For those who are regular readers to my blogged babblings, I
have been struggling for some time now on how to refer to the woman who is no
longer my wife. I’m sure it must seem
silly to spend as much thought on this but as I have committed myself to
writing this blog; I am stopped down each time I needed to make reference to
her. I have made it a point to not write
out her real name although a good portion of my readers know it. This blog is
about me and my feelings and while I need to talk about her, I don’t need to
personalize it by including her name and thus I have kept it out. I also think that at some deeper level having
a pseudonym for her helped me to not get too emotional while writing these
posts.
Maggie Stiefvater wrote in Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception: “Names are a way to keep people in your
mind.” It may not seem it considering
how much I write about her but I don’t want to really keep her in mind so I
don’t want to state her name. A name
gives someone life and feeling and within these “walls” I don’t want to give
that to her. I’m not trying to be mean;
I just would prefer the “distance.”
Using a name is too close.
Calling her my wife certainly didn’t fit any more even
though at the time of this writing, the divorce was not officially final. Others have used the acronym STBX which
stands for Soon To Be Ex but what do you call them once they are no longer
“soon to be?” Plus I didn’t care for the
sound of it. “Stabuhex.” Sounds like a creature from the Lord of the
Rings.
The other option and one that I have been using is “Ex” or
“the Ex.” I’m also not crazy about this
endearment either as it sounds too menacing: “Enter: The EX!” Another problem I have with simply referring
to her as the Ex is the negative connotation it has on me. I mean, I get it
already!
I have “struck out” once again in marriage.
“X” marks the spot of failure.
“Cross” another one off the list.
I know it’s supposed to refer to her but it also acts as a
constant reminder to me.
A friend on Facebook posted: “How about the “X-Wife” since
she’s the super villain in this story?”
I’m not saying my wife (or ex-wife or soon to be ex-wife…see why I need
a specific term??) and I are great friends right now but I don’t like referring
to her as a super-villain (although X-Wife does have a certain amount of flair
to it). Another suggestion was the Evil
Queen but again, “evil” is a bit much.
No, she’s not a villain, she’s not evil and she’s not a
Tolkien creature. So what to call her? I
didn’t know but then inspiration hit me when I read this blog:
You can read the blog yourself (after you finish mine, natch!)
but basically the guy writing it has been divorced for several years and bumped
into his former wife at a party. She
kept referring to him as his Ex. “Here’s
my Ex!” “That’s my Ex!” He got perturbed by the term being applied to
him as much as I don’t like applying it to my wife. As he stated:
“I do not identify myself as her
‘ex.’ … I feel, in all ways, utterly current.” He went on to write:
Let's all let go of the past, as surely as the
future will let go of us. I, for one, would rather be introduced by my name,
with an addendum, that "we were married once." Or as "the father
of our children."
And there it was.
While reading that, I realized that the best term, the most accurate
term I can use to describe my Ex, my STBX, my X-Wife and Evil Queen is … “The
Mother of My Children” or MMC for short.
It fit. It felt good writing
it. It wasn’t negative and 100%
factual. I mean in some weird soap opera
twist it could come out that one or both of my daughters were not biologically
mine but since I’ve been the only father they have ever known and my name is on
the birth certificate, they were still mine.
But you can’t say she wasn’t my daughter’s mother. I was there.
I saw their birth. I held her
hand as she had each one and complained about how badly my feet hurt from
standing there the whole time like she was perfectly comfortable the entire
time. So, she IS the Mother of My
Children. She is the MMC. No doubt, no denial, no problem using that
term from here on out.
Still, I have some regret not being able to use a Tolkien
reference but maybe “My Preeecciousssss” would have been a little too creepy.
Next time: What’s on TV?
