9 posts tagged “divorce”
You know, when you get married you take a week or more off for a honeymoon. When you have a baby or adopt one, typical maternity leave is six weeks. When a loved one dies, you usually take a day or two off...sometimes more if you have to clean out the house or make arrangements. Major, life-changing events require time to adjust to your new circumstances.
But I got divorced and planned to return to work the next day.
And I did.
However, I'd been there for less than an hour when they sent me home. I was having trouble focusing. I was distracted. I wanted to cry. I didn't have any patience. I wanted to be at home, in my pajamas, in my bed. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to throw up. I did NOT want to serve food, smile, be hospitable, or be cheerful.
Hm, doesn't that sound a lot like grief? And, as dumb as this may seem, it never crossed my mind that I needed to take a few days off after I went to court to finalize my divorce to grieve. I have since come to the realization, though, that I did. And still do.
I have good days. Today was a good day. I laughed at work, joked with my guests, teased my co-workers, played with my kids. Yesterday, though, not so much. I had a moment, standing at the foot of the bed, while I was getting dressed for work. A moment when I realized that my spouse was gone and I was alone. Even though I shook off the moment, the feeling stayed with me all day. I went to work and did my job, but I wasn't my usual sunny self.
We'll have to wait and see how tomorrow goes. But, if any of you reading this are in the midst of a divorce, don't plan on working the day after you go to court to get it finalized. You need to give yourself the time and space to grieve the dream that you have lost.
Trust me.
Well, my divorce was finalized on Wednesday, March 25, 2009. Eleven years and four days after I became a wife, I was stripped of the title. Walker's been gone for a little over nine months now, and the kids and I have been doing fine. We have our own little routines, our own silly new habits, our own peace with the situation. I did not anticipate the finalization being hard on me.
But, oh, my God.
It was awful. I mean, just terrible. I stood in that courtroom, looking around, and thinking, "Eleven years ago today, I was on my honeymoon." I didn't cry until the judge announced that the court accepted our petition for divorce and declared our marriage dead. Tears started rolling down my face, and I must have looked really pitiful because the court reporter got up and gave me a hug.
Thank God Cree, Kimberly, and my friend The Great Camel were there. They steered me out of the courtroom and into the car, then took me out for lunch and a margarita. I think I was pretty much putty in their hands, my brain was not functioning.
Two days later, my brain is still not functioning. My stomach is sick, I haven't kept much down for a couple of days. My head hurts, probably from crying. All I want to do is sleep, and my cheeks flat-out refuse to turn up into a smile. I just did not anticipate the sheer suckiness of having it publicly acknowledged that your marriage failed and is over.
Done. Kaput. Non-existant. Revoked.
I've been a wife my entire adult life, and I'm just...not one...anymore. The dream I've held in my head for over a decade of us sitting on a front porch, matching rocking chairs, watching the grandkids play in the front yard with the dogs is dead. My marriage is dead. Someone asked me why I was having a tough time with it, since he's been gone for over nine months - it's not like this is new or surprising. The only thing I can compare it to is a funeral. By the time the funeral rolls around, the person you love has already been dead and gone for a couple of days. Yet, you can't help but get hit with a fresh wave of grief when you see that coffin get lowered into the ground because then, it's real. It's final.
It's not like I really have time to wallow in my grief and self-pity: I still have three little kids to take care of. I'm sure that in a couple of days, I'll get my feet back under me and find my smile.
But this seriously sucks.
And, apparently, the cosmos agreed with me. I've never seen a sky like this except in the original Ghostbusters movie. I thought it was kind of appropriate for the day.
I hurt so badly right now that I can't even cry, that simply crying is just. not. enough. I feel like I need to retch the pain up and out of me in a putrid torrent of hurt, disappointment, anger, disbelief, frustration, indignation, betrayal and...sadness. I'm keeping my composure though, I'm smiling on the outside, because my children are home with me and I'm afraid that if I let even a trickle of the pain I'm feeling out, my heart will burst like the proverbial dam and I won't be able to control the damage.
Up to this point, I have refrained from putting the details of the State of the Dissolving Union on my blog because then it becomes public domain, forever archived in cyberspace for the world to access on a whim. Basically, (cue COPS theme music) anything I say here can and may be used against me in a court of law. But this is my outlet, my vent, and I'm afraid I'm on the verge of blowing like Vesuvius.
My husband left me, you all know that. He told me he didn't love me anymore and he got himself a girlfriend. Or, maybe he got the girlfriend then decided he didn't love me...I don't know and I really don't care. That was hard, that hurt. It was really awful when his girlfriend decided to assauge her guilt by trying to convince me (and, herself) that she wasn't a homewrecker, that her sleeping with a married man was excused by the fact that he and I had problems. I suppose that she didn't want to feel like she was responsible for breaking up a marriage so she called me, she texted me, she came for lunch to the restaurant where I work, knowing full well that I would be there. Of course I can't speak to her motives with any certainty, but I sincerely hope that's why she was doing all of those things because I can't think of any other plausible explanation for harrassing your boyfriend's wife. I stomached her offers to babysit, to speak to Walker on my behalf, to help me get a job with her company. I refused to be baited when she suggested a self-help book she thought I needed or told me I was (and I quote) "a pathetic piece of shit" and "a lazy pig". I managed not to laugh in their faces when they insisted that I needed to respect her. I didn't throw a fit when she sent me an itemized list of all the fun she had with my kids on Christmas Day. I think she finally decided I was serious when I told her for the hundredth time that I was glad that she and the kids got along so well but that I have no interest in being her friend, and that if she didn't stop contacting me I was going to get a restraining order, because she hasn't bothered me in about two weeks. Here's hoping the cease fire lasts.
But even if it doesn't, I now know that I can handle being stalked by my husband's girlfriend with the same grace that I handled being told that my husband, after 12 years and three children, didn't love me or want me anymore. What I am having difficulty wrapping my brain around and handling with any amount of grace, is the way he's treating our children.
Oh, don't get me wrong, he's not being mean to them. They come home after every other weekend telling me how much fun they had with Daddy, how he played Rock Band with them on the Wii, took them horseback riding, or let them help him cook supper. They're equally glad to see him when he picks them up on his Fridays as they are to see me when he drops them off the following Sunday. What he's doing is a lot more subtle.
He's five weeks behind on his spousal support. He's a week behind on his child support. He tells me that it's because he hasn't been working enough hours, but when I ask why he's not spending his extra free-time with his kids, he doesn't have an answer. He hasn't even talked to them on the telephone in a week, and when I pointed this out to him his answer was, "Well, the kids haven't called me." I couldn't believe I had to try to explain to him that it's his responsibility to maintain a relationship with his children, not the other way around. Then he tried to say that the reason they don't want to call him is because I've been telling them ugly things about him. I would think that after knowing me for a dozen years plus tax, he would know that I'm a better mother than that. I may not be a better person than that, because believe me, when our kids aren't around I call him every name in the book. But I am a better mother than to subject the children to the stress of feeling like the rope in an adult game of Tug O' War.
When I told him that by not giving me the money that the courts ordered him to pay he's depriving the kids of the things they need, he told me that it wasn't his responsibility to support the kids and that I should be able to support them without counting on him. I guess he conveniently forgot that WE decided that I would drop out of college to get married and have these kids, these beautiful, intellegent, healthy, good-natured children who I did not conceive by myself. I may not have conceived them by myself, but I seem to be raising them by myself. How, exactly, does that work, Walker? His answer: "If you can't support them on the $2.13 you make an hour as a waitress, you need to find a better job and quit being lazy and depending on me."
Lazy? LAZY?! The man who walked out on his wife, his children, his home, his pets, his job - all of it - has the audacity to call me lazy? ME?! The one who works every minute the children are in school? The one who washes the laundry that they bring home dirty from their weekends with their dad? The one who gets up with them in the middle of the night? The one who rolls change, then goes to the store to buy the peanut butter for them to pack in their lunches? The one who reads to them before bed through eyes she can barely hold open?
I'm not looking for a pat on the back here, I'm not doing anything extraordinary. Thousands upon thousands of women (and men, for that matter) are doing the same things that I am. We don't have a choice, we have children; we refuse to run away from the responsibilities that come with the gift of a child. I don't want comments telling me how brave or strong I am, because I'm not brave (I'm scared to death) OR strong (every time I turn around, someone is having to help me out). All I want from this post is to get the poison out of my system so it doesn't eat me alive from the inside.
And I think it's already working.
"Guess who's back.
Back again.
Shady's back.
Tell a friend." ~Eminem
Okay, so maybe I haven't been missed as much as Eminem, but I sure have missed y'all!! My wonderful Bennett built me a laptop while he was serving in Iraq, and my wonderful Cree called and got my internet hooked up last week while they were here, so...here I am. It's pretty sad when you can't even afford cheap therapy, right?
But I am officially back in the land of the connected, and I've put tech support on speed dial cuz we all know just how computer savvy I am!
I guess I should try to catch everybody up, but honestly, I don't even know where to start. I'm still living in the Twilight Zone. Walker and I have come to an agreement on the terms of the divorce, we're just waiting for the paperwork to be drawn up so we can sign. I still can't believe my life has come down to signing on the dotted line. I think the reality of the situation has started to sink in with the kids, because they've started to act out a little bit. Tempers flare easily, they argue with me a lot, and they assume responsibilities that aren't theirs while shirking the ones that actually are. I guess I"m going to have to start paying for their therapy a lot younger than I had previously thought!!
But at least now I can post whenever the mood strikes me, and check in on my friends to see how they're doing. And pay my bills online, hallelujah!! And look up Eminem lyrics when I want to...
Do you know what's really sad? Sad is when you have to go to court and have the judge order your estranged husband to change the brakes on the minivan that his kids spend at least an hour a day riding in.
I had to go to court today to get temporary orders put in place for our divorce. It really, really sucked. I went alone and spent three hours pacing a hole in the carpet of some little 'conference room' that my lawyer found for me so I could have a little privacy while I was waiting. Apparently, divorce is synonymous with wait. When people talk about the court system 'grinding along', they really aren't joking. The were 15 cases before our judge today and we were at the bottom of the docket...I would have been there all day if the two lawyers hadn't worked out a scenario he and I could both agree to.
This really, really, really sucks. I never thought divorce would happen to me ~ kind of like breast cancer, you know? You know it happens, you buy things with pink ribbons on them, once a year you go on a long walk, and every time you see Sheryl Crow's face on the cover of a magazine you pick it up and glance quickly through to see if she's still doing okay. But you don't think it will ever actually happen to you. Divorce feels the same to me. It seems like I fell through that secret hole in the dryer that eats your socks so that even though you're positive you put two matching ones in the washing machine, when you take the clothes out of the dryer you have a single sock and no mate. So, now, after ten years of marriage, I suddenly find myself living in a mate-less sock twilight zone where things look the same but are so very different and strange. You know, like the mirrors in a fun house.
No wonder my head hurts.
You know, after that run-in with Walker and his girlfriend at his apartment a few weeks ago, I had really gotten okay with the State of the Dissolving Union. I realized that day that he really didn't know who I am - that I really don't think he ever did. I realized he had created some hateful, selfish, self-indulgent woman and put my face on her. I had started to believe my friends and family (male and female) who told me that I was going to be alright, and that I deserved better, and that it's probably all for the best. I felt like I could be strong and independent. I had a plan for an education and a career that I had already taken steps to implement. The kids seemed happy and if I waited to go to bed until I was absolutely exhausted, I didn't have any trouble falling asleep.
Until two days ago. Until my husband felt the need to send me a text informing me that he thought we were making a mistake. Until he showed up at the house in the middle of the night and told me he still loved me. Until he told me that not only did he still love me, but that he was sorry it took him so long to figure it out.
Until he told me all that, then said that he still didn't know what he wanted to do.
I hate yo-yo's.
I've had my share of pain in my lifetime. I've split my head open, broken my pinkie toe, given birth to three children, had my ears pierced and my tubes tied. I've even experienced the emotional pain of playing SkipBo with my seemingly healthy grandmother only to receive a 7 a.m. phone call four days later telling me that she was gone. That actually paled in comparison to the 6 a.m. phone call just three years later when I learned my 34-year-old aunt/godmother had died of heart failure in the middle of the night. Didn't see that one coming.
But I have to admit that I was shocked...shocked, I tell you...to discover that the emotional pain of my husband telling me that he didn't love me any more could physically hurt. The vise on my heart absolutely rivals the pain of labor contractions, because it doesn't go away after 90 seconds.
It actually makes it hard. to. breathe.
I mean, you and I have been hearing that in tear-jerker break-up songs for years now, but I never believed it was real. I always thought it was Urban Legend, along the lines of the Loch Ness Monster or the lady with the beehive hairdo who never washed her hair and had her brain eaten by the spiders nesting in her 'do (remember that one?). It even seems to affect my digestion - everything I eat makes me sick. What a way to lose 25 pounds, right? Ladies and Gentlemen....the new Hollywood fad diet! Can I get a tummy-tuck and a boob-lift to go with that? Oh, come on, people! At least give me some dental veneers and a walk-on part!
The second mind-boggling realization, which came literally moments after the first one, was that even when experiencing pain of that magnitude your body keeps functioning. I would have thought that anything that hurt that badly would have to kill you. So, how can my heart have just exploded in my chest...yet keep beating?
After about six weeks that breath-stealing, vision-clouding knife wound had dulled to an acid-indigestion laden ache. The scab got ripped off today when my kids came home from spending the afternoon with their dad and said, "We got to see Miss Stacy today, but only for a minute. But Daddy let us record songs we made up for her and he'll give them to her later."
I just thought hearing, "I don't love you any more," hurt.
Ha.
My friend Brit is amazingly matter-of-fact. If she's your friend, she will literally hand you the shirt off her back without you even having to ask for it. However, if you tick her off then you'd better watch your back. She does not take crap off of anyone under any circumstances. That being said, I probably don't even have to tell you that she's not really happy with my husband right now.
This past weekend was our annual 'Big Girls Only Slumber Party' - no kids, no husbands, no bosses. Most of our girls ditched us this year, but Ken and Brit were here and, of course, we were discussing the 'State of the Dissolving Union'. Brit looked at me and in a flash of brilliance said, "Oh, don't worry about him. He's just an old pair of shoes." When I asked her what she meant by that, this is what she said:
"You know when you're out shopping and you find this fabulous pair of shoes? The ones that make your legs look great but are actually comfortable and seem to go with everything in your closet? Well, after a while they get scuffed and need to be resoled, and you notice that they pinch your toes now. So, you give them away...and maybe someone else sees them and thinks, 'Hey, with a little polish those could be good-looking shoes.' They try them on, maybe even wear them for a little while, but eventually they decide the shoes need more than just some polish to look good, and they drop them off at Goodwill. Well, Walker is that pair of shoes."
I have to admit, I laughed. Alot.
My laughter was, however, short-lived. Yesterday I was at my grandparents house filling them in on what was going on, and needless to say they just aren't really very happy either. My cell phone rang and I saw that it was Walker. I thought it was weird for him to be calling since I didn't have the kids and neither did he, so I decided to answer it. He sounded tired when he said, "I don't know why I'm even calling to tell you this, but I don't want you to hear it from the kids or Mom and Dad." Great, I thought, he's finally 'fessing up to having a girlfriend. I really didn't need this. He continued, "The wench line snapped at work today and took off part of my finger. I'm having emergency surgery to fix it." My heart pretty much stopped. I asked him where he was but he wouldn't tell me which hospital he was in. I reminded him that I'm still his wife but he wouldn't budge, and I was really surprised at how badly it hurt me to realize that he really must not want anything to do with me if he doesn't even want me there when he's having surgery.
His parents did call this morning to tell me that he was out of surgery and doing fine, for which I was very grateful.
But it still smarts.
I'm going to qualify this blog with a warning to anyone looking for a light read and not in the mood for whining, look-at-poor-little-me pity parties. This way, I can't be sued if anyone reads this and is so instantly revolted that the piping hot coffee they just swallowed is regurgitated and causes serious and irreparable burn damage to his/her lap. Besides, getting money out of me right now is the equivalent of trying to get blood out of the proverbial turnip, so you'd be pretty S.O.L. anyway.
I'm over-thirty, over-weight, and over-tired. I've been married for ten years and we've been together for a dozen. I have three kids, three dogs, three cats (two of which have litters right now), and five budgies. I have stretch marks. I have stuck with my husband through two states, eleven towns, a dozen different jobs, and more than one all-nighter when he just didn't come home. I violently vomited through three pregnancies in 34 months. And he had the audacity last month to walk in one day and tell me that he just doesn't love me any more. Who the hell told him marriage has anything to do with being 'in love'?
I mean, seriously folks. How many of us wake up every single morning, look at our spouses and think how lucky we are? I know I'm not the only person on the planet who thought if she had to pick up one more dirty, inside-out sock that landed less than a foot away from the clothes hamper, she was going to smother her husband in his sleep. I know that I'm not the only woman in the world who felt like her husband didn't sympathize enough with her while she was pregnant - how dare he order hot wings while we're out to dinner knowing fully well that the smell would send me racing for the bathroom?
I haven't been 'in love' with him every day for the last dozen years. Heck, there were quite a few of those days when I didn't even like him, much less feel in love with him.
But I always stayed. Never even thought about leaving.
