Mar
28
For many years now, this blog has been a place for me to document my days, but more importantly, process my feelings. I often find my way to the heart of what I’m dealing with emotionally through the act of trying to describe things to you, dear reader.
The stage I’m in now has been enormously tricky to navigate with public writing. I have this great desire to make sense of the reality I am living in, to be seen in it. Things can feel so isolating; I deeply crave commiseration, validation, reflection.
But that kind of support can be destabilizing to others in this story. The parts of my story that feel the most painful are live wires connected to people who are not me, who have stories of their own, who I love more than anything in the world.
So my work here is to find the truths that can be shared in a way that honors my experience, while staying fully in my lane. And let me tell you, that has been hard and I have messed up more than once.
I think the most honest, safe way to describe my life post-divorce is that it does not look like what I thought/hoped it would look like, and that is something I can keep talking about in general terms. It’s the part of my life that is the most difficult, the most painful, and it feels so BIG. Sometimes it feels like everything, this feeling that things are not as they should be.
That is where the struggle happens, right? What is that saying, Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Which is a deeply annoying thing to consider sometimes, like oh thanks I guess I just have to life coach my way out of this severed arm that got torn off by a wheat thresher. But I can understand the basic truth of it. If I’m stuck in a pouring rainstorm, I can either accept that I’m getting wet or I can get wet and howl in misery at the sky. Neither option keeps me dry.
It should be different is a thought I have to let go of. In part because the whole of that thought is “…because things would be better,” and I can’t keep trying to convince people to agree with me. Maybe that isn’t even true, no matter how it feels to me. But also because this is how things are, full stop.
Who knows about the future but this is how things are, there is no sign of change, and it’s time for me to stop scrabbling against it. Beating my wings on a hot bulb, nothing happening but my own ability to fly burning black.
There is a big difference between sitting with pain and spinning out trying to figure out how to get rid of it. Sometimes it feels like way too much to let that pain really come to the table. It tells me it is overwhelming, that I can’t handle it. It comes with a lot of sneaky no-good thoughts like this is all your fault and this is because you’re a bad person, you always have been and you always will be. It tells me that it is an endless black hole of hurt and it will never ever get better.
I have been stuck at acceptance since day one, I think, and always trying to convince myself that I’ve progressed. Whew, that was tough but I think I’ve got it now lol!! The truth is that it was tough, it still is tough, it’s going to be tough.
This is tough and that’s okay. It’s okay for things to be hard because sometimes things are hard. Pain does not automatically mean I did something bad. Pain will not kill me, it is a natural thing to be feeling, and it will in fact evolve over time. It won’t always feel like this. Nothing stays the same forever.
I think it’s important for me to allow the bad feelings to come on in, and also to make sure they’re not bring a bunch of backchannel buddies. Yes, I feel loss, but no, it does not mean I am a bad mom, a bad person, or that I did not exist for the past 24 years. Yes, this is sad, but I am not erased. I cannot be deleted from life’s grid. I am still here.
My life meant something before and it still does. My whole life has taken on a different shape and not everything looks like how I wish it would look and that is how it is. If I manage to expand outside of my own navel-gazing, there are a GREAT many things that are not how I wish they would be, and that is how it is.
Don’t let this pull you back from being their mom, my therapist told me recently. Mom harder.
I like that, Mom harder, and I think it can apply to my own self as well. Oh honey. I know it hurts. I’m sorry. Let’s just sit here for a minute.
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My hangup is usually at the acceptance part too because everything in the world is clearly my fault, DON’T YOU KNOW and the self-talk I engage in I would NEVER direct at another person in my same situation. My therapist gave me this phrase: “acknowledge your pain, respond with kindness.” I’m not saying I’m perfect at actually doing it, but it’s a good starting point for trying to head off all the self-flagellation. You matter. You’re doing great.
In the early days of divorce-world, the things I was accused of being responsible were sometimes astounding. I was responsible for earthquakes, unrest in the Middle East, and the grocery store being out of the favorite cereal. I didn’t have such an issue with those things, but I felt incredibly guilty for finally saying, “I’ve had enough.” and then going through with the divorce. Which of course was my fault because I refused to put up with the crap no other human would put up with.
My parents had an amicable divorce: no courts, no orders, just mutually agreed upon financial support and a weekly schedule they both respected and were flexible executing. So when I split from my daughter’s father and we had a spiteful, nasty custody battle, I distinctly remember thinking, over and over, that it “does not look like what I thought/hoped it would look like” and also “It should be different.”
I don’t actually remember exactly how I got through it. Busying myself with anything I could find? Rage? A lot of thai salad rolls, I recall. That was 15 years ago. Now I’m one of his emergency contacts on his surgery paperwork and the kiddo doesn’t speak to him. Life is weird.
But the thing is, given your boys ages, they are either already gone or almost out the door. Whether they still sleep in the family home or not, they are going. And that’s a good thing. And they shouldn’t feel bad about it, and neither should you. This will happen divorce or not. Just be there for them and be happy to see them on their own terms. It may be less divorce than you think. You might be missing less than your mind is telling you.
I wish for you, as I often wish for myself, that it were possible to write 100% the way things are, the real stuff, without having to think of other people. Even private journals get found later.
I used to write and write and write. I saved a lot of it. I also burned a lot of it. If my journals are read after I’m gone, then so be it. It will just be another picture of who I was at that time.
You’re not a bad person and don’t ever let anyone tell you that.
I can only imagine how hard it is. How painful it is, and sitting with pain is hard. Acceptance and acknowledgement is hard.
Loss and growth and change are all painful and hard.
It’s hard when life continues, when we evolved when others changed when things shift.
You’ve got this. It will be ok.
Also, remember, your story is your own. You are allowed to share your story.
Others can choose to be part of that or not. They can choose to respect your experience and your story and your side. It doesn’t invalidate them, doesn’t make their story any less true for them, but you’re allowed to be YOU.
Things really do change. Just because family and relationships have taken on a certain shape at this moment does not mean it will be that shape forever (and IME it probably won’t be). “Mom harder” is fantastic advice. Hang in there seems so trite but … hang in there!!! <3
“Mom harder.” You will always be mom. Even when they’re 60. One thing my therapist said to me, was, “You are teaching them who you are. He is teaching them who he is.” I divorced when my kids were young, so their lessons in who we are started very young. At one point in the very, very early days I heard from the very, very new significant other, that they just wanted him to be the “father he deserved to be.” As if I was responsible for preventing that from happening. I did keep it in mind as I focused on “being the mother I deserved to be.” Of course I wasn’t and am not perfect. I made lots of choices, some better than others, but there was always intention behind the hardest and most challenging ones. I was not going to play the, “let’s just see what happens if I don’t do anything,” game.