Anticipation

Sometimes the day to day is so difficult that I forget to dream about the future, but today I'm filled with dreams.

I'm trying to imagine what life will be like one, two, or three years from now.  How good that might be: how Katherine might adjust beautifully to this new, strange life we're giving her.  How my career - inching forward now - might really take off.  How being a working single mom might just seem like being alive, instead of a daily hurdle.  How my finances might be stabilized.  Trips to take, stories to write...  Maybe some romance.  Maybe.
   
   

And then I start to think of the shorter term, and that looks better, too.  Bryan is slovenly, and sharing a home makes that hard on me.  More importantly, he's liable to be sweet one minute and angry and confrontational the next, so I feel like I tiptoe around trying to stay out of his way; there is no sanctuary in being at home when he is there.  He often has Katherine in front of the TV while he sleeps or plays on the computer or works on a bike in the garage, and it's so hard for me to watch, and to hear as she says, "Daddy will you play with me?" and he replies "No, I'm busy."  "Busy with WHAT?!" I want to yell.  I try to say nothing.  (Sometimes, something slips out.  Like Cuckoo Mama, I might be wise to invest in duct tape.)

But this summer, that will shift.  He will move out - hopefully within a few blocks of our house so that Katherine can walk back and forth unsupervised at her will - and our home will be a sanctuary again.  I will have friends over for dinner again, mine and Katherine's.  I will steam clean the basement, top to bottom, to make it livable again.  I will help Katherine with her homework, and he will not tell me I'm helping her all wrong as he does now (even though he's unwilling to help, hasn't read the assignments, etc.).  I will make dinner, and he will not tell me he hates vegetables and make faces like a toddler.  I will stop wondering what all of my biting-my-tongue is teaching Katherine about how men should treat women, and what is okay to accept.
 


I will not have to listen to passive-aggressive anything in my walls again.
If Katherine's husband spoke to her the way Bryan speaks to me, I swear I'd kidnap her and move her to the other end of the earth.  Thinking about that gives me the courage to do this single mom thing, and if it was the only reason, it would be enough reason to divorce.

I pray that when he has his own place, he will feel connected to his own life once again, and he'll be more engaged in living.  I pray that knowing he can't see Katherine every minute he chooses, when he is with her he will really be with her.

I pray that when he is sleeping for hours during the day, or playing video games, since I won't see it, and nor with Katherine, I won't have to answer "Why does Daddy just lie on the sofa?" ever again.

I pray that when he moves, he will take his angry storm cloud with him, so that I can feel the sunshine on my face.  I pray that Katherine feels this sunshine, too, and that somehow it makes up for his absence.

I have been mourning the end of our marriage, and the end of Katherine's nuclear family even more than that, for a long time.  I wrestle with it daily.  But I really, really think that good things might come out of this for all of us.

I'm counting on it.