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.