Piano.

I know it's just a god damn piano, but I liked it.  I have to sell it now.  I have to move to a new place, and in the midst of all the financial realities of ending a marriage, it just won't work to spend a frivolous amount to hire movers to move it.  It's just one little loss in a series of losses.

I know that this is an "opportunity" - everyone tells me that it is so, and it's true, to some extent.  I'm excited to get on to a new life but impatient.  I want the new life now.  I want to find a little cute house, with a little patch of green out of the backyard for the kiddo and a few windows for light.  It doesn't even have to have a dishwasher.  I just don't want to be mugged bringing in the groceries or wake up to gunshots outside my door.

I just wanted my damn piano.

Cheers,
Harriet.

Just Because.

Truth in Advertising.

So a friend posted this recently Craigslist ad, "50 Reasons to Date Me", and it gave me pause... 1) Never post anything on Craigslist you don't want to give away at a convenience store parking lot, and 2) I may date again one of these days.  I did have dinner recently with someone who randomly asked me to, and I didn't enjoy it for the reasons you might think.  I went, so that I could wear cute clothes and talk to a person wholly unrelated to my present life, and eat some food.  I was bored.  I drank one too many glasses of wine and hid more than one yawn.  Blech.  Dating.  I forgot I hate it.

I have had a few good dates in my life that were planned and prepped for.  The best ones weren't.  They were connections with people that went somewhere surprising, and to be honest... I haven't really "dated" in the traditional sense of the word since I was about 26.  I've been married, I've gone "out" and to things and to dinner, I've had friends with whom I met for events, talks, patio drunkenness, fun. I hate the dating rituals of meet, talk, random kissing, do-it-or-don't-do-it, wrestling around with common topics and ideas, and ditching a person when it's a bad fit. I. Hate. It.  I am a seriously a one-person person, who loves intimacy with my nearest and dearest friends.  Dating just seems so small-talk fake.  I get restless and bored on the quest towards something somewhere.  Story of my life, in all arenas.

Part of my relationships' troubles historically have been a lack of getting what I want and need.  I know me.  I know what I am, what makes me tick, what I like.  But I settle in to giving to others so damn much that I forget to watch out for what I need more than what someone I'm with needs.  Even at that random dinner this week, I sat there wondering, "Why am I listening to this?  If I said yes to the second date (and yes, it was out there lingering and waiting for a response...), what would it really do for me?" This man was nice, kind, semi interesting.  I like people stories, and this was a person with his own stories I'd never heard.  But I didn't need to hear them, and they were not valuable to me.  I'm sure he'll find someone down the road that wants them.  I don't.  I need to find someone that has more to give to me than I can give to them for awhile.  I'm just all done out with the giving away.  Someone needs to fill up my life for a while, and not the other way around.

Cheers,
Harriet.

Bereft Beret.

Well, I haven't been posting as I come into the "new normal" of this separation and pending divorce.  It has been a challenging road to just figure out how to move into survival mode.  I hate that mode.  I hate surviving... I would rather be thriving.  And the reality is, I have been more in the survival arena for longer than I would like to admit.  Nothing about the ending of this has been expected, although I knew that there was going to have to be a crisis point in which something changed at some point; I just didn't know it would be now, these crises, or this little life scene of the drama.  i didn't know that it would be one-directional with no options other than gone.

I think a part of "surviving" is reality as a mother: you have kids, they run around the world bumping into things and needing things and going places, and you just find a way to manage it all.  I'm a manager of my life, other little lives.  It is required.  They depend upon it.  I thought I was the main manager of mine, but when divorce hits, you realize that all those little areas you thought were in your control completely aren't.  You frantically keep hitting the control button ineffectively and nothing responds.  You lose your center.  You lose the right to be in charge of things that intimately effect every part of your being.  You shatter.  You enter Shock-land and have a period where you don't even realize how core this has become.  You don't notice the pieces falling off of you.  And then, when you do, you realize you have no idea where they landed or how it looked before.  You don't know how to put it back together.  Which pieces do you really even want to find?  Which pieces do you let go?  What is the shape of what you will be next, and are there any spare parts you can find somewhere else to reshape and refill you?

I don't know.  I like the word, "bereft".

be·reft/biˈreft/
Adjective:
Deprived of or lacking something, esp. a nonmaterial asset: "her room was stark and bereft of color".
(of a person) Lonely and abandoned, esp. through someone's death or departure.

I'm wearing that lately.

It's not that I'm totally depressive.  I'm not.  It's not that I'm sitting around in some crying pathetic stage (...anymore...) and waving my fists angrily at the gods.  I'm not.  It's not that I'm waiting for him to return.  He's not, and I don't want him to.  But I'm bereft.  I lack something.  Nonmaterial assets in my life are leaving, and I will miss them.

I move forward, slowly.  I have hours, even days, where things look good.  I think about living in a house where I'm the sole opinion of what to hang on a wall, and quit considering a thought outside of me and the son.  I plan for the future.  I hang on to my few dollars.  I get the house ready to sell.  I crack a joke.  I do my thing, and remember what that actually means.  When you have had an emotionally unavailable partner, at least it's easier to live without the support or comfort of another person.  You have already done it for a long time.  However, I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.  I really don't think I was wired to live an independent life alone.  I was wired to be an independent woman with a strong person.  I have made excuses for the weak ones I chose.

/excuses.

Cheers,
Harriet.

In between days.

The posts I've written so far are only further evidence to show the wild swings of the last few weeks in my little frail psyche.  The extremes for the last three weeks have been so unbelievably polar that it has scared me at times.  I tend to go from highs and lows, but do have a lot of in betweens. Made me think of this song, today - whether from The Cure or Ben Folds, it has summed it up for the last month:

 

I realized, as I drove around into the nothingness, thinking about my life, my son, my self, I realized that I didn't care that he's walked away.  I don't want him to walk back, and I think he's going to want to.  I have really been denying the realities of this marriage for years.

Rewind to two months ago:

Me: "I am alone in this marriage, and you won't join me."
Him: "I want to but nothing I do seems to work."
Me: "Let's work harder.  If you can't find a way to be in this life, then let's get help."
Him: "I don't need help."
Me: "I didn't say you."

This is the cyclical conversation we've had forever.  This is the rewind and fast forward and mute and stop buttons in our lives.  We could stop speaking and just lip sync to a recording.  It was always me reaching, him pulling away, in spite of himself.  Him crying and telling me that he wanted to engage, be different, be needed, feel good.  Me crying back and offering up everything.  Exhausting, terrifying, uplifting, optimistic... those were my feelings.  I don't know what he felt, because he would never tell me.

Why him?  Why did I choose him?  Single father, two little babies.  Me, competent, reeling from my own life losses and challenges, finding some comfort in the stability he seemed to offer.  Deciding to be in love.  Deciding to commit to this little family.  Taking charge, watching him step back and let me.  Resenting that fact.  Fun and silliness, and then reality and responsibility.  He never could see that there could be a mix.

I hate that I've been stronger than every adult I've ever had a relationship with.  I wish someone would push back once in awhile, not just watch.  I want to live a life with someone who sees things themselves and doesn't wait for me to filter the world for them.  I want someone terrific.  Someone spectacular.  Someone who can be themselves, and knows who they are.  That wasn't him, and in all honesty, I knew that from day one.

Cheers,
Harriet.

Inadequate.

I am so angry right now I can barely keep it together.  I cannot believe what I am doing.  I cannot believe what he is doing.

My two oldest children, my stepchildren, returned home today after he left with them on Monday.  They have been "visiting" their paternal grandfather, and not attending school.  After begging, pleading, and threatening, he has returned them to our home.  Through gritted teeth and fake smiles, we came to an agreement that they would be able to stay with me to attend school and have some 'normalcy' as things transition to a life apart.

The husband has lost/quit his job in the last week.  He has been kicked away by his two week girlfriend due to my exposure of the affair to her friends and parents.  He has no home. The majority of his friends have dumped him in disbelief of his callousness.  He has no stability now.  He looked at me with a smile and said, quite simply, "No."  He left.

I am left with the wreckage.

I would not have it any other way, for them right now.  I can at least minimize some of the destruction.  I can offer them the same classroom and teacher and friends for the next seven weeks.  I can make sure they drink their milk and go to bed on time.  I can give them the surety of siblings, having all three kids together for a little while longer.  But I may be kidding myself that this is going to give them much.

I wanted to keep them to keep them okay.  To allow them to leave without some ferociousness, some fierce protectiveness on my part would leave me with regret.  I cannot lose any part of my soul and humanity to this.  I won't let him have it.

My stepson is a numbed, almost catatonic mess.  He keeps asking me why.  I have no answers.  My stepdaughter zoomed off to two birthday parties back-to-back upon return, so I haven't had more than 20 minutes with her.  I'm so worried.  My four-year-old will only keep going into hypercrazy, and then breaking down into crying fits for no obvious reason.  He tells me that he wishes dad were here.

This man has gotten the escape he wished for, sought after by leaving his family, his home, his job, his life.  He looked like hell today.  I desperately wanted to ask him if this was the escape he thought he'd get, and if it indeed was making him happy.  I was afraid if he answered yes I might punch him.

I am left holding the responsibility baton.  I'm the one that will be sleeping in a bed full of little bodies that only want to feel safe, and I know there's a time limit on doing that for them.  Even with me, the safety net has holes.  I am inadequate right now.  I am not enough.

And that is what he had told me.

Cheers,
Harriet.

Elliot.

I sat with you today and looked out on you.  I realized that I could never love somebody whose soul was this shallow.  It's a gift, this pain and heartbreak, not for the children - but for me, in some sad, sick way.  Maybe it's your last way to show me you love me a little, at least.  You showed me who you are. 

And I don't like you anymore.

Harriet.