but are really just normally healthy boundaries? i want to shed them more often and still manage to watch out for my kids, as a functioning fucked up adult. Does that make sense?
  •  I am worried that i’m not going to regain my proofreading clients when this is done, and that i’ll be back to a square i don’t want to be on.
  •  I am aware that if I were isolated like this and still married like I was, that I would be one of the people you should be worried about, the isolation and the misery combining to unsafe.
  •  The mental health of all of us in my house right now is becoming my ringadembells item, and i’m just as unhinged as they are, but am the grownup.  I am reminding them that all the feelings are okay and that they all will pass, with time, and that nobody has a ‘right’ way to be. its all i can do, that and feed them.
  • my kids have too much screen time. i’ll care later. i obviously care now, but see item previous item, and include ‘screentime guilt’ on the list of feelings that moms are allowed to have and to let pass.
  •  my eyes constantly fill with tears for and of these kids and these times… sometimes it is overwhelm, and disbelief, and sometimes it is laughter and those are the best times.
  • Pitchfork Unwifedmotherexpletive

 

Divorce, Humanity

write as defiance. DEFIANCE.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

so, the ex contacts me to tell me he just read the blog.  and thinks its about him.  I’ve told him enough times not to read it. that nothing, even if he is in it, is about him.  all me, all the time.  And everytime he tells me he has read it, I feel like I need to go stand in the darkest corner of the house and never write again. and sometimes I have stopped, for ages.

so today, as a mark of noticing the dropped shoulders that I got from yelling alone in my kitchen?

I write. As an act of defiance, i write, however small a piece… because he got enough out of me already, and he can’t have anything else.

and i’m not being ‘too dramatic’, or ‘angry’, i’m just showing you how I save myself these days.

the sun is bright. and i’m still allright.

Author's face UnwifedMother Expletive

 

Divorce, Humanity

the middle.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

the kids are flying off to Florida tomorrow for a long weekend and a swim with some manatees.

the ex is dating, has broken up with the woman he was with immediately after leaving (foggy dates there, intentional) and it’s coming back around on me.

I don’t care. I do care. ego is involved. things are not equal. they won’t be. my kids are very lucky.

and I’m going to miss the kids a lot. its only one night more than regular that they’ll be gone from me, but the fact that they’ll be having all these first-time experiences without me is a little bit peaky. and airplanes.

and i’m having stress dreams about disrespect and the way i felt when i was married and the futile feeling that i had about my life all the time.

and i’m calling my friends and they are holding my hands, and my LM is being lovelier.

and man, there is this gift in all this… that i’m not there anymore, that he isn’t in my life anymore, that i can yell and be mad and not be constantly gaslit about my own worth and sanity.

that i forget. and remember. and yell in the empty kitchen, to myself,  ‘he is not in my life ANYMORE’. and the yelling feels right, and loosens my shoulders.

here i am.

sometimes i am mad. catch me at 9:30 at night when not one.single.kid. is making any progress towards sleep and i am a fucking harpy of doom.  totally.

and i don’t have to hear anymore about what an ‘angry person’ i am.  because i am so much more than a person who gets angry sometimes. and really, i always was.

i’m not there anymore. and the fairytale fell apart and the crying in the wedding dress is done. (i’m sure i’ll have some more moments, but.)

and i’ve got amazing kids with me all the time, and i’m allright man.  right here in the middle of all this, i’m still allright.

Breakfast Table Mess UnwifedMotherExpletive

Divorce, Humanity

Hello! Still not simple.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

there is something that unravels in your chest when you are in the right spot.  shoulders let down, breath slows.. its a piece of you that you don’t even always recognize as being wound.  (this one is tricky. not a wound. but wound, the tightly wound spool of thread…)

I think, even in a good marriage, you forget to take those moments of unravel. but I don’t know, surely, as I only had a good marriage for a short while.

it is akin to surrender, this unraveling, as a vulnerability in and of relief, a certainty that you are in a safe spot.

seems so simple.

but hello. it isn’t.

all the tiny steps you take to get there. to unlearn and relearn and step out and step back… those tiny steps to move away from a gigantic broken, blistered heart? ‘tiny’ being a euphemism for ‘each and every one is a gigantic, monolithic mass of granite that you can’t see the top of when you first approach.  we’re talking rock climbing every step of the way, with our out-of-shape, middle-aged everythings. I’m talking bloody fingers every reaching hand, every single one. and then the release. that spot.

just so you know. sigh. i’m climbing.

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