Muchness and Light

Please learn to rule with your head, not your fist, and those lessons that you learn will carry on.

After Max was born, I remember reading some parenting book (though I can’t remember which) that said not only does your newborn not know that it’s not an extension of you, it doesn’t know that it’s not you.

It makes sense. The baby’s entire existence has been literally attached to you, dependent on you for everything. This doesn’t really change for months, especially during those first vital weeks, when your entire life feels like a never-ending game of Keep the Freakin’ Baby Alive!

But there does come a time when your child starts to articulate its own personality. It was fascinating to me (still is!) to see the ways Max and Tricky both looked and acted like me or DH—and the ways in which they didn’t. No matter if your child has your dimples and the other parent’s cheekbones, they will eventually exhibit certain characteristics that are totally uncharacteristic of either parent. It was always fascinating to me to discover my children.

While mine are both biologically mine, I suppose parents of children who aren’t born of the parents’ biology have their won type of discovery. The determination of Nature versus Nurture would be necessarily different, though just as fascinating. In no way do I mean to denigrate that experience; it is simply one I have never had.

Regardless of how your child comes into your world, you have dreams and hopes and expectations for it. Of course, this is at the heart of construct of gender and social stereotypes, and the later pressures that can come from such constructs, but it also inevitably shapes the ways in which you parent your child.

I try not to judge other parents. There are, of course, parenting choices that I wouldn’t and didn’t choose, and there are choices other parents make that I would never make for Max and Tricky. Sometimes I do find myself privately harsh when speaking of those choices. But, generally, I believe each parent must make those decisions for their own child, knowing them and loving them in ways only a parent can.

One of the things I was adamant about when the boys were young—and got great support from DH on this—was not forcing them to be any certain way or to have certain thoughts. I always tried to give them information and to help guide them toward the decisions that were best for them, even if those decisions were counter to the ones that I would make for them or for myself. Of course, sometimes I had to use a parental veto, and that could be met with disdain or anger or outright indignation.

When Rango and I were together, we argued regularly about how his approach to the boys was counter to everything they’d come to expect. He expected them to fall in line with whatever he said, and respect was code for obedience. I have encouraged them to express their emotions, even in an impassioned way, as long as that expression was respectful. I do not tolerate name-calling and insults, though they have certainly slipped into heated conversations at times, whether toward each other or toward me. I am just as adamant that they make the repair after they inflict damage.

As I have said for years, I am not raising children; I am raising young men. I expect Max and Tricky to be self-actualized adults, who are capable of self-sustenance and educated decisions about their own paths. I hope that they are happy, healthy men, who successfully navigate whatever path they choose, but also who can admit to their mistakes and apologize for their transgressions, whether toward someone else or toward themselves.

All I have ever been able to do is to try to give them the knowledge they need to make the right decision for themselves, in line with their own moral compass.

Max graduated high school this year, spent a month abroad as part of a cultural exchange, and started college as a sophomore. Together, we made the decision that he would live at home this year. In many ways, it has given us both time to adjust to his burgeoning adulthood.

If he were living in the dorms, I wouldn’t have any clue what he’s doing in his spare time. I wouldn’t know if he’s eating healthy or getting a reasonable amount of sleep. I wouldn’t know about his extra-curricular activities. And so, I’m trying to give him the freedom to explore his new world, with the encouragement and support to do so safely.

In so many ways, it’s like when he became a toddler, demanding to explore the world on his terms but running back to me for a hug and a soothing kiss when he got scared or hurt. Sometimes I have to let him fall and then offer him a hand to get back up. I cannot take the hits for him.

Mostly I hope that I have given him the tools to make smart choices about which hits to take.

No matter what, Max and Tricky aren’t me. No matter how much they can remind me of teenage DH at times, they aren’t their father. They are wonderfully intricate, self-contained psyches made up of the best and the worst of everything they’ve experienced, including their parents.

This is at the heart of the teenage rebellion—a rejection of what you have mastered in order to establish your own identity. It is painful for both teen and parent, and adolescents can be complete assholes, but they’re essentially overgrown toddlers playing dress-up with incredibly high stakes.

I have no doubt that I defied my parents’ expectations. I am positive I was, at times, a complete disappointment. I have no doubt that they would have chosen differently for me, if they’d had a say in it at all.

And, the fact is, many of my choices were (and continue to be) in conscious, direct rebellion to their wishes. I am independent and stubborn, often flouting their notions of an ideal child. But I was left to take care of myself from a young age, and I bypassed normal childhood almost entirely. I stopped seeking their permission and their approval long ago, and I feel absolutely no obligation to meet their expectations of me—nor do I care to psychologize what those expectations are now.

In reality, I hope Max and Tricky will eventually do the same. I don’t want them to be grown men who need or strive for validation from their mother. (I’m sure I’ve done enough to screw them up that that doesn’t need to be another topic for their own therapist’s office.) They shouldn’t need my approval to make choices for themselves or their children, though I will always be happy to offer advice and support and encouragement. I may snark about their choices privately, but I will have done my job (and kept the freakin’ baby alive!) if they are in a position to even make those choices.

I will always be, as I have always been, present for my sons. I will always ask them about their day and listen carefully to their response (even when it’s just a grunt). I will always encourage them to make healthy choices and then take them to the doctor when they need it. I will always give them information and ask for their opinions regarding decisions about them. I will always try to give them what they need, not what I think they should need.

In the end, they are living their lives. It’s not me making those decisions or walking their paths, any more than they can walk mine.

But I will continue to offer them a hand and a hug and a safe, reliable place to return, because that is what good parents do.

 

 

We two have run about the hills and pulled the daisies fine. But we've wandered manys the weary foot since long, long ago.

What a year 2017 has been. Whether personally or politically, I wasn’t expecting the dramatic changes this year brought. I’m not quite sure what to expect for 2018, but I don’t imagine that it’ll be quiet.

After 27 years, I finally finished my bachelor’s degree. After more than ten years of pain, I had three levels of my cervical spine replaced and rebuilt. After three years, I ended my relationship with Rango. I had 182 Détente Days with DH—and I’m thankful for every single one.

The greatest lesson for me this year was that almost nothing will come according to my time frame. No matter how hard I work, how thoroughly I plan for any and every contingency, things occur at their own pace. The best-laid plans and all that jazz. It helps when I’m working with a goal in mind, but sometimes I still need the reminder to slow down and at least acknowledge the journey, regardless of the destination. Life is most pleasurable when I can enjoy the trek, but sometimes my path has been littered with difficult obstacles that were, at best, life lessons waiting to happen.

Because there was so much to deal with this year—which was really just a culmination of all the previous years—I went back into therapy. I’ve written a good bit about the Internal Family Systems model and how I’ve used it to deal with decades-old trauma that continues to impact my day-to-day. Part of the process includes understanding the role each subpersonality plays, the burden each carries, and the job each performs to keep the whole manageable and safe.

So, what happens when I know all of that? If the burden is lifted from the subpart, what the hell is she supposed to do now?

As I began the slow process of unburdening, I found different parts—Cissie and Stephie, Harley and Quinn, Pearl and Buttercup—who were lighter of load but who also couldn’t stay trapped in their compartments inside my head. Their work was done, and it did no one any good to keep them trapped in a dusty house, struggling to feel the light of day through an old, dirty window.

I imagined a garden for them. In my mind, it sits off to my left and back just a bit. I can hear the birds and see each blade of grass or petal of flower ripple in breezy sunlight. I can smell the earth and the life. It looks much like the yard in front of my actual house. As each subpart is unburdened, I invite them to go to the garden to play. I invite them to join Cissie on the trampoline, jumping until they’re breathless with laughter, hair mussed and clinging to their sweaty, warm necks. Sometimes Buttercup sits at the edge, bare legs dangling from the porch, dirty feet bouncing against the cool brick, and she sings. Her songs are sometimes little more than she or I can hear, but there is a hum of love whose confidence waxes and wanes but which never really fades away.

Sassafras still struggles. Sometimes I feel her very close to me, close on my immediately left and in need of reassurance when she feels overwhelmed by longing and nostalgia and confusion. But I remind her that we are still working, that I am still working. Although love may not come in the ways in which her heart has desperately imagined, it is always with her. I am always with her. But she is always free to put her burden down, just next to me, and join the others in the garden, even if just for a little while.

There are nameless, numerous others, only some of whom I’ve been fortunate enough to engage yet.

I am still working.

But if I am carrying each of them, and they are each carrying their burdens, then I am also carrying those burdens.

So tonight, as I close one year symbolically and open another, I am inviting those burdens to go into the garden, as well. Whether they be ghosts of Christmases past, unhealthy choices of present, or fears of what the future may or may not hold, I am opening the door for each of them to be free—and to be free myself of those weights.

I am offering one last toast to disappointment, to broken promises, and to unfulfilled dreams. I will drink once more to each and every lost love, all of whom mattered and will always matter, but who cannot continue to keep me mired in the past. I have accepted my fault, and I have accepted theirs, but I cannot continue to define expectations for my future based on the past actions of people I will never see or speak to again. They had opportunity not to be ghosts; I am cutting their chains loose and setting them free.

I wish each of them well as I sweep their dust out the door into the garden.

I’m going into 2018 with few expectations. I expect to continue doing my work and making myself healthy and whole. I expect to attempt new things. I expect to discover new things about myself.

I am superstitious about a few things, and New Year’s Eve is at the top of that list. How I spend that night is often indicative of the entirety of the following year. I can regale with tales of New Year’s Eve Omens for almost as many years as the Valentine’s Curse.

This year, I specifically chose to be at home with my babies. We cooked dinner together and piled up on the couch to watch The Little Prince. I rolled my eyes at the short-sighted, closed-minded grown-ups. I cried when he found his rose too late, overcome by baobabs. I gasped at the sudden lurch of my heart when the he met the snake in the desert one last time.

And I hugged my babies and told them I loved them for the millionth time, because I never want them to know what it feels like to question my love and my support. And I never want to know what it feels like not to give that love and support unconditionally.

So, I don’t know what’s coming. It will be what it is, when it is. But for now, for tonight, I am peacefully in my happiest of places, surrounded in love and comfort, quietly bidding farewell to the past.

I wish you all a peaceful, loving new year.

 

 

Everything has changed. It's a different kind of Christmas.

The first year DH and I were separated, I couldn’t stand being at home for Christmas. The boys and I packed up all our gifts and drove three hours to Alabama, back to family and where DH and I had grown up and where the boys had been born, locking our jaws tightly on high-held heads and got through our first Christmas as a family of three. The second year, I couldn’t stand to drag out the Christmas ornaments we’d collected as a family for years, so the boys and I made our own decorations that year. The court-mandated visitation schedule had begun, and Max and Tricky spent the first half of their Christmas holiday with their dad and his then-girlfriend. When they came home on Christmas Eve, they were sugar-coated and excited, announcing that we would be doing Christmas Guatemalan-style! and opening gifts at midnight. I made breakfast at 2 a.m., and that was the last time both boys slept with me in my bed.

For the next three years, we incorporated Rango into our new tradition. He didn’t have fond Christmas memories from his own childhood, and he was amenable to adopting ours. The day of celebration and the celebratory menu changed, depending on the visitation schedule and on his food allergy. He refused to participate in our annual viewing of A Christmas Story, saying it reminded him of unhappy Christmases growing up in a dysfunctional family. He would game elsewhere, while Max, Tricky, and I piled on the couch and yelled lines at the television, like we’d created our own Rocky Horror Christmas Show.

This year, without Rango, we weren’t limited by his food allergies or his ghosts. When I casually asked the boys what they’d like to eat for middle-of-the-night breakfast, Max cried out and demanded Waffle House.

“It’s Christmas. They’ll be open.”

And this is how a new Christmas tradition was born.

Traditions are beautiful. They tie you to a shared past and anchor you in loving nostalgia. But they are not fully fixed and are open to adaptation, to making them contemporaneously cogent. Some changes are welcomed—a new baby, a new marriage, a new home—and some are not. Since my divorce, both of my grandmothers have passed away, and childhood memories of being at their houses for the holidays are forever frozen in time. While the respective families have worked to create new memories and new traditions, it is bittersweet to conjure those last Christmases with my grandmothers.

I know many families who are creating new traditions this year. New babies make the holidays seem so much brighter. The loss of mothers and children and beloved family members can blur the holiday lights with slow, hot tears. But another Christmas, another new year, is coming and going, and how it is marked is completely up to them.

This is the last Christmas I know for sure that Max will be home. My baby will be graduating high school soon, and he will begin the slow embark on his own adult life. Eventually he will establish his own traditions and schedule that may not include me or his dad or his brother, not in the ways it has through his childhood. He will always be here in some way, but I don’t know how many more times I will get to hear the cacophony of my little boys parading down the hall to open gifts, or the sound of wrapping paper being ripped and tossed at light speed, or the boyish squeal of delight at having received just what they wanted.

“I’ll always come home…. I have to get my presents!”

“But you may be at your girlfriend’s parents’ ski retreat in Aspen,” I retorted.

“Yay. More presents for me,” Tricky chimed in.

But even when they are grown and bringing their babies home to create new memories at Sass’s house (yes, we’ve already agreed that Sass is the likely grandma name), Christmas at midnight—even if it’s on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Day or by phone—is something the boys and I can always share. Waffle House is always open; middle-of-the-night hashbrowns can come any day we like.

We were surprised to find our local Waffle House half-filled with grown families, dressed in spirited dress wear, as if they’d come after midnight mass. Two were apparently regulars who’d come to share a meal and bring a gift for their regular server, who hugged each of them and wished them a merry Christmas. Our new tradition of leaving a generous tip for our 1 a.m. server wasn’t original, but it did help to anchor us in this time, when it is still just Sass and her boys, for the inevitable coming change.

To everyone who is living tradition-challenging change this year, go with it. No matter the reason, find something in the newness in which to anchor yourself, and make it your own. There may be laughter or tears, unequivocal joy or breath-stealing heartache. Make them into what you need. They are yours to do with as you wish.

I wish you all love, light, and peace in this holiday season.

 

 

Enough to make my systems blow.

Almost three years ago, I underwent a total thyroidectomy to remove the second half of my thyroid gland, the first half having come out in 2006. During the intervening years, I was on a replacement hormone to help prevent the growth of benign nodules and to curtail the symptoms of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. But when a nodule expanded to almost 6 centimeters in diameter within about 6 weeks, it was time for the invader to go.

But Invader Zim has returned.

For more than a year, I have felt like crap. My GP said he thought it was the stresses of school and work and kids and divorce. My bloodwork looked normal. In reality, part of my thyroid was growing back, and I was experiencing all of the symptoms of hypothyroidism—fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, weight gain, dry skin and hair—that come with Hashimoto’s.

Although my bloodwork looks normal still, my endocrinologist and I made the call to rid Glamazon Island of this invader force yet again. After a five-needle-stick biopsy, there’s still no definitive answer, though he thinks it’s benign, giving it only a 5-7% chance of being malignant. Either way, I’m not a surgical candidate—one cell left behind would likely regrow new tissue again—and thus I go today for radioactive iodine treatment.

The 2+ weeks of a low iodine diet have been difficult but manageable. No dairy, no soy, no iodized salt, no se salt or seafood or sea products, no chocolate, no egg yolks, no potato skins, no red dye #5, no rhubarb, only certain beans, and only 6 ounces per day of meat. A lot of fruits and vegetables, and a lot less coffee thanks to no cream, and I’ve lost almost 10 pounds.

I’ve also been a gripey, exhausted freak.

In the midst of that was recovery from last month’s wrist surgery and a cervical epidural injection and work and kids and school, though I dropped back my class load dramatically.

Rango has been incredibly supportive, even when I’ve been a raging lunatic. The fluctuating hormone levels have made me agitated and fatigued. But I get up every day and do what I have to do.

I’ve mostly made light of it, joking with Max about whether or not I will turn into She Hulk after this is over. In all fairness, if anyone would be excited to get some new superpower after radiation exposure, it would be me. But I’m getting the lowest possible dose for this procedure.

It still scares the hell out of me.

Talking to Queen Frostine yesterday, I finally came unglued.

“I’m scared,” I admitted through welling tears. “I know it will be okay, but I’m still scared.”

She, like everyone else, has offered to do anything to help, but there’s really nothing anyone can do. Rango is here to prepare food and make sure the cats are taken care of while I spend 72 hours in isolation. I’ll be locked in my bedroom for three days, and then I have to carefully clean everything I came in contact with, to make sure I wipe off any radiation-tainted sweat and skin oil. All I can do is hang out and watch TV and sleep.

I sent the boys for some summer visitation with their grandparents in Alabama, and I miss them already. The cats will freak out and bang on the bedroom door for the entire three days, I’m sure. And Rango and I will only see each other from at least three feet apart.

Maybe that’s what’s most frightening for me, really, the shutting down my life. I can’t do anything during isolation. I can’t clean the house or paint the bedroom or work on my computer, since I’ll just leave radiation everywhere. I can sleep and eat and watch TV.

I hate being still, but that not being still is exactly what contributed to my getting sick. The constant drive for the last three years to always be moving forward and being productive has left me exhausted and not well. Even after my wrist surgery, when the doctor recommended I take two weeks off from work to recover, I refused and demanded to be allowed back within a week, even though it meant doing everything with one hand.

But this is where I have to admit that doing everything one-handed is far easier than doing everything single-handed. I am forced to rely on other people at times, and I absolutely hate it. My parents and Rango and some friends who will help cover the boys over the next couple of weeks while I have doctor’s appointments. The boys themselves, who have to be prodded and pushed to do their chores, but who also seem to get that Mom will get sicker if she keeps doing everything herself.

I’m going to take a shower and go swallow a pill of radioactive iodine and come home and hole myself away like I’m supposed to. I will let the world go on about its business while I go one about my business of resting and letting the I-131 do its job so I can get back to doing mine.

So please send me good thoughts. Send me updates of what’s happening in the real world.

And in two weeks when I can go back on a regular diet, send chocolate. Please. For God’s sake, CHOCOLATE!

 

I felt like there was something missing in my day-to-day life.

I bought a new pair of shoes last week.

That, in and of itself, is not newsworthy.  I've tried really hard not to turn Muchness and Light into a journal of my daily activities, though I certainly have revealed more in this forum about my daily life than the average bear might share.  (My blog is my woods sometimes, isn't it?)

But I bought new sneakers.  They're black with teal laces and trim, plus a splash of hot pink—totally unlike the pink and purple that tend to attract me. 

The last time I bought sneakers was almost four years ago.  I'd started walking to feel better, taking the first steps toward what would be a 115 pound weight loss.  Those metallic magenta Nikes have carried me over at least 3,000 miles.  They adorned the major milestones of my last four years, and they were the strange, symbolic foundation for the deep transformations that took place within me.

Three Christmases ago—the last Christmas DH and I were together—I asked for new sneakers.  DH bought me a pair of pink and purple Nike Dual Fusion 2s that I picked out.  They were exactly what I wanted.  Exactly what I told him I wanted. 

Those shoes never fit right.

They were too high at the opening, rubbing uncomfortably against my ankles.  The toe box was cut strangely, and sometimes my pinky toes would go to sleep. 

I never wore them more than a dozen times, always going back to my well-worn metallic magentas. 

Those shoes became strangely symbolic of my marriage.  The ones I bought for myself, that I wore to protect me as I moved again through my life, were comfortable and supportive.  I've never met anyone else who had those same shoes.

The second pair were a gift I picked out—as I always did for gifts for myself.  They were something I asked for that DH gave me when he had a reason, but they were never right.  And I saw them everywhere on other people's feet.

I have been terrible about self-care during the last year-and-a-half.  My 115 pound weight loss is now a net of about 100 pounds.  I haven't been walking, let alone working out, with any kind of regularity.  My life is the boys and the house and work and school.  When I get free time, I am often too exhausted by everything else to even think about going for a lengthy walk. 

I'm not eating well or sleeping well.  I forget to take my medicine—the mandatory thyroid replacement hormone that will keep me functional and alive.  I'm cranky and bitchy from all of the stress that I know is taking a toll on my body, not to mention my mind. 

I am busting my ass right now to get through school and still try to work when I can, plus clean the house and do the laundry and sometimes cut the grass.  Max and Tricky need attention and time and care, and they deserve to have more than what's just leftover at the end of the day. 

So it's me who gets the leftovers.  It's Stephanie who fights with herself to get a little care and attention.  It's Stephanie who gets lost in her own shuffle and then feels like shit because she barely has the time and energy to touch base with the parts of her who fought so damn hard to unearth themselves from the minutiae that was killing her soul.

But if I don't take the time to care for me, I will have nothing left to give, especially to the boys.  I have to constantly remind myself that I am worth my own effort, even if it means I have to put down a textbook or tell a friend no or refuse to answer the phone.  Even if it means I have to drag my exhausted, flabby ass from the couch and put on my shoes and walk.

I put on my new shoes over the weekend and took the boys (also in their new shoes) to the local greenway.  I did three miles, and it felt good.  It felt right.  And my shoes didn't hurt my feet. 

One foot in front of the other.  That's the only way I'm making it out of this.  One step at a time. 

 

So tuck your hair behind your ears, your tears and your silly fears.

I am tired.

There's so much on me right now.  The end of the school year for the boys, with its neverending stream of class activities and banquets and parties, means summer is encroaching.  In previous years, we were able to relax and have some fun, but that will be hard to manage this year.  Today was first day of summer classes for me—a full 15-hour class load that would normally take 15 weeks but is truncated to 10.  Somewhere in there I still have to work part-time, do my homework, care for the boys, clean the house, cut the grass, do the laundry, cook the meals, and try to breathe. 

I have a little help lined up but not much.  The decision to stay in Atlanta after the divorce, as opposed to moving back to Birmingham, meant I have no family backup within almost 200 miles.  I have friends close by, certainly, but almost none are in a position to be able to help.  DH is now living out of state.

It's all on me.

Every detail, every move the boys and I make, is considered and planned and stored in my head.  Days like today start in the middle of the night, when I wake for whatever reason and start to run through the lists of what needs to happen today, this week, in the next month, over the next few, and so on.  I am working on a two-year plan right now, and there is no room for error.  Time and financial constraints make this the only plausible course of action; I have no choice but to continue to move forward.

I look around the house and see all the little shit that needs to be done—the cluttery stacks of school papers and junk mail that are building up like landmarks, the leaking shower pipe that has forced us into sharing my small bathroom, the small hole in the roof, and the shredded, fading wallpaper that still hasn't been stripped after two years—and I just can't get to it all.  These days it feels like I have my fingers shoved in eight or nine leaking holes with no room to stretch even my Amazonian hands toward another emergency if it comes up. 

Money and time are tight.  Manageable but with little room for error.  There's not a lot of time for me to stop being Mom or Ms. Jackson; Stephanie barely seems to exist right now, let alone poor Sassafras, who convinces me to wear something pretty and shiny every couple of days just so I don't forget that she exists, even though somedays my greatest splurge is a trip to Target ten miles away. 

But when it gets hard, when I start to cry because I feel overwhelmed by all of it, I remind myself that I am an Amazonian princess who can save the world, and herself, with love. 

You got that tattoo for a reason.

I can do this.  I have to do this.  I am doing this.  I'm not pulling the freshly-laundered sheets over my head and ignoring the world.  (Believe me, I've tried.  I just lay there recounting my to-do list until I get up and do the dishes.  Again.)  I am busting my ass every single day to bring myself and my sons closer to a self-sufficient life, to a time when we are not dependent on anyone else's time or money or support.  I am teaching them and myself that there are strong, dogged, determined women who will work their asses off to make a change, even if it is only in their own world.

And things go wrong all the time.  I find myself missing a school event for Tricky because I'm working, kissing his teary face at the bus stop because he's frustrated I'm not there like he wants me to be.  Or I'm in the front yard, fending off a barrage of Fuck-yous from a pajama-clad Max, who at 13 doesn't understand why his father hasn't reached out to him in well over a month. 

I do my best to hold it together, to keep the shaking and the tears at bay until they're gone for the day or safely in their beds at night, but I screw up.  I yell about the cat boxes and the dirty laundry they won't pick up off their bedroom floors, about telling them again to unload the dishwasher.  And I don't sleep, worried like hell about how I'm ever going to manage this on my own.  And at night, I stare at the lonely dark until my brain tells my body to shut down, even though it is itself constantly churning and planning and worrying.

You got that tattoo for a reason.

Every day, I get up and try again.  Sassafras helps me pin my hair up in my crown and throws on some sparkly bangles.  I fuel up the invisible jet, and I cruise from errand to job to another errand, hoping like hell that I have a handle on it all.  Praying every single minute that I'm not losing track of my babies, because there is no one else around to keep them on track. 

But I know that everything that came before, all of the lessons I have worked so hard to learn, are playing out now, in real time.  There is no more practice, no more play-acting until I'm ready for the real thing. 

This is my life, and I got that tattoo for a reason.

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Your story sad to tell, a teenage ne'er do well--most mixed up non-delinquent on the block!

After twenty years, I'm back in college.

In 1990, I started college on a substantial scholarship.  My life choices got in the way of studying, and I blew my scholarship within a year.  I tried, off and on, to finish what was originally a Communications degree, but I never quite got it together.  There was a lot of wasted time and money before I finally gave up, choosing to live my life with DH.  With the divorce came the realization that I would have to take care of myself long past the point of alimony or child support.

So as of last month, I'm back in school full time, enrolled at a local technical college to pursue a degree in Paralegal Studies.  Queen Frostine has said for years that I'd make a great attorney.  Given my attention to detail and my dogged curiosity, she thinks I'd be especially well-suited for the mechanics of the law life.  In my old life in financial planning, I spent a lot of time reviewing complicated estate and human resources documents, and I thoroughly enjoyed that process.  Writing Persona Non Grata brought entertainment law into my realm, and I ultimately finalized my divorce pro se (without an attorney). 

Being a paralegal seems like the natural and logical next step. 

But being back in school is weird.  When I was a college student in my late teens and early twenties, work/life balance was about little more than fitting classes in around a boyfriend or getting wasted.  Now at 41, I have not only my schedule of on-campus and online classes, homework, and real work, but also my sons' school and social activities to contend with.  And now DH has moved 300 miles away, which means I have the boys for the vast majority of their time.  Plus somewhere in there I have to take some time for me, to relax and socialize with my own peers and get recentered so that I can take on the constant demands of this life I am trying to rebuild.

The schoolwork thus far isn't terribly hard, though math is kicking my ass harder than it did when I was 18.  The courseload for this first semester includes some pretty interesting (and sometimes infuriating) introductions to sociology, humanities, and the law.  All too often I am fascinated by some random thought in a discussion group or textbook and find myself off on a tangent, researching the fundamentals of space law or Goffman's dramaturigcal perspective. 

And now with a brilliantly gifted 8^th grader who is naturally inclined to the same slacking I was in middle school, I am paranoid about his life choices.  I've always said I didn't care what my children did for a living, as long as they were happy.  While I know that my prior choices led me to the place and time of having my sons when I did, I am also painfully aware that we are in a financial bind in part as consequence of those choices. 

Had I applied myself and finished my degree when that was supposed to be my main priority, my life would be very different.  I might be better prepared to handle the financial fallout of divorce in my 40s, but I also might not have had these children.  I probably would've gone on to have kids, but Max and Tricky could only be who they are because they were conceived and born at their respective moments in history. 

I can't get caught up in what might have been or should have been; I live in the here and now, both as a result of and in defiance of my past.  All I can do now is work my ass off to provide better opportunities for my kids but also for myself.  This is part of learning to take care of myself in a whole new way. 

When it feels overwhelming, I have to remind myself that this won't last forever.  In the same way that the boys will age and grow—bringing an end to child support and the necessity of complete financial self-sufficiency—I will age and grow, getting through this process and reaping the rewards that I can on the other side. 

 

I stand up, and I'm searching for the better part of me.

During the process of divorce, especially at the beginning, life becomes almost exclusively about your children.  Obviously for people who don't have kids or who have adult children, it's a different story, but I don't know what that's like.  Living through both my parents' divorce when I was 11, as well as the last couple of years, I only have intimate knowledge of what it's like from my perspective.

Like so many couples, DH and I had brutal, nasty arguments before the separation.  We tried our best to keep them away from the boys, though I know we weren't always successful.  While we did our best to keep the energy off of them, there's no way they didn't feel the tension.  Sometimes it boiled over and disrupted their lives, occasionally waking them or turning into a heated exchange in the middle of dinner. 

The night we told them that we were separating was the worst of my life.  In that moment, I remembered very clearly being the child huddled on the couch between my parents.  They were both sadly stoic, trying to explain clearly and concisely that they were divorcing, that our lives would change, but that we were still a family who would get through this together.  Watching the boys cry the night we told them, I knew exactly how their hearts were breaking and all of the questions they'd both ask me and keep quietly and painfully to themselves. 

At first, all of my energy went into keeping them calm and safe.  With very good reason, I was even more attentive and patient with them.  I tried to make every waking moment as quality as I could muster, while also giving them space to be able to breathe and think on their own or together, away from Mom. 

Eventually I had to start living my own, private life.  I had to begin to see what being a single mom and woman was like.  A big part of that, of course, has been dating. 

My parents were very good at this.  I was about the same age as Max, so four years older than Tricky, when my parents separated.  When they each started dating, they were careful to keep those new people away from me.  I can only remember meeting two men my mom went out with, one of whom is my stepdad of more than twenty-five years.  I met a few more women with my dad, though he has always said some were nothing more than friends.  He dated one woman for several years, and she actually lived with us for a good portion of their relationship.  Both he and I are still friends with her, even though they've been broken up far, far longer than they were together. 

When I started dating Bounder and saw the potential of something more important, having him meet the boys eventually became necessary.  It wasn't that I needed them to welcome their new daddy into their life; no one will ever replace their father, whom they love very, very much.  But if he and I were going to have a relationship, we would need to spend quality, physical time together.  And, no, I don't just mean sex.  (He never, ever spent the night at my house while the boys were home.) 

Dating and being in love would have to consist of more than constant texts and emails.  Regular phone calls couldn't replace regular hugs and kisses.  While quality time and conversation are of tantamount importance to me, I am bi-lingual (in The 5 Love Languages sense) for physical touch.  The small intimacies of handholding and kisses on the cheek are just as important to me as the loving whispers and soft laughs in my ear.  I need boisterous laughter, both in and out of the bedroom. 

Of all the men I've met and gone out with since I separated from DH, the boys have only met Bounder.  Initially, it was a ten-minute, "nice to meet you" moment one afternoon.  Eventually they were okay with his coming to visit me after they went to bed, then they were comfortable with dinners together and a movie after.  We would occasionally take them out and do something with them, together.  When he and I broke up, they were sad for me but also a little sad that they wouldn't get to see him.  I handled it well (at least in front of them).  They know that I still have occasional contact with him and ask me about him from time to time. 

It's hard enough to bring someone new into my life, but my life includes two boys.  They have to be a part of anything substantial.  Not only are they the most important people in my life, I am their primary caregiver.  They spend the majority of their time in my care.  With some potential changes on the horizon, I am likely to be responsible for them even more of the time.  If I try to wait to see someone I'm dating until a night when I don't have them, it could be weeks that we have to wait. 

Relationships can't function healthily like that. 

While it was best to make the boys the main focus initially, it does no one any good for them to be the only priority.  We live in such a child-centric time, but they have to learn that they really aren't the epicenter of anyone's world but their own.  They are of an age to begin to realize there's more to life than just them. 

Stephanie is more than Mommy.

Going back to school, working small jobs while I'm doing it, makes our life very busy.  I can no longer devote all of my time and energy to their schedules.  Our family calendar is sometimes a color-coded nightmare of homework and school events and appointments.

But taking the time to be me, content and comfortable in who I am and my abilities, makes me a better woman.  Being a complete woman, who is able to both express and receive love from more than just my children, makes me a better mother. 

And it's good for them to see that Mom can go on and have a happy, healthy, productive life.  They won't always been in the house with me, no matter how often they declare that they'll always live with me.  They will eventually move on to college and relationships and the lives that they build for themselves.  I will be here (figuratively or literally, I don't know yet), living and building my own future. 

When I am happy and healthy, living my life while incorporating them into it, I show them by example.  My goal is to raise healthy young men who can handle their own shit.  My hope is that they find partners who can do the same, in part because that is what their mother modeled for them. 

 

The license said you had to stick around until I was dead, but if you're tired of looking at my face, I guess I already am.

After more than 21 years together, 19 years of marriage, 14 months of separation, and 2 days in court, DH and I were granted a divorce yesterday—December 11, 2013. 

In the end, it all came down to numbers—what that time and energy and battling was monetarily worth, as decided by a judge who had never met either of us prior to Monday morning.  In a few hours, we both were granted the chance to lay out our cases and argue, again, why what we wanted was the best solution. 

My dad had told me months ago that in the end we would both feel like we'd lost.  He was right, of course.  I'm not thrilled with part of the judgment, and I'm pretty sure DH is unhappy about some of it, as well.  But because we couldn't come to an agreement on our own, this is how it had to play out. 

Leaving court, I kept my head up and looked straight ahead, trying to get as much distance between the two of us as possible.  I didn't want to have to walk out of that building where our marriage had finally died and have to be close to him.  I didn't even want to walk past his car—the one that had also been my car until just a few minutes before.  I didn't want to have to look at anyone in that building, afraid that I would cry or that they would somehow be able to peer right through my stoic facade and see my broken heart. 

Last week, while trading off the children for visitation, he and I had a conversation in the driveway, waiting for the boys to gather their things.  It wasn't about anything important, just chit-chat, but for a moment I could see a glimpse of the sweet, smart, funny man I had loved for half my life.  There was a glimmer of the same quirky guy I'd known I would marry from the moment I first saw him, when I was 14. 

It broke my heart. 

In all honesty, when the judge went through her list of questions about how long we'd been married, when we'd separated, and if I believed our marriage to be irreconcilable, I wanted to shake my head and cry.  I wanted to say, "No, your honor, I don't ever want to believe that it's irreconcilable with this man, with the guy who took care of me when I couldn't, with the man I loved so much that I fought my way through hell to give us two beautiful babies.  I don't want that to be over.  Ever."

But I knew it didn't matter.  The damage of everything we've done to each other and our relationship is too great.  It has overshadowed the joy and the beauty and the love in the most agonizing of ways.  We did it to ourselves, and we did it to each other, even though we promised time and again that it would never come to that. 

A recently-divorced friend told me yesterday that he read once that the people who get through this process in the healthiest way are the ones who have good memories of the marriage.  Make no mistake: I have thousands of good memories with DH.  Years of them, both before and after the boys were born. 

I loved him.

After court, I called my parents and the Castration Committee to let them know how it went.  I cried a little bit, but mostly I held it together.  I emailed my former attorney and our mediator and our marriage counselor, to let them know how it ended.  It reminded me of calling people in 2006 to let them know my grandfather had died.  It felt like writing the thank-you notes for funeral flowers. 

When I got home, there was a lovely Christmas cactus on my doorstep.  A very sweet friend left it for me, along with an even sweeter note.  Covered in buds, it's a constant reminder that something good and beautiful can always appear when you least expect it, that life will fight to flourish no matter what, and that even the most delicate of things can be far sturdier than they appear. 

The boys had known we were going to court, and I explained that the divorce was finalized.  I didn't go into details about the settlement or what had transpired during the proceedings.  Ultimately it's none of their business, and there are parts of it that I will never share with them. 

"Can you and Daddy get remarried?" Tricky asked.  His question was like a knife to the gut.

"We could," I said carefully, "legally, but that's very unlikely ever to happen."

"But what if you loved each other again?  What would happen then?"

I caught my breath.  "Well, if that were to ever happen, then your father and I would have to decide what to do.  But I don't want you to get your hopes up or expect that, sweet boy."

I stopped and asked both boys to look at me while I spoke to them.  "I know this has been incredibly difficult.  This is not where any of us thought our lives would be, but we are here nonetheless.  I want to make sure you both know, though, that Daddy and I love you very, very much.  We also loved each other very much.  I never want you to think for a second that we didn't or that you somehow came from less than absolute love.  No babies were ever wanted more than you were, and your father and I loved each other deeply when you were born.  Always know that."

In the end, the only number that matters is 2—Max and Tricky.  Our sons and what is best for them are my only real, lasting concern in this.  I have tried my best to behave and keep as much of the drama away from them as possible.  If I have done nothing else right through this divorce, I know that I have been a damn good mother. 

I also hope, though, that the finality of the process will allow DH the closure he needs to heal.  I hope and even pray that his heart finds the peace it needs to be the man and the father I know he is, deep inside under the rubble of our destructed marriage.  He was special and important to me like no one else, and I have loved that soul for a very long time; I want good things for him, especially as they apply to our sons. 

Ultimately, I want the same things for me, in my own time and in my own way.  As long as I've had to deal with it all emotionally, it was still shocking to find myself so sad and grieving again.  It's all too easy to fall into the dark place of thinking half my life was for nothing, that those 21 years were wasted.  I know they weren't, if for no other reason than those 2 little souls who found their way to us in the beautiful bodies that DH and I created together. 

I'm glad the process is pretty much over.  I'm glad to be out of legal limbo.  But I hate that it came to this.  I hate that we couldn't get our shit together and make it work.  I hate that two people who loved each other so much could get to a place of utter disdain. 

I'm going to take a couple of days and distract myself with work while I try to process it all.  Then I'm going to pick up the pieces and move forward, a little bit at a time.  I may want to curl into a ball until the crying stops, but I can't.  There are two babies who need me, forever and always and no matter what. 

May all your troubles soon be gone.

I'm having a hard time looking forward to Christmas this year.

I had the flu in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, which culminated in an urgent care visit Thanksgiving Day.  (I'm feeling much better, though still not quite 100%.)  The boys left that evening for their weekend visitation with their father, and I spent most of those days on the couch with my favorite blanket, watching Netflix. 

Normally, I would start getting the Christmas tree up while the leftovers were heating, but I didn't really feel up to it.  It would've been nice for the boys to come home to a blank tree, ready for them to decorate. 

I seriously debated skipping it altogether. 

Physically, I've been exhausted, and dragging the trees (We normally have two.) up the stairs was more than I wanted to manage.  But the thought of unwrapping each of the ornaments, of reliving twenty years' worth of memories was really more than I could handle.  Seeing each year's picture ornaments, or the ones bought for the boys in the years they were born, made me want to puke. 

Last year was my first Christmas without DH since 1992.  The separation was fresh and contentious.  I cleaned out the ornaments, setting aside the ones that were his or had been gifts from his mother.  They did eventually make it out of the house with him. 

I clearly remember wrapping the boys' presents in the den floor by the tree, crying my eyes out because I was doing it by myself for the first time ever.  He wasn't there to help choose their gifts or argue whether we had spent too much.  He just wasn't there anymore.

This year, I couldn't stand the thought of doing it all again.

Of course I didn't tell the boys any of this.  They knew I was sick, but they were gone for a second weekend with their dad, so I had time.  Tricky, 9, suddenly suggested we have nothing but homemade ornaments this year.  Max, 12, readily agreed. 

So we have spent the last few days making paper garland and covering cardstock candy canes in glitter glue.  We wrapped their few, comparatively meager gifts and put them under the tree.  Through it all, they are happy and laughing and hugging each other and me. 

I generally wait until they go to bed to cry about how I wish it were different, for me and for them, about how I hate that their lives have been so thoroughly skewed in the last year.  The guilt and lament can be overwhelming at times, though the tears make the white lights of the tree sparkle even more. 

I know what's important is that we are together and generally happy and generally healthy.  But this is not what we promised them.  This is not the life they, or I, were expecting. 

Somewhere in this, we are finding the beauty in all of the ugly.  We are finding ways to enjoy small moments, fully and together, because that is all we can afford.  We are finding the joy in each other and in this smaller, modified unit we have created over the last year. 

There is miraculous wonder, in that we have survived and in some ways thrived.  This year, just to get through the holidays in one, emotionally-healthy piece will be the true miracle.