Doing the Best We Can

Last week at the mediator, I had to confront Bryan about a lie.  I found out that he was laid off or fired months ago, and I had not revealed to him that I'd inadvertantly learned this information.

The mediator asked his salary, and he used old numbers.  I let it go.  The mediator asked him directly about health insurance, costs, employer coverage, etc. and he used the old information, even though I knew with certainty that he was now on COBRA (and that I was too; I'd been panicking about it because as a breast cancer survivor I know how vitally important health insurance is!).

He looked the mediator in the eye and lied.

In that moment, right before I revealed that I knew the truth, I felt so overwhelmingly sad for him.  His life is not going well, and he does not seem to have the tools to fix what needs fixing.

I spoke quietly, and my eyes were full of tears when I said, "I really hoped that you would bring this up so that I did not have to, but I know you were laid off a few months ago."

I think he wished that the ground would swallow him up in that moment, and I hated that I had to bring it up.  I believe he felt shame, and I was so sorry that I was associated with those feelings of shame....again.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Bryan suffers from clinical depression, and he doesn't manage his depression.  He is not in therapy, and I don't think he's taking meds any more, and yet he has classic symptoms of depression.   If I had to name one reason that our marriage failed, I would say that it was "untreated depression" or "undertreated depression."  He is a mere shell of the man I met and married, and bears no resemblance to his former self.  His humor, intelligence, and generousity have vanished, and in their place is anger, confusion, and closedness.  He went from being a person with many good friends to a person with few contacts; he went from being a great employee to....well, not great.  He went from being romantic to being self absorbed.  He lost his libido, his sense of self worth, and so much more, and I blame it on the depression.

So, sitting in the mediator's office, I saw all of this with great clarity, saw the pain he was in, and I felt deeply compassionate for him.

With that compassion came a new understanding: he is doing the best that he can right now.

I get so angry that he doesn't spend much time with our daughter, that he does the bare minimum in so many parts of his life, but especially in parenting.  I can not count on him to make sure she takes showers, or gets her homework done, or eats anything healthy, or goes to bed on time, or does any chores.  I get so angry that he expects me to do it all - every doctor's appointment, every birthday gift, every homework assignment (helping), every new pair of shoes.  I was so frustrated when we were living in the same house and he would sleep in every morning so that I would get up, make Katherine's lunch, serve her breakfast, get her backpack re-packed, etc. even though I was the one going to work and he was not.  I couldn't believe that he'd watch me flying around, and that when I walked in the door from work he'd watch TV while I cooked dinner and helped our girl with homework.  I found it astonishing, and it made me very angry.

But in that mediation, in a flash of insight, I think I saw it for what it is.

He loves his daughter.  He is taking less than he might from the house because he wants her to live in the house.  He's paying child support even though he's unemployed.  But he has nothing else to give right now.  He's doing the best he can.

He only has our daughter four four nights a month, and he usually only takes her for two of those nights (sending her to sleepovers the other two).  I have been so angry that he has given her so little...but suddenly I see it, he's doing the best he can.

Yes, I'm exhausted.  Yes, it takes a toll on me.  But I am so incredibly proud of the job parenting I'm doing.  I'm setting a good example, I'm raising a kind daughter who has a great work ethic.  Katherine and I have fun together (this weekend's agenda: a sleepover at our house with a couple "BFFs", a visit to a pumpkin patch followed by pumpkin carving and hot apple cider, Sunday School where I am her class's teacher, and then our new tradition: a quiet evening dinner followed by a movie every Sunday night), but still get homework done, eat veggies, etc.  I am working hard at work.  I'm balancing the oh-so-tight budget.  I got up at 5am the first fall day of rain to check the gutter in the corner where it causes problems, making sure that the water was draining away from the house.

I'm doing the best I can, and he's doing the best he can.  It's not fair, and perhaps I am owed much more, and perhaps Katherine is owed much more, but all anyone can give is their best.

So, I feel more at peace with him than before.  I'm so relieved that we are getting divorced - I can not have a partner who refuses to manage his mental health and expects me to deal with that fallout from that decision, and I can not live with lies, and I need to be married to someone I respect - but I see him differently now.

No, it's not fair.  However, I got the better end of the deal.  I CAN find joy in tiny things, I am proud of who I am, and I love my relationship with my daughter.  Yes, I have to work twice as hard, but I have more than double the benefits of that work.

 Tonight when I get home from work there will be three girls - Katherine and two of her besties - in my home, giggling and asking me funny questions about boys (they are at an age where they alternate between the idea that boys are weird and that boys are cool), and maybe we'll all dance in the kitchen to Carly Rae Jepson's summer hit "Call Me Maybe."  Katherine will roll her eyes at me - "oh Mom you're so embarrassing" - but then she will "accidentally" bump into me and I'll grab her arms and spin her in circles and she'll laugh and her friends will say "do me next!" and by the time the song is over I'll be out of breath and we'll all be laughing.  In the morning, her friends will say, "oooooh are you making chocolate chip pancakes?!" and they will be so excited when I say yes, because I have been informed that my house has the best sleepover breakfasts ever.

I know that this is all true, because this is how it always goes.  Or maybe we won't dance, but we'll bake together.  Or maybe they'll have me look up You-Tube videos on my computer, bands I've never heard of and would never listen to on my own (um, like Carly Rae Jepson) but which appeal to the tween set, and I'll indulge the girls because I love that they still include me on these activities, and because it always comes out who has a crush on who or what happened at school last week.  Sometimes they ask my advice about navigating a tricky friendship, or about how to ask their moms something.  Sometimes they ask how old I was when I got to do some things, or they'll ask me to tell them a funny story about when I was their age.  Then, they'll bounce off into Katherine's room, and I'll hear whispers and laughter, and sometimes they spend three hours without coming up for air, organizing elaborate fantasy worlds with Littlest Pet Shop, and I'll be able to light candles and read a book in the living room with few interruptions.

When it's bedtime, they'll talk longer than they're supposed to, and finally I will say "this is your last warning and so if I have to come in again I'm afraid I'll have to separate you" and they will stop talking because this is about the 100th sleepover for these girls and they know I mean it.  They'll say, "Okay" and they won't be upset at all; they'll roll over and go to sleep.  In the morning if I sleep longer than they do, they'll bounce onto my bed like a litter of puppies, and I will say "when are you girls going to learn how to make me coffee?" and they'll call out a chorus of "yuccckkkkkk coffee is so gross!" before they wonder if there is any hot cocoa available.

Bryan misses out on all this, and I feel sad for him.  He may not be treating me fairly, but still, I'm getting the better deal.

I am grateful for my life.  Thank you, Bryan, for giving me perspective. 

Does Daddy really have to move out?

Another busy day.  Work, work, work, run to get child, come home to dog (unwalked) and house (uncleaned) and no dinner.  Make dinner.  Tidy up breakfast dishes.  Sit down to hot home cooked meal (late but I did it, tasty and balanced), feeling like maybe, just maybe, I can do this...

And then the question, like four thousand bricks flying at me, hitting my body, bruising me, knocking me down, suffocating me with their weight when I fell.  Accompanied by Katherine's flushed cheeks, and tearful eyes the color of the sky in summer, it was hard for me to breathe.  My own eyes filled with tears immediately.

"Yes, baby, he has to move out.  I am so, so sorry that I can't make our family work together.  I would do anything to give you a great life..."

"Then Mama, can't he just stay in the basement?"
(More tears.  Mine.  I was powerless to stop them.)

"No, baby, it's time for him to move out.  It will be really hard at first, but we will all adjust, and I'm just so, so sorry that it has to be this way.  This is not what I dreamed of for any of us, and I wish it didn't have to be this way, but your dad and I aren't good together.  We weren't good for each other, and that is not how we want to teach you to have a marriage.  In good marriages, people have fun together, and they don't yell at each other, and they work hard together.  We just weren't good at that, and we tried, but we couldn't do it..."

Silence.  I tried again.

"In some divorces, the parents just yell at each other and it's hard for the kids.  We're trying not to do that to you.  When you're with me, you can visit Daddy just down the street whenever you like as long as it's not bedtime or something like that.  I want you to love Daddy, and he wants you to love me.  We don't want to put you in the middle, honey, and we want to give you a great life.  We will try to make this as good for you as we can."

She just sighed.  And changed the conversation.

I still feel sick to my stomach over it.

I didn't say "Daddy shouldn't have yelled at Mama" and I didn't say "Daddy wasn't trustworthy" and I didn't say "Daddy tried to make Mama do all the work" and I didn't say "Being with Daddy made me feel more lonely than when I was alone."  I'm giving myself a gold star for that.  Two or three gold stars, actually.

But I don't want gold stars.  I want to make my daughter's life lovely and beautiful and I don't want her to feel any pain.  I especially don't want to be a source for her pain.

Divorce hurts her.  I was never under any illusions about that.  No child hopes that their parents will have such a bad relationship that it will lead to divorce, and she is no exception.  When he moves out, it's going to hurt her like nothing else in her life.  (My cancer hurt her, but she was so little, she has forgotten so much of it.  This is a blessing.)  I can not protect her from that pain.

I can not protect her from that pain, and it's all I want to do.

I believe that ultimately divorce will help her by teaching her to stand up for herself, and by my modeling of strength and compassion.  She will draw her own conclusions about her father.  She will also draw her own conclusions about me.  I will do everything in my power to model of life of integrity, to lead us both to joy, to be a pillar of strength, to create a beautiful life for myself and for her....but I will not have the proof of my decisions, good or bad, for many years.

I believe, in head and heart, that I am doing the right thing ultimately for her as well as myself.

But please don't mind if I cry myself to sleep tonight.

How I can be an optimist, despite it all

Over on the Daily Plate of Crazy, Big Little Wolf is having a conversation about how our principles and our pragmatism operate when we're at our worst.  I'm starting to see that principles, attitude, and pragmatism all come together in something that I think gets at the essence of who I wish to be.

 In her comments to me on my prior post, BLW wrote:

I say these things only to make this point: a good attitude is extremely useful (very helpful with our kids), but attitude and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. Understanding that many of us are at our worst during and after divorce, we can prepare for that if necessary. We can also use that knowledge to understand that it's a painful process, with many tentacles, but pain often comes before healing - even if healing takes considerable time.

This is important thinking for a self-proclaimed optimist of the PollyAnna variety.  There are plenty of people who believe that optimism is for fools, and that it can be dangerous for its lack of pragmatism.  (Perhaps I should revisit Barbara Ehrenreich's book on the subject in another post, for she's covered it in great detail.)  But BLW points out, correctly, that pragmatism must be linked to optimism, and this is when it starts to get exciting.

I'm convinced that to dismiss optimism is to miss the whole point of being alive. I think it matters.  And I think that the best optimism comes with pragmatism, and the two operate hand in hand.

A fool disregards the facts, refuses to look, pretends that there is nothing amiss.  If that fool puts a positive spin on things, people call her an optimist, but at heart, I believe that she's more fool than optimist.  The Secret swept through America a few years back, proclaiming that all we had to do was declare our intentions and life would give us what we asked for; this is the ultimate in foolishness if you ask me.  (Don't even talk to me about how angry I got, reading it as a bald, breastless woman.)

A pragmatist, on the other hand, trudges through things, one foot in front of the other, acknowledging that life is difficult and that there are difficult tasks to do.  Pragmatism itself is not about joy, and so sometimes pragmatism is confused with optimism's opposite, surly negativism, but this is no more accurate to me than calling an optimist a fool.  It's tricky business, though, trying to make pragmatism and optimism meet. 

In divorce, optimists might believe that the future is rosy, that there is a new life waiting to be found.  Pragmatists, on the other hand, have a to-do list that is daunting, and they're too busy trying to figure out if they can pay the mortgage AND keep junior enrolled in piano lessons, and they have to cancel book club because they can't get childcare, and, well, who can blame them for being a bit joyless.

But it can come together.

Optimism, Pragmatism, and Principles

When I gave birth to my daughter, I knew that I wanted that baby more than just about anything, ever.  I had visions of our life together, of motherhood, of all I wanted to give her.  I knew I'd go to the ends of the earth for her, and that doing so was part of my deal with my unborn baby.  I wrote her letters before she was born, promising: "I will do whatever I can to keep you safe."

I didn't have to wait long to get tested as to how far I was really willing to go to protect her.

At the end of my delivery, everything went wrong.  My baby's heartrate dropped in panic inducing ways, and my own blood pressure went sky high into dangerous levels.  Two crash carts were called in, and the room filled with a dozen doctors ready to face the worst.  To say that it was frightening doesn't even touch on how I felt - I was in agonizing pain, and suddenly I understood that my life, and my baby's, were at stake.

 My gynecologist looked at me, and raised her voice to me (the only time she ever did so).  Get this baby out NOW, she commanded.  DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?

Yes, ma'am.  I understand.  If I don't get the baby out, both of us are at risk of dying.  I understand.

My principles laid out, I knew what to do. My principle was clear to me from the onset: do anything to protect my baby.

My principles fed my attitude: my baby was worth whatever it took, and whatever I gave her was from love.  I would give her everything I had to save her, because she was worth it to me.  I would give her anything, including my pain, and maybe my life, with love.

And then pragmatism had to do some work.  As people called, "we're losing them" my gynecologist said, "NOW.  I mean it.  Get this baby out NOW!"  I knew something inside me was wrong, that things were scraping, that my body wasn't "right," but the pragmatist said, "We have to do this.  We will push with all of our might, and when we feel tearing, we will not stop.  We will bear down, and we will force this baby out."

When my daughter was born in the next contraction, her hand was above her head, and she scraped my birth canal; it felt like birthing a cheese grater.  When I tore, I knew I was tearing, and I kept pushing anyway, making the tear worse...but delivering the baby.  It was a physical feat, but more, it was a feat of will and desire.

And it was worth it.  So, so worth it.  Delivery complete, both of us left the danger zone we'd been in.  I had lived by my principles and done my best to protect my baby, taking a pragmatic approach (I was under no illusion as to how ugly it was going to be, but I did it anyway), and in doing so, uncovering the greatest joy I've ever known.

Principles + Pragmatism = Joy

I happen to be very, very, very fond of living with joy.  I'll go out of my way to find joy, to identify it, and to keep it.  And I have learned that if I apply my principles with pragmatism, I'll find joy eventually.....and this keeps me optimistic.  Eventually, if I apply my principles with pragmatism, I'll find joy.  There is reason for optimism!

It's not a secret.  It's not The Secret.  But my optimism is founded in the truth that I Know How To Find Joy.  If I live according to my principles (which requires first, knowing what my principles are, and second, taking a pragmatic approach to living by them), then I will locate joy....and that is why I can be an optimist.  It might not work out entirely the way that I want (I still do involuntary Kegals when I think about my stitches after birth), but there is joy in doing what I believe, and this allows me to approach life with optimism.

So how does all of this apply to divorce?

Divorce is it's own kind of ugly - I don't know how many (metaphorical) stitches I'll need by the time this is over.  I can already feel where I will tear, though.  And this leads me back to the inspiration for this post, BLW's words:

I say these things only to make this point: a good attitude is extremely useful (very helpful with our kids), but attitude and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. Understanding that many of us are at our worst during and after divorce, we can prepare for that if necessary. We can also use that knowledge to understand that it's a painful process, with many tentacles, but pain often comes before healing - even if healing takes considerable time.

I know what my principles are.  They are:
- honesty to self and others
- compassion to self and others
- protect my daughter
- be a great role model for my daughter
- live the best life I can live
- make the world a better place

I already know that divorce is not my best time.  It's been an ugly road to get here, and I'm not okay yet.  I am operating low on Maslow's heirarchy, even as I fantasize about operating at the top.  And my ex is an angry, depressed person who self-sabotages and acts passive-aggressively and it's hard to have a logical conversation with him because he either shuts down or blows up, and I feel judgemental about him and angry that he put us in this position.  I know I'm in the danger zone for acting like this:



I know lots of people who wouldn't blame me (although the "cheater" label doesn't apply....I don't think....).  Sometimes he behaves badly, and I really want to act the way he does in response.  Who could blame me?

But I won't act like that, because then I couldn't look our daughter in the eye.  I won't act like that because it's not who I want to be.  There are days when I think he deserves it, true, but *I* don't deserve it.  I want to live with joy, and for that, I'm going to have to take the high road.

I have a lot of to-do lists.  We're meeting with the mediator soon.  And I've run the numbers more than I can count (thank you, Excel).  I have plan A: he pays what he ought to; and I have plan B: I get nothing.....and I'm determined to make it work even if it's plan B.  I'm working on keeping the house, but I'm talking to a realtor too.  And I know that whether I get plan A, or plan B, I'm going to try to live my values, and that will give me some joy along the way, even when I feel tearing.

And I've got an ace in the hole.

Childbirth introduced me to pain.  I healed from that pain, and marveled at my body's ability to do so.  But it was nothing.

My real pain looks like 15 surgeries related to breast cancer, several of them with more complications than I can list.  My real pain looks like the doctor telling me that it's 50/50 that I only had a few months left to live (yet here I am, healthy again).  My real pain looks like radiation burns that made my skin crack open and ooze unmentionable things....and it looks like caring for my daughter and my husband yelling at me in the middle of it as I was hunched over from that pain.  My real pain looks like riding a bus to chemo while my husband slept at home.

So, I know a thing or two about pain, and I know that it goes away: either you die and so you don't care any more, or you heal.  I have healed, over and over again.  I know how to heal, and I  know what it looks like.  I know that there can be unheard of complications, but still, eventually, I can heal.

So yes, I'm an optimist.  I believe that I can heal, over and over again, no matter how deep the wound, no matter how terrible the odds.  I'm a pragmatist, because I know how to thank the surgeon for her care, right before she cuts off my breast, and because I know that it doesn't matter how much I hurt, if my little girl needs dinner and nobody else is feeding her, then I need to make dinner.  And I know what I believe in, and who I want to be, so I let that guide my decisions.

Forgiveness falls in there somewhere, in the neighborhood of compassion.  All of the intentions in the world can not control every word that comes out of my mouth; I'm not infalliable, and I wonder what my ex would say if he read this post.  But I can say this with certainty: I try my hardest to do my best, and I apologize if I screw up.  Maybe it's optimistic to think so, but I think that is enough.

So, somehow, this is going to work out.  I will make mistakes along the way - oh, I've made many, including along that cancer path - but I believe in my ability to recover from them.  I will lose my optimism some days, and my pragmatism other days, but it's okay, because I won't lose what I believe in. 



I'm alive, and I'm glad to be alive.

No matter how many tentacles reach out to squeeze me.

------------------------------------


How do you hold your sanity when the tentacles of pain grab you?

What tools do you use to live your principles when you're tempted to throw them out?  What's your ace in the hole?

Are you an optimist?  How do you maintain optimism in a world that is often ugly?

I hope to hear from you.