Divorced Life

Dating after divorce. How soon is too soon and when is it too late to jump back in the game? Last year I flirted with the experience of dating, I wasn’t officially divorced but we were seperated. I mean it couldn’t have been more clear that he and I were over. He had a fiance whom he was shacking up with. Yes, it was pretty clear.

I came to the conclusion that I could do one of two things. Sit and wallow in depression over my apparent loss..or pick myself up (as frankie says) and get back in the race. Cause that’s life, right? No time to dwell on the past, the horse is untied and the saddles settled and buckled onto his back. All you need to do is jump up and on it. Take the bumpy road south to warmth and happiness, feel the breeze of freedom.

That image is what you tell yourself and what you hope will happen. However reality is slightly different. Hell more than slightly, it’s very different. The next minute you’re sitting next to some fair-weather friend puffing a square pushing a cape cod in a chipped glass around the chipped laquer surface of a bar at a local dive. Some kind of lush life.

This wasn’t exactly the image you envisoned of the singles life. Bottoms hanging over squeaky bar stools, musky odors in the air, bad outdated jukebox music, droopy-eyed patrons with bad teeth, greasy hair, tight denim and overbearing cologne. Like a truck stop bar with less jovility (if that’s even possible).

At this point you just want to get away and hope that it’ll be a long time before you delve into those waters again. I may be taking liberties with the singles scene, but the point remains the same. When one chapter is barely complete, how can you start over again? Dealing with the baggage of others, dreaming the grass is greener on the other side is not wise. We, newly divorcees wait in a purgatory of sorts, resting our tired bottoms on the rickety stools of truck stop bars, counting the minutes till we can get back to civiliazation again.

Today I continue to process what has happened and try to focus on my future prospects. What those are I’m still not entirely sure of. It’s a mix of hope and dreams. I go back and forth between what I truly need to survive and what I want to accomplish to feel satisfied and fulfilled.

My experience with marriage and subsequently divorce, is that I’ve become very unsure of myself. Its been too easy to internalize all the negativity and turn it into a referendum on my worth as a person.

Am I truly worthy of happiness?

Am I worthy of love?

Am I destined to be something great or has my path already been chosen? Do I now sit in the middle that is inevitably all that life has granted me? What do I make of these lemons handed to me? I’m still missing the sugar, so I can’t make lemonade. I’m left stagnant and confused with few ingredients to make something worthwhile.

Everyday I have these thoughts of self-doubt and at least once a moment of tremendous regret. It’s hard to admit these things, but in truth rests a glimmer of hope.

Right now that’s all I have to work with.

Last night I learned that my ex stole off to Vegas and got remarried. Obviously the May wedding date that was relayed to me, was simply a smoke screen. Another mistruth to leave me clueless and in the dark. Why should it matter to me? Well everything matters, because for the past couple of years I’ve been taken through the wringer over and over. I’m always the last to know although it impacts my life the most.

I need to decompress for a bit so I decided to share some musings I published from 2006. In these times all I have to hold onto are my children, but my biggest fear is that I’ll fail them and sometimes it feels as though I already have.

Three pairs of eyes

I awoke from my afternoon nap with a searing pain in my nostrils. My daughter had awakened before me and was sticking her sharp fingernail up my nose. Then I felt something wet and it turned out to be blood coagulating in one of my nostrils. Kids…you gotta love them. Even in a small bit of pain I could see the beauty in her curiosity. Don’t get me wrong I get frustrated (by say the 7th time) when I have to clean up spilled juice or milk off the floor or Mr. Clean and I have to put some extra elbow grease into getting the crayon markings off the wall (Washable my ass!).

…to be a mother is to hold the keys to the future. The reward of knowing that and the burden…

Do you remember that moment? A quick but painful glimpse at what was to come nearly blinded you with feelings of near desperation. Perhaps that wasn’t what you experienced. Maybe my circumstances differed a bit. However divorcees are still bonded by that one moment that comes and sweeps over you when the realization that things are ending slams into you like a boxers punching bag.

We may not experience it at the same time and our reactions may differ in many ways, but in that moment a memory is welded to our fate. We never forget and our outlook on life and love, in some ways, changes forever.

If my man was fighting
Some unholy war
I would be behind him
Straight shook up beside him
With strength he didn’t know
It’s you I’m fighting for
He can’t lose with me in tow
I refuse to let him go
At his side and drunk on pride
We wait for the blow - lyrics by Amy Winehouse

During my marriage I stood by my husband at times when I really shouldn’t have. Ate dirt, scraped the bottom of putrid barrels and walked across broken beer bottles all the while inside, I knew it couldn’t ever be enough.

He is addicted to self loathing behavior. In his reticence he would venture out at nights and I’d retreat to the monotony of staying behind with the babies. Barefoot and full of pride, no…worried yes. After the clock reached the time where all good little husbands should be tucked warmly in their beds nestled in the affection of their darling wives, mine was still gone.

At around three thirty in the a.m. his scent precedes him and my nostrils are stripped numb as he flops down next to me.

After a while, my only actions were a sigh of relief, that he’d made it home safe followed by the thought…

“Is this what marriage is all about?�

It’s War everyday and who do you fight?

Do I fight his friends…my friends…do I fight him or is it the world?

Marriage is thought of by many to be this spiritual bonding, steeped in purity and blessed from above. My wife, my husband is my “soul mate�. We were made to be together. It was meant to be…

I entrenched myself in many battles that I fought alongside him, laid on the battlefields and shed tears as bombs went off all around us. I put it all on the line, yet in the end I was left behind to die among the other casualties…in some kind of unholy war.

If you haven’t noticed, nows the time to take note. This is not a blog about lamenting continuously in regards to the emotional devastation wrought by the sad fate of my marriage. At least I hope it’s not. However there are times, like now…when the midnight hour is calling me to sleep, but my mind can’t let go. I sulk a little. Nothing drastic or alarming…but a quiet discontentment when my small apartment is cathedral-like quiet, that I can almost here the low whispers of parishoners praying to their unknown entity of faith for answers.

I felt like that a short while ago. In an impromptu moment a needling feeling pricked my nerves as I envisioned kneeling on an invisible pew, head tilted downward, hands clasped together in front of face and fingers brushing lightly against my quivering lower lip. I’d close my eyes and ask softly for a sign. Any sign at all that I am doing the right thing.

“I’m flying blind, oh entity from above, please help me to understand. Help me to understand where I belong in this world.”

I open my eyes briefly expecting a light to shine down and illuminate me with some truth, revealing all the answers and providing a moment of fleeting comfort. Instead there was silence. All I had to look forward to, was another restless night.

Needing to sleep, wanting to sleep yet staring at the computer screen because in the end, the only comfort that can be found ,is within the fingertips I now use to type this message to you.

My thoughts are a bit jumbled, which has been the norm, in my experience since separating from my husband. See…there I go again, calling him my husband, in which the fact is…he is not. We’ve been officially divorced since Sept 06, but our year long court battle over “monetary issues” rages on. To say it’s depressing is, well, obvious. I won’t point that out, however even in the most challenging moments when everything first imploded with our marriage did I ever think it would get this bad…um, no.

I soldier on. What else can I do? When financially crippled, emotionally wrung out and paranoid of most men that cross your path, all that’s left is to hold on to any shred of normalcy you have and persevere. This world, a sphere of continuity, never pauses to give you time to mourn. It keeps going with or without you. So when in Rome…do as they do, even if you feel like all you want to do is lay in bed and let the world pass you by.

Take a second and imagine you are me. I know that’s a little hard to do, since you have no clue who I am, what I look like, my subtle mannerisms and intelligence level. First impressions are sometimes everything, I know, however I would ask you to suspend the inclination to actually “know� and just be some anonymous human being for a moment.

Imagine you’ve traveled across the U.S. by way of train, a two week old newborn in arms and one year old in tow. You’re bogged down with luggage and the trickles of sweat rolling down your back feels like an army of microscopic bugs on a slow death march to war.

Now imagine stepping off the train and entering a bustling station. People going to and fro as you struggle to balance three heavy pieces of luggage and a baby carrier atop a wobbly stroller while keeping a firm grip on the handle. You look left then right, pause then scan the open room cautiously, before realizing…The one person whom you needed to be there…wasn’t.

It seems a insignificant event to an observer, but to me it became a metaphor for my marriage, “When needed, never on time, sometimes absent or DOAâ€? At it’s very base lay an indifference to the union. I was to learn later that this was not an anomaly but the trade off for co-existing with a person whose first love and priority was himself. The rest of us came in somewhere but what position, I’m still not sure of.

However the early afternoon became early evening and finally he arrived. His first words, a rhetorical question, in the middle of a story where the plot was becoming clear…

“What time did you get in again? I forgot�