Sep 05, 2016 10:48
I logged on to good old LJ today mostly to check out the handful of friends who still update/blog and thought about doing an entry to recap my Labor Day getaway (got back yesterday) and somewhere in the middle I wound up looking at my archives. Particularly I wanted to look at 5 years ago because it was Fall 2011 when all hell broke loose, many things fell apart (a LOT of things), and life's new Lego pieces were all that was left. I don't feel the need to recap because one reason I still love LJ is that while the number of people still reading this may be small, most have been here for years. Years. That is pretty amazing.
Labor Day Weekend 2011 was the proverbial beginning of the end for my marriage. I didn't know it as such then but hindsight being the awesome thing it is that is very clear to me now. Re-reading things I wrote at this time 5 years ago was cathartic today. A lot of the questions I was asking myself then were wise and some of the things I speculated on turned out to be true.
If I'm being brutally honest... if she had any financial independence or the kind of work ethic it takes to work, work, work and support yourself solely she'd probably have left by now. But she doesn't have that. Deep down she knows the life she is living or wants to live is not sustainable in any practical way if she had to do it on her own. She isn't equipped for it. I think in a way she feels ashamed of it but is also, in a way, too lazy to address it.
I wrote the above on September 4th, 2011.
I haven't blogged much this summer (or this year!) so I will add some timeline to things. We divorced in Spring 2013. This past June, after 5 years of default/walkaway/not paying the mortgage she inherited in our divorce, my ex wife Kell became 'homeless'. Despite years of rent-free living, tens of thousands in divorce settlement, ample support, and (to her credit) a relatively promising full time job she has not been able to muster first-last-deposit-etc. for an apartment. The guy she 'married' in Fall 2013? He is nowhere to be found, having left right around the time she/they got notice they were going to be forced out of the house.
I have had Gavin basically 100 percent of the time this summer (he would normally be with us 50/50). It's been like that despite her still receiving child support (it happens automatically via my paycheck and through the state). I got an email from her this week informing me that for the foreseeable future she would be living with her aunt in the next town over and there is room enough for Gavin so our normal 50/50 can resume. Gavin, the good sport that he is, is going along with this despite the various inconveniences that will come with his high school, his part time job, and his friends all in one city and his mother and 'other' home 10 miles up the road. My own prediction is that this arrangement will last through 2016 before it begins to affect Gavin so negatively that he opts for more of a 75-25 arrangement where he spends every other weekend with his mother.
All that drama and details aside the bigger point is this: It's been 5 years since things unraveled and in that time it feels like I have written not just a new chapter in my life but chapter after chapter after chapter. I think of it more as a new book began 5 years ago and that book has had new experiences, new relationships, hard lessons, stupid mistakes, and so much more but all with a common undercurrent of moving forward. For the most part I only look back so I can see how far I've come. And the more distance there is between then and now the more I realize how unhappy I was and, more importantly, how even in the worst moments of the here and now things are still better.
In this time, at Labor Day five years later I am better rounded in regards to "Happy". I wish I could say I was physically healthier but in 2011 a mix of anxiety and crazy amounts of exercise (a lot of which was a massive distraction from all that wasn't right in my world) gave way to a lot of weight loss. In 2016 I find myself trying to get back to that place. Having said that, the rest of me is really good. There are bad days and moments when that past I've referred to still comes around to try to hurt me or, more aptly, to blame me (Kell is a disaster. It must be said.) but I find myself able to let it go or shake it off considerably faster than I used to. Hurtful things said to me or emailed to me used to bother me for days. Now it bugs me for hours and sometimes not even at all.
How have I spent this Labor Day weekend? I was away for 3 days to parts of Oregon I have never explored. And that is stunning because it's some of the most amazing, picture perfect parts of this region I've called home for 25 years. It felt like it was time to get over to Bend, Sunriver, Sisters, and other parts of Central Oregon. And it helps that I have the most wonderful girlfriend ever who loves to see and do things. I've been with Allison for just 5 months but it is far and away the easiest, lightest, most positive romantic relationship I've ever been in. We just work. We're good to each other and good for each other. We counter balance each other. I told her this weekend that the more she is in my life the harder it becomes to imagine her NOT being in it.
In the past five years I've dated a lot and had all kinds of crazy experiences -- some I regret but most I view as lessons in do and don't. And no matter how optimistic I've been about someone new I've always had either a fear or an expectation that it would end. I was madly in love with this woman named Emily that I met in early 2012 and I am still grateful that she and I met each other when we did (both of us were recently separated from very long marriages) but throughout the course of that relationship I knew it wasn't going to last. It was none the less heartbreaking when it ended but it helped that I just kinda sorta knew. And every connection since then has, for me, felt temporary even when I've been optimistic. Allison feels different. I'm optimistic and without letting myself think too far ahead it feels very indefinite. I have no fears of bad things or it all taking a negative turn. Instead I think about how many more things I want to experience with her. All the while we have the parts of our lives that are solo. She has her son. I have my son. It will be a long time before those areas intersect or criss-cross. I've written before and still maintain that Allison is the "relationship you arrive at"; the kind of love you can only really embrace when you've reached a place of being content to be alone.
Anyway...5 years. I am at times amazed how fast that time has gone by and at other times it feels like it was a slow churning form of hell. I think a lot of that depended on the year. 2012 was a hurricane and full of experiences I could have never imagined. 2013 was hard. 2014 was renewal and a lot of acceptance. 2015 was good intentions but trying too hard. 2016 started bumpy and it still gets the usual life turbulence but it's pretty amazing what happens when you become a pretty good pilot. You can steer and adapt and change course and you can carry a lot more and bring a lot more to wherever you're going, wherever you stop, or where you choose to land.
J