The lonely high road

A dear friend of mine is the child of divorced parents, and ever since I met her in college, I've heard stories of that particular divorce.  The image of her father rolling up his car window and driving away with her in the backseat, as her mother yelled, "FUCK YOU!", is emblazoned on my mind, as if I'd been sitting next to her.  I know that I don't want that for Katherine, and I know that it's all too easy to get to that place.  I'm looking for role models, because I really want to do this as well as is humanly possible.

In an effort to avoid repeating the divorce mistakes made by so many, I'm looking for role models.

One of the first books I found on the subject of divorce was The Good Divorce: Keeping Your Family Together When Your Marriage Comes Apart by Constance Ahrons, Ph.D.  It was an auspicious start to my divorce research.  In the book, Ahrons outlines an ideology for approaching divorce in a child-centric manner.  I read it twice before I asked for a divorce, hiding it in my bedroom (we were already sleeping in different rooms a lot of the time, his choice not mine) until I was ready to commit to divorce.  If I was to sum up the whole book, it would be, "Take the high road."  The high road means being compassionate, it means controlling one's temper, it means placing the child's needs first and foremost.  This seems like a sound strategy for me, and reading the book actually solidified my decision to divorce; it was the first strategy I'd seen that looked like something I could live with.  (Make no mistake, the book doesn't advocate divorce, and it doesn't paint a rosy picture, but it doesn't paint a picture of parents screaming at each other through a car window, either.)

With the book under my belt, I thought that it would be relatively easy to find lots of people just like me, lots of blogs about women (or men) going through divorce just the way the book had defined.


I have taken to scouring the web to find just about every divorce blog there is. This is such strange territory for me: none of my close friends are divorced, my parents and my grandparents aren't divorced, and I don't have many footsteps to follow in.  Surely there are people out there doing it the way I hope to?


There are plenty of angry, vitriolic blogs about divorce.  Some of them are funny and entertaining, but when I read them I get a little chill to think of living in that kind of bitterness.  I don't want to live like that, and I really don't want my daughter to live surrounded by that.

I don't know about you, but she doesn't look very happy to me.

I keep remembering, "Anger is a poison you drink to kill your enemy."  I don't want to die like that.  Sure, I'm mad - don't get me started - but I want to be HAPPY.

So far, I have found only a few blogs where the parents are both able to put their kids front and center, and have reached a place where they are living lives that aren't a testimony to anger and pain.  Here's my list, in case there are others out there, like myself, who are looking for a little inspiration in the divorce department. 

The first one, which is also the first one I found, is Molly Monet's Postcards from a  Peaceful Divorce.  Molly and her ex meet for dinners with their kids, she speaks kindly of him, she reflects on the marriage positively even though she is glad she is no longer in that marriage.  I have grown very fond of Molly - a woman I've never met, or conversed with, and who likely has no clue who I am - and I've been rather in awe of her.  Hers is the standard to which I have held myself, and mostly, I have felt like a miserable failure as a result.  Overall, she comes across as a hip, happy, successful, well rounded woman who not only raises her kids with love and patience and joy, but manages to have a successful career, a commitment to yoga (and all of its health and social benefits), AND a dating life.  I have spent hours trying to figure out how to be more like Molly, and how to achieve her brand of divorce.  I hate to admit it, but recently when she admitted to some struggles that she's been going through, I felt a tiny bit of relief, because she's actually human, and her revealed humanity helped me to be gentler with myself.  (And I hate that I would revel even a tiny bit in someone else's suffering - really, am I that small?!  But I am incredibly grateful to Molly for putting it all out there, for me to look up to, and I'm also grateful to her for revealing that everything isn't perfect, because that gives me permission to be imperfect as well.)

Another blog, which I discovered more recently, is Cuckoo Mama's This Cuckoo's Nest.  (Like me, Cuckoo Mama is blogging anonymously.)  Cuckoo Mama isn't all Zen like Molly: actually, she gets pretty pissed off and blows off steam on her blog about her "beer monkey" ex and his shenanigans.  But still, she puts her kids' needs front and center, even where the ex is involved.  The kids stay in the house, and she and the ex take turns "birdnesting" in that house, so that the parents have to move in and out, but the kids stay there.  This is an act of selfless love that only someone who has resorted to divorce could possibly understand: deciding that the marriage is too broken to continue, but sharing a physical space with that person, takes the patience of Job.  Cuckoo Mama writes funny rants about dirty dishes left in the sink, and she threatens with her purse brick, but she puts it front and center that she's glad to do this for her kids, and that it works because her ex is a decent guy.  I may aspire to be just like Molly, all peaceful compassion, but I relate to Cuckoo Mama, because she is angry but she does the right thing for her kids anyway.

Big Little Wolf's Daily Plate of Crazy is a blog about many things, including divorce.  Big Little Wolf is wise, compassionate, and contemplative, and whatever she's writing about, I tend to love it.  (Although I don't share her passion for Mad Men, but don't tell her, because she's a cool kid and I want her to like me, and she's crazy for Mad Men.)  Recently I commented on a post of hers about where truth lies in divorce, and she gently told me that it is much easier to see truth a few years out from divorce, rather than right in the middle, as I am.  Maybe this is why she seems to be so at ease with her divorce: she's no longer living it, she's moved past it, and it no longer defines her.  I need to go back and read her archives (they go back to 2009), because I'd like to get to where she is now, but she's right, that's going to take me a few years.  In the meantime, maybe I can read about how she got there....

An unusual - and therefore refreshing - blog is When The Flames Go Up, by ex-spouses LOD and AskMoxie.  They take turns blogging their perspectives on divorce, and they are thoughtful and considerate of one another.  This proves that it CAN be done, and I cling to their blog for that particular piece of hope.  They don't want to be married any more, but they are still kind to one another, and that makes them great co-parents.  Beautiful, don't you think?

There are lots of angry divorcee' blogs, to go along with the ones I've listed here.  In William Quincy Belle's post The War of the Divorcees, he mentions the possibility that maybe, as a man, he should wear a cup when he reads some women's divorce blogs.  I don't deny that there are reasons to be angry: when I read The Bitter Divorcee's description of how her son needed stitches after her son's drunken father hurt him, and how he doesn't even pay pittance child support, I don't blame her for being bitter (and I admire the grace with which she handles herself, given the circumstances; I enjoy her blog, too, even though it's not the model of divorce I'm hoping for, because she's wise and thoughtful even in her circumstances.)

But what I've learned in searching out blogs about "good divorces" is that really, decent divorces are few and far between.  When I read The Huffington Post's Divorce section, it seems that the world has gone mad, and it's mostly about adults behaving like over-tired toddlers, screaming for the sake of screaming.  The type of divorce I'm still envisioning isn't easy to come by, and most of the time, when I tell people my vision, they look at me as if I'm deluded.

I want to act like that too.  But don't you think I'm too old?!

Then again, those are the same people who told me that NO WAY could Bryan and I live in the same house with Katherine together for a year after deciding to get divorced.  They told me that it was impossible.  They told me that I'd never make it.

It has been lonely, it has been isolating, it has been frustrating, it has been exhausting....but it's been a year.  The high road is lonely, but I'm glad that I've got a few havens on the internet to show me that I'm not truly alone in my approach, and that maybe, just maybe, I can make this work for everyone.

Do you read other divorce blogs?  Which ones?  What inspires you?  What makes you laugh?  Where do you find intelligent discussions about divorce?  Do you have a divorce blog?  Please, let me know....especially if you've found others who are taking the high road.  I look forward to hearing from you.

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.

Seriously? I mean, SERIOUSLY?

I really want to be zen.  I really want to sound like Molly from Postcards from a Peaceful Divorce.  She seems to genuinely like her former husband, and she doesn't appear to feel a lot of rage.  I'm not fond of rage, but I'm feeling it.

Two examples:
Today I came home from work; Bryan had picked up Katherine at school at my request, from her after school activity, so they'd been together less than two hours when I got home.  (Remember, he's on the bench, getting paid to do nothing but sleep and play video games all day, which is all he does.) I arrived home full of determination to be sunny and kind, and since the weather was still sunny I said, "Hey!  I was thinking we should get take-out and head to the beach for a picnic; would you like to come with Katherine and I?"  This is much more polite and kind than I feel, but I'm working on a fake-it-til-I-make-it attitude.  He said, "No, you go."  Phew, relief.  So I got the girl, said, "Grab some flip flops and let's go!"  She said, "I'll put on a swimsuit," and I laughed and said, "No, no swimming...." and before I could continue, Bryan said, "Aw, come on, let her swim," and I said, "It's APRIL.  In the NW.  It's not that warm, it's just sunny, and I think swimming isn't reasonable."  Katherine joined Bryan, "Mom, can't I?  Please?"  I repeated, "No, it'll just be a quick picnic, it'll be nice to be outside, but it's not warm enough to swim."  Bryan went on, "Come on, let the kid swim!"  As a matter of fact, he went on, and on ,and on, in front of Katherine.  I finally got Katherine in another room and said, "Bryan, right now this is my call, and I say it's too cold for swimming and I'm not up for a freezing kid, I just want a quick dinner.  I would appreciate it if you would not contradict me and argue with me right in front of Katherine, especially because it's my night with her and you're not even coming."  He said, "I don't see what the big deal is."  I said, "I don't believe it's good parenting to have conflict in front of her, and as you're not coming or at all involved with this situation, can you please stop arguing with me, especially in front of her?" to which he said, "Why don't you just let her go swimming?"  ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! 

Not sure if this represents cold beach Katherine, or me.  You pick.

It was 64 degrees out and breezy, the sun was setting, we hadn't had dinner yet, and the ocean here is COLD.  He wasn't coming, he wasn't going to get her through the bath when she got home all sandy and salty and seaweedy, and he wasn't going to deal with chattering teeth or cut feet from barnacles.  My nice little spontaneous picnic - me in my work clothes, high heels and trenchcoat off, replaced with a jean jacket and flip flops over my work dress because I didn't have time to change - felt tarnished.  Now, why did he have to do that?!  Katherine and I had a great picnic anyway, with her running around in the grass, the dog getting picnic scraps, the sun setting over the water.  So there.  (insert head toss here)

Sadly, I do not own a single corset-topped dress. But you get the idea.

And the other example, this one really gets me steamed.  But not in a steamy hot way, in a fuming way.  You know what I mean.

Katherine was in my room watching a funny cats video on my laptop (oh good grief, but it was only three minutes), and I was putting on my pajamas.  Bryan walked directly into my bedroom, to which I said, "WHOA!  I'm changing!" as I literally backed into my closet.  He came in anyway!  I said, "Hey, a little privacy!" and he snapped, "I just want to kiss MY daughter goodnight."  I had to send him a terse little email called "boundaries" in which I reminded him that it was inappropriate for him to enter my bedroom, and UTTERLY inappropriate for him to do so when I was undressing.  He wrote back "Understood," to which I refrained from saying "Then why are we having this conversation AGAIN?!"

I'm sure that both of these little exercises are him proving to me that I'm not the boss of him.  I can not tell you how relieved I am that I am *not* the boss of him, but these little outbursts of his test my patience.

And since I'm on a roll, I'll share one more little passive aggressive piece of nastiness.

We got our tax refund - nicer than we expected - and so this weekend I said, "Our vacuum really isn't picking up the pet hair; I just vacuumed and look, the carpet looks terrible.  Since we got our tax refund, and since we're going to need a second vacuum when you move out so that we each have one, I thought I'd got to Costco and pick one up.  What do you think of that idea?"  To which he replied, "It doesn't matter what I think, you'll just do it anyway."  I said, "No, that's why I'm mentioning it, do you think it's a good idea?" to which he replied, "You don't care, you'll just do what you want," to which I replied, "I'm trying to understand what YOU want, are you saying you think it's a bad idea?" to which he replied "I didn't say that, but it doesn't matter what I think....." and that conversation could have gone on for another hour, I think, if at that point I didn't realize its futility and walk away.  (I didn't go to Costco, or buy the vacuum.  Still not sure what I should do on that count.)

In my sweet fantasies, the less steamy ones, The Guy would either say, "I think that's a great idea, go for it!" or "I don't think we should shell out the money right now," but either way I'd get a direct response.

Gratuitous picture that simultaneously makes me gag and reminds me what I want.  I'll bet they're having a nice, reasonable, SANE conversation on that white sand beach.

So here's the deal, to sum it all up:  I am fully aware that he is not going to change, and that unless I walk away from these weird exchanges, they would just continue like that until the end of time.  It doesn't matter if I set boundaries, or try to agree upon a parenting style, or hold reasonable discussions about household expenditures, he will find a way to undermine me and blame it on me.  I am walking away, because I don't want that in my life, and because I don't think it's healthy, and I don't even think it serves him, and I know it doesn't serve me.  But living together, I just don't know how to get around these exchanges, and it sucks the bliss straight out of me.

All day, I thought, "I'm so glad I like my job!" and "I'm proud of the work I'm doing," and "It'll be so nice to picnic with Katherine," and "I love the sunshine," and "The salad I made for myself for lunch is delicious and healthy" and "My boss is a lovely woman"...and I was a right proper PollyAnna.  I came home prepared to do chores, manage homework, clean up after Bryan without complaint or thought (because it's easier to do that than to have a repetitive argument about it).....but these little things just throw me over the edge. 

I'm working on my good attitude, I swear I am.  Maybe tomorrow I'll do better.

Back from Vacation

This evening Katherine and I returned home from vacation; a blissful week not all that far from here geographically, but somehow worlds away.  We are far too broke for vacations (the finances of all of this deserve several long posts, by the way, delving into what it means to have given up my career for nearly a decade, his inability to manage finances, and what it means to be living with your ex husband when you still can't support yourself 100%) but fortunate in having several friends with beautiful vacation homes.

This particular vacation home is my favorite. I've been there more times than I can count, and there is something just so right about it.  When I'm there, I can think, and relax, and somehow everything seems clearer.  When I'm there, anything is possible, but I don't feel a need to rush around.  It's a simple cabin, not too big, not too small, and I love it.  There is no WiFi; there isn't even cell reception.  I'm usually pretty connected, and the lack of connectivity itself is fantastic.  The trip was wonderful, and I really came back feeling refreshed.

I had been back in the house all of two minutes, complete with gift from daughter to ex (my idea, because I'm trying to be nice, see?!) to hear "I hope you brought milk with you.  I ran out yesterday."  Little statements like that make me absolutely crazy.  He's been home, nothing to do, and can't even buy his own milk?  And feels a need to mention it within a minute of my arrival?

I did have milk in the cooler.  Good thing, because in the morning if I don't have my coffee with milk I can not function.

(This is not what I look like while I drink my morning coffee.  This is not what I look like, ever.  And my coffee cup is about 5 times that size.)


Seconds later, he spotted the chocolates that had been given to me by a friend, and he lunged for them.  "MMMmmmm I like those" he said, and I snatched them away like a toddler, doing everything but yelling "Mine!"  Oh dear.  My vacation zen can wear off pretty quickly if I'm not careful.

While I was gone I came up with the brilliant idea of forgiving him for everything that's come between us.  I have this idea that he is a broken person, struggling in the world, and that he is doomed to be unhappy unless he changes, but that I have a great capacity for happiness, and that is enough for me, and I should just forgive him.  There is no "just" in forgiveness, I think it's a longer process than that (possibly millenia, actually), but I do like the idea.  It would be easier if I didn't come home to piles of things, a bad smell in the kitchen that wasn't there when I left, and the damn milk.  Breathe in, breathe out.....

It's going to take a lot of breathing for me to get past these little irritations, because after too many years of marriage, the little tape that plays in my head (or is it an MP3?  nah, mine's a tape) says:
How can he expect me to manage every little detail even when I'm gone a week?  Why can't he get off the sofa, even for his OWN coffee?  How on earth will he care for Katherine when I'm not in the background taking care of this stuff?  Why is he lazy?  Why do I have to do everything?

And then the other voice says:
Stop being judgemental.  Move on.  You're getting divorced, and it isn't your problem to solve any more.  Be an adult, don't dwell on the little things.

And the first voice replies:
But it's driving me CRAZY!

Clearly I have some work to do to attain forgiveness.  I know.  I'm working on it, okay?

But on another topic....

I have a massive love of orca whales.  There is something mysterious and beautiful and wise and playful about them - they're like mythical creatures to me, I find them so astonishing.  Well, I live in a part of the world where they live wild, and I've seen them, but only rarely.  Somehow, I got it in my head that when things were going to be okay in my life, when I was going to figure out the career and the finances and the divorce and find The Man, I would receive orcas as my sign.

On the ferry, there was a pod of orcas.  We were with them for at least twenty minutes.  I got pictures.  And I wept, because they were so beautiful, and so unexpected, because I loved seeing them so much, and because I thought, "Really?  My sign?  Right now?"  The orcas did not come bearing checks or a man, but they were no less sublime.

I don't know if it's a real sign.  I'm aware of how cuckoo I sound just for admitting out loud that I think it was a sign, and I don't know if I believe in signs...  But sign or no sign, seeing them was a gift I'm unlikely to ever forget.