Barnmaven

Outcomes not expected

After we first separated, my ex and I had a very complicated parenting schedule.  At the time I think it served both of our needs to be able to see our kids on an almost daily basis, and we felt it was good for them to have time with the other parent as frequently as possible.  A few months ago, he suggested we go to an every-other-week schedule.  I wasn't really sure I wanted to make that switch, but I also wasn't certain if I was just being selfish or if the way we were already doing it really was better.   I agreed to give it a try, and after we agreed together on holidays and so forth, we made the switch.

I have to admit, I think this is better.  Right now it works well for me, simply because I am picking them up and taking them to childcare near where I work three days out of the week, every Friday they spend the whole day with their dad and every Wednesday with me, regardless of whose week it is, due to work schedules.  I think its an easier adjustment for them to transition from the rules and the rhythm of one household to another one time a week rather than every day.  I think its giving them more stability in the time they spend with each of us, and a way to really enjoy their time with each parent. 

The one thing I really notice, though, is that every other Sunday, when they have spent a week with their dad and are making the transition between parents, is HARD.  In an I-lost-count-of-how-many-timeouts-they-had kind of way. 

"They're really tuned up," SG noted in that bemused tone of voice he adopts when he's coping with chaos.  "Yeah, I suppose that's one way of putting it," I replied. 

I think its natural for children of two households to have some difficulty transitioning, particularly if there are differences in parenting styles (there are) and in the structure of the households in question.  My ex and I have an informal understanding that we will not tell each other how to parent.  If my children complain that something I have forbidden them to do/play with/eat is A-OK when they're at Daddy's, I simply say "The rules at Dad's house aren't the same as the rules at mine."  There are other things I will allow that my ex won't, but I don't think either one of us is interested in having a tug-of-war over whose way of parenting is "right."  There are so many instances where it isn't a question of right or wrong, we're just Different.  And so I try to temper my reaction to the fighting and the hyperactivity and accept that I have very limited control over how hard it is for them to make the change in households.

Going into the divorce, there were things I expected, and my expectations were met.  I expected it would be painful, I expected it would be stress-ridden and emotional.  I expected my children to have a great deal of difficulty traversing the new road map of our lives.  I expected anger and bitterness and being so lonely sometimes it physically hurt.  I also expected there to be some positives, those things the absence of which is why I wanted the marriage to end in the first place.  And those were there, and to experience my home as a place where there was more peace and serenity than not was a revelation.  On top of those positives, though, were a few unexpected gifts.

Even with the injection of the noise and the chaos on these every-other-Sunday transfers, it is a relief to have them under my roof, to go to sleep at night knowing they are just a few feet away, to wake in the morning knowing I'll soon be rousting them out of their beds.  Their childhood years are finite, and every week they are not with me I know I'm missing something precious.  Something that has slipped through my fingers without me even being aware that it existed.  The ability to reach out and physically touch my children is something I no longer take for granted. 

Every other week, I learn to be a person who has children but who does not have them with her.  I learn to find that part of myself that doesn't exist simply to be Mother and I nurture her.  I go on dates with SG and we enjoy the freedom of being grownups without curfews.  I was so used to worrying about whether my kids were being good for the sitter or going to bed on time or trying to keep tabs on them if I brought them to a social engagement.  Its a different world to attend a party or have dinner in a restaurant when you aren't constantly doing a mental check on how the kids are doing and if you need to throttle down some energy or head a fight off at the pass.  Agonizing over the fact that my children are with their other parent isn't going to make the time between pass any faster.  I have learned to just accept it and find pleasure in the positives.

There are times, as always, I roll with the punches and life is simply about coping with too many things that are hard.  But more and more of late, there are days when life has much more richness and joy than anxiety and turbulence. 

When and why

My mom usually hands me a stack of magazines whenever I stop by.  There's always some article or the other that she thinks I'll find interesting.  Usually she hands me the Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, that sort of thing.  When I stopped by to chitchat after choir practice on Wednesday, though she gave me the May/June copy of AARP. 

She knew I would find this confusing, so she quickly pointed out the cover photo and article - a piece on Amy Grant and Vince Gill.  Oooh, thanks mom!

I became an instant fan of Amy Grant when i was a sophomore in college.  Somebody had a tape of The Collection (remember tapes!  And having a Walkman!  Damn, I'm old) and she hooked me from the start.  Its not that she had this amazing vocal range or these deep and twisty lyrics, or even that she looked like this glamorous superstar.  It was all of the opposite that drew me - her voice was lovely and just this side of untrained, her lyrics were simple and down to earth and so was she.   There has always been an emotional framework in the songs she performs that says "I have the same challenges and fears and joys that you do, let me sing to you about them." 

It wasn't necessarily as a Christian artist that she appealed to me.  It was just her and the way that she sang.  It wasn't just that she sang Jesus songs - she did, sure, but she also sang songs about life and about feeling insecure and lonely and silly and happy.  I could relate.

I was lucky enough over the years to see her in concert a few times, and she's one of those artists who sounds just the same live as she does on her albums.  I thinks she's been lucky to work with some really smart producers who wisely chose not to overprocess her voice and just let who she really is shine through her work.

Maybe her crossover pop was a little sugary and sweet, but I think there's a place in this world for music that speaks to the simple things of love and family and all the connections innate to being a woman - daughter, sister, partner, parent.  In her music and in her interviews I always took away the feeling that she truly loved people just as they were, no matter who they were, and accepted them exactly where they are.  Of course, the enormous amount of money and talent and time she has given to charity over the years speaks volumes to her deep compassion for others.

When Amy and Gary split in 1998 I was also going through a divorce.  When she married Vince(with whom it was clear to anyone with eyeballs that saw the "making of" House of Love video she was deeply in love), I was also marrying my second husband.  When she was pregnant with Corrina, I was pregnant with my daughter.  I, too had endured the shaming and blaming that happens when marriages end and had left a church because of it; I empathized deeply with what it must have felt like for her to have that scrutiny amplified infinitely, a Christian artist getting divorced in front of the prying eyes of the world. 

I loved the article and the interview. I'm truly happy that Amy and Vince are still together, still in love.  Its hard, I know this, when you marry a person and you intend it to be forever and things go wrong and you realize at some point that its not going to work. Its wonderful when you find the person with whom you have a deep, loving and spiritual connection, who accepts you where you are and loves you unconditionally.

After I finished reading the article I thought about so much of what had been written about Amy and Vince and their respective first marriages/divorces.  As I often do when something crosses my mind, I hit my search engine and Googled a few articles.

I came across an article by Wendy Zoba written back in 2000 for Christianity Today.  The entire tone of the article was at best dubious about whether Amy had done the right thing by divorcing Gary Chapman.  Zoba wrote:

"Anyone who has persevered in marriage will attest that in deed there are moments of "enjoying to the fullest," but that often attends many tedious, sometimes painful, stretches. The best premarital advice I received came from our pastor's wife: "There are going to be times when you'll hate each other's guts." Those moments have been few and far between, but when they have occurred, my husband and I recognized this was normal and would pass."

This is just so offensive to me.

Not that Zoba and her husband are fortunate enough to have the kind of marriage where the rocky times are few and far between.  Not..not at all that.  What chokes me is the assumption that she makes that Amy and Gary's relationship was just like hers.

Now, I don't know that it was or wasn't.  But neither does Wendy Zoba.  Neither does any other person who has pointed a judgmental finger at someone else for getting a divorce.

If two people are so fortunate as to have a marriage where the times they "hate each other's guts" are few and far between and that they mutually recognized that the bad time would pass, then of course I wouldn't expect to see them tripping over each other's feet in the race to find a divorce attorney.

But comparing her own relationship to the relationship between Amy and Gary, which by many accounts was troubled for years, or to the relationship of anyone who has sought a divorce for entirely legitimate reasons, if this is the basis on which she's concluding that people ought to stay together, no matter what, then I cry "foul."

I know a lot of people feel like marriage is supposed to be forever, that you're supposed to stick it out for eternity except in cases of infidelity or abuse.  But I simply can't accept that as the case.

A marriage - or any sort of love partnership for that matter - is supposed to be a bond where the people in the relationship are both bettered by being with their partner more of the time than they are not.  Every relationship, even those where a couple is starry-eyed smitten after years and years together, still has its rocky times.  I've never personally met anyone who has been with their partner for a number of years who has never had a disagreement.  But those couples, even though they've had a fight here and there, or even overcome a very serious issue, the relationship they shared contained more positive than negative, more good than bad, more light than dark. 

But what happens when that's not the case?  Is it really correct to tell people whose relationship brings them nothing but heartache and anger that they must stay married, no matter what?  Can any therapist or minister truly counsel a couple who have spent years fighting, pulling each other down, whose love styles and personalities, beliefs or opinions are truly antithetical that they must stay together?   What good does that do for anyone? 

While other people might have opinions about why my marriage ended, only my ex and I know the whole truth of it.  We were the ones living it, struggling with it day by day. 

Its not that I don't think marriage is important or not to be taken seriously.  Of course it is. But I think people need to be careful when making assumptions about what goes on behind the closed doors of other peoples' lives.  Don't be so hasty to judge.  Most people don't tell you the whole truth, we are taught from early on not to tell the family secrets, to minimize things, to keep what is private, private.  I have been surprised many times by finding out someone was being physically abused or that someone was being cheated on, or even that people who seemed really happy whenever they were around friends and family actually had screaming fights constantly when they were home alone together. The announcement of their divorce was shocking, because nobody knew there was anything wrong.

Ultimately, I don't think its healthy for anyone to stay in a relationship that makes them miserable.  There is no growth in that, there is nothing about it that makes you a better human being, a better parent, or closer to God.  Sometimes the best that can be done is to accept that something is not working and do your best to carefully pick up the pieces and go forward, toward a happier future.

Reparations

"I don't want to spend my whole life down on my knees

Just fixing what I've broke."

- Hem, The Pills Stopped Working from Funnel Cloud, 2006

What are your regrets in life? What are the things you did in your past that hurt another person that they either never forgave you for or for which you never made amends?  You know, the unresolved ones.

When I left my first husband there was no awful thing that he'd done wrong, no infidelity (on his part), no lying, no abuse, nothing.  I went through a lifequake of epic proportions when I found my birthfamily and pretty much fell off a cliff.  I didn't want anything to do with anyone, didn't want to work, didn't want to be married, didn't want to have majored in English, wanted my whole life back so I could do it over and be who I finally thought that I was.  The best I could do was end what I came to realize was a marriage of incompatible people and try again. 

In retrospect, I was incredibly selfish and immature.  Maybe we *were* incompatible, but how would I know?  I didn't try.  I believe he will never forgive me for it.  I don't believe he has to.  Its not a requirement.  And I also believe there is nothing in this world that I can do to make amends for shattering his life.  I can apologize.  I can say it was all my fault, that he did nothing wrong.  But I can never, ever fix it.

Should I have to?

12 years later, he sends me an email to let me know the dog we had together has passed away, as he did last year when one of the cats died.  And I let him know about a mutual friend who passed.  We are polite, we don't ask questions or talk of personal things, but at least we are polite.  There is no meanness, no need to dredge up painful pasts.  I'm comfortable with that.

I remember a friend I had, she was a very needy friend and very controlling.  We had entered a contest together, the Milk Carton Derby during Seafair.  We didn't win the judging, but we did win a random drawing for two tickets on Continental Airlines, anywhere they flew domestically.  For me, it was great timing.  I was planning on going to Boston with my rowing club to compete in the Head of the Charles.  I wasn't sure how I would be able to afford to get there, so this ticket was like a gift straight from God.  My friend, though, thought that we should use our tickets to go somewhere TOGETHER.  I offered a compromise, I would take extra vacation days while in Boston and after the race was over, she and I could do some touring around New England.  It would be in the fall, the best time of year to be in the Northeast. 

My mother's cousin's widow lived in Boston, in a very fine old neighborhood, in an enormous house.  It was three full stories with a basement, she came from old money.  She very generously offered her home to me and any of the other rowers who needed a place to stay. 

My friend wasn't interested in this shared housing, and she tried to find herself a hotel room in Boston.  She could not find any hotel that wasn't already booked.  She called me, angry and demanding a solution.  I said I hadn't realized that so many people would be in town for the race, maybe she wanted to change her mind and stay at my relative's house?  She SHRIEKED at me.  "People aren't in town for your FUCKING RACE, you idiot, they're there for a convention.  Your stupid race isn't that important!!  And no, I don't want to stay at your cousin's house with a BUNCH OF FUCKING DYKES!!!!"  And hung up on me.

She never spoke to me again.  I left her a couple of half-hearted messages, hoping to patch things up, but she never returned my calls, and frankly it was a relief.  (And just for the record, I had a WONDERFUL time in Boston.  We took a silver medal in the women's 8, and a couple of us rented a car and drove to Vermont and did a bunch of sightseeing and had a wonderful vacation. SO THERE.)

I have wondered about her since then, whether she still hates me.  What she would say if we just randomly ran into one another at the grocery store or at a restaurant.

Would she expect me to fall on my knees and apologize?  Would I want to?  

I wouldn't expect it of her, even though I thought her behavior was horribly rude and selfish.  She probably thought that I was the one being selfish.  And rude.  I think where the disconnect happened was that she had very high expectations of me, expectations I wasn't going to fulfill.  That was the beginning of a painful breach that has never healed.

Another person comes to mind, a man who, though I didn't date him for long, was a big part of creating the codependent monster I eventually became.  He was an alcoholic, much older than me.  In the months that we were together, I became unbalanced as I tried to fix him, control him.  The relationship was one of the worst in my life.  He was always at the bar, drinking.  He never came home when he said he would.   He would pick on me for my clothing or my weight or my hair.  I was never good enough.  He cheated on me.  He gave me an STD.  After I finally grew the ovaries to throw all of his belongings in black plastic garbage bags and put them in his car, I spent years being furious with him.  I wanted him to SEE how wrong he had been.  To acknowledge it.  TO GROVEL ON THE GROUND AND BEG MY FORGIVENESS.  To change. 

The things that went wrong with J and I, for a while I did the same thing.  And even when he owned his part in things, I still felt unsatisfied.  I was still angry and I wanted someone to PAY.  To grovel.  To fix what they had broken.

As time passes, I realize that I do not have that right.  A person can only apologize for what they own as a wrong.  If there are reparations to be made, if they have the ability to make them, ok.  But most often, in friendships and interpersonal relationships, there is nothing the other person is going to be able to do that makes you feel better.  That part, the getting over the anger part, that's up to ME.  And damn, that's harder than hell to do.  To stop expecting people to fix the broken thing in me.   Its happening, though.  I think I'm starting to understand the concept of accepting responsibility for my own repair.  At the same time, learning to stop being endlessly angry with the people I feel have hurt me.  Being mad isn't going to make them admit their offenses.  Being mad isn't going to make them sorry.  I need to let it go, write it on a piece of paper and burn it in the fireplace.  Cry my tears and let the river flow away, taking my pain and anger and hurt with it.

Because I too would like the forgiveness of others.  I dont' want to, cannot, spend my whole life groveling for forgiveness, trying to fix the broken parts of other people.  Its not my job.

Someday, I think, if I work on this hard enough, I really will know peace.  Someday.

The Grand Scheme of Things

It's a good thing its Friday.  That means tomorrow's Saturday.  That means tomorrow is the day I can go ride for a few hours, and right now I really need to go be on a horse.

As much as this was a productive week (I cleared out the jungle in the front that used to be a vegetable garden.  Cleared it to the ground.  Go, me) it has also been a very difficult week emotionally.  First there was this, and believe me it has been a very difficult time at work. Everyone is emotional, odd things and comments set off random bouts of tears.  Not only that, but someone close to me is having an enormous personal struggle, and I'm worried very much about their safety and well being.   And frankly, when I read the news, I sort of understand why people feel so damned hopeless. This is a hard world we live in, and we are in frightening times of late.  On top of everything else, my dog Lady has really been on my mind lately.  I'm missing her so much it takes my breath away sometimes. 

Friday nights are hard, as well, because the kids are at their dad's, and even though I often relish my quiet time, and I get my time to ride on Saturdays because they are spending time with J, I still miss them.  I always feel a little at loose ends on Friday nights.  I don't go out much, so its just me and the critters.  Half the time I eat a bowl of cereal standing in the kitchen, watching Olbermann and wondering why I'm such a pathetic homebody. 

In this little corner of the world, I look at all the voices clamoring for attention.  I know I'm one of them, a speck among the multitude, seeking relevance, seeking understanding, seeking connection.  At the beginning and the end of it all, and most of the time in between, we are truly alone with ourselves.  We suffer pain alone.  We can seek out comfort from others, we can receive solace from the support and love of those around us, but ultimately each of us bears our own pain in our own way, and no one else knows its depths or its breadth.  Thinking of the pain of others often releases me from the necessity of dealing with my own feelings.  It tends to remind me, as well, that even when my life seems very small, insignificant and challenging, I have many blessings and that spending time dwelling on what is painful isn't really a helpful way to spend my time.  Still, its there.  For all of us.

How do we find hope and meaning in all of this?

Faith helps me.  I don't know if there's a "grand plan" for my life, but I have the hope that there's something more, something greater.  My friend Charles tells me there is.  Actually, he tells me a lot of jokes, too, and you know those help. 

My children help me.  How can I not look on these faces and feel that my life has meaning, has purpose?

 

I can also look at the kindness of friends and family, like Michelle, who every Saturday blesses me by coming by with her horse trailer and taking me out to the trail.  Like my brother, who every time he comes to visit me takes my kids to play for a couple of hours and then cooks me dinner on top of it.  My online community, who send me tweets and leave me comments, and give me so much support just by being there.

And I see things like this .  And I remember that despite all in this world that is painful and hard and scary, that there really IS love and hope.  And sparkly unicorns that leave glittering piles of happy. 

And I still get to ride tomorrow. 

The Less I Know

Converse of that old saying, "The older I get the more I know," I believe my life is teaching me that the older I get the LESS I actually do know.  At least, the less I find I that I will fight you to the death to be right about.

I have begun to find that I am a woman who likes it when her ideas are challenged; likes it when she has to admit she's wrong.  I do.  Its painful sometimes, but I still like it. 

Its not that I don't have opinions, thoughts, beliefs.  I do.  There are still, in my outlook, some things that aren't so flexible.  Protecting children.  Mandatory castrations for rapists and child molesters.  UW tops WSU.  Basketball trumps football.  Life is a journey.  Voting is a right people died to attain for you so get off your ass and do it.  That sort of thing.  But a lot of the other things I "used to know" -  they've changed and evolved over the years, my thoughts on relationships, parenting, politics, faith.  When I was in my 20's I would take a stand and prepare for battle.  I KNEW what I knew. If you didn't agree with me you were questionable. I was absolutely rigid in the strength of my convictions and my knowledge of the future.  Every life-altering decision I made was right for me - whether it was or not.  I played hopscotch on the landscape of my future, firm in the unwavering resolve of my immature mind.  Humility was an infrequent, perhaps completely absent companion.  My life was an adventure written on scraps of paper then cast willy-nilly into the air.  I didn't realize then that it was paper I was casting, I believed it was stones, stones that would stay where thrown and sit tight under the weight of my will.  But paper it was and paper it remains. 

Paper swirls and dances and tosses on the wind of chance and whim.  Paper might stay still if you can put your finger on a corner and hold it there, but if you are distracted even for a moment, off that paper flies to dance and skitter across the yard.

Consequence.  It was a word I struggled mightily to avoid, large, unforgiving, crushing.  As long as I could avoid consequence I could live in the denial that my ego demanded.  Eventually, like chickens come home to roost, consequence found me.  Picked me up and body-slammed me to the ground.  As I lay there, gasping for breath, realization dawned that the consequences were not going to end quickly or painlessly.  No wonder I had avoided them for so long.

The amazing thing about having your life fall apart is the opportunity that it creates. 

It has been the end of my assurance to self and others that I have it all figured out.  It has been the acceptance of my humanity and all of the simultaneous strength and frailty that term encompasses.  In the last year I have learned, slowly and painfully, that I'm not always right.  That just because I have an expectation doesn't mean that it is reasonable.  That if someone disagrees with me I don't have to argue them down into the dust; that I can listen to their thoughts and beliefs with my ears AND my mind open. 

It was when I realized I knew nothing that the path to learning everything opened wide. 

Wishes

I had something lighthearted all written up to post today, I was just going to give it some last minute editing and then schlep it onto the blog.

But something else found its way to my heart to be blogged about today, I'm sure that happens to all of us from time to time.

Sometimes as a parent I feel confident that I know what I'm doing.  I know my kids, I get what it is they need from me, and for the most part I feel like I am doing a good job providing it.  The divorce is hard, on all of us.  I am confident this is the right step, for lots of reasons.  We've had lots of therapy with the kids and had assurances from the professionals, the people who are supposed to know what they're doing, that we are handling this in the best way possible, putting our kids needs first insomuch as that is possible, and providing them with much love and assurance to help them feel secure. 

I know, from talking to other parents, to professionals and through what I've read, that even when kids really understand that there are valid reasons for their parents to split up, even when they readily admit that they like living without the fighting, at heart they still always wish for their parents to reconcile, to have their family in one piece again.  And even though I understand this, intellectually, emotionally - its still extremely painful to be reminded that the decisions we make as parents have deep and unavoidable consequences for our children.

In addition to really enjoying writing stories, my daughter likes to make lists.  She makes lists of her friends, of her animals, her family members.   I don't know if it is a self-comforting method or just a way of understanding the framework of her life.  As I was putting clean clothes away in her room, I found this, her latest list.

 
 

The first three things are sad enough.  AT 8 my daughter already wants to be popular, and as a child with behavior issues, that's going to be difficult for her.  But the fourth?  I felt my heart sink to the ground and shatter. 

I know she needs to be able to say these things, and I'm not going to ever tell her that she can't wish for her mom and dad to be together.  But its hard knowing that I can't make her wishes come true.   Even though I believe that I am doing the right thing, reading her words makes me wish I had the ability to change history, erase time, start over again and do things differently.  And I just. cant.

Its that moment of I'm trying to do what I know is right for me and by doing it I'm hurting my kids.

Inventory

I'm wrapping my head around a thought today.  You're shocked, aren't you?  Of course.  Not.

What's your reaction when someone tells you they think you're not a nice person?  Not a good person?  How do you react to criticism?

I have an old habit of taking criticism deeply to heart.  Obsessing over it.  Having endless imaginary conversations with the deliverer of the criticism, wherein I eventually realize what I wished I'd said to them then and kicking myself for not being smart enough to think of that response at the time.  I simultaneously buy into the criticism - not in an objective way but in an "I'm a terrible person" way, and I reject it.  That's the kind of stuff that makes you crazy.  It does.  I should know.

I don't think any of us see ourselves as others do, in both the very best and the very worst sense.  I don't believe the good things.  Rarely, anyway.  And what I think they are probably looking at as a negative thing usually isn't close to the thing that actually bothers them.  I believe, like many people, that I live in denial of my own worst nature.

I'm working, slowly, on changing the way I react to other people, the way I treat myself.  I want to ideally be the kind of person who looks at myself and acknowledges what's good and truthfully acknowledges what the problems are.  I know that only by really accessing those parts of myself that hurt and that are constantly reacting because of that hurt can I truly change them.  BUT.  I also have to have the judgment to evaluate and discard those negatives which aren't really true.  

I'm no different from a lot of people in that I constantly find myself taking other people's inventories.  Focusing on what's wrong with someone else is a surefire way to avoid dealing with my own stuff.  When we get to Step 4 (I will, eventually, I'm still stuck on Steps 1, 2 and 3), we stop taking stock of others and we enter a process that is at first painful and agonizing, but ultimately one that frees us.  We look at ourselves. We don't just pick a bunch of bad things and go with it, but we have to truly evaluate not just the faults we think we have, but the ones others have pointed out.  We sift for truth.  We acknowledge - and sometimes we reject.  We assess the impact our actions and words have had on other people and own up to what we've done that was unnecessary and hurtful. 

I believe that when this process is finished, many many years down the road, I'll be a much more enlightened and peaceful person.  I'll know my real faults.  When someone criticizes me or tells me they think I'm a bad person, I won't get angry or defensive.  I'll recognize my own truth and be able to let them work through whatever it is they're going through.  I'll acknowledge my own part in the conflict and make amends.  But until then?  I'm going to have to remind myself to stop obsessing over every cruel, hurtful word.  I have to remind myself that just because someone else thinks something about me doesn't make it true.  Because some things just aren't. 

Unraveling

We sat in the kitchen, miserable. We sorted through the detritus of more than a decade, argued over what was important and what was cared about and who would get custody of which things. We talked for the millionth time about why we ended up where we are and acknowledged one more time that we both would have done things differently Some people say that regret is a wasted emotion, and of course the past being a fixed path is unchangeable and inflexible. No, regret cannot change the course of water that has already flowed downstream. So often, because we are told that it is useless to regret, we shelve what we regret and move on.  I believe that regret is worth at least a periodic sifting-through, if you will, because how else will we make better choices in the future if we learned nothing from our mistakes of the past?

We do not own the time that we are given, not the length and breadth of it, but the choices we make are ours and we must own them.  I know that parts of this unraveling I own.  I am trying to instill in myself, on a cellular level, that which I already intellectually know:  I am responsible for my own emotions. 

When I am hurt, when I am angry, it is not up to someone else to make those feelings go away.  That is my job, mine alone.  The actions of others might soothe me, momentarily, ultimately I am the person who must decide to move on from my anger and hurt.  Forgive, never forget, but let it go.  Dwelling on past hurts is one of the most certain ways that I know of to be miserable, unhappy and bitter.  Someone hurt you?  I'm sorry.  Now LET IT GO.  If I had understood this, in theory and in practice, life right now would look very different. 

 In the same vein, I am not responsible to someone just because they think I should be.  When I buy into the philosophy that I owe another person something or that I must not do what I believe is right because it might make them feel bad, I am failing myself. This is a lesson for me, not for the other person.  How many times do I have to let myself be swayed by imposed guilt into doing something that I don't want to do before I realize that I shouldn't be letting other people dictate my boundaries?  How many times should I apologize to someone for how I feel before I realize that they don't have the right to tell me what my feelings on any certain subject should be?  When I failed to honor my own feelings and boundaries, I created a landscape in which I continually felt used, misunderstood and ignored.  *I* created it.  I can't blame another person for doing what I allowed them to do.

So I learn and I move on.  I watch the once churning riptide of a marriage subside and flow back into the deeps, examine the whorls and striations it has left behind in the sand of my soul.  I study them well, seeking greater wisdom in the learning of how I hurt myself and others.  I make promises to myself that I'm not sure I know how to keep, to not do this again.  That Next Time I will be stronger.  Next Time I will honor my boundaries.  Next Time I will remember that in relationships one does well to wade in from the shallow end, not to dive into the deepest part too soon.  Next Time I will limit my expectations of others, and increase my expectations of my self.  Next Time, I will not let fear and insecurity erode my foundations. 

And if there is no Next Time, I will still practice good relationship skills with my children, with my family, with my friends. 

I am sad that we lost our way.  I know that things could have been different, but we let ourself be drawn in ways that divided us.   I hope that someday we can forgive each other for our hurts, that we can treat each other always in a way that honors the relationship we once had and that honors the children that we created together. 

We grasp the opposite ends of the thread that held us together and together we tug.  Bit by bit, the unraveling takes place.   No stopping it now, no going back.  The only thing to do is, the right thing to do, is to step over the pile of thread, look to the future and hold on to just enough of the past to help keep me on my path.

A sandwich I really didn't want to eat. Either day.

This morning I hit "off" instead of "snooze" on my alarm, my boxer gifted me with multiple piles of liquid stool that required cleaning, and to top it all off I spilled coffee down the front of my white t-shirt as I was pulling out of the daycare parking lot after dropping off my son.  I was an hour and a half late for work.  Yup, the morning was a capital P Poop Sandwich complete with cheese fries on the side.  Me?  Fine!  Yes, I'm terrific!  Absolutely awesome, thanks for asking!  Just please remove all sharp objects from the room for your safety and mine.  And don't slam the door when you leave.  Maybe lock it behind you.

I'm unreasonably emotional this week.  I could have blamed it on Aunt Flo from Red Bank paying me a visit, but that euphemism actually packed her bags and left a day or two ago.  And the emotional nuclear warhead of my monthly cycle typically detonates somewhere between 3-5 days prior to her visit.  So I guess estrogen can't be blamed.  Could be I'm hitting the low swing of the pendulum on my bipolar cycle, but even that doesn't quite seem to "fit." 

As a preface to today's stellar beginning, yesterday's emotional fun can best be described as a whole fecking bunch of "meh."  And maybe a heaping, stinky ol' poop sandwich.  Two in a row.  Yum. 

Its hard to know just how much stuff it is OK to write about the separation.  Some people who read these pages know us both.   I don't want to say anything disrespectful of my children's father.  I want J and I to be not just people who paste a smile on our faces for the benefit of our children, not just people who coexist without fighting, but parents who raise our children together respectfully as friends on the same team, even if we no longer live together. 

Letting go is a much more gradual process when you have children together.  I think at this point in time I can't envision what that will look like when it is fully done.  Putting aside feelings of resentment and anger, jealousy and disappointment, there are still going to be times when our lives are unavoidably entwined.  In some ways we are still entwined in ways financial that I think contribute toward an unhealthy continuation of codependency.    But as time goes on and we both go about the process of living separate lives, there are inevitable places along the way where things are really fucking hard.

As things that were once held jointly get separated out, not only do the minor earthquakes and tremors surrounding those dissections cause emotional distress, but I also find the the finality of each thread's unraveling is profoundly sad.  Every step that we take toward living completely separate lives, not just physically but on paper as well, is another step toward something I realize is inevitable, but also another step away from the dream that we held on to for such a long time.  It is heartbreaking.  

I feel so disconnected from the rest of my friends, nearly all of whom are married or in relationships.  I have become a cliche, a middle-aged single woman.  Single in a double world.  Even the bloggers I follow are, for the most part, happily married or happily partnered.  This venture into the foreign landscape of a solo person is at the same time peaceful and fraught with angst.  I can't relate to people who are in love, who are happily married, who have someone they spend time with other than their children or friends.  I find myself drawing inward, feeling awkward and out of place in social situations.  Everyone else is a "we."  I'm just an "I."  And even though that's truly how I felt more and more over the last few years, I still had the social trappings of being a "we" and so belonged in the club of the twos. 

Its not that this is all bad.  Its certainly better than the alternative.   I don't' have to be answerable to anyone for my time.  How it's spent.  Who its spend with.  What the price tag is.  But the reality of freedom is that it's often not as "free" as it sounds when you're looking at it from over the fence.  I never wanted to be out of my marriage so that I could go DO WHAT I WANTED.  I wanted out of it because I couldn't live in it the way it was.  I can't speak for J, but I'm pretty sure that's where he was at too.  We devolved to the point to the point of being so miserable and angry with each other that we couldn't even hold a simple conversation.  It was no way to live. 

But even as miserable as we were, this is still so fucking hard to do.  I never expected to be feeling this sad about it.  I thought I would be OK with letting go of the little pieces as they slipped away.  And of course, I'm not really "ok" with it at all.  OK in concept.  And very sad as the process becomes real.  It would be so disrespectful to the relationship we tried incredibly hard at to be glad to see it go.  We don't deserve it, the two beautiful children we made don't deserve it. 

I guess at the root of it, the separation is no different than any other thing in life.  There are good days and bad days, days that are incredible and those that are unbearable.   A recent conversation with a friend who is having her own very transformative life changes going on reminded me that the grief process is not limited to matters of death and dying.  No wonder I feel like someone punched me in the lower cortex.  So tonight, as a panacea to the poop sandwich I feel I've been gnawing on lately and as a balm to soothe my grieving spirit, I think I"m gonna just have chocolate and vodka for dinner.  With a side of a box of kleenex and a DVD of Girls Don't Cry. And let my stinky dogs lay on my bed with me.  And cry.  That chocolate's going to taste a lot better than what I've been chewing on the last few days.

Does my child belong in public?

I know, two posts in a day.  Maybe I'll take a week off to make up for it.

Her Bad Mother posted today about whether it is discriminatory for store owners to not want babies in their stores.  This just after I had posted about ADHD and my frustration sometimes with people's reaction to my daughter's behavior.  ADHD, bipolar, autism, aspergers, PDD-NOS, all have the commonality of being mostly "invisible" disabilities.  It is not immediately clear that the child you see as "misbehaving" in public is actually having a meltdown due to sensory overload or the inability to appropriately process something they are experiencing.   And no, I'm not saying that it's easier for parents of children with visible disabilities.  Its just different experiences that we have. ( I have my own pet peeves about the people who stare at the boy with leg braces or the girl in the wheelchair.  Go up and smile and say "hello" to them for fuck's sake.  They're people, not zoo exhibits.)

There was recently another online shakeup over a mother's complaint on her blog regarding the behavior of another child in the library.  Mothers of autistic children recognized some hallmark signs of autism (hand flapping, low frustration tolerance) and went apeshit in their defense of the child, prompting Smockity to remove the post and apologize.

One of the commenter's on HerBadMother's post wrote this:

"I am a mom and have 3 kids- 2 younger ones (9 & 10) that I take with me everywhere I go. They are well-behaved and don’t go into stores acting stupid, being loud, and manhandling the items and breaking things. But there are ppl out there, and you have all seen them, I know I have, who come in with WILD, unruly, loud, destructive children and the parents don’t even TRY to control them. I have seen it NUMEROUS times in almost every store I have been to. It is THOSE parents with THOSE kids that make ppl leary of having young kids around & I don’t blame them. It is a parent’s responsibility to make sure your children act civilized and behaved when in a public place, especially a store that sells breakable items."

OK, for one?  HOW NICE FOR YOU that your children are well-behaved.  Lovely, really.  You must, by your own definition, be a REALLY GOOD PARENT.  That of course leaves me contemplating the fact that in comparison with YOU, I must not be a Very Good Parent at all.  Because MY KIDS?  They are sometimes the "THOSE KIDS" you speak of with such contempt. 

Honestly, when I hear someone tell me how their children are always perfectly behaved in public and that parents of poorly behaved children have no right to take their children into the public eye, I want to SMACK SOMEONE.  I want to have a big fat tantrum of my own, right in the middle of the fucking room.  How dare you tell me that my daughter has less of a right than your child, who blessedly for you, lacks neurological issues?  How.  Dare. You.  I'd love to be one of those parents with perfectly behaved children.  Truly, I would.  Its the fantasy I always had of motherhood.  I pictured myself looking exactly like June Cleaver, feeding my perfectly groomed tots perfectly cooked food, placing my perfectly cool hand on their feverish foreheads when they were sick, reading them stories in a perfectly expressive voice while they lay tucked in their perfect beds in their perfect pj's, playing perfectly nice games like Monopoly and Scrabble with them.  OK, I do some of those things anyway (well, not Monopoly and Scrabble, more like Whack-A-Mole, but you know what I mean).  Never in my life did I imagine that the biggest challenge I would face as a mother had everything to do with something I could not control. 

I'd love it if the people who complain about my children being in public would offer to come babysit my children for me so that I can go shopping or run errands without them.  I'm a single mom now, don't you know, and can't really afford to hire a babysitter for the weekly grocery shop.  CPS rather frowns on me leaving them home alone or locking them in the car - or better yet, leashing them to the parking meter.  Or perhaps you feel that since my children aren't always well-behaved that we don't deserve to have groceries? 

Maybe when my kid does have a meltdown in the store and I am frantically trying to deal with it, instead of staring at us or speaking rudely about us, maybe you could help me maneuver my cart out of the way and keep an eye on my other child while I am otherwise engaged.  Maybe you could ask me "How can I help?" when you can clearly see that I am overwhelmed and trying to stay calm.  Maybe you could just give me a friendly look instead of staring at me like you wished my kid and I didn't exist.

I'm not making this shit up.  People do this to us, all the time.  When I was testing the waters in my faith journey, I tried going to a couple of churches.  One place I went to I thought would be welcoming of people with differences.  I blogged about it before, how after the service, my kids threw simultaneous tantrums.  NOT ONE PERSON OFFERED TO HELP ME.  They just stood there in horrified silence as I worked to corral my kids and get them out the door to the car.  Trying to figure out how to carry my then-60 pound daughter to the car and not leave her also-tantruming brother inside alone with strangers was a little bit more than I could handle at the moment.  I never set foot in that church again.

Maybe I can't write about this, maybe I shouldn't.  I'm angry right now.  Maybe being angry isn't the right way to change people's perceptions, but I can tell you that it is not fun being the person who gets stared at and talked about, no matter what the reason.  I don't accept that I should feel shameful or guilty because I don't have perfect children.  Except that when we get treated this way, I do.  Feel shamed.  Guilty.  Like I'm a bad person, a shitty mother.  A less-than-stellar citizen.

I hate it. 

**Check out this great post by Leah at workitmom.com on kids on airplanes.  I puffy heart her.