Only You

I’m not even sure how to start this, but like all things, except for maybe a few, it’s always easiest to just get it done with quickly. I’m getting divorced.

My husband came home from a work trip, and told me he’s made up his mind, and wants to divorce. Initially I was in shock, and then I hated his guts, and then I was really sad, and now I’m sort of a combination of those things, as well as hopeful and grateful he just acknowledged that he is not ever going to wake up and want to be here.

I started telling people, like my friends at work, and friends at my daughter’s school, the kids’ teachers and my family. Everyone keeps asking me, “How are you doing?

I give a grimace, and egh-expression, and then try not to cry. I am not handling food well right now. It’s as if I’m physically feeling the effects of this figurative free falling, and my stomach feels like I’m on a roller coaster since my life went from its comfortable state, to being thrown against the wall and smashed into a thousand bits. I told my sister, I believe this is all leading to something good, and trust this time is planting seeds for a more fruitful future, but I also don’t like how my life needs to be deconstructed in order to be rebuilt.

My brother is really religious, and I was worried to tell him because I didn’t want him to tell me that I should try harder, begging my husband to stay. I told my mom, “Let’s just not tell my brother, and then when he’s out visiting at Christmas, and asks, oh, where’s your husband at?” We’ll both shake our heads at him, and say, “Whose that?”

But it turns out my brother was as nice and supportive as I could have hoped. He is such a kind person, and sometimes I forget it because he dresses his kindness in religious tenets. He is a truly compassionate person.

What I’m realizing though, by sharing my sad news, is that everyone is dealing with shit in his or her own lives. It’s like that Bob Dylan story, about how his grandmother told him, “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.” After I share my battle, then they get tearful too, and they share with me one of their heart breaking moments.

The heat of the battle fluctuates. Now I have an understanding of my sixth toe dream! If you asked me three weeks ago, “How’s life?” I don’t think I could have conjured up much to complain about, so it is the best footing to start a transformation. I am going into this on solid ground.

Since the divorce news, I have sort of become a senseless idiot in the car, and have been in two minor car accidents in parking lots! Even worse, they were my fault. But both times, it was like the other car just appeared from nowhere. My auto insurance premium is going to be close to a million dollars by the time I make it through this. I have to remember to stay focused in the present, and not drift off in thought, becoming absent minded. I’m lucky it was just cars! And I was only going 5 mph! The first accident I kept calm, but the second time, two days later, I let out a long winded string of profanity, that my kids must have realized gave them no invitation to participate in.

It reminds me of after my son was born. My husband went into a depression, and I was really overwhelmed with everything. Frequently, I would walk back to my car after grocery shopping, and realize I forgot to close the doors. One time, I almost cut my finger off in the garbage disposal, and another time, I stuffed spinach into a bullet blender that was on its base, and slashed my index finger deeply in four places.

My friend, who worked full time while going to nursing school full time, told me similar stories where her mind became a bit less reliable. She told me how she’d be in the shower, and coming to the end of her shower routine, she couldn’t remember if she washed her hair, and she’d wash it again.

My dad asked me, “How are you sleeping?”

He laughed when I said, “I’m sleeping fine.”

“Well, ok then,” he said.

I’m sleeping fine because I’m fucking exhausted from all of this. When 8:30 pm rolls around, I’m heading to sleep. I am emotionally drained. 

I think my daughter might be drained from the energy of it all. We haven’t told her, and plan to this weekend, but last night she went in my room at 6:30, and when I walked in ten minutes later to check on her she was fast asleep. This morning, it was getting closer and closer to 7am, and we have to be out the door by 7:15, at the very latest, and I had to dress her like a ragdoll, laying on the bed too tired to move.

I looked up kid books on Amazon about divorce, and they are seriously disturbing, making the picture for children that mommy and daddy yell at each other, and since they hate each other so much, they cant live together anymore.

We didn’t fight like that, and maybe that will make it even more complicated to explain, but this will be the moment where my heart breaks because I don’t want to break her little heart. My son, who is three, will probably not be too aware of what this all means. I hope he can make light of it all by one of the brilliant ditties he comes up with on the spot, usually about poop or butts.

My kids have a great bond, and although they aren’t too keen to admit it, they are obsessed with each other. Last night I walked in on them laughing and singing. Kiki took off to the bathroom, laughing so hard from a song George was singing. The just of it sounded like, “Sleeping Beauty poops in her bed.”

A lot of times people say, “Kids are resilient.” And I stopped my husband after he said this to me, and said, “Kids don’t have any choices.” 

I’m trying to be mature and optimistic. I can get my mind ramped up to where I feel like burning all his shit in the backyard, especially when I become speculative. I need to keep in mind that this is taking me somewhere, and the classic saying, holding onto anger is like drinking poison, and expecting the other person to die. So when I think I fucking hate the shit out of this ungrateful sack of scum, I can turn around and think, it is nice of him to do this now rather than five years from now, or even one year from now. If he knows he’ll never be happy, it’s nice of him to acknowledge it because his state of mind is an all-consuming force in our lives.

He came in my room the other night, and in a rather chummy tone, that only provokes my conjecture, says, “I hope we can all vacation together, and spend holidays together, with our new families.”

I gave him a look like, can you please get the fuck out of my face, and accused him of being a sociopath. Then I said, “I don’t have to like you now. I can like you later.”

I will miss him. Who will I call when our kids do crazy funny shit, or if I have exciting news? Who is going to introduce me to great music? He really has a knack for what I like. Or what about hanging out at night? Who else will make me watch indie movies that I love, but never have the urge to watch? We were the biggest champions of each other’s projects, and so supportive of each other’s aspirations. Loosing him is really sad. I’ve been looking at his face for over ten years.

I’m also guilty of my own issues. It didn’t help that I had this compulsion to save him from his isolation instinct, a need to show him what it is like to be a part of a functioning family. I couldn’t just accept that some people don’t want it. Or they are unequipped for it, and it feels unnatural to them to have to work hard to maintain relationships.

Plus, I am not completely trusting in things right now. There are fucking lies that won’t die. So it’s easy for me to listen and agree to someone say something to me, and then when I’m alone think, “That doesn’t sound right? What the fuck is going on?” The week before we were planning a summer trip to Tokyo, he initiated a kitchen remodel, and I am in the tail end of a real estate course to become a licensee because we were planning to flip houses. Things were going well for us, the best they had in a while. The spontaneity raises questions, and directly after arriving home from a trip. Also, he seemed so intent on getting an apartment by his office, but has ended up in the heart of downtown in order to have nightly entertainment out his front door, and I wonder if he's fallen into the midlife crisis cliche and considered most of his family responsibilities dreadfully burdensome and just couldn't take the weight of it all.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter. I might have been a shitty girlfriend, but I was a great wife, and I was at the whim of his mental health, his proclivities, his sadness, the last five years, so its nice to be able to feel like I’m will have agency again. .

After I told my son’s preschool director, she gave sage advice to a woman who quit her job to raise children, with her short term livelihood somewhat at the mercy of the courts and her soon-to-be ex husband’s conscious. She said, “Keep a journal of anything you can think of that’s relevant.”

And then, again, in a very realistic tone said, “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about doing it on your own, since you’re used to it, because he travels so much.”

She’s right. My cousin once asked, “It’s like your blog is written from the point of view of a single parent. Is that on purpose?”

“No, I actually do live like a single parent 75% of the time” She asked me this after I wrote a post about sawing up a mammoth branch that landed in my front yard, so it wouldn’t sit there till the end of time. In the post I referenced Troop Beverly Hills, the movie I lived on as a kid.

In the movie, Pyllis Nefler takes the girls camping, in style, below the Hollywood sign. Her troop gets bored and approaches as she smokes in a chaise lounge chair. I think it was Tessa, who says, “You shouldn’t be smoking, and were above the fire line.” Then Lily chimes in, pulling her wayfarers down her nose, “Smokey the Bear says only you can prevent forest fires.”

Phyllis says, “Well, Smokey the Bear isn’t going through a terrible messy divorce.” She then rallies, for the girls, and they make fondue and sing Kumbaya before having to move to the Beverly Hills Hotel because of an unexpected down pour. I always saw myself as Pyllis’ best friend, the romance novel writer who drove a Ferrari with doors that opened up like bird wings. But alas.

We are doing our best here, to not make this a “terribly messy divorce.” In fact, it’s the last thing I want. First of all, we couldn’t afford to. And second of all, we need to minimize stress for our kids. The night before I met with my lawyer, I said to my husband, “I’m afraid you’re going to wake up one day, and regret this.” And he said to me, “I know I won’t.” The perfect sentiment. I cant live in the past, and even though it’d be nice at the moment, I can’t live in the future.

This week I got three emails from students informing me of their diarrhea. It was disgusting, and I wanted to let the class know that a simple “stomach flu” is sufficient. I thought about jokingly adding, “I promise not to tell you about the shit going on my life, if you promise not to tell me about the shit in yours.”  But I do care bout them, like I quoted earlier, "Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle."

Instead I retold them a fantastic story my sister told me yesterday. A person she used to work with filed for divorce, and two days after filing, his wife bought a lotto ticket, and she won five million dollars. The students laughed, the older ones laughed a bit louder. So did I. Then I thought about how that kind of money just might cover my new car insurance costs.

I know this is going to be a good thing. To be honest, I always knew this was going to happen. There is never a "good" time for this type of change, and considering my place, I guess this is as appropriè a time as ever. It will be hard at times. I'm allowed to feel sad, but I also recognize this as a transformative time, and embrace it. It's up to me, and only me, to see this as a starting point.