Little Jagged Hole

The day dawns cold but bright

Chug chug, off to work

Never enough time, can’t even see my desk

Always worried my time is coming

He leaves today

Another round-the-world trip

Another two weeks at home with the boys

Our boys, our silly goofy boys

And that little, nagging, jagged hole

She left.

It looks much smaller than it is

But I keep telling my self it’s hardly there

That little place

Where she ripped herself out of my life,

Out of my family.

That little place that’s empty now

We all pretend not to see it

But it’s always there

And it’s not always a bad thing

But it’s always there.

I tell her goodnight every night

Even though I know she isn’t listening.

At least she knows I think of her

And I still see

That little, nagging, jagged hole.

Fly in the ointment

So, things are going pretty well with the marriage counseling and the hubby and I are feeling pretty good about the progress we are making. I think we both see improvements in each other and our ability to listen and respect each other, and that’s been a huge improvement. We are definitely headed in the right direction.

Here’s the problem: my daughter is absolutely against the whole thing. She won’t even entertain the idea that we might work things out, she has said she won’t move back in to the house if that’s what I decide to do, and when I suggested she accompany us for some counseling, the next thing I know I got an angry phone call from her father about what I was supposedly “forcing” her to do against her will.

This kid has spent the last six months overinflating every negative encounter she has ever had with my husband and convinced herself he is Satan in human form, which he certainly is not. In fact, overall he has not been nearly as disciplinary with her as I have been. Now, everyone else in the family is willing to put the past behind us and work on the tools we need to move forward in a more positive way, except her. She absolutely will not let go of every tiny little injustice she feels she’s been dealt, from as far back as second grade (she is going on seventeen). And her dad is just fueling the fire. He uses terms like ‘outcast’ to describe her and it makes me absolutely nuts. She has never been treated like anything but a complete and total member of my family, often to her disliking.

So what am I supposed to do? If I let her move in with her dad full time, I can guarantee her diploma and any purposeful future will go right down the drain. But I have spent sixteen years trying to love this disrespectful, hateful little user, and when is it time for ME to get a break? I have tried, and tried, and tried… and her affection and respect for me only go as far as what she’s getting from me. The minute ‘NO’ comes in to the picture, I’m a rotten bad guy all over again. People, I am so exhausted.  She has worn my heart right out.

My husband feels hurt, and is hurting for me right now that she would turn away from me and her brothers simply to avoid the effort of making a new start with him. She can’t face the fact that she has been truly awful to him over the years, and our entire family has spent a great deal of time walking on eggshells as a result of her moods and tempers.

So what do I do? How can I move forward? I have told her I will never choose between her and my husband, but it seems she HAS made a choice… how do I deal with that?

So Long, 2008…

 

Well, this has been one of the most bizarre years of my adult life.

I entered it in a stable marriage, a secure job, a comfortable house, and good financial status.

I am leaving it in a state of separation, a job I worry about keeping, a cold basement apartment, and never enough cash to stretch from one pay day to the next.

It’s been interesting.

In between there have been lost loves, internet relationships, and plenty of heartache and heartbreak. It has been tough learning to be on my own, but I really think I am making progress. It’s hard, and it’s lonely, but if there’s one resolution I make for 2009, it will be that I refuse to sacrifice my self, my personality, my happiness, to appease a man. I have rediscovered what it’s like to really be able to just be me… and I like me.

My husband and I are getting along well, spending some time together, and will start counseling in January. But I have been very clear that I have made no promises, aloud or inferred, that I will be returning home. It seems I like him as a friend, but as a husband? I still have no idea if we’ll ever get back to that point. Much change is needed.

My kids will return from my parent’s place in Southern Utah on Sunday; I have missed them and can’t wait to see their little faces again (reminding myself they’re just not so little anymore). School starts up again Monday, and life resumes as normal again for everyone… well, as normal as it can be right now.

So what will 2009 bring? Hard to imagine. So many things in the air right now, I can’t possibly predict what might happen next… but stay tuned,  faithful readers, it’s sure to be entertaining!

Magpye’s ‘Life Sucks’ Poem

 

 

Stumbling blind

Reaching wildly

Finding no purchase

The sound of dark, smell of cold

I am enveloped in lonliness

I see

But I do not see

I feel

But feeling is excrutiating

I fight

But the struggle pulls me further under

Until I cannot breathe

Voices around me

As if from underwater

Unreal, distorted

Time is a sharp wire that winds ever tighter around me

I scream

But no one wants to hear

I am truly alone

Relationship Confusion

So… these are the things I am dealing with. My husband and I are considering reconciling. I know he wants to, and there are parts of me telling me I want to. But I have to be so, so careful about making sure they are the right parts of me, and they want to for the right reasons… there are a million reasons why my life would be so much easier if I went back home. Life on my own has been extremely hard, much harder than I ever expected, and at times brutally depressing. Not to mention that financially I have never been more challenged, ever.

But after all I have been through, the things I have learned about myself, the me I have discovered since I have had the freedom to be this me, I worry that all that is for nothing if I just turn around and go back home. Granted, I would not be considering it if I did not still have deep feelings for my husband, but I can’t forget that I spent years being deeply unhappy there. Maybe it sounds shallow, but I don’t want to give up my Captain’s Quarters, my pirate flags, my pirate bathroom… those things are ME, and I know I would lose those if I went back. I like those parts of me. He never understood it.

I feel like he really wants to rush back into a relationship, and as much as it is nice to have some closeness with him again, I really worry about taking things too fast. I was kind of glad that we couldn’t get in with the counselor until January, I felt like that put a little mandatory waiting time in place. I don’t know if he really understands the level of commitment to change I will require before I consider giving up my independent life, hard as it is, to come back. I know right now he feels motivated and willing to change, but he has made so many promises in the past, and never kept any of them. Work always comes first, then the boys, then the gym, then sleep, then hunting, then… what ever else he might be forgetting. Helloooo?

I know if we are going to move forward, IF, then my main responsibility is putting those grudges behind me. It’s just hard to trust again. I want to… but it’s hard, I so don’t want to be hurt again, it’s so demoralizing to practically live for someone who tends to forget you exist. It’s taken me these many months to start building back my sense of self-value, and that has been one of the best things to come of this separation for me. I don’t want to lose that.

I hope being around more and opening the lines of communication isn’t giving him the idea that we are automatically getting back together, he has already suggested I move back home first and then we start counseling, and I was like, ‘no way!’ Maybe I need to discuss that with him openly to make sure there are no misunderstandings about where we stand.

Communication….. isn’t that always what it comes down to in the end??

Just wondering

How do you know? When you live in limbo land, how do you possibly know what step to take next? When everything is turned upside down, and nothing is the same from one day to the next, and you’re cut off from everything and everyone that can give you any insight, how do you know where to turn?

When everyone has their own agenda, when nobody knows what’s really going on inside you, when you have no idea what’s going on inside him, how can you possibly make any reasonable decisions about your future?

When everything that can go wrong does, and nobody wants to give you a break, and you just gotta keep on chugging but you are wearing your emotional fingers to the bone, how can you trust yourself to make sound choices?

When black goes a shade blacker, and the dark before the dawn just keeps getting darker, and you’re waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel and realize you haven’t even reached the tunnel yet, how do you convince yourself to keep going?

When you are killing yourself to do your best and it’s nowhere near good enough, and you spend what little free time you have just waiting for the other shoe to drop, when you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months, or a decent meal in days… when the latest glimmer of hope has turned to the sheen of a teardrop on your cheek, what do you do next?

These are the things I wonder lately….

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Well, I guess I blew it again. This time I went into the chat room where R and I always meet, and I went under a different name, because he always does, and I thought maybe I’d show him how it felt not to know who you were talking to.

Long story short, BIG MISTAKE. He was in under a different name and we got in a huge fight not even knowing who we were and now it seems the whole chat room I have frequented for months as my solace in a lonely life hates me. I don’t know that he has been saying things about me, so I won’t make assumptions, but something is very strange about the sudden hatefest going on in the room where everybody knew and liked me. And I can hardly get him to talk to me because he doesn’t think I understand his point of view about what started the whole thing. I do now. But it was still a scary side of him I had never seen before and it shocked me.

So… what now? I don’t know… are we done? I wish I knew. Part of me says if he can be like that, I need to take my leave. But honestly, a bigger part of me still deeply cares for him and is extremely dismayed over what has happened. I don’t want to let go. But I don’t know that it’s my choice anymore.

Hey, Newsflash… Magpye screws up again. Stupid, stupid me.

No happy ending for the Magpye

So… I got dumped. In an EMAIL.
Right after I got written up.
It was an AWESOME friday.
I have spent the rest of the weekend drinking beer and crying, what else is there to say?
I just don’t know how much more I can really take; I really don’t. It’s SOOOOO not funny anymore.