Monthly Archives: March 2016

Good days happen

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I didn’t go to the hospital on Tuesday, the Ex had other visitors and I decided to take the afternoon to shop for groceries, decide the meal plan for the week, and just potter around the house; my closet looks like a tornado went through and frankly the rest of the house is pretty much the same, I had plenty to do.

So of course I invited two friends over for the kids, and since kids have a way of mysteriously multiplying suddenly I had six kids in the house, three girls and three boys, which obviously means the house now looks like a tornado went through, followed by a hurricane and then whatever was still standing got taken down by an earthquake.

Thankfully the kitchen is in the center of the house and has a great view of the yard, so that’s where I spent my afternoon. Turns out this wasn’t as bad as it seems, I spent a lot of time making sandwiches and doling out water, but I also got a cake in and a nice risotto with spinach and bacon. Two kids decided to stay for dinner. My kids are exhausted and ecstatic. I’m pretty sure today was a good day.

Right back at it

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One of the things that has changed along with the Ex’s illness is my work status. I’ve forgone my state of idle bliss and have gone back to work. Much against my best intentions…

Several moons ago, I worked for a few years at a lovely medical Spa near our town. I worked for the Ex, which was much less devastating on our relationship than one would think. I managed the Spa, and quite enjoyed the work despite it being intensely time consuming. I enjoyed it so much that I worked until two days before the Boy was born and I went right back to work once I’d healed from the whole ordeal. The Boy was a delightful baby (during the day) and slept contently beside my desk when he wasn’t eating. The job, however, was time-intensive and stressful enough that when I fell pregnant with the Girl a year later I completely lost my shit and decided I was done. DONE.

So fast forward to January and the Ex asks me to return to my previous job, with better hours and for a limited amount of time, just to get some projects off the ground basically. I said no. Because, mostly, I’m not crazy enough to go work for my ex husband when we’re going through an extremely difficult and emotionally destabilizing (for me) separation. And then he got sick. And then I had no choice but to take the job. Mostly because I have issues with saying no to people.

It’s taken some adjusting. I’m only working part time, but with all the added work of taking care of the Ex, bringing him his meals and all the rest of it, it really feels like I’m working full time. Also, I miss my kids. And I miss exercising. A lot.

I know, I know, everybody works… but I had a pretty good set up before!

Also, there are things I had forgotten about working with actual adults. I get to talk to actual adults. I also need to remember that I’m not dressing for the park or errands. The last few weeks I’ve been holed up in the office, so jeans were fine, but now I’m interacting with clients a bit more and, as I realized this morning, jeans and sneakers ain’t cutting it! So now I’ve got to do a closet check, with subsequent tears and wails of I’ve got nothing to wear. Oy Vey!

I’m tired just thinking about it.

Did I mention that I actually have to use my brain now? For several consecutive hours I need to be able to not just concentrate but also look smart doing it. I need to follow conversations and look at a budget without going cross-eyed, and I need to remember what I tell people to do and why. My brain is about to explode.

It’s not all bad, but it’s not what I would have chosen. For now I’m rolling with it and trying to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment as much as possible. Also, trying not to tank the projects, alienate the staff, or kill one of the clients, all distinct, if remote, possibilities… thankfully I’m too tired right now to worry about that too much, which I guess is one of the benefits of insomnia. Score one for insomnia.

If they can do that, so can I.

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This week has been hell, I would have said about ten minutes ago. It’s been a difficult week for me, full of ups and downs; too many emotions and too many tears. I can’t get rid of the anger, the disappointment, the resentment… so many negative feelings along with worry and fear for the Ex’s life (I’ve decided it’s time to stop calling him the Husband… I fiddled around with the Father of my children, but that’s just too goddamn long to write), worry for my kids, worry for work, worry, worry, worry… which reminds me, need to get my brow botoxed before I turn into a prune.

My MIL was here for a few days, then my mother arrived, which, if you’ve read my past posts you would thing was a very bad idea, considering how much we fight and argue and disagree… but in times like these, I’ve realized, I need my family around. Case in point, last night we were watching tv and at around 1 am, when every other sane person that knows how tired I’ve been would encourage me to go to sleep, we decided to watch “just one more episode” (Lucifer, good show btw), by then of course it had been four hours since dinner so I was feeling peckish and I turn to her and say I’ll just pause this for a second, I’m going to make myself a sandwich. And instead of saying do you really need a sandwich at 1am? Which is what I expected and was getting ready to argue, my mom just goes “ok”, gets up and follows me downstairs to make her own sandwich. And at that moment I realized how badly I needed having her around. She’s the one that makes me have two glasses of champagne with dinner, because, really, why not. She makes me feel like maybe I can loosen up and let go of my obsessive control issues every once in a while. She’s the one that is completely and unequivocally on my side in the fuck fest that has become my life. She loves the Ex, but she loves me more, and she sees him differently from the way I see him. She doesn’t blame me as much as I blame myself, she takes a bit of the responsibility from my shoulders, she helps me see him with his flaws and not just my own. She sees how badly he is feeling, she realizes and acknowledges the difficulties he is going through, but she also sees and cares about mine. I’m happy I asked her to come, cause sometimes, no matter how old we are we really do just need our mom.

But this wasn’t the only point of this post. Right before I started writing I saw the following video on the war in Syria. And just like that my problems did not seem so big. We all live our own personal tragedies, of course, and my problems aren’t any less important to me now, but they have been put into perspective. There are people trying to survive atrocities, daily, all over the world. If they can do that, I can survive this.

Crying, rivers and streams

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I used to have a husband.

I used to have a man that loved me, took care of me, put me first and who put my happiness above all else. I married this man, I loved him, I gave everything to him, I tried to make him happy and to take care of him. We made two beautiful, perfect little lives together. I was exceedingly lucky.

Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but it was ours and it worked. For a time it worked. And then it didn’t work.

He got leukemia, twice, he had two bone marrow transplants; he developed an illness called GVHD (graft versus host disease), which some transplant patients get, but he survived. He survived, but we didn’t. I don’t even know when and how it happened, our marriage died, slowly, over time, we didn’t even notice. One day everything was fine, and the next I simply can’t take the fighting any longer and I ask him to leave, for the night, for a few days, just to get a break from it all. He left, and it was a nightmare, so he came back after a week, but he never really came back. He came back and slept in another room, he shut down or off or maybe I only then started noticing. He simply didn’t love me anymore. It took me forever to understand those words. How, how can he not love me anymore? We’re supposed to love each other forever. We’re supposed to love each other more each day, not less, not stop.

It took months, months of arguing, of crying, of trying to wrap my mind around it, months of negotiating, figuring out what we were doing, months of hopes and crushed hope, months of misunderstandings, of righteous indignation and of broken hearts.

Finally in September I accepted that I could not and would not try to keep a man who loved me, yes, because we’ve been together for sixteen years and have two children, but who no longer loved me as his wife, who no longer loved me for me. And then it took two more months before he finally moved out of the house, but only half way, all his stuff is still here. And after that we still went on for months trying to figure out a new routine, trying to parent together without being together, trying to become independent from the other while maintaining a good relationship. I never threw a vase at him. I wish I had. I wish I had yelled at him, I wish I had gotten angry at him and thrown plates at his head, I’ve got so many plates. I wish I hadn’t cried quite so much.

Last week he was diagnosed with leukemia again. AGAIN. And I’ve started crying again, and I can’t stop, I literally can’t stop. I used to have a husband, now I have a man that I love, but with whom I am no longer married – on paper, I am, but in every other way that counts, I’m not – who needs me, who I can’t abandon if for no other reason that he’s the father of my children and because I can’t imagine a life without him in it, and because he is my family and I am his. And so I can’t stop crying, crying rivers and streams.