A dead end street is a good place to turn around ~Naomi Judd
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living -unknown
Thirteen months ago, The Husband found gainful employment two hours away. I got excited for a minute. "This is our second chance" he had said. We would go to counseling when we moved there, he claimed. Give it one more real try. With the stipulation that I would find some accountability there for checking in on how I was treating him. Until we all moved to Clean Slate as a family, everything was on hold. Put in a box, emotion-wise. To be continued. And we ran things on the surface, civil and family-friendly. Still no kisses or touches or real engagement of any sort.
We put our house on the market, and he left Monday through Friday. Back to Stepford on the weekends, when I would go to work. It was the best summer I can recall. I had picnics and pool days with my children. We made cards and crafts and fed the ducks and geese at the pond. We picked raspberries and blueberries multiple times. We made pies and cobblers and muffins. I read books like I used to years ago (for fun, not for crisis-save-my-marriage). I wore sundresses with no underwear. I discovered the weekly podcast of NPR's "This American Life" which I used to love to hear on NPR, but couldn't find on our radio for years. I played music with good beats and likely inappropriate lyrics for my children. But we sang and danced and ate dinners outside.
After several weeks into this, maybe a month, I recognized that on every Thursday night I would fold in on myself. Like the time-lapse photography of a blooming flower. In reverse. Because he would be coming home the next day. And Who I Am was nothing of interest to him. There was nothing between us but parenting and running the house communication. It was all very amicable mostly, but having some time to bloom alone I did not like having him around and wishing for a relationship that just wasn't. And I was discovering Me again. And that I liked who I was more than my husband did. I had forgotten myself in the maelstrom. And for years before, truth be told.
And then it was fall. House still not sold in this crap pre-election economy. So kids start school and we continue this weekly routine. Only I add the gym and running every morning after the kids are in school. More books. More podcasts like "The Moth". More candles in the house and sassy clothes purchased, not always worn. Just on hold. Less linear living. We take a stepladder to a huge apple tree in our subdivision once a week after school and fill a huge basket with them. We make cakes and pies and applesauce and share them. We 'Boo' friends houses in October with Halloween goodies, my children sneaking up to ring the doorbell and run. It was the best fall I can recall. Until each Thursday afternoon-ish, when I would shrivel back up inside. It was nothing he did when he was home; he's a basic good man and a wonderful father. It was just everything we were. And were not.
And then I f*cked up. Spectacularly. And everything imploded. So I guess in the end that's a good thing. -ish. I still haven't decided exactly in hindsight, because there was serious loss as well. Glad I am not trudging that same worn path of my hopeless marriage, but unsure if anything other than a bomb blast would have moved us on out of the building. Condemned. Been condemned. Why are you still in this building? Can you not see it's unsafe for occupancy?
A lot of my belief system is upside down in the months since, so what you read now may or may not sound like the same girl who wrote the last three years of sh!t on this blog. I cannot even go back and read all that bemoaning and angst, it's excruciating. I could trim this blog to about a third of its original ramblings and agree with those. The rest I would delete, I think. Or severely edit. But it was my torturous processing of it all, so there it sits.
Wow, has it really been over six months since you've heard from me? Really? Jesus. I can't even spend the hours it would take to update you. But oh, you know you'll get it in snippets and highlights.
Nutshell: Separated, getting Divorced. Officially since January 2nd. Truly? Years. If my sweet children (and faux poverty) were not involved, I would be doing cartwheels.
Brutal honesty. Why did I ever marry this man? And completely lose who I am as a crazyass-yet-okay individual? Being completely "the problem" in our marriage. We are so incompatible it is insane. Oh I became the Problem all right. In spades. But that's for another episode.
So if anyone still follows this once-popular, now-neglected-as-hell blog, thanks. I'm here. Will try to get you as up to speed as possible.
But what you used to read about me and my life is completely topsy-turvy and inverted now. We have transformed into Bizarro Stepford. Buckle up.
