Barnmaven

Relationship math

 

I love to read relationship books.  Whenever I read something that reminds me of my relationship with SG I marvel at how intuitive, how clever, how well researched the author must be.  When I read something that doesn't fit us at all, naturally either the author is a charlatan or we are the exception to the rule.  My husband is more than a standard deviation from the mean, if you know what I mean. 

Anyhow, this current book I'm reading is all about how Attachment Theory is really what comes into play in our love relationships, that our primary relationship with our partner follows many of the same patterns as child/parent attachment.  Similar to the way a healthy parental attachment fosters a sense of security and the ability to be happily independent in a child, a healthy attachment in an adult relationship makes each partner feel safer about indpendence - both theirs and their partner's.  According to this theory, then, a clingy, jealous or insecure partner isn't just being a jerk:  they're dealing with abandonment issues. 

Makes sense.  It helps me see my distaste for SG's road job in a different light; a person whose standard motto regarding relationships goes something like, "Everyone leaves.  Period." isn't likely to feel too secure about having their partner off living the single life for a couple of months at a time. 

Time and love do much to cure the places we are broken, and SG and I have seen a lot of that happening over the course of our relationship.  I'd love to say that I'm completely without insecurity, but I would be lying.  I am, however, much more secure in this relationship than I can recall being in a very long time.  

Which is good, because we're pretty sure he's going to end up going back on the road.

Its not that his in-town full-time job is a horrible job, or anything.  But its not what he's used to.  Its not what he likes or wants to do.  He likes the road.  He likes his solitude.  It doesn't mean he likes being away from me or that he doesn't want to be with me.  But its work and pay that agree with him, and if being alone for several weeks at a time are the price, its one he's happy to pay.  Not everyone has the luxury of choosing what they do for a living.  Hell, at best we choose between several imperfect options and pick the one that's simply the least worst. 

We've had some very long and occasionally very intense discussions about this of late.  We've spent time exploring our feelings about our relationship, about ourselves, about what we want out of our lives and where we want to be ten or twenty years down the road.  We've talked about what's hard about him being gone for me -- being lonely very much the primary issue, followed by being overwhelmed -- and about what's hard for him about about the current situation. 

Compromises in relationships don't mean each party gets what they want and then they hold hands and skip down the primrose path while rose blossoms fall from the sky and birds sing love songs.  Oh, no.  Compromise means sometimes I have to give up more than I think I want to and other times the short stick gets drawn by my husband.  Compromise means maybe my husband goes on the road, but at the same time we get someone to come help with the housework and the yard so that I at least get a break to do things that I want to while he's gone.  Compromise means maybe he doesn't take the six month job that would bring a much bigger payout, but takes fall and spring work and spends the winter at home.   And lets be honest, the days he's here and I get to go gallivanting off on my horse while he stays home and wrangles my offspring there is absolutely no doubt about who is getting the short stick.

So little in life is absolutely perfect.  I would say, if pressed, that SG is the perfect man for me.  I think he would probably say I'm the perfect woman for him.  I know there are times both of us will tell you how the other is driving us insane or irritating the crap out of us, but even then there are billion reasons its worth it to get to the other side of the trying days.

Remind me I wrote this come fall, will you?

Girl things

My left shoulder hurts.  It has for years, but not like it has lately.  Lately whenever I try to put my arm up over my head, do pushups, carry hay or saddle my horse it really really hurts.  I went to see the shoulder guy at the Orthopaedic clinic, and he gave me a shot of steroids but that only worked for a little while, so I was back there this morning.  He wants to rule out a small tear in the rotator cuff before he puts me in physical therapy, so they're scheduling an MRI. 

I'm so excited.

I've never had an MRI.  And what if I have to have surgery?  Another scar to show off!  Cool!

Yes, I'm that person.

I'm the person who sees snow falling and I might pretend to be annoyed, because that's apparently what you're supposed to feel when it snows.  Inside, though, I can't wait for the adventure of driving in it.  There might even be an accident!  I might end up stranded in the wilderness and have to hike through the mountains and eat my companions to survive!

I'm the person who gets a scrape or a cut and the only reason I go looking for a bandage is so I can walk by my husband and kids and say "LOOK!  I'M BLEEDING!"  If the cut isn't bleeding enough I'll probably squeeze it a little to see if I can get more out of it.

I'm the person who hates needles and gets tattoos.  "How many hours did that one take?"  "Four two hour appointments."  "Didn't it hurt"  "Oh, yeah, it hurt like hell.  It was awesome."  And when I'm under the needle and the artist asks if  I need a break and I say that I'm fine and they respond with "Wow, most people would have had to take at least a couple of breaks by now," I'm all "FUCK YEAH."

I'm the woman who will smack a volleyball into the face of the guy on the other side of the net with barely concealed glee, run over the shortstop on my way to second base and barrel through the guy trying to set a pick on me when I'm guarding the guy who's driving the baseline.

I put on my coveralls and a baseball cap, put my truck up on ramps and change my oil, change my filters, refill my washer fluid and try to see if that pesky leak is just a loose bolt that I can fix myself.  I look like a greasemonkey, and I could care less.

And this may sound crazy, but at the same time I like that I can put on a fancy dress and get my hair and makeup all just so and knock my husband's socks off with my awesome female self.  I very much like my femininity and all that it entails.

I'm not alone in this.  So many women I know are just like me, strong and soft.  Tough and tender.  My daughter is one of them.

Pink, bright hot pink, is her favorite color.  She loves My Little Pony and Dragons, stuffed kitty toys and light sabers.  She wants to be a princess and a ninja. She has beautiful hair to her waist and she prefers jeans to dresses.  She came to me on Christmas day to talk about how upset she was when some relatives and friends gave her brother "boy" toys and gave her "girl" things like body wash and perfume.  She was upset to think anyone might think that she was a "girly girl." 

There is so much to love about being a woman.  While its a sure bet that my childhood in the late 60's/early 70's subjected my psyche to a great deal of gender role absolutes, I enjoy wearing makeup and dressing in clothes meant to showcase what I think is attractive about myself.  I care about how my hair looks, and I struggle like many women about the impossible-to-walk line between having fingernails that are neat and pretty or fingernails that allow you to do things like cinch a saddle, throw hay bales and repair fencing. 

In 1983, the year I graduated high school, 95 percent of autobody repair workers were male.  There must have been something brewing in us and the classes of women that followed.   As of a decade ago, the number of women in that industry tripled -- a 369% increase.  Other typically male-dominated industries have seen similar jumps in female workers - firefighting, millwork, engineering and law enforcement, to name a few. ¹  I've been a lot of things in my work life, but the bulk of it I've spent in transportation. 

I might have grown up watching Charlie's Angels, but I think I still understood at a very deep level that those women were still playing to male sexuality and that they represented very little that was real.  Anyone with half a brain knows that television and movies tell you lots of lies about how people look and what they say and do.

So when Amazon Girl complained about some of her gifts, I told my daughter that people weren't trying to be unkind if they bought her "girly girl" presents.  I told her even though she might not be a perfume and flowers kind of young lady that it wasn't demeaning for people to think of her as feminine.  Besides, isn't a gift is more of a reflection of the giver than of the receiver?.  But I get it, as might any woman who in the hormone hell of early puberty was mistaken more than once for a boy.  But I want her to know - to believe - that she doesn't have to be one or the other.  Both aspects of her exist together and there's nothing wrong with that.  There's nothing wrong about being a woman who can both take care of herself and look good doing it.

The dividing line between two worlds that were once very separate has become thin and transparent.  We may be very different physically, we may in large part have critically different ways of thinking and organizing our lives, but in so many ways we have broken free of the gender roles that at one time were used to contain and limit us.  I think thats a good thing for all of us, men included.

So hey, do you want to arm wrestle?

 

^{1.  Bureau of Labor Statistics 2005 Current Population Survey}

 

Thanks Blogher for featuring this post on Blogher.com!

 

 

All its cracked up to be

Someday when I write my autobiography - or someday when I'm dead and someone has the notion to make a television sitcom about my life - the title should be "Six of one," except I'd be borrowing the title from Rita Mae Brown and it wouldn't be a fictional funny drama about one woman's coming out story.  It would be the story of the woman whose life story seems to consistently be pointing how life is this continual mishmash of good stuff and hard stuff - ALL THE TIME with the good stuff and the hard stuff.

I suppose that's my blog theme.  I wish I'd figured that out a few years ago.  Here all this time I thought I was writing about horses and special needs.  See what the wine does?

I hit the grocery store yesterday after dropping the kids off with their dad (hint:  if you take your kids halloween costume shopping do not finish the trip by dropping them off with their other parent.  Kids with new halloween costumes want to go home and put them on, not leave them with you and go to their other parent's house).  Since my Mom has been picking up the kids after school , she does their homework and feeds them dinner, which makes my grocery list rather sparse.  Unless there's someone to cook for, I don't cook.  What's the point?  Its cereal for breakfast and dinner is eggs or soup.  So I'm at the grocery store and putting my things on the moving belt at the checkstand and I realize that everyone in line behind me probably thinks I'm a middle-aged single woman with no kids and a house full of cats. I was half tempted to throw a True Confessions in with everything just to say "La la la, I don't care what you think!" but actually no one even has True Confessions on the shelf anymore and I at least just managed to establish the fact that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth.

Its a big silence to wrap my thoughts around, those first hours after the kids have gone.  With SG on the road everything is at the same time both more and less meaningful.  I put away the groceries, empty the dishwasher, wash the few dishes in the sink.  I have six more hours before I have to go to bed, and I can pick and choose how I want to spend the time.  I'm lonely and not lonely, all at the same time.  I do realize that with a house full of pushy cats and large, noisy dogs that I'm never really alone, but since I'm the only one who can actually talk, its a lot quieter.  Being alone with my thoughts is a really dicey proposition.  I'm one of those people who can go either way -- and sometimes its a matter of a few minutes between happy as a lark and sooooooo lonely and sad.

Is this just part of the human process, learning how to accept while still retaining the option to complain when we don't like what's happening?  There's a distinct line between "doormat" and "punch life in the face." 

Last night life gave me a 90 pound puppy who thinks she's a lap dog and a 22 year old horse who was on the verge of colicking, a chicken intent on sitting on eggs I do not wish her to hatch and a husband whose phone couldn't get a clear connection to give us a chance to connect for five damn minutes.  Life also gave me a nice bottle of wine, a friend on the other end of the phone to be a substitute shoulder, and a nice cold evening to make my dinner of soup ever so enjoyable.  So who am I to complain?

Six of one.  Half a dozen of the other.  It all balances out in the end.  Its all good.

Pick your cliche'.  Any one of 'em will do. 

 

Welcome to our world, fellas.

Have you ever listened to the BJ Shea morning show on Seattle's KISW? 

Me either.  I hate talk radio and morning programs.

Except we were stuck on 405 trying to get out of Bothell and back to the dry side of the state after seeing Bonnie Raitt at Chateau Ste. Michelle the night before, and my random station surfing landed me on this particular show right as the hosts were discussing a most interesting topic.

According to a recent study, women are now more interested in men for their looks than for their money.  Men?  They're more interested in a woman's intelligence than her looks. 

From the reactions of the shock jocks on the show, you'd think this was the worst news EVER to hit the airwaves.  At one point one of the guys was going on about how male movie stars are too good looking and it sets women up to have unrealistic expectations of men and how they look.  Dude, did you really just say that????

Imagine.  Men bemoaning a double standard created by movies and the media that sets an impossibly high standard of physical perfection for one gender.

One of the hosts, I'll assume it was BJ, went on to say how the over-50 women he and his wife knew that weren't married were simply unhappy and that women had better learn to be less picky or they might end up (horrors) alone and unmarried.   Spinsters.  GASP! 

I think he might have been taking the study results a little too seriously and reaching a fairly unlikely conclusion, but then again, it was talk radio, and I know ratings depend on the hosts' ability to get their audience lathered up about something, anything at all.  Even so, as deliciously entertaining as it was to hear men object to being treated like arm candy, I think BJ has a couple of good points. 

I disagree that one needs a husband (or wife) in order to be happy.  Being partnered is great for many people, but there truly are men and women who are quite content to live unattached.  Relationships are hard.  Relationships can help us accomplish our goals, but there are times they can hinder us as well.  When you hook your wagon to someone else's star, you take on each others' concerns, desires, frustrations, needs and wants.   Personally, I'm happy that SG is as hands-off as he is when it comes to giving me space.  As much as I love him, as much as he loves me, we both have things we enjoy doing alone or with our individual friends.   I know myself well enough to know that mostly I am one of those people who wants to be in a relationship.  Even so,  I'm grateful for the times I've been on my own, for learning not just to be okay with that, but to actually like it.  Finding your bliss is a more pure evolution when it isn't being influenced by a partner.   

When it comes to looks, though, my gut reaction is that BJ Shea is correct.  Yes, we are attracted to the people we're attracted to, but there is more to a person than their physical appearance.  If someone is just looking for the chemistry of a fling, I suppose limiting your criteria to simple appearance is fine, but when it comes to seeking relationship material, looks don't count for nearly as much.  Research indicates that the more time we spend with someone, the more likely we are to enter a relationship with them.  Chemistry grows when we find someone who matches our emotional needs, not just our physical desires.

BJ also contends that most men aren't really that shallow.  I agree, but I'll take that to another level and say that most people aren't really that shallow.  I think we all have certain types that we are attracted to, and certainly everyone can appreciate visual appearances, but I think the majority of people are looking for long-term commitment really do pay attention to a lot more than looks. 

Even so, people have the right to be where they are, even if that happens to be a place of depthless interaction and missed opportunity to appreciate others' finer qualities.  Its true that I can still work up a head of steam if I dwell too long in the false standards of beauty our film and print media create for our daughters (and apparently, now, our sons), but its also true that I'm less bothered by this phenomenon than I used to be.  I give less credence to arbitrary rules of beauty set by people whose opinions matter little to the reality of my life. 

Is it more important for one to look good or to be good?

Is it more important for one to be beautiful or to be interesting?

Is it more important for one to be flawless or to be self-reliant?

Its not that you couldn't be both, but if I had to pick one characteristic over another, I'll choose character over looks every single time. And the amazing thing about that, is that the more you know and appreciate a person, the more you are able to see the beauty of them.

Planning ahead

NOW when the number of my years

is all fulfilled, And I

From sedentary life shall rouse me up to die,

Bury me low and let me lie

Under the wide and starry sky.

Joying to live, I joyed to die.

Bury me low and let me lie.

                    ~Robert Louis Stevenson

 

On the days I'm actually in the mood to hear what's going on in the outside world (its an election seasion, mostly I'm not) I tend to listen to NPR's Northwest stations on the way to and from work.  Sometimes I have to throw in a CD or switch to a music station if its early morning and I'm having a hard time waking up or if its the way home and the soothing voice of Robert Seigel starts causing me to nod off at the wheel.  One of my doctors told me once that an attribute of unmedicated ADHD is  tendency to be extremely sleepy in the afternoons.  That was a BINGO! moment for me, as I had been having terrible trouble driving home from work on a daily basis.  Once I started medication it got much better, but I still have days when I'm a little overtired and driving home is a crapshoot.  But I digress.  Again.  I know, you're so surprised!

So a couple of weeks ago Diane Rehms did a segment on aging and preparing for end of life issues.  One of the guests kept talking about a program called Five Wishes.  Its basically a living will but with extras, like telling your survivors what you'd like them to say when people ask how you wanted to be remembered, picking songs or passages you'd like at your services or if you even want services, along with standard advance directives.  In most states, signed by the proper witnesses, it stands as a legal document. 

Its not easy to talk about death and dying, not for most people.  I don't mind it, but my parents have been very open for years about their wishes for end of life issues.  Mom keeps a folder with all the pertinent instructions and information on where all the necessary documents are located.   Other people aren't so comfortable about planning for or talking about what will happen if they get ill or very old or die suddenly.  I suppose most people don't often like to think about the fact that we're going to die someday.  Its the great unknown, isn't it?  It will happen to everyone, but we don't know how or when and we don't know for sure what happens after.  We might believe certain things about what happens when we die, but there's no clear information to be found about exactly how that goes down.  Is there a test?  A door greeter?  Is there really a Rainbow Bridge and will there be a Noah's Ark of all the animals I've ever loved waiting there for me?  Who's scooping all the poop up there in the meantime? 

I do know that I'm not afraid to die, per se, but I'm afraid of dying while my children are still young.  And because my children are still young and because I only recently remarried and I don't have a current will and my advance directive is about twenty years out of date, I really dug into what the folks on the radio were saying.  SG and I talked some about what we would want to happen after Ken died, but we never went ahead and put anything on paper.

When my brother died, it was completely unexpected.  I can't remember ever talking to him about what he wanted done when that time came, it just wasn't something we thought about.  We talked about what we knew our parents wanted, but it never occurred to either of us that we might not outlive our parents.  Because he'd never had those conversations with anyone and because he didn't have any advance directives, his death was exponentially more difficult, especially for my niece and nephews. They are young adults, and my niece was in the position of having to make a lot of decisions without really knowing for certain what her dad would have wanted.  She also had to deal with the pressure of making these decisions with a lot of different people telling her what they thought she ought to do.  Its a position I would never want to be in, and its a position I don't ever want to put anyone else in.

I kind of forgot about the Five Wishes site for several days, but at some point I had a chance to actually use my laptop at home and I checked out the information there.  I was planning to sit down with SG at the next opportunity to talk about the end of life planning and the need for us to outline our wishes and probably get wills made.  And then...

(This is where the hair on my arms starts to tingle a little bit)

...the doorbell rang.  The dogs freaked out, so it took a few seconds to shove them into their crates.  I opened the door and there was a very nice looking older blond lady standing on my stoop, holding a clipboard and carrying a casual looking briefcase.  She introduced herself and as it turns out, she is a sales representative for a local funeral home. 

COINCIDENCE?  Does this stuff ever happen to you?  Isn't it really spooky when it does?

It wasn't really a good time to have her come in and sit down with us (kids rampant, house messy, in the middle of things), but we made an appointment, and she came back a few days later.  We talked for a good hour or so, and she left us with some materials.  One of the materials is a pamphlet we keep even if we decide not to do any pre-planning, where we write down all of our important information, things we or our families would need to know if when we die.

I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, and neither is SG, of course.  Most of us aren't.  But this is a one way trip, boys and girls.  Making plans isn't something we are doing for ourselves.  Its something we are doing for each other and for our children and our families and friends.  When my spirit no longer lives in my body, what happens to my body won't matter to me.  It will matter, though, to the people I love.  And so we plan ahead, hoping that those plans won't be needed for many years to come, but having some peace about knowing that they are made just in case.

(No, SG, I'm NOT having your body shot into space on a rocket.  Stop asking me.)

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/justintron/6245250507/

 

Finis.

Its better if you do it quickly

I've added another guest to the pasture this week, a mare that was injured after getting her hind legs torn up in barbed wire.  The people who were boarding her didn't even notice she was injured for several days, so she was in some need of doctoring and pain management.  Fortunately her injuries are not going to leave her permanently lame.

Part of doctoring her for the moment involves hosing down her legs until the scabs are softened and then scrubbing them off with a bristle brush so that I can get antibacterial agents into the wounds themselves.  The first time we treated her there were some pretty big scabs that had to come off.  Just scrubbing wasn't working and I had to grab them and pull them off.

Its one thing to grab your kid and pull off a bandage or a scab. You know they're going to yelp, you know its going to hurt, but you have to do it fast and all at once.  And your child is (hopefully) smaller than you are and so you're not taking your life in your hands.

Its another thing entirely to put yourself within striking distance of a 1200 pound animal and do something that you absolutely know is going to hurt like hell. 

I've been fortunate in my years not to have many injured horses that needed doctoring.  Only twice have I ever dealt with having a horse stitched up.  Both of those times I just held my horse and let the vet do their job, then made sure I kept the stitches clean until they could come out.  My friend Michelle, on the other hand, has dealt with a sizable herd for a long time and is no stranger to doctoring horses.  She says that its the uncanniest thing sometimes, even horses you don't think will be able to tolerate what you need to do will actually be very quiet and patient when you have to do something that hurts.  Perhaps they realize that they need your help to get better, and so they stand still and let you work.

For whatever reason, this lovely mare allowed me to grab hold and yank some fairly large scabs from her hocks without kicking, rearing, biting or bolting.  She was an angel, and has been every day since as I clean and reopen her scabs and treat them with Betadine and a gel spray. 

I guess she knows the truth - the only way to take off a scab is to stand still and yank it all right at once. 

When SG and I got married its not like I was unaware of the fact that his current career means he is gone for weeks at a time.  I'm still getting used to it, though.  I liked having him home, having two of us doing the heavy lifting together.  Enjoying each other's company, having him there to come home to at night, to kiss goodbye in the mornings.  With him gone life seems emptier, less meaningful.  Far too stressful.  The part of me that is logical acknowledges fully the need for paying work in a down economy.  My inner drama queen, however, is less inclined to care about logic.  She's far more concerned with her creature comforts.  She wants her man home, and NOW.  She puts up such a fuss and my inner Spockette has found herself drowned out by the brouhaha.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a murmur of further jobs on the road.  Maybe months worth.  My inner drama queen blew up like a unicorn full of glitter with a hand grenade shoved up its ass. Then she stuck her fingers in her ears.

Its been a merry spectacle, let me tell you.  Tears, emotionally charged text messages.  Hangups.  And really, nothing had been decided yet. 

Fortunately, my inner Spockette and I tag-teamed her, stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth, duct taped it in place and shuttled her off to the back of the attic for the time being.   When SG called, inner Spockette and I had it all under control.  He ripped the scab off - he will be going directly to North Carolina from Arizon with no time for a visit home, and he will be gone until the end of May.  Inner drama queen made a barely recognizable muffled yelp and hasn't been heard from for a couple of days.

If you try to pull the scab off a little bit at a time it takes forever.  Every little tug hurts just as bad as the one before it and the one after it.  All you have accomplished in the end is to make your pain last longer.    Even horses know this.  Hopefully my inner drama queen has figured it out as well.

 

Shaming and blaming

In respect to the issue that prompted my last post:

I directly approached someone who crossed a personal boundary and asked them to be more considerate in the future.

I received a response in which I was told that they would, but that I should "lighten up."

I'm sorry, did you hear me giggle?  I giggled.  And I politely responded:  "You don't get to set my boundaries for me.  Thank you for [doing what I asked.]

See, here's the thing.  I get to decide what I will put up with and what I won't.  I certainly can't force other people to respect my boundaries, nor would I want to.  But no one can decide for me what those boundaries are.  I'm old enough and wise enough to be able to determine what is acceptable to me and what is not.   Its not as if I'm going to punish someone for crossing lines, that's not my job.  There's no implicit threat of retaliation.  Its a simple request:  Please don't do that in the future because I find it unacceptable.  The offender is free to continue to offend or not; that's really irrelevant to me.  I've called them out on something and I'll continue to do so if its warranted.  By the same token, I'm perfectly happy to let bygones be bygones and treat others with the same respect I expect them to give to me.

I didn't used to be good at boundaries.  I was married for almost ten years to someone who pooh-poohed my boundaries around a couple of issues.  No matter how I tried to explain that I was really uncomfortable with these issues, all I got in response was "you're being silly."  "It's really not that bad."  "You don't understand."  I got shamed, blamed, and for a long time I tried to ignore what my heart and my mind told me for the sake of keeping peace.  It sucked ASS.  It hurt me.  It hurt our relationship. 

I know better now.

When my heart and my mind tell me something is not okay, I'm going to sit down with that feeling and examine it.  I'm either going to understand why situation x is not okay with me, or I'm going to resolve my feelings around it so that it doesn't cause me a terrible amount of angst.  I'm willing to consider that I might overreact to some things based on my personal experience and history, but I'm also fully capable of understanding and verbalizing what things are not acceptable to me. 

I frankly don't give two shits if you think I'm being silly or if you feel compelled to tell me to "lighten up."  You don't get to set my boundaries for me.  I'm old enough, wise enough and comfortable enough in my own skin to determine what passes for acceptable treatment of me and my family.  If you cross a line, don't waste your breath trying to shame me for your trespass.  I don't play that game and neither should you.

Limping down the aisle

So.

There's been a lot going on around here.  The stuff in my life and the stuff in my head have resisted my best attempts to write about them, and its frustrating.  Hopefully this post breaks the dam and I can wax eloquent more frequently about things that I often think really mean little to anyone but me - but you keep showing up to read, so what do I know?  I'm just an old broad.

Before SG hit the road in September we talked about our future together and the obvious answer was some planning towards wedding bells the following summer.  Then his start/end/start/end dates for the jobs he was going to do changed - more than once - and planning something became rather problematic.  Then he suggesting meeting in Vegas over the winter, which frankly when you're my age and haven't been qualified to wear a white wedding dress in quite some time seemed like a perfectly reasonable option.  Then the discussion of how to include loved ones came up, and then we started talking about a quick affair in between the September and November jobs.  That's where we were when he left, and I was keeping myself occupied in his absence by thinking of wedding plans, then calling him to see what he thought of this idea or that.

At some point in October, I honestly can't remember when, things got a little haywire.  Distance, weariness, job stress and myriad other things put downward pressure on us.  Someone might have gotten grumpy and uncommunicative.  Of course, that someone might not also have been feeling his best, working 12 hour days and living off restaurant and microwave food.  Seasonal depression, which is a guaranteed annual event, had its way with both of us.  Trying to plan became a chore, a point of contention, an added stress.  We wobbled.   Wedding plans were put on hold - not cancelled, but definitely not on the plate for this year -  we agreed to just table the discussion until he was home.  

We spent the rest of our daily conversations being loving and supportive and counting the days until we could be in the same zip code.

He got back last Tuesday.  We spent two days remembering the thousand things that are so amazing about being together - the ease of things, the chemistry, the deep discussions and the delight of companionship.  We cooked and ate and held hands and smelled each other's skin.  We touched and hugged and crawled under the covers, emerging for water and air now and again.  Thursday we took the lid off the marriage discussion.  We talked and talked about where we are and where we want to go and what we might want to do about that.  And then we drove down to the courthouse and got ourselves a marriage license. 

It will be a small, casual affair with a few family members and friends.  But even so, its amazing all the things that need to be done if you are doing more than eloping over the border to the Chapel of Love in Couer d'Alene.  Most of that is my mother at work, insisting there be flowers and hors d'ouvres and proper champagne glasses.  Hell, I just wanted to find a dress I liked.  I did, too -- and when the final choice fell between "bridal" and "hot" - trust me, I chose HOT.  When you're 45 years old and you find a dress that makes you look hot, you buy it. 

So I'm all set with a beautiful blue dress and a kickass pair of low black pumps.  But you know, me being me, things just can't go that smoothly.

With someone warming the other side of the bed, getting up to run has felt like less and less a priority the last week.  I managed to run on Wednesday and meant to do it on Friday and then on Sunday, but it just didn't happen.  So this morning, I doggedly set the alarm for black-as-night-thirty and dutifully put on my running shoes and vest and threw a leash on T-Bone when it blasted me out of a lovely dream.

We hadn't gone very far when I realized my selected route was much darker than I had anticipated.  I thought there were more street lights along that way, but clearly I have questionable accuracy when it comes to memory.  And about a half mile in as I was considering the need to turn around and find a more well-lit path, it happened.  I tripped over the concrete edge of a square manhole cover and fell, wrenching the holy living crap out of my left ankle in the process.  I managed to crawl up onto the curb and suppress my moans so as not to wake people in nearby houses.  T-Bone, bless his heart, sat as close to me as he could, then curled up on the ground, watching every car that passed with a concerned glare.  When I could talk without sobbing I called SG (always, always always take a phone with you when you run) and asked him to come get me.  Then I passed the time until he got there mentally beating myself up for being so damn stupid and possibly ruining my ability to even walk on our wedding day, much less finish my C25K training plans.

Fortunately its just a bad sprain.  My plan is to keep it elevated and iced until about 2:45PM on Wednesday so I can put a flesh-colored elastic brace on it under an opaque pair of panty hose and actually wear my new black pumps and walk on the damn thing.  I have every confidence that this plan will work and I will not hear a word to the contrary. 

We can have the sidebar discussion on just how much crutches suck later.  If I have to talk about it now I may just weep, and that's not in the cards today.  I refuse to be down about this.  It hurts and it looks like hell, but its a small radar blip in what is otherwise a joyous and bliss-filled week. 

So if you have positive thoughts, prayers or energy to send our way, we'll take all of them you can spare. 

The End. Period.

It may surprise some of you (especially those of you who are friends on Facebook) to know that technically I am not yet divorced.  My ex moved out well over two years ago, but we didn't actually begin divorce proceedings until August of this year.  I don't know why we waited so long, but when I look back at the patterns in my life I note a definite tendency to postpone the inevitable, so I guess I'm just being true to form.   I will rip off a bandaid, jump into cold water, endure the artist's needle, but I will not lend myself readily to painful emotional change. 

The not-quite-yet-divorced status should, if all goes as expected, change tomorrow.  The final paperwork has been signed by my ex, his attorney, my attorney, and myself.  The hearing is scheduled for 8:30 AM (which really means all the lawyers will be in court at 8:30 AM, there will be check-ins for those doing status conferences and eventually the lawyers who have motions to be signed will line up for their turn, then the status conferences will take place and THEN motions that need to be heard will be considered and hopefully they get done sometime before armageddon.  I suspect this is why attorneys charge so much money, its recompense for the stab-yourself-in-the-eye boredom they go through in court every week). 

The final death throes of the marriage took place over a number of years for a number of reasons.  Tomorrow will be the final, gasping breath of the brontosaurus shuddering on the carpet of the rainforest floor.

 

I don't know if I ever really believed that marriage was forever.  I know that I hoped it was.  I don't think there are many people that enter into a relationship commitment planning for its eventual demise, though we all have to realize that its a possibility. 

I am looking forward to settling into a different phase of my relationship with my ex.  I think that now  that we are no longer debating over exactly how to split hairs and then assign ownerhip to halves of hairs that the bulk of the discomfort will be over.  Worrying about what would happen and who would get what if we didn't agree was a soul-consuming experience.  As much as I am trying to learn to lean back and worry more about the ride than the destination, I'm still human and still reacting to my fear more than I would like.  I've struggled with anger and hurt and jealousy.  I've had to learn how to walk away without voicing upsets or concerns that aren't capable of being resolved.  I've learned to let my feelings be felt with the explicit understanding that there isn't a happy-ever-after, there's no reward or prize or mountain summit, just a continuation of life that will undoubtedly serve up fresh suffering after some time passes. 

Falling in love and beginning a new relationship didn't really alleviate those feelings.  It just allowed me to ignore them for longer periods of time.  Ultimately, though, I've got to acknowledge them and allow them to work their way through.  If I don't, they'll just keep causing me pain and there's no reason at all to let that linger longer than it needs to. 

After tomorrow, my ex and I will no longer be husband and wife.  We'll be coparents.  We'll be once-lovers.  People who walked a path together, side by side for a time, and who will continue to parallel one another to a small extent because of our mutual ties to our progeny. 

As our children become adults, I hope that they will be able to comprehend that relationships are complicated and fragile.  I hope that they can understand - and more importantly believe  - that a divorce was never something we envisioned for our family until we actually reached the point where it happened. 

I hope they will learn that when you're an adult living in a world you are coping with your past and your present in ways that often do not make sense.  That unless you give your relationship the time and energy - and compassion - that it requires, it will not thrive.   That once you stop communicating you begin sliding down a hill that only grows steeper the farther down it you travel.

I hope that they will be able to recognize that in the end we both made some hard choices in order to preserve our sanity, healthy, and dignity, and more than anything, I hope that they will forgive us for the impact those choices had on them.

I hope very much that they will be able to see their parent's divorce not as an altogether negative experience.    Divorce is painful, but at the same time, my failed marriage gave me a gift.  Through it I found impetus for growth and change, seeking new ways of interacting with others, with myself, with the world I inhabit.   

The impermanence of things in life offer us gifts.  Tomorrow marks the end of one thing, but offers a new threshold to cross.  

 

A light so bright it hurts my eyes

In the noise and chaos of dealing with too many balls in the air, I'm not overburdened with opportunities to think.  Between the kids, work and animals, usually any chance that I might slow down and string two coherent thoughts together about how I feel and where am I going in life are interrupted because a ball or two is about to go SPLAT!  Quick, catch the ball!  What was I thinking about?  I forgot. 

Suddenly Sunday night arrives and the kids are off to their dad's.  I'll see them after school four out of the next five days, which helps, but its evening, and then its morning, and holy crap, its dark out.  Fall arrived and I was so busy avoiding thinking about it that it I almost didn't notice it happening.  Lets just say now would not be a good time to run out of Wellbutrin. 

I have reason to believe that this winter will be better than last winter, which was better than the winter before.  That two-year-old winter, just post-separation, was fucking brutal.  The kids were fighting our family's circumstances with every fiber of their beings, I was facing nights where my kids were not with me and I had not yet done the work I needed to do to accept that pain as a part of my life.  It was dark, I was alone, and even though I was finally free of living within an angry and shattered marriage, I was not used to being alone.  I made it through, by the skin of my teeth it seemed sometimes, and by the time the next winter came around, I was doing better.  I was making progess in my personal psychological and spiritual practice.  I was finally comfortable with being alone, with periods of quiet contemplation.  I had things to do and friends to enjoy when I needed some time around other people.  I met SG, and for the most part, the rest of the winter seemed effortless.  I was happy, mostly.  The depression was there, of course, it always is, but it crouched inside its little mouse-hole, barely poking its nose out to sniff the air.  Occasionally it would skitter across the floor, only to be vaporized into black smoke by the shining bright light of my happiness.

This year things are somewhat different.  I'm with someone, and yet I'm alone.  It's hard, its a struggle, and let me tell you that every minor relationship issue feels greatly exacerbated when you can't see the other person's face when you're hashing things out.  So its both OK and not OK at the same time - and right there I am reminded of the twofold nature that I try so hard to embrace.  Life includes both joy and pain, and so this is just a natural part of being human. 

The other thing that changed is that my ex and I changed our parenting schedule.  We went to every other week, a situation I wasn't entirely happy with but agreed to because it was pitched so reasonably.  I have a friend that's a judge.  He says most parenting plans are like this and they don't like complicated parenting plans when you go to court.  And really, it makes more sense to limit that number of transitions they have to deal with, especially with our mixed bag of mental health issues.  It took a while, though, before I realized the real reason for it.  (When I figured out that our parenting schedule matches his girlfriend's parenting schedule and they are both surprise! kid-free on the same weeks, I had to draw a little +1 in his column in the imaginary scorecard I keep in my head.  Touche.  Nicely played.  Asshole.)  So before, the last the longest my kids slept somewhere other than my house was two nights in a row.  Its not all that bad, considering.  On the weeks they are with their dad I still pick them up after school until he gets off work.  I still get to be involved in dinner and homework and all the chaos and noise four evenings on the off week.  It helps tremendously.

Sunday afternoons are special.  I savor those last few hours with them, even if we're doing mundane things.  Yesterday we went up to Michelle's and spent horse time.  The drive is a little over a half hour. 

As we drove home, the light was beginning to thin.  My daughter laid her head on my shoulder, and grabbed my free arm to wrap it around my shoulders.  I hugged her, ruffled her hair, touched her soft cheek with my fingers. 

There are moments in time when loving my kids is both the sweetest and most painful thing imaginable.  I am awestruck once again by how incredibly fortunate I am to have these mysterious and quicksilver beings in my life.  I love them completely and without limit, and I know that our time is precious because it will too soon be less available.  They are with me for but a brief span of their lives, and they will drift further and further away from me as they learn how to be independent people.  They will still be mine, in my heart of hearts, but more than that, they are their own.  So I hold my daughter's hand in the car for as long as she will let me, squeezing it gently, savoring the sensation of her fingers entwined and our palms - hers soft and warm, mine calloused and hard - pressing together.

These are the moments I pull from my memory banks to hang on to when the night is dark.  They are the bright light that chases away the shadow. 

This winter will be better.