The Blank Page

Having the ex here even for a Christmas finally put the lid on things...and screwed it down tight.

He sat in the livingroom on Christmas day texting with the new 'interest of the minute'.  When he is all alone, no woman after him, he would be so sweet to me and butter me up.  I know when someone else comes along.  I told him that the communication between us is over.  I want a fresh start and he being in my life only makes me anxious and ornery.  He quickly agreed with it...because he is on the verge of a new relationship.  If this one goes south, he will be trying to make nice with me again.  It may be a few months down the road, a year...whatever...but I have closed the door.  I got a belly full of him.  He is acting like a 20 year old jerk.

It isn't like I don't remember those 25 years.  Of course, he tries to turn the tables and put the blame on me.  It is what he has always done...put the blame on someone else.  I don't know why it never dawned on me before to wonder just how awful his childhood really was?  How much of it did he twist and turn to make it sound like he was abused by so many in so many ways?

I am not going to sit and think about it or try and figure it out.  It no longer concerns me and the only way he is going to have a long lasting relationship is if he hooks up with some woman that dishes back out to him what he gives her.

I have to remind myself why I stayed with him...for my kids.  So that they wouldn't have to be left alone with him every other weekend...so that I would be here with them all the time to step in when he got bad.  In the end, I got what I wanted and the bonus is that he is 3 states and a 12 hour car ride away.

I guess you could say that I got my closure.

The difficult part is changing my way of thinking.  My world is changing a lot.  He is gone and my son will soon be moving out and living his adult life...learning how to budget and pay bills, etc.  I pray for his success and safety.

My big house will be getting empty.  I don't know why I need all of these rooms.  It was great for a while when we first moved in.  The kids had plenty of room for friends, Darkness has his own office space, I had my sunroom, the dogs have lots of room to roam.  Now there will be Bethany and me.  Darkness' office serves as a guest room/study room.  I have my own office.  The family room has become a room for the dogs.  I utilize the livingroom.  There is a diningroom that will seldom be used...no more family and friends around the table.  And an empty bedroom downstairs.  Actually two empty bedrooms downstairs but I am going to use one for storage.

If it wasn't for the dogs, I would downsize now.  I would sell the house, rent something smaller for Bethany and I until she is out of college then I will move back up towards my family and get a condo.

I will most likely still have the dogs.  That is going to be a problem.  sigh.

I have been watching "Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce".  Most of it is crap but tonight it really got into the feelings...the lopsided part of divorce.  Last week the main character and her almost ex decided to give it another try but found out that the problems they had before, personality clashes, were still there and they could not figure out how to change it.  So they parted.  As one of the divorced women said, 'It is the residual feelings after the divorce that you don't know what to do with.'  Another one's ex husband had another woman in his life that sobered him up and cleaned him up and he told his ex wife that the new wife made him a better person.  That is kind of an 'ouch'.  Then you wonder why he couldn't be that person when he was with you.  Is it because you married when he was this other broken down person and you took him as he was?  You didn't try to change him?  All along he wanted someone to kick him in the pants and make him change?

I can be a better person than I have been married to Darkness.  I can be that self assured, kind, helpful person I was before I married him...the one that thought she was worth something.  I just need to unearth her and dust her off and reintroduce myself.  I was adventurous and fun loving.  I have become a fat, listless, lump.

I can do things.  Things need fixed, etc...I figure out how to do it.  I have always been that way mainly because I know I am smart enough to figure things out and I never had the patience or trust to leave it up to someone else.  I liked the idea that I was independent.  On the flip side...I would so very much love a guy that would step in and say, "I know you CAN do it, but you don't have to do it.  I will do it for you."  Or the guy that will step in and say, "I know you are strong and capable, but you don't have to be so strong all of the time.  I will help."  Darkness's attitude was that since I COULD do it, I SHOULD do it.  He didn't need to be here.  I love how he has said so many times, "I felt like I was just a paycheck."  Well, you could have been more but you never tried.  I had to do everything else so why shouldn't you at least be a paycheck?

Or, the infamous, "I needed more sex.  I wanted to be hugged...touched."  My answer to that?  Give me a reason.  Make ME feel like you actually love me.

The thing is...he didn't love me.  He never treated me like I was someone worth his time...unless he wanted sex.  Now he can try and get it somewhere else.  Even sex with him was mostly one sided.  Thinking back, he was one of the worst sex partners I ever had.

He is so selfish that even that bipolar nut job he was with last year made comments about him on her FB page.  He doesn't know what real love is.  He is too selfish and self centered.  He only does things if he wants to be told how great he is and wants pats on the back.  If he does something that someone tells him is great, he goes around telling everyone about it.  He told all of us, one at a time, about the dinner he cooked for his mom and her husband and how much they loved it and wanted the recipe.  He was there 3 full days and 2 half days.  He cooked them one meal and he had to tell us all, one at a time, how much they loved his dinner.

He would buy some new car, or gadget, and have to take it around to every one of his family members and friends and show it off and brag about it.  TJ and Bethany said it was very embarrassing.  I have never done that.  Even when I got a new vehicle, I never told anyone.  I got it for me...because I needed it.  I would stop, eventually, to see a family member or friend and they would say, "is that a new car?" and want to look at it.  They would ask me questions and I would answer them then finally get them away from it and by then THEY told ME how much they liked my car.  No one knows the gadgets I have bought myself or what I really have in my house.  I bought things I wanted for me.  No one really cares or needs to know.  My kids take after me.  They don't tell ppl what they have.

He has a need for attention and admiration.  I didn't give him either.  I knew to pat him on the back A LOT when he did do something so that I might get him to help out again later.   But that didn't always work either.  I just didn't count on him for much. The fact that he put a ceiling fan in the livingroom and did it right was amazing enough.  The fact that he built a fence around the backyard was another VERY amazing feat.  There are things that need to be fixed on it now but it isn't anything he did wrong...it is just what it is.

He actually got out and helped with the landscaping one year but that was mostly because he wanted it to look nice when the family came to visit.  Which they did when Bethany graduated.

I have many things to do outside and inside and I can get them done.  I watch 'Rehab Addict'.  She is a little woman and she can do things!  LOL  I am much larger around than she is but maybe if I keep busy I can be little like her.

My daughter tells me she is going to help me eat healthy and be more energetic.  We'll see.  It would be nice.

Eat, Pray, Pup Hankies

I get really frustrated with my phone and computer's spell correction feature.  I was trying to type the word 'epiphanies' in a text message to a friend and my phone kept changing it to 'Pup hankies'.  I have no idea why that would make more sense.

Anyway...in just one observation by a friend, the last of the fog disappeared.

She said (and I am just giving a paraphrase) that she could always tell when I had been in contact with my ex because I was more anxious, uptight, and complained more.  I was like, "huh".  I sat and thought about that.  Then I asked Bethany, TJ, and Brittany if they agreed with that.  They all did.  My daughter even went so far to say that when I had blocked him from my phone and email I was more calm, I joked around more, sang, and really didn't mention him at all.

So I took those observations and realized that I was anxious and sad and complained throughout most of my marriage.  I second guessed myself and always felt like I could never do anything right.

My mother told me not long after I married him that everyone lost 'me'...I wasn't that same self assured, head strong, joker I had always been. 

It was after listening to what the kids had to add, along with my epiphanies, that I relaxed and knew what I have to do...close that book and put a lock on it.  I do not know what he will do with his life but it is not my concern.  I am happy that it is not my concern.  I am finding me and liking that person again.  And someone else will find me and like me too.

Closing the Gap

I know a lot of people thought that allowing my ex to visit for the Christmas holiday was a big mistake.  And I began to wonder about it myself.  However, it turned out to be what I needed.

It started out as me just being nice.  I thought it would be good to have that one last altogether 'family' Christmas.  TJ and Brittany will be moving out 2 weeks after Christmas.  In probably 2 more years Bethany will be moving out.  Heaven knows where their dad will be or who he will be with.  I may find someone and remarry.  OR, fate may have other things in store.

As it turned out, and I am sure God did this for me, their dad spent the night Friday night.  It was actually 2 a.m. in the morning when he showed up.  He was supposed to stop briefly Friday night to leave off presents and then continue on his journey to his mom's.  He was working in Illinois for the week.  But he texted me to let me know he ended up working a much longer day than anticipated Friday and did not leave Illinois until about 10 p.m.  He wanted to know if he could crash for the night.

Since our son and his fiancee had already left earlier that evening to go up to see his grandparents, I told his dad he could stay in TJ's room.  I had not had the chance to set up the futon in the study/guestroom yet, since I had not planned on him being here until Christmas Eve.

It was the next morning that things were said and happened that gave me another 'aha' moment.  Or maybe a bunch of little ones.  To make a long story short....I am done.  I don't know what I was feeling badly about or guilty about or trying to hang on to.  He irritates the ever living stuffening out of me because, after not being around him for so long then having to be around him, it made some things glaringly obvious...he is very immature.  An immature narcissist.  Perhaps that statement is redundant.

He is 50 years old and he says he doesn't know what he wants.  Oddly enough, that was the first thing my ex pastor's wife said to me about him when he divorced me, "I don't think he even knows what he wants."  I do know what he doesn't want and it is plain that he never did want it...to be married.  He is no good with relationships.  For years I thought it was me that was not good with relationships but...no.

That's all the knowledge I need about all of this.  I am no longer conflicted or feel guilty or sorrowful about it.  I am ready to move on and date and see if I can find that guy.

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On another note...I am proud of myself.  I put a new fan in my main bathroom.  I repainted the walls and the baseboards.  I put in new tile.  The only thing left to do is replace the fan switch with a timer switch.  That is happening today.  yay me!  I did it all myself.!!!  I did!  I did!  LOL!!!

Now to put up the new window treatments in my living room and hang pictures.  Then next week I will paint my office, rearrange it and make and hang the new curtains.

Today is the first day of vacation.  I am going to bake cookies and vacuum and steam clean my floors.  I was up really early though with lower back pain from bending over and cutting tile last night.  I iced and took a pain pill.  Now I want a nap.  And guess what?  I am going to give me one.

No Deep Couch Sitting

That commercial makes me laugh...the dad that goes to sit on the couch only to get right back up to clean up another mess his young son and friends have made. He says that he doesn't have time for deep couch sitting.

Life is like that.  There isn't much time for deep couch sitting.  For so many of us we made the mistake of thinking we had it.  We just had to add to it as we went along.  But then, a death happens or a divorce.  In the case of the death, you are missing that other person but you have everything that you both had collected along the way.  With a divorce, some of the things you have collected for your life along the way gets split up or just goes one way or the other.

For death or divorce of a spouse there is one thing in common...you lose that person you searched so long for...the one that you thought would complete you.  If you are the one left behind, it is a confusion:  what happened?  Could I have done something to prevent the loss?

If it is the death of a spouse, they didn't choose to leave you.  You can still hang on to the idea that they loved you until the end...and into eternity.  With divorce, they chose to leave you.  The love just stopped,  The silence that is left by the empty place is deafening to the soul.    You don't understand how you could love someone so completely and they don't get it...or don't want it.  They chose you at one point...why did they 'unchoose' you?

People go through changes in life.  You never stop growing and learning.  Perhaps what they learned or found did not have a space for you.  Perhaps like repainting a room, the couch no longer matched.  The other person repainted their world and you didn't match.  Maybe you repainted your world too but made sure that the other person would still match because they were your favorite piece.  Someone wanted something totally different while the other person was content with most of what they had already.

You find yourself waiting for someone else to come along that thinks you will match their world.  But, they have to fit into yours too.  The only problem is, you may be looking for something that is almost identical to what you lost.

Then there comes a time when you have a project and you have certain things you need to complete the project.  You think you don't need to buy anything because over the years you have collected all of that stuff.  Then, in the midst of it, you find that you do NOT have everything you need because some of what was collected went with the other person...it left with them.

Then another sadness sets in as you realize that along with the most important piece of the setting of your life is gone and other little accessories.  The little accessories can be more easily replaced but it isn't the point.  It is just another reminder that your life was taken apart.  "Things We Lost in the Fire"...because it feels like a never ending burning inside.

I have heard so many couples say that the secret to a long marriage is to never give up.  And that you have to respect the other person, value them, appreciate them and also realize that the biggest part of it is being comfortable.  They know each other...all the little pieces and parts.  It is like deep couch sitting or curling up with a warm fuzzy blanket.  It just is.

I guess I thought that is what my marriage would be...that comfort.  I was okay with it in a lot of ways.  We did not understand or communicate very well.  I did not put enough effort into the right places but I took for granted that it was always going to be worked on.  Maybe that was it...like my favorite stretched out, worn out sweatshirt it would just always be there.  I could make changes to my world but I would never change it so much that my favorite sweatshirt no longer fit in.

I just didn't notice that I was not fitting into someone else's world anymore.

Then again, maybe I never did.

Another Party

I am over tired and not feeling well.  My son has been sick for days and the last couple of days he has been REALLY sick.  His fiancee has been sick all week.

 I was really sick  today especially.  However, I still had to keep moving.  I figure if my son can be sick, drive an hour to work in nasty traffic, drive into downtown Cincy and sit through town hall meetings, then drive home through bumper to bumper traffic then I can do what I have to do around here and be sick.

I just get upset every now and then because I seem to be left to do all the cleaning...and dishes...and cooking.  I feel like a non-person.  They just don't think.

Then it makes me angry in another way because even though I can forgive the divorce...cuz...the divorce itself I have made peace with.  It is HOW he did it that I get angry about still.  I lose my job and have no visible means of support and he wants to divorce me.  Anyone with a conscience would not do that to someone else...especially someone that has been there for THEM through everything.  25 years of taking care of him, picking him up and dusting him off and that is what I get. THAT is what is going to take me a while to get over.

I suppose the dinner I had with Jean last night stirred things up too.  She had a very horrible husband and put her through a lot.  I have friends whose exes were terrible and put them through a lot.  I have realized that my divorce, itself, was not that bad.  So he decided to try and replace me with some low life nut job.  His problem.  The only things that I am angry about is his dumping me right after I lost a job AND suggesting I sell the house...so that the kids and I could live on the street???

Yeah..when I am not feeling well I can get pretty bitchy.

Adendum:  I woke up with that whole thing on my mind again.  I had told Jean that I just had no desire to be with another guy.  She told me she went through that for a while too but it would come back.

But here is what my mind must have figured out in my sleep cuz it was the light bulb that woke me up:  he did not care about me.  I had not cared about me either.  I had put all of my heart into caring about my family and just wanting some care back...that I had nothing left to care about myself with.  And because I had not cared about myself, why should he?  I am not really giving him an excuse.  There is no excuse.  And I can write him off with "he is what he is" and this is true. But the fact remains, I cared more about his feelings than I cared about my own.  I have mourned something that was never going to happen.  I have mourned the fact that I had cared about him but he didn't care about me.  I have spent a lot of time and energy on that instead of learning to care about ME!  And THAT is why I am not ready for someone else to be in my life, yet.  Someone needs to care about ME...and that someone is me.  I need to care about me.

I look in the mirror and it shows that I don't care about me.  If I had cared about me, I wouldn't have put on so much weight!  By the time I put all of my heart and soul into my family, I had nothing left for me!  So now, I am learning.  It is like going through physical therapy...retraining.

I keep telling myself, 'once I get used to my job' or 'once the holidays are over' or 'once my son is moved out and settled'...and that will take place right after the holidays.  But, will I have another excuse for putting myself on the back burner?  It is sad when I have to MAKE myself care about myself.  Why is that so hard?  I need to realize my own worth.

I am not sure why that is so hard for me.  I know, I could blame it on my mother like everyone else.  She expected a lot out of me, yet, she would put me down too.  She accused me of being self centered and selfish.  She told me I wasn't creative enough to think outside the box.  And because of the negatives, I have done nothing but put others before myself and I have done a lot of thinking outside the box and learning to be self sufficient.

And because of all of that, it gave others the excuse to treat me like they didn't need to help me and that I didn't matter.

But I do need help...and I DO matter.  And I need to realize that too.