So, I am endeavoring to find ways of being honest on here. I am going to look at some of that bone-jarring self-reflection that may be to honest to read. I wonder if I can be that honest and allow myself to be the wanted and warped hero/anti-hero of my own story.
I had had a series of wonderful encounters the past few days and things came crashing down today as my wife met with an attorney about the process of our divorce and asked me to go for a drink and discuss it. I have sadly gone beyond the point of wanting to engage in small talk and banter. I had had three long days in a row. I have a decent amount of work to do just to keep up with class preparations #iteach. I agreeed and drove her to a local Mexican restaurant. I wasn’t capable of giving out any nice. I had only dead fish face to give her. Now dead fish face is better than eye-rolling, wtf face. But I have lost the ability or desire to pretend what we are going through isn’t horrible. This has been going on, on and off for two years now. This was a financial separation agreement conversation. I believe that very few of us are able to see the dollars and cents of our lives and place an effective value on it. We quietly disagreed about the bottom lines on the spreadsheet we were working from. I was very surprised to here that on top of that she felt I had promised her 30 months of a flex period where we would jointly fund the house we own while she and the kids lived in it.
(Hah!, Pandora knows what I am blogging about and just started playing Whiskey and You By Chris Stapleton.)
I searched my memory for a moment to see how close that was to anything I ever said to her. And I had to just say no. The conversation wasn’t going well and I immediately was glad that I hadn’t ordered a drink but a little sad that I had ordered food.
I noticed as soon as she sat in the car that my divorce stomach returned. Over the past two years, cohabitating until the past August, I have lost 25 pounds. I had some weight to lose so I was glad to lose the first 15 pounds. I hadn’t really noticed that I had mostly stopped eating. I have recently been gaining a little weight back while living in a new place. I have been pan-searing tuna, cooking carne asada, and more or less getting back to eating at least two real meals a day. Christmas brought more feasts and snacks and comfort food. I have recently begun to worry that I was back on a path of weight gain. But being with her sucked by appetite away and because it had been awhile I really got to see the effects and understand better why I really lost that weight.
It is so emotionally taxing. It is 90 minutes later and I am still decompressing. I have started to take a couple of bits from my cold nachos. I want to drink a beer #bellstwohearted, but because I want to I won’t tonight.
I am sorry for the whole conversation and dread the next one. We are stuck financially and distanced emotionally. More talks are one the way.
There was a moment in 2017 when it felt like we ended things in a kind way and began our separation. I wish that could have been an easy button night to zap everything into our next lives. It is going to be complicated, frustrating, and lack any easy or quick solutions.
But here is a poem I wrote then.
My Last Night with the Dread Pirate Roberts
My Last Night with the Dread Pirate Roberts
8/17
It was a sweet night and I thank you for it
The night my Buttercup cleaned house on her pirate ship
You calmed me with a night of entertainment and familiar things
We moved in nostalgic rhythms and you saw and heard me
And when it was time you mixed the lidocaine in my ale
Clung to me like it once was
And you murdered me while crying sweet tears
As the sounds of St. Vincent washed me to shore
Wesley and Buttercup rebecame farmboy and farmgirl
Mostly true love became darkness
We became two I’s
And it was done so painstakingly sweetly
Hello sweet sorrow