12 year anniversary

September 16, 2006, we used to to say it'd be easy to remember because our area code was "916" and so was our anniversary.  So far it's worked, neither he nor I have forgotten.  I've not really taken notice of it, however.  It's something I think about the day before and then suddenly realize it was yesterday.  It doesn't sit on my head until I get angry with it or sad with it.  Thankfully it keeps to itself.  This year I was up at my boyfriend's house sanding the school's wooden sign that I'd taken as a project.  I got covered in redwood dust, I sweat, I felt proud of what I'd accomplished.  The day prior I was debriefing with my sweetie about being thankful for all of it.  Then I called Ethan and told him too, albeit through some tears.

I'm happy just now.  There are many things I would change, these are mostly trappings and so not really important.  I'd not go back and change anything though.  I'd marry him, I'd make babies with him, I'd go bankrupt with him, I'd live in tiny weird houses and clean up dog diarrhea from the carpet with him.  And while I'd never ever want to go through it again, I'd even have him leave me.  I love the changes that I see in myself since this all began.  I clearly remember who I was when we were married, who I was when I held baby Rosanna in my arms who I was when I called him to find out where he was and learned that he was sitting next to her and they hadn't kissed yet.  And then, having had a major life-spolsion, going on so very many dates- a necessary experience that shifted my world view dramatically and permanently. 

I am so different than I used to be!  I love it.  I would absolutely change my children's confusion and hurt.  To take that away I'd do almost anything.  And yet I also am reminded often to trust.  So I do (it's more rewarding and less stressful than the alternative) and I imagine a way in which this betrayal will serve them in their lives, I imagine how it's all perfect.  This struggle was sent to me to give me an opportunity to "level up", to remember that I am a powerful woman who makes things happen and to practice being love even when it seems impossible.   I'm working, working, working on these things daily.  I'm communicating even when it feels dangerous and reaping the rewards, I'm loving through the seemingly unlovable moments and I'm noticing how much that changes things.

What an awesome practice field my life is. 

JUST LIKE HIM

I, like you no doubt, have heard the Adele song hundreds of times.  "Someone Like You" emerged when Rosanna was little and I was moved by it.  Her voice was powerful and thick with emotion, she took me along her journey of heartache and longing and I felt as though she were telling my story.  I get emotional like that.  In fact, just last weekend I fought back tears when I overheard a man reminding his wife of her ring size.  He knew it more readily than she did. This is the kind of love I want.  Anyhow- I was listening to that song again today, reminiscing how little RoRo would sing it with me in her lispy 2 year old voice, and it occurred to me that the song is even more sad than it seems.  

Think on it for a tick: she is still so stricken by this love lost that she seeks the man long after the romance has died.  So long, in fact, that he is completely over it and is taken aback that she has shown up again.  Despite this, she croons to us that it is no biggie, not to worry, she'll find another JUST LIKE HIM.  **Girlfriend**: unless we're looking to relive the situation that caused you to write an epic-ly moving and wildly popular love song- I suggest we shift our focus to someone NOT like him.   OR she is making deeper observations about the nature of human beings to choose the same situation over and over again through different people/scenarios while still incurring the same results- thus "finding someone like you" is inevitable.  

That's really not why I sat down to write this evening.  I sat down to give myself a genuine high five.  I heard a piece of the song differently tonight and it gave me a moment of reflection: I have chastised myself for the amount of pain I suffered while my world was disintegrating.  I had, pre-Ethan, built sturdy walls around my vulnerable parts and, as a result of work and love and trust, I had let the man in.  I hated myself a good deal for not being smart enough to stay walled up, while at the same time knowing that "walled up" isn't  a way I want to live.  Ethan, knowing me better than me, insisted that loving is my nature.  He told me I couldn't shut it down even if I wanted to.  He saw in me things that I refused to, he lifted me up (ironically, during the time when his actions were stomping me down) and promised that who I am is amazing.  I am acknowledging some of this now, and this little snippet of the song brought it into new light:

"Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead

Nothing compares, no worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes, they're memories made
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?"

I heard it like this: it's all perfect.  There is no choice but to live through all the moments, without endless second guessing and analyzation, the result isn't promised- so we just live it.  Then! this song comes on, and I was like, "HELL YEAH":

"I hope you fall in love and it hurts so bad- the only way you can know is give it all you have....."

SO -you guys- IT HURT SO BAD.  Just thinking about the hurt is making me cry again.  From this I can discern that I freaking gave my all.  I am so proud that I gave my all.  What a waste if I hadn't.  I am so proud that I hung on to my marriage and made gargantuan attempts to make it right.  I am so stinking proud of myself for the stubborn clinging and no-shit honoring of a commitment.  I'm also proud of the moment I decided that I was worth more than what I was fighting for, so I took out my scissors and, through mind-numbing sobbing, cut loose the life I was promised.  

For record, it still hurts...just not as bad. 

Un-understandables

You can all relax now, I've officially identified the most ridiculous part of being a parent: comforting your precious babies through the voluntary absence of the other parent.

I've probably said this in the past, and I used to see my Dad once per year, for a month in the summer.  I'd miss him fiercely all year, then feel trepidacious leaving the comfort zone of my mom.  I'd love being there, a state away, with my Dad.  I was so grown up.  I did things I'd never do in California, mostly that meant being by myself for stretches of time unheard of in my Mom's care.  I could go anywhere, do anything, plan my day and then do something else. No one was there to say no, or yes.  If I rode my bike allllll the way across town, then there I'd be, with the consequence of now needing to pedal all the way back.  When it was time to load me back onto a California bound plane I would be stressed outright.  We'd be late, my luggage barely being tossed into the plane's belly, the front desk person throwing annoyed looks.  I'd be stressed because if I was late my Mom might decide that this was the last unacceptable flaw to my summer visits and I'd not be allowed to see my Dad again.  I'd be stressed because my Dad's roommates and friends would be standing there in the airport in their river shorts and ripped/no shirts, scraggly and tanned, to say goodbye to me too and I didn't want them to see how sad I was.  How near I was to bawling.  I was so very sad to be leaving my Dad for nearly a year and I hated missing him.  That feeling, it's a very specific one, and it's impact hadn't punched me in the face in long while. 

A year and a half ago this very feeling showed up on my child's face when her Daddy told her he'd be no longer living here.  You should know that this feeling is the worst feeling I had as a kid- complete helplessness.  It is wanting something that is vital to your life force, something that you are incomplete without, and having people you love take it away.  It's incomprehensible.  There is a tight squeeze around my heart- it pumps harder, my throat closes up, painfully and I sweat.  My feet chatter on the ground and I can't stop chewing the insides of my cheeks.  I talk about random things.  Nothing makes me feel better.  Suddenly here it was again, this time on the face I love the most.  I was looking at myself, losing my dad and feeling like this couldn't be so.  Then all of the reasonings and thoughts to make the situation be less devastating pour out of her, because there must be a mistake.  We adults must have overlooked the obvious solution, if we could just let her fix/mend/behave these wrenching consequences away.  I'm not sure I've ever been so angry.  Besides knowing that divorce was not going to be a part of her life, I'd never imagined needing to defend my daughter from this old feeling.  I was in a panic, enraged, desperate to get her past the moment where the world changed.  I later wrapped my whole body around her, having coached her into some measured breathing, still feeling the tremors of a meltdown move through her, and I imagined all the yuck of the world trying to get past my cocoon, trying to stain her loving heart.  In my mind I succeeded in all the right ways, but the worst offender wasn't outside, he was in.  And I have no say in that.

She is having these attacks of reality more often lately.  She lays in bed, holding back scathing accusations at the world about not seeing her Daddy enough, and eventually they spit out of her bright red, crumpled face.  Two or three words at a time I get the story.  I agree with all of it: the unfairness, the un-understandables, the inquiry as to why.  She told me last night that she felt like she was going to explode.  She told me tonight that it felt like, "I cracked my head open again, only my heart feels cracked not my head".  I see it in her eyes and in her defensive body language.  She is in it.  She's there, where I was, and she is feeling so helpless and out of control and longing.  I squeeze her and she wraps her legs in knots around mine.  Maybe if I squeeze her just so, it will wring all of this ick out of her tender heart.  I keep her there until she is asleep.  Heavy.  Twitching.  At peace.

New day, new male cow excrement

Remember those weeks where you just wanted to bury yourself in bed and let the throbbing tragedy be muffled by your heavy, depressed slumber?  Yeah, that.  I just watched my entire paycheck be gulped down by a bill that I spent the previous hour frantically making phone calls to avoid.  The ding of my phone notifying me that my account is now hundreds of dollars overdrawn brought me back into the comforting arms of my bed.  Children still needed through my tears.  So and so looked at me this way.  I can't find my fairy house.  Look at this octopus I made with bendy straws.  Why are you crying.
I lie to my children a lot.  I carefully picked over the real reasons I was crying, an exercise that dove me deeper into the sadness.  The final response- after it was weighed for the possible level of inquiry it would illicit and the amount of life altering thought processes it could set off, was that, "I'm sad about the way I wish things could be." My eldest accepted that answer, responded, "I love you Momma" and left the room.
A friend told me that these challenges are being given to me in this life because I am being called to "level up".  On the path to enlightenment there are obstacles and navigating them is the test.  I don't like it.  I am very, very attached to the way I want things to be. I've let go of the physical manifestations- the house, the yard, the marriage.  Now I just want the peace.  I want a break from defending my children's growing up against the chaos that disguises itself as faithful, truest love.
On that note, I also want to say: faithful truest love doesn't ask you to be someone you're not.  It doesn't fight for you to have angry relationships with other people.  It doesn't leave you in lurches of sadness while it goes off and shares it's body with another before coming back to you.  It doesn't require you to tippy toe about, just in case it is having an insecure moment.

I'm not delusional about what love looks like.  I think it allows for all parts of oneself to be perfectly present, even the yucky parts.  I think the results can't be that you are left questioning and stressed and turned upside down and wondering what essential parts of yourself need to be remedied.  No.  That is not it at all.

It's Almost Here Folks!!

I've been through enough inner work to know that when I am feeling judged it is really just me judging myself.  And let's say that I'm wrong, that someone out there really is judging me, well shame on them.  They can go fly a kite (or some such thing).  But here I am feeling the need to justify, or explain some things away.  Really, also, to dump out this Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout-sized pile of feelings onto a blank computer screen.

I do my best to disappear on the weekends.  Emotionally and physically. I want to vacate my week life, set it down and come back in 48 hours.  I wouldn't say single moms are heroes (it's not a dig, I just am not sure that's the right word for it), and I am hardly that 'single mom' anyone ever talks about, but it's f*cking hard and draining to sustain two rambunctious, thriving, needing people through a week without that other person struggling right along side me.  And not just any other 'one'.  The one who made them also.  The actual only other person who can relate to them in the way I can, who can share a sideways glance with me that holds an entire story that we can giggle about without words passing.
And so I go.  I am not around for hanging out.  I am not around for work.  I am not around to experience any parts of my weekday life.  I really, really need to go away.  I need to check out.  It feels imperative to my survival.

And no, I won't be there with my kids at the weekend birthday parties.  He will.  I won't show up for those few hours to be there.  I want to.  I love the community, the family and love that is being with my tribe.  But then I am back in my week.  And my kids are too.  If you knew the heartbreak that happens for my babies when I pop in for a moment of their weekend, you wouldn't question it.  It sends them into a tailspin.  Maybe not right away, or maybe in that moment.  They aren't ready to deal with that.  I am not going to require them to.  They are still too raw.  So am I.

And so I'm not there.

And guess what else?!  Thursday I'm a free woman!!  Divorced!  Have I told how wrecked I am?  How vulnerable, exposed and generally terrified I feel?  I am coming up on a solid week of hovering on a meltdown.  I can't see old baby photos without crying.  I can't see or talk to Ethan without crying.  I can't listen to someone gripe about their husband without crying.  I can't listen to half the music on the radio without crying.  The way that electric guitar hovered on that note a moment longer- crying.  I am afraid if I really give in to the crying that is waiting for me, I'll be sucked into a deep pit and never be seen again.

You know what else is neat?  Some horrid person thinks I should be over it.  She thinks I am being dramatic and invasive.  As if my own personal feelings of failure plus the impending doom I feel is waiting for my children as they grow in a broken home isn't plenty on it's own- no I want to stick myself in the midst of the relationship that f*cks with my brain the most.  What a hilarious assumption.  An entire third of my life was committed to this man.  We created new human beings together with our bodies.  We cried and loved and laughed and struggled and were in awe together.

How sad for her that she hasn't had that experience.  Otherwise she wouldn't accuse me of being a horrible person for not being 'over it'.

Sundays are for wailing

There is a moment lately that I hate.

It happens on Sunday nights.  I come home to my children (after being gone for the weekend so they may have time with their dad without being shuttled around), in time to love on them a bit and help get them to bed,  They get to have both of their parents read to them, snuggle them into their covers and then leave them to slumber.  However, on Sunday nights they wail.  They know their daddy is leaving after he closes their door.  My six year old pouts at me, accusingly, "Why does daddy only get to see us two days a week and you get us five days?".  Her look is volatile, angry, wounded.  I tell her I agree, it isn't fair.  She flails back into her pillow, sobbing.

I hate him so much on these nights.  I am called back to comfort the casualties.  They are inconsolable.  And there is nothing I can do to make it better.  This is the part that makes me insane.  This is the part that leaves me silently crying along side them in the dark.  I'm helpless.  I can hold hands, rub backs, provide squishy, comfy stuffed animals, but I can't fix it.  I send him angry texts, imploring him to think about what he has done to his perfect, amazing children.  I regret it almost immediately.

Eventually their melt down exhausts them to sleep.  It's quiet and the rage I felt is lessening, but a punching bag would be ideal right now.  I realize it's a futile effort, and I try to see his side.  Every time I come up short.  I just couldn't leave my children, my family, my life for another person (this scenario, of course, doesn't involve abuse).  I would fight and fight and fight to see my children more than just on the weekends.  As a matter of fact I did.  I fought and fought and took on new, uncomfortable shapes and agreed to awful, unthinkable solutions and became a shadow.  I disappeared into an ugly dark place that had me unable to eat or smile or sometimes even get out of bed.

While it is undoubtedly the one thing I knew would never be a part of my story- I am getting a divorce.  The paperwork is cold, impersonal and daunting.  Seeing my precious children's names on a legal form makes me want to vomit.  Sitting for an hour and a half to hand over a pile of papers to a clerk who then questions why I would fill out such-and-such form (well, because that legal help desk over yonder told me to) has the tears that were welling up begin to spill over.  She doesn't care much.  I finally leave and take time to ugly-cry in my car before I can drive away.

This process sucks and has repercussions beyond oneself, we all know this.  He is learning the round about way, experiential learning is what I believe it's called.  I just never expected to have to protect my children from their father's "learning process".

I am suffering.

The first weirdest part about Ethan moving out was grocery shopping.  I know, that threw me off too.  It was because I was the only adult to shop for.  So many of my choices revolved around what he would want.  I think I was a good wife.

Now my grocery shopping feels indulgent.  Sort of like when I was young and I would go shopping with my Mom, and I would think to myself, "When I grow up, I am going to buy tubes of cookie dough and just eat it raw!  And then I'll eat a whole package of Oreos!!!"  I had it all figured out, obviously.  And it's sort of the same.  If I see something I like, I buy it.  It doesn't matter if he would like it, because, well, he isn't here.

It took weeks before I didn't feel like crying in the grocery store.

Mostly it's the vacant space where he once was.  It's the complete silence after the girls are asleep.  The frightening thought that if I don't have music on or talk to the dog, that the silence will chase me into my own head and I will be bombarded with debilitating thoughts of how I could have done something different.  It's dark in there.  So very dark and, so far, there is no bottom.  I've spent hours rolling around in my bed, kicking blankets, throwing pillows and sobbing until I could hardly breathe.  Then thinking, "If I weren't able to breathe, and I died, no one would know for hours because my kids are asleep and no one is here to know if I am still alive."  Which sends me further down the wretched rabbit hole.  At some point I am calm again, and still there is no man here to hold me and kiss my forehead.  There used to be one here every single night for nearly ten years.

I adored him.  He has a warmness about him, he would always be touching my knee or my back.  When I'd make dinner he'd come in and kiss the back of my neck as a thank you as I fixed up four plates.  I'd rarely get to pass him by with out a pat on the butt or a grazing of his fingers.  We share things that no one in this world can ever share with me: things our children say and do that are only funny to us since we have known them the best.  Or inside jokes that have existed for so long and are so deep and layered that referencing them takes on a subtlety no one else notices, but we do.

Don't think that I am delusional.  I get that we were thirteen years in and less than sparkly anymore.  For me, there was never any other option.  I have suffered through spans of our marriage, but I survived knowing that it was just my expectations that were causing me grief.  Losing this man is the deepest kind of pain I've felt.  It's the most violently I've reeled against an action in my life.  I can actually feel my insides trying to get outside, like my blood cells are vibrating and expanding every time I feel him move further from me.

And what about my kids?  My most perfect, beloved beatings of my heart, out walking around outside my body- a judge is going to order that it will not be my time to see them during certain days of the week.  These two amazing people, who I am infatuated with, who (with his help) I freaking MADE with my BODY, are going to be taken away from me certain days of the week.  For his disgusting behavior, now I am forced to miss out on pieces of their lives.  It's so maddening that I want to disappear with them forever.

I am suffering.