Showing posts with label emotions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotions. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The End


Today would have been my ninth wedding anniversary.


Actually, since the judge hasn’t signed off on the divorce yet, I guess it’s still my ninth wedding anniversary but that’s all just a formality.  The MMC has given me her final sign off on the divorce papers so there wasn’t any last minute reprieves or second thoughts on the whole thing.  It’s done and with that, I think this blog is done as well. 


I started this blog at a time when I was really lost in everything that was going on.  I was still wondering why the divorce was happening and my emotional outlook was very bleak at the time.  I had questions on what happened with my marriage, what will happen to my daughters, how was I going to get by and why were mattresses so expensive?  Writing this was my therapy.  It allowed me to put down on “paper” what was going through my mind at the time and straighten out the thoughts that were buzzing through my head at a mile a minute, going in a hundred different directions.  In some ways, this blog helped to keep me sane. 


But it wasn't only this blog.  I’m not sure if I have ever taken the time to thank the people who helped me through this by simply sitting there and letting me vent on what I was going through.  I owe those people a world of gratitude whether they helped me on the phone, via email or in person.  Writing this stuff out is one thing, but having a person to talk to about it is another.  I guess I would also like to apologize to those same people if I took too much of their time.  This divorce became my favorite topic of conversation and there were probably times where I went off on it and never asked them how they were doing.  I’m sorry if I did that (and I know I did).  When you’re hurt, you tend to be self-centered a bit and while maybe it’s understandable, it’s not right.  Of the many things this experience has taught me, one is that you need to constantly think about others and try to put them before yourself as best as you can.  Whether this means making sure your spouse and children are ahead of your job or letting someone talk about their troubles instead of just having them listen to yours, the world runs much better when we deal with it as a team instead of just looking out for yourself.


I’ll admit, though, I did this blog solely for me.  I had no intention of trying to help other people with it and was surprised at the number of people who reached out to me to tell me they were going through the same thing or how I “read their mind” on whatever topic I was going on about.  When going through a rough time, you think you’re the only one who is or has experienced what you are going through but in truth, you’re just one of the many.  It’s kind of sad really to think that divorce or marriage trouble in general is so common.  Still, if what I wrote gave any grain of comfort to someone going through a bad time too, it makes what I wrote even more worthwhile than the help it gave me to write it.  Hope that made sense.  J


By ending this blog, does it mean that I’m happy and content with my life right now?  No, not even close but there isn't any more that I can say about what happened and how I have transitioned to being single that would uncover any new ground.  I still have bouts of buzzing where I wonder why or what happened but now I just yell at myself to shut up because I've covered all of it before and there won’t be any new answers to come out of it.  Instead of torturing myself by asking the same questions I had three months ago, I try to just face forward and move on.  Unfortunately, that doesn't prevent the buzzing from coming.  I read a line about divorce that I thought was apt:  “Marriage is temporary but divorce is forever.”  Cynical about marriage, yes, but certainly true about divorce.  I applaud the people who figured out how to make marriage work and I hope it continues to work “until death do them part.”  That’s what it is supposed to be, isn't it?


The other reason I started this blog was to recapture a creative side I used to have.  I think I have accomplished that and I’m not going to give it up so while this blog is ending, I’ll probably start up another but with a focus more on day to day life and other types of observations.  I’m also looking at putting what I've written here into some type of book.  There’s a challenge to that because I’m not sure if it would be more fiction or non-fiction or self-help or what.  I think I need to write it first.  I've got a decent start with about 40,000 words with what I've done here.  I just need to build around it. 


But I have rediscovered the writer inside me and I appreciate all of the kind words I've received about the blog.  The best one was someone telling me they don’t read but they read my blogs.  I’m not sure there is higher praise. 


Of course this blog will live on.  Nothing dies when it’s on the internet, does it?  I’m sure it will still show up on search engines and maybe others will benefit from what I have written or, if nothing else, have a laugh.  I wonder if my girls will ever come across this and I guess there is some concern they won’t like what I have written.  That may be a baseless concern, though.  I don’t believe I have put their mother in that bad a light.  Yes, I've made it clear she didn't do a lot to work on the marriage when she became unhappy but I think she knows and acknowledges that.  Plus, I feel like I have done my part in sharing the blame. Yes, there were a couple posts I wrote on issues where we disagreed but again, I don’t think I was ever heavy handed or vengeful.  Some may say writing this blog to begin with was vengeful but really, it wasn't.  I never started this with the intent of making her look bad.  Obviously, this all comes from my side of things and by that nature, she becomes the “bad guy” but that was not intentional on my part.  I just wrote about what I was feeling at the time.  I asked people who know both me and my ex if I was ever being unfair to her and I was always told no so I’m going to take that to heart.  Hopefully my girls will see it the same way. 


So, it’s time to take “Went From Being Married to Single” to just “Being Single” (although that probably won’t be the title).  I’m not sure what exactly I will write about or when I will even put out the first one but rest assured, it will be coming.  I don’t want to lose the writing “momentum” I have gained from this. 


Again, if you are reading this and have read my posts or will be reading my posts, thank you.  The feedback I have gotten has been as fulfilling as was writing them to begin with. 


Much like my marriage, however, this blog’s time is over.  Kind of fitting, isn’t it?  Maybe my next blog should be about the loss of my first blog?  Hmmm…


Take care and thanks for listening.
 

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Travel and the Single Man


For most of last year, I was on the road with my job.  I figured I was away from home 40-45 weeks out of last year.  I have previously surmised that I felt the traveling played a significant role in why I am no longer with my wife and daughters.  It’s a somewhat ironic thing because it wasn’t that I was out messing around when I was traveling which is what breaks up a lot of marriages.  In fact, it was quite the opposite.  When I was away, I missed my family and thus I spent the majority of my evenings in my hotel room.  Sure, I would go out to eat but I was pretty much back in the room by 8 or so.  Even if I had to stay over the weekend which happened a few times, I still wasn’t out partying at some bar.  I’ve never been the type to do that anyway and even more so when I was married. 

Now that I am single again, I thought that traveling would be a more exciting proposition.  Granted, I don’t travel near as much as I did.  As I’ve said in previous posts, I changed to a job that kept me home more.  This was a valiant (although futile) effort to save my marriage.  My first big trip post separation was a trip to Prague in the Czech Republic (mentioned in the last post, Tales of Beards and Bracelets).  This was for my company’s sales kick off and I thought “Man, this is where I am going to make my mark on being single again.”  You see, at events like these, there are a lot of meetings and presentations but there are also a lot of social events.  The company would tell you it’s a chance to network with your peers but most of the company’s employees will tell you it’s a great chance to get really drunk. 

Seeing as how there would be several hundred employees there from all across the world and that I would be in a foreign country, I was ready to do my share of mingling and maybe even have some “fun” while I was there, if you know what I mean, wink-wink-nudge-nudge. On the plane over, I got my man-bracelet and had a few drinks to prep myself for what was sure to be a few nights of frivolity.  I was excited.  I was ready to do this thing known as being single.  I couldn’t wait so much so that I couldn’t sleep on the plane. 

This excitement and readiness for living the single life at its fullest didn’t last long.  The first social event was after the first day of the meetings and there was a happy hour that went well into the night at the bar in the hotel.  Plenty of women and conversation but I was somewhat off to the side.  Not alone, though.  I had a few of the folks I work with who I should actually refer to as my friends but I wasn’t in the middle of chatting up some woman.  I felt out of place.  I felt like it was wrong.  I couldn’t shake the fact that I had just gotten out of the most important relationship I ever had in my life and trying to dive into the single life at that point was like diving into a pool that had no water.

Still, I tried to be as sociable as I could but the flirty single man wasn’t coming out.  At one point, I was showing the man-bracelet that I got on the plane and said it was something to replace my wedding ring.  One woman who was in our group laughed and said, “Oh I know your type.”  I looked at her quizzically and asked, “What is my type?”  She proceeded to describe me as the man who cheated on his wife and now left her and his children behind in order to pursue a mid-life crisis as a single man on the prowl.

The words stung even though they were very, very far from the truth.  Whatever winds I had flowing through my sails were suddenly stopped.  I politely (okay maybe not so politely, I had a few drinks in me after all) advised her that she was wrong and that my wife lost interest in the marriage and I wanted to work things out.  I never cheated on her and I couldn’t wait to see my daughters again.  She quickly shut up.

The rest of the trip was fun but there was one evening where the guys I was with were busily trying to find something to buy their wives and stopped at several stores to haggle for the best deal.  Another moment where my ship stopped dead in the water.  I didn’t have anyone to buy something for.  Oh sure, I did get my daughters some souvenirs but it would have been nice to have someone special for which to buy something special. I would have been right there with my friends in the haggling arena if that were true.  Instead, I stood outside the door and watched people walk by letting that all too familiar buzzing of “whys” and “what happened” dart around my head.  I tried to hide my depression from the guys but I’m not sure I did a great job at it although I hope it wasn’t too obvious. I didn’t and don’t want to be a downer around everyone just because life shit on me a little bit...okay so maybe this blog goes against that thought but I’m not forcing you to read this! :)

Another aspect of traveling relates to those little moments I talked about in The Little Things.  Whenever I used to sit at the airport waiting to board the plane or as soon as I got off the plane, I would call the MMC (see sidebar) just to talk for a bit or let her know I arrived if that was the case and ask how things were going.  I would talk to the girls as well but a highlight was just talking to her.  Like I said, I missed my wife and family when I traveled so making even short phone calls helped to ease that bit of loneliness.  Now, I don’t have that option and when it occurred to me the first time I stepped off a plane, it felt odd…weird…different.

One more story of travel and being single and then I’ll let you go.  When I was returning from going to Seattle for my niece’s wedding (see An Open Letter To My Niece), the girls and I got upgraded to first class on the flight back.  They sat together in the first row and I was behind them in the aisle seat, ready to spring up if they started acting up.  A woman sat next to me in the window seat.  The girls were absolutely perfect the entire flight and it certainly helped that it was a red-eye because they slept the majority of the time.  Those first class seats were practically beds for them.  When we landed, I was getting the girls up and their things together when a woman who was seated across the aisle remarked to the woman who was sitting next to me that she has never seen such well-behaved children on a plane before.  My “seat mate” said that she could take no credit for the girl’s behavior which I thought was a great response.  The other woman said “But you’re with the man who has the good little girls so you should be proud of that.”  We looked at each other, smiled, and let it go.  No sense in trying to explain, although it did kind of bother me that this woman across the aisle made no attempt to give the compliment to me, the father.  Like fathers have nothing to do with the behavior of their children!  Oh well.  Maybe I should have gotten the phone number of the woman who sat next to me but this was before the Prague trip and if I wasn’t ready for single life then, I certainly wasn’t ready for it at that time. 

I said I was going to let you go after that story, didn’t I?  Well, one more thing.  I’ve noticed an evolution with these posts as I have been writing them and I wondered if it was noticeable to anyone else but me.  I started out with the hurt and pain of losing the woman I loved.  I spent a few posts noting (hopefully humorously) about some facets of being single again (specifically in Bed, Bath and Bothered) and how I will be a single father (as in Parents, Inc.) but I spend most of my time on the divorce and the emotions around that.  Still, I do see that the posts are becoming less about her and more about not having someone, which I believe is signficant in that I am probably getting over her but not the situation.  I think loneliness is part of the “suddenly single” package, isn't it?  While it doesn’t have to be a sad thing, it is a major part of getting through all of this.  The end of this may be when I meet someone but I think the end will be when I am WITH someone. 
Okay, you can go now. Thanks for listening.

 


Next time:  The lessons of life


Friday, August 10, 2012

The First Visitation


This past weekend marked the very first weekend visitation I had with my girls.  Since the wife (or the ex…or soon to be ex?  I’ve seen people use the abbreviation of SBTX but I don’t care for it…I need a unique reference to my ex…some heavy thought will be given to this topic).  Anyway since SHE moved out last week, we started on the documented procedures set forth in our settlement agreement with visitation, child support and all that.  I have the monthly amount worked out for child support and I created a Google calendar for the visitation schedule straight through until they both turn 18.  This way we both know the schedule and can make and document adjustments as needed.  My hope is to never have to actually look at the settlement agreement again.  We are both adults and should be able to work out whatever we need to work out.  If we can’t, then we’ll pull out the agreement and if that doesn’t settle it, I guess we pull out the lawyers.


Normally, I will get the girls starting on Friday afternoon through Sunday at 6 pm but I kept them over Sunday night this past weekend.  Like I said, my ex and I are adults and we’re okay with adjustments…especially when those adjustments mean I get the girls an extra night! 
In some ways, that first weekend almost didn’t count because I was still at our old house which was mostly empty since the Ex left.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I had nothing but three people’s worth of stuff out of a house that held four makes for a mostly empty house.  The only room that was pretty much untouched was my office.  Still, I had a couch, the big TV, dining room furniture, a bed and dresser.  What else did I need?  Well, turns out an inflatable bed was necessary for the girls to sleep on.  They’ll have their own beds in my new house but for this weekend, the girls slept in the middle of the living room on an air mattress (a big, queen sized one).  They loved it and after they were asleep, I went up to my room.  They slept through the night without any problems.  I was expecting some crying in the middle of the night but, for the most part, my girls are troopers or just heavy sleepers. 
Friday night was spent going to the grocery store and getting supplies for a movie night.  I didn’t have a TiVo/cable box due to a mix up in the moving but I did have a PS3 console so I could stream Netflix through it (this will be a blog topic coming soon).  We set up the living room to be as comfortable as possible and the girls fell asleep watching Stuart Little.  As I got up to go to bed, I discovered that the couch I was going to use in my new house was not so great for my back.  It was the same couch I had before I got married and either it got old or I did.  Either way, a new couch was needed.  Possibly an orthopedic one if they happen to make such a thing.
Saturday morning was spent getting the house cleaned in case anyone wanted to come see it.  It was up for sale although the only way you can tell is by the sign in the front yard, not the steady stream of people looking at it (fail). My Ex and her mom came over to help with the cleaning while the girls played.  Once we were done and I took a shower, the girls and I headed out to lunch and then a movie (Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days).  We played a couple games in the arcade at the movie theater and had a good time.  My girls love to go to the movies, which is great because I do too.
Afterwards, we did what all kids love to do, furniture shopping!  Since I knew their attention spans were limited, I grabbed a salesperson and had her walk me through all of their couches at a Usain Bolt-type pace.  Luckily there was a special event going on in the store which included a guy playing piano for the customers.  The girls hung around him, asking a million questions and did a little dancing to the songs he was playing.  I felt sorry for the piano player but his loss was my gain. They were occupied.  In about 15 minutes, I narrowed my choices down to two couches and ten minutes later, I was out the door with a receipt for my new couch to be delivered on the Wednesday after I moved in. It felt good to get that done as quickly and as efficiently as I did.  Maybe I should take the girls with me every time I go furniture shopping? Hmmm…probably not.
It rained when we got home, so Saturday evening was dinner, some game playing on the PS3, and another movie (the Eddie Murphy version of Dr. Doolittle).  Sunday morning was a bit lazy as it looked like rain…a little TV watching, a little breakfast, some blog writing, and a round or two of the card game War with my oldest (she loves the game).  Then it was off to run some errands.  The list of things I needed for my new house was growing.  With the Ex and all her stuff out, I could more easily see what I needed.  When I was at my niece’s wedding, my family threw me a Divorce Shower just like the one I talked about in Bed, Bath and Bothered, so I had a handful of Target gift cards to use. 
Once that was done, we went back home just in time for a terrific storm to hit.  It got so bad; we went down into the basement.  My oldest daughter is petrified of storms while my youngest would probably go do cartwheels in them if I let her (I didn’t).  When it finally blew over, we came up from the basement and checked the outside.  A tree blew over and another tree shed a rather large branch…all missed the house, thank goodness. 
I don’t know if it was the storm or just being over-tired, but the girls woke up in the middle of the night screaming so they came up and slept with me…which was fine. Usually I don’t like it because they sleep in such awkward positions (as discussed in Making the Spare Bedroom Your Bedroom, Spare) but since we were down one person in the bed (re: the Ex), it wasn’t bad at all.  In fact, it was nice. 
So nice that when the morning came and I took them to my soon to be ex-mother-in-law’s house, I was sad.  I knew it would be two weeks before I could enjoy them staying the night again and the reality of the situation sunk in. That night found me sitting in the middle of that empty house wondering what went wrong once again as a depression storm took down my relatively sane mood much like the rain storm took down the tree in my backyard. 
I took some deep breaths and tried to get past it because that’s all I can really do.  In Parents Inc., I wondered what type of dad I would be now and how I would handle my time with my girls when I had them.  I’m still not sure I have that answer but I think it’s something close to what we did this weekend.  Activities we can do together but nothing too spectacular.  Just spending time with them and giving them as much attention as I can. 
It wasn’t like it was all butterflies and rainbows while they were here.  They’re still children and children can be a bit frustrating at times but that frustration goes away quickly when you know there’s an even bigger frustration just waiting for you when they leave:  The frustration of being alone.

Next time:  The big move!

Saturday, August 4, 2012

The Emotional Forecast


“…And that’s why you should never mix gardening with nude acupuncture!  Ha ha!  Now let’s turn it over to Kevin for the 5 Day Emotional Forecast.  Kevin?”


“Thanks, Chip.  Well, folks, after a series of nice days, it looks like we’re in for a day or two of deep depression and why wondering.  After that, we’ll see a clearing of false hope followed by a bout of ‘I’ll never marry again.’” 




Ah, if only we could forecast our emotions like this.  Going through the cycle of being okay to depressed to really depressed to feeling pretty good can be exhausting.  If we knew it was coming we could at least be prepared for it.

Initially, my depression days were pretty much every day.  On a graphical representation of my moods, dark clouds with lightning bolts would have been heavily used for at least the ten day forecast, if not the extended one.  I don’t believe there was a sunshine icon used until a month or so after the decision to get a divorce.

Beyond then, it seemed like every other day was a down day and then that turned into every three days, then four, then weekly until finally I was at a point where I would have a morning of depression every couple weeks.  I chronicled the last one in The Healing Walk.  It was during that walk that I thought maybe there was a pattern to my emotions or maybe to everyone’s emotions.  If I could figure out how that pattern worked, document it and then publish that baby, I would make a quadzillion dollars in no time.

Initial analysis made me think that the emotional downbursts were a buildup of sadness over time.  At the start, there is so much sadness that it’s always raining.  Later, as the soul starts to heal, a weak acceptance high pressure system helps to block out the depression but that depression continues to build as its fueled by questions and memories of the good times until, at some point, it pushes out the system that is keeping you moderately sane and hits you like a tornado hitting a trailer park.  Then, like the tides, it ebbs away leaving clear skies of moderate happiness or at the very least, overcast skies but no rain.

The general pit in your stomach that pretty much doesn’t leave for a long while is kind of like the humidity of your pain.  It’s there and it’s bothersome but it doesn’t stop you from living your everyday life.  Unfortunately, that humidity is just the precursor to the sadness storm that’s coming.  I think until you get rid of that constant humidity, you are still in the depression cycle.

If I was more conscious of this while going through it, I would have logged my emotions each day or maybe several times a day just to see if there was a pattern.  It would have been hard to translate, though, since, just like the weather, my emotional state was fairly unpredictable.  I can’t tell you the number of times I felt somewhat normal only to see a picture or hear a song that brought on an emotional outbreak like an afternoon thunderstorm in the Spring.  Having a log may have helped me to track my emotional states so I could see when a downward spiral was coming and then I could batten down the hatches and put plywood up on the windows of my heart.  For me, that would have been putting on my walking shoes and shorts and hitting the pavement.  Walking turned the tumultuous storm into a steady rain and then to a sprinkle and then to complete sunshine.  The longer the walk, the better the outlook.

I’m sure there would be no way to accurately predict when the emotional bad weather would hit much like there’s no way to accurately predict the real weather.  There are, however, people getting paid big bucks to try to do it and they use a model to follow so why not me and the emotional forecast?  If I had an emotional forecast model, I could provide a personal service to help someone each morning predict just how crappy their day is going to be.  Wouldn't that be a nice service to have? 

"Back to you, Chip."



Next time:  Which came first? The marriage or the children?

Thursday, August 2, 2012

And Now She's Gone


(Once again, I interrupt the regularly scheduled blog for something more "in the moment")

Yesterday, my wife moved out of our house.

Since they only moved a block away, the girls will probably bounce back and forth as they want until I move out 10 days from now but the person I thought I would be with until I died is now gone and I’m still alive (here’s hoping it stays that way for a while).

I thought this would end up being harder than it was. I thought an extended Healing Walk was going to be needed or fresh box of tissues or, at the very least, a big long hug from someone (although I probably would’ve needed to pay for that service…what’s the going rate for just a hug from a hot prostitute?  I say "hot" prostitute because, really...who wants a skanky one?).

I find myself, however, moderately okay. In Making the Spare Bedroom Your Bedroom, Spare I suggested against staying in the same house with your soon-to-be ex-spouse because it was/is extremely uncomfortable. I am tempted to rescind that piece of advice, though. Not the part about it being uncomfortable. Oh, it was uncomfortable. There was no getting around the built up tension between the two of us on some days. I’m talking about the living together post separation part being the advice I would rescind.

Having to stay with the woman I suddenly found out was no longer interested in keeping me as a husband became like an intense detoxifying program. I was constantly exposed to the reality that we would no longer be together. Day after day, I was slapped in the face with the reality of divorce. That kind of accelerated the healing process. That probably sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? I will try to explain but I was kind of surprised by it myself.

I believe that if I had moved out immediately and went into seclusion (which is what I initially told my wife I was going to do); I think it would have been a harder and a longer process to get over the relationship. My state of mind would have been frozen at the point of realization that my marriage was over and the love for my wife would have been trapped in emotional amber, not being able to dissolve itself. The buzzing of questions on “Why?” and “What happened?” would have taken longer to go away because I would have only been able to focus on those questions in that point of time, searching for those answers and nothing else. Since we were financially and thus physically bound to be together, however, the time made me continually face the fact that I was getting the divorce. Seeing my soon to be ex every day forced me to realize it was over and I found the love I had for her slowly draining away through tension, opened eyes and cold reality.  I had to confront the hard feelings and deal with them immediately. Sure, this meant a lot of depression, crying, and rendering of garments but now that we have reached this point where we are physically apart, I feel that I am emotionally apart as well.

Other than just facing up to the hardship, I also took a lot of deep breaths and counting to ten when I felt like blowing up at her. We had to live together along with our children so getting into a clash every time she left a pile of dirty dishes in the sink or when I thought about why she gave up on the marriage would have made a difficult situation completely unbearable. So, I swallowed my pride (and a fair amount of anger) and turned the other cheek…not always, but a lot. I think this helped me to accept the reality of the situation; to understand that there wasn’t anything I could say or action I could take to change the road we were on. The intersection that may have allowed that was long and far away in the rear view mirror.

Thus, I reached a point to where I simply didn’t care about answering those ever-buzzing questions. It was like I had become immune to the pain or more accurately, I no longer had the pain. I believe I reached that mindset much quicker by living with her than I would have by being alone.

Does this mean I’m completely healed? That I’m cured of this disease called “divorce?” No, I don’t think so. I’m sure there will be relapses and times where conflict will overcome the peace. Those times will most assuredly happen when my daughters come to visit and then leave but I think I’ll delve into that in a separate blog.

For now I will breathe in the silence and the emptiness of the house but feel that everything will be all right. I have already fought the battle of being alone by not being alone. Now was the time to live it.

My wife physically leaving isn't the end of the story.

It’s just the beginning.



Next time: What is the Emotional 5 Day Forecast?

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