Category: Divorce

Divorce, Humanity

where its at. what i got.

Lovelovemotherexpletive
  1. I survived the November/December overwhelm but something needs to be different when it rolls around next year.  There is grief for my father, yes, which can’t be undone. but it is complicated by the loss of the marriage (Yes! Still! I can’t believe it either!)  and all the dreams I thought were mine for so long…  the holidays are a minefield of negotiations, two kid birthdays and thanksgiving, christmas eve, christmas day, new years eve, new years day and all of the days in between… and full days of childcare/love in amongst it all.  negotiations between what is and what I thought life was, negotiations between their father and me, so many of them. Negotiations for myself and my expectations of real life and real love and the real-ity that I am in with the Loveliest man. (he’s still a lovey)  I’m fully exhausted.
  2. https://youtu.be/0Uc3ZrmhDN4 
  3. There is the world, which is frankly, and still, just TOO MUCH.
  4. I have made my own laundry detergent. LM did the grating of the soap and it still smells lovely. Fels Naptha, Washing Soda (think baking soda) and Borax.  I think that is it.  Pretty sure. no link for now because everything i just looked up was corporate or link-laden. i hate that.
  5. I have more plants than fully makes sense.
  6. I’m going to forbid my kids any plastic bottles, starting tonight, which, believe it or not, might cause an actual walk-out. it used to be a thing to get drinks after sports. cold ones. now there’s a whole lot of ‘suckit up, kids, we’re almost home’. I’m going to save a lot of money as well. so, bonus.
  7. and, lastly. i hate gingerbread houses with a passion straight from the divine. molten lava hatred.  this one was delivered to a little girl by the LM, who did not know.  It was all pre-formed, all of it. all i had to do was frosting it together. has my hatred dissipated, you ask? no. no it has not.

What’s your list like? Tell me.

Gingerbread House Unwifedmotherexpletive

Divorce, Humanity

Holidaze. Stupid stupid. (ode to pms?)

Lovelovemotherexpletive

yeah, i am in some sort of dark tube of hellacious premenstrual bollywood currently.

so there.

i’m dreading the days i will miss the kids before christmas, when they are at their dad’s. i already want to cry about it. probably will.  ( i get them back christmas eve, but there is no telling me, in current state.) last year i stayed in pajamas and drank too much wine and wrapped things and cried. some people call that heaven, i know.

sigh.

it’ll pass. i know. yes. and i still have been wondering if i should revamp my consideration of my anti-depressants. i’ve stopped taking them, roughly 8 months ago. (plenty of rollercoasters, that i’ve survived just fine…)

premenstrual rollercoaster, you all are my witnesses. hand to god.

its like this: self-loathe. rationalize. hit the wall of regular life. self-loathe. bump in the road grows insurmountable. quit. lie down. do laundry. self-loathe, rationalize. and so forth.

and it might all subside in the next 24 hours. if i’m lucky. might have to wait 36, or 48 more. i’m a loser like that. see?

(don’t ever underestimate the power of a hormonal swing, my friends. ever.) (((if i ever had a need for a picture of swing, now would be the time. now.)))

Elephant Office Unwifedmotherexpletive

Divorce, Humanity

lost and found, but lost.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

hi. I’m at the end of my recovery day, from yesterday’s full 24 hours of hell, from both ends. the kids were at school for the bulk of it, but after school were play auditions for two kids, and a soccer game so I needed to ask for help. and it came, with trumpets. kids were taken to tryouts, soccer was watched and that kid got to go out to dinner with his dad…dinner was served to other kids, homework was done.  a small crew of 3 adults did what I do on a normal Wednesday.

I’m not going to tell you I’m not proud of my life.

and I’m going to tell you that you are lucky if you have family and love like I do. so lucky.

today is recovery. fair amounts of water, boredom in bed, sickness at the thought of food, but hungry.  by the time the bus rolled around today, I had moved myself to the kitchen cozy. spent an hour just chatting with my girl because I missed her yesterday. an hour. the bliss of it. just cozied up. I learned about the lady who did all the math for the moon. (Katherine Johnson) Everything stays the same, yes? but these tiny differences? that my girl sits on my lap and tells me all about the LADY that did all the math to save the men who traveled to the moon? oh, it’s rich with possibility. if this were a comic, we would turn the page to the next ms. marvel.

but since I’ve been in bed all day, I now can’t sleep, as weak and ridiculous as I feel. and so I’m here, apologetic.

one thing: I paid to print out the whole of my old blog, wifemotherexpletive.com  

1016190912I thought it would be so cool to go through it and pick out the things that I loved, that I have written, those bits of beauty that slipped through and away during those years.

and I can’t. I read the first post, and the second, and did some flipping. and it is just unbearably sad. I was so sad, all the time, and mad, and lost. like the perfect puppy who lives under the bridge while the happy family walks by, unseeing. I hate ‘near miss’ movies, and I’m pretty sure I lived one for a long time. Maybe the hate comes from the experience.

It was ten years of my life, that writing. and makes two volumes, when divided chronologically. the first is so fat, rich with hope and trying. and the second volume thin, with so much less of everything.

I don’t want to look into the memories, or remember what the code was in my stories, as I was trying so hard to communicate with my husband my devastation at what i was, what we were.

Its been crushing me a little, into sickness maybe? and this is the season when I feel devastation the deepest. if one has any choice in that, at all.

so there it is. my late-night blog. what the hell do i do with all that?

Divorce, Humanity

Divorced Parents

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I continue to be amazed when I meet and know parents who’ve divorced, with how many variations there are of the experience and how commonly held the fears about the kids experiencing the process.

mine is one of a super privileged type: i was able to keep my house, and live in it.  i have the kids all week, he has them three weekends a month, and dinner on tuesdays. during the summer tuesdays become a sleepover!

0514191231

i’ve seen parents who can’t afford to house their children after the divorce and so have family take them in, while the former spouse refuses to pay child support. 

i’ve seen parents move in with new boyfriends just to provide that ‘stable’ thing they’ve always dreamed of for their kids. fingers crossed on that particular one.

I’ve seen parents stay living in the same house, but different rooms, in a state of near constant rage and hurt and despair because the money is so complicated and the kids aren’t even told. (imagine what that is like to live in?)

i’ve seen women get full time jobs and have their moms move in to help.

i’ve seen dads fighting for full custody against social norms and expectations. but, man, do they have to fight.

i know so many divorced people who have such great nostalgia for the ‘time before’ the divorce, not because they love that person anymore, but because they ‘loved’ that person once upon a time, and the sadness of that loss is still with them, compounded by the sadness and pain of the divorce process and the acquisition of worry for the kids. 

i’m one of them. i find it very difficult during these end of the year school things to not have the person i created these kids with by my side.  and when i do have him literally there? to realize that the man i was married to is gone, again, replaced by an irritating stranger who hurts my feelings by looking so much like someone i miss.

hmm. this is really quite a grabbag post about divorced parents. how’d you like that ramble? sheesh. Anyhow. Not divorced?  Go hug someone who is, because man, this is a doozy.

and it just keeps going on. . .

 

Divorce, Humanity

small life, redux. (ha!)

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Its like the balls of tinfoil candywrappers you find around the house after any holiday, but halloween and easter really seem to be the producers around here.  the little bit of sparkle that is bitter when mouthed.

thats what its like. listening to myself when i’m scared of something.

UnwifedMotherExpletive Small Life tinfoil wrapperand i’m scared, a little, of this small life i have, and the change inherent in the choice of vulnerability.

i have this brilliant life.. although there has been a lot of death this week, in life and in my chicken coop, and the contrast between humanity and farm has never been more clear.

the loss of 10 birds to a death by suicide?

wordless .

 

 

 

large break.

and remembering can be pretty hard sometimes.  and imagining can be hard sometimes, too, when pain and deepest sadness are at root. and in a small life it can be all consuming.

but there are other sides to the coin, as always.

this small life, this dandelion of detail that keeps pushing its way into my foreground, this need to spread joy underground, to be persistent against all the formality and form of the ‘just so’… it is me digging in my heels against the perfect lawn, the ‘be happy’ mentality, against my own self-judgement for having a ‘mom’s boyfriend’… because i judge that phrase . so. damn. much.  and i can withdraw more and more. and the small life warps a little… and again, and again, the dandelion bursts its sun into a million wishes… and who the hell am i to warp that?

and i’m so incredibly lucky and so incredibly heartbroken that not everyone finds the dandelion.

 

thats a sentence to end on…