A Heavy Heart

I think I’ve got post-holiday blues. Well, that, and some serious cramps. Blugh.  

I woke up this morning with a really heavy heart. You know, that sort of sadness that sits on your chest the way a cat does, only without the lovely comfort and purring? That sadness that just lingers; a heavy weight on you.

It’s about my kids. I miss them. I miss that I only get to spend half their lives with them. (They’re at my house for one week, and then at their dad’s and we alternate holidays.) I’m sad that my son has so much anger in him, and I can’t seem to help him express it or let go of it. My daughter seems to have adjusted better, but I worry about her too.

I’m sad that I’ve somehow become this monster in the eyes of my ex and his wife, when really all I’ve tried to do is be business-like in my approach to them. I spend a lot of time trying to ‘soften’ the language in my emails (it involves smiley faces, lots of questions about how they’re doing, and remaining vulnerable and open) but their emails and correspondence haven’t changed toward me. They’re still succinct and business-like. I guess the language thing only applies to me.

I’m sad that his parents have stopped responding to my emails, and for the first time his mom didn’t contact me to have lunch and catch up when she was in town for the holidays (They live in Canada; a twelve-hour drive). I’m not sure if this was her choice, or pressure from my ex, or pressure from her husband, or maybe even my ex’s wife. They think that my having a friendship with my ex-mother-in-law is wrong. It was never about trying to manipulate or even talk about my ex with her. I genuinely like her, care about her, and wanted to continue a relationship with her. She is, and always will be, my kids’ grandmother.

A couple of a weeks ago my ex was yelling at me and saying “When you left, you said the kids would be fine, and they’re not.” Essentially, he was saying “Look what you’ve done!” I honestly don’t understand. My ex is so much happier in his new life. I am so much happier in mine, and I truly have the perfect partner for me now. I don’t believe for a second that the kids would’ve been better off if I’d stayed, because I would not have been better off. They need a stable mom, and that’s who I am now.

I do the best I can. I’ve never claimed to be perfect. I do try very hard to be loving, supportive, understanding, open. I try to listen and support, not just my kids, but my family, the kids’ dad and stepmom, friends. And it saddens me that I can’t have a relationship with my ex’s parents, even though they’re the kids’ grandparents. And it saddens me that there is half the time when I can’t be there to help my kids. I chose co-parenting thinking the kids needed their dad as much as possible. (My dad was not present until I was thirteen, and even then, not very much.) Part of me wishes I’d fought for more time, like 75/25. But I didn’t want to put the kids through a custody battle.

I wish I had the power to fix this. I wish I could make transitioning between the two houses easy for my son. I try to talk to him, get him to name his emotions, but it doesn’t work. I wish he and my daughter could understand that I made all of the choices I did with them in mind FIRST, not last. I wish that my ex’s family had a wider understanding of family. That you don’t have to choose sides. My mom says that “Love is something you don’t take away from people. It just grows.” There’s plenty to share.

So. Heavy heart. I know I’ll get through this. Kealoha helps. Having the kids here for a week at a time helps. We’ll get my son counseling. And some day I’ll be able to explain so that they’ll understand.

But right now, I really wish they could be with me and Kealoha all the time, and the whole trying to parent 50/50 is breaking my heart. And I think maybe that’s what the heaviness is.

My Obsessive List of Back-to-Dating Questions

After a self-imposed exile (is that the right word?) of dating, I find I want to do it. Uhm, dating, that is, and not Do It…which is an entirely different thing, but yes, something I’d like to do too.

I’m having a little trouble in this area though. Mostly, it’s my brain. It’s getting in the way. At 36 and divorced and a single mom, I have a whole new list of dating questions and I don’t know the answer to them.

Here are a few:

1) Can I blog about a man I’m seeing if he reads my blog? (If I’m seeing you and you’re reading this, you may want to stop. Seriously.) My blog could prove awkward. A girl needs secrets…and while dating you want to appear perfect and like you always smell of scented lotion. You do not want to come off as neurotic, strange, or possibly obsessive…which are all conclusions you could make about me if you read my blog.

2) And if I blog about dating, can I do it while I’m dating or do I have to wait until months later? I keep envisioning me on a date that’s going really well, so well, we’re on some couch somewhere making out like teenagers and I say “Oh! Hold that thought! I want to tell everyone I’m making out like a teenager!” Then I run to the computer, type away, and then run back.

3) Do I wait for a man to approach me and ask me out or embrace newfound Cougar-within and approach him? And what are the new rules? When do I talk about my kids without making it sound like I want a new Daddy. I don’t, but the kids are an essential part of who I am. Like down to the DNA.

And men my age are usually divorced and/or fresh out of relationships or wounded by relationships. Do I wait until they’re more well-adjusted? Is someone who’s bitter about their ex best to be avoided? Or do I just jump in there and say “Hey! I’m here! Let’s do it!” (Dating, again, people. Not Do It. That’s for later.)

4) Can I date someone whose friend I dated but that was like in college when I didn’t know any better? That’s probably asking for a whole lot of drama.

5) Are all my former students who are now in their thirties off limits still? Because role-playing could be fun. No. That’s off the list. If you’re at my school looking to hire me, I would never NEVER date a student. (Again.)

6) Do I immediately mark off the list anyone who is living with their parents. Times are tough. It’s a new era, and lots of people need to get back on their feet.

7) Could I possibly have a fling? One that doesn’t necessarily mean anything? That would be free and easy, wouldn’t it? A passionate fling on a beach somewhere where I have long hair and a bikini body that makes the gods jealous? (Oops. Just slipped into fantasy there.)

8 ) I just answered my own question. I don’t think I’m a fling type of person. My heart always gets in the way.

And most importantly….

9) How do I stop that heart from getting broken? I’m terrified. Absolutely terrified of falling in love with the wrong person. I’m also terrified of falling in love with the right person.

10) I don’t really have a #10 but I felt like I couldn’t end a list on 9.

So that’s my obsessive list for dating. Who knows the answers to these questions? I could ask my therapist, but he’d probably tell me to just trust myself. I’d rather have someone just tell me what to do and not do. It would be a whole lot easier.

What the last year has taught me about marriage and love.

This question comes from Laura Michels. She is a fantastic actress newly returned to Grand Rapids and performed in the piece I wrote for the GRAM as well as ‘twelve scenes about loving’. She asks: “What has the last year taught you about marriage and love?”

I had to think about this for a while. I’m still not sure that things happen for a reason, though I do believe that we can get meaning from even the most horrible experiences. So what is the meaning of this year for me? What have I learned?  I learned to find my voice again. I’ve learned what marriage is not, what it shouldn’t be. I’ve learned that I still believe in love, but I’m still struggling with the fear that it might never happen for me, at least the good kind of love. The kind of love that is balanced and, well, kind.

In my marriage, I thought that to keep P. married to me, to keep the family happy, I had to give up on my self.  I mean that. I mean, I gave up on My Self. I gave up on things that made me happy as an individual. I thought being married was sacrificing everything in order to make your family happy. By doing that, I disappeared. I became mute. I was a living ghost. By leaving, I rediscovered that self and now know that though I am flawed, maybe even tragically, or at least melodramatically, I am, essentially human. I’ve learned that everyone is at some point a fuck up. And it’s these flaws that are endearing. Achilles without the flaw in his heel is just another God. With that flaw, he’s vulnerable. He has a heart. He can be loved.

I’ve learned that I have a big heart. I’ve learned that I now know what love is and how to recognize it. It isn’t giving up your self. It’s finding someone who loves and supports you not in spite of your flaws…but because of them.

I’ve learned that marriage should be a partnership. There should be passion, and fights, and times of quiet. There should be support. I’ve learned that a woman has value. She is more than a collection of roles like mother, wife, cook. She is a full person. A person to be treasured. I should have been in my marriage. I was not. I take partial blame because I allowed it to happen.

What I’m still learning is how to be kind to myself. To look at the wrinkles, the silly mistakes, the wonderful blunders I’ve made and to laugh. And there have been nights, alone, in my apartment, where I have turned up the music and I have danced. I have very little rhythm and my body rarely moves the way I want it to, but I have danced. A year ago, I was too afraid to do this.

So. What have I learned? What has this year taught me? That being alone is okay. Loving who I am is okay. Hoping to find a relationship built on trust and compassion and passion is possible. I just have to be a little more patient. I’m working on it. I really am.

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No Title Strong Enough For This

I know I need to write about this because it’s keeping me up at night, but I’m not sure how to begin. I’ve had a very hard week with some difficult news. (I’ll get to that in a moment.) But what happened when I heard the news was that I felt something inside me crack, the way I imagine my foot originally broke, or ice breaks when there is too much weight on it. First a thin line appeared, and then the sound of things breaking apart. Emotionally, that’s how I felt.

What happened is this: I have been trying to get a house. I did everything the way you’re supposed to: I was preapproved for a mortgage because I didn’t want to get my heart set on something and then be told it wasn’t possible. So I got preapproved. Gold star approved. Then I found the house.  A perfect house in the perfect location, a place I could call home and provide some stability for me and my kids. I’ve been looking for a place to rest my entire life it seems. And not rest as in die, I mean, a place where I feel safe. A place to call my own. A place that’s also a respite from the outside world. The house inspection went great. The owners accepted my offer. We set a closing date.

Then two days ago I received a call from the mortgage company: “See, Tanya, the underwriter is having a problem with the word Temporary. It says you’re a Temporary Full-Time Professor, and that makes them nervous.”

Only Kendall can’t call me anything else, because to call me full-time means that they’d actually have to get approved to create a position first and then follow all the university’s rules in filling that position. “What does this mean?” I asked the guy.

“Well, we need to see your W2’s from 2008. They want to make sure you can afford the payments.”

Should be easy, yes? Only I was a stay-at-home mom in 2008 and had no income. Of course, I had income, I had my husband’s income. We shared everything. But mortgage companies don’t look at it like that. What they see is that I was unemployed for 5 ½ years, not that I was taking care of my children. They won’t count my husband’s income as mine because it was his. You see? That’s when I cracked.

To leave a bad marriage, one in which I was pretty much invisible as a person, I had to leave every comfort and security. I’d chosen to be a stay-at-home mom for the interest of our kids and because of finances. But when I left the marriage, I left with nothing. NOTHING. I’m not exaggerating. Pierre ‘let’ me take about $500 from our joint account. Everything else was up to me. I had no home. No furniture except for a couple of pieces I asked him for. I had no full-time job. Now that the divorce is final, I also have no health insurance, no dental insurance, no retirement. I have a car in which I now take over the insurance payments for. And then, on top of it, I can’t get a house because I’m a security risk.

And my ex? He has insurance, he has 5 ½ years of employment, he is searching for a house with his fiancée and will have no trouble, he has ten plus years of retirement saved up. He has a new car. He’s moved seamlessly from being married to me into a new relationship with a new woman who will be his new wife and he will have his new home.

I’m not mad at him specifically. I’m mad at the system. I’m mad that a woman (or man) who chooses to stay with their children then has no security, no credit, and is viewed as someone untrustworthy. I’m mad that everything I’ve provided for my kids has been from sheer tenacity. I’m mad that I have no guarantees. No insurance. No one to help me bear the weight of it. And I’m mad that the perfect house I found may not be mine after all, and I will have to explain to them why Daddy is getting a new house but Mommy can’t, after all.

I’ve often wondered how women stay in bad relationships where they’re abused or misused or mistreated or simply unhappy. Now I know. You stay because you have to. You stay because what is in front of you is poverty if you are not lucky enough to get a job. You stay because you may not be not lucky enough to find a landlord who will trust you enough to rent to you. You stay because you are terrified of getting injured or sick or hurt and you won’t have the insurance or the money to help yourself. You stay in a marriage because even though you are strong and independent, you know you cannot fight the system on your own.

Yesterday I really felt “What is the point?” What is the point of my trying to get ahead, of trying to produce creative work, of trying to get a house for the kids. But deeper than that I felt “What is the point of me?” “Why do I matter?” No one else seems to think I do, most of all the system.

So I put a call out on Facebook of all things asking for support. And all day my phone chimed with friends telling me they care about me, they’re thinking of me, and I felt…I don’t know…loved.

What I’ve done is hard and lonely and terrible at times, and there are so many obstacles in my way, and so many people saying “No”.

But there are also a few whispering words of strength from my friends and family, words of encouragement, of support…so even though I feel so alone in this System, I know, essentially, that I’m not actually bearing this weight on my own. And for that small thing, I am intensely grateful.

An Exercise in Humility or Humiliation?

So far this whole broken foot fiasco has either been an exercise in humility or humiliation, maybe equal parts of both. I’ve had wonderful people offering to help and I’ve had horribly sobering moments where I sort of float outside myself and think “Aw, who’s that sad sap crawling up those stairs?”

Some random moments:

WORK

River City called me in to do one of my recurring voice-overs. I’m the Phone Lady for a major local health care group, so you can blame me when you hear prompts like “Thank you for calling. To speak with an operator, please hold for 27 minutes or so while standing on one leg, then maybe we’ll let you through” OR “If you are bleeding profusely, please hang up and dial 911.” Okay. Tangent.

So when they called me, I thought “Sure, I can handle this. This is a five minute gig.” I’d forgotten about the stairs. And the slope in their driveway. I got in the car, harder than it sounds since my driveway is an obstacle course of slush and ice, pulled my crutches in, drove, and was faced with a slope of sheer ice. I slipped my way up, rang buzzer and faced The Stairs. Granted, these stairs are not a big deal if you walk like a normal person. If you’re on crutches for the first time in your life, they are The Steep Stairs of Death. I stood there, looking at them, and thought “Fuck it”…and I crawled. That’s right. On my hands and knees.

Then there was another set of stairs leading to the basement studio. No big deal, I thought, I’ll just scoot down on my butt. Only there was a leak in the ceiling and I sat down on wet carpet so by the time I got down the stairs, not only was I butt crawling, but now looked as if I couldn’t hold my bladder.

Thank god everyone there has known me forever. My foot is broken, but my bladder works just fine.

DATING

I thought I was ready for this. Especially with my ex remarrying I feel like I ought to at least be dating. I decided to meet someone I’ve been writing to for a while online, and damnation, I was bound and determined. Plus I had a goal with my writers’ group to go out on a date with a man who wasn’t gay. (Though I really wish I could date gay men.) I limped my way to the restaurant and had a fine time talking, but at the same time, I was acutely aware of how I must smack of just a little bit pathetic. I managed to not wear stretchy pants, so that was a bonus.

I had these flashes in my mind of what sex would be like with a cast. I can’t take a bath so shaving is out. Imagine a heated moment and I lose my balance and fall over onto the floor. Or I’m trying to be sexy while I unzip my pants and then can’t get them off because they’re stuck on my cast. And then…naked bodies…imagine the awkwardness of a solid, rock hard CAST in the way. Not to mention my Sasquatch legs.

I’m thinking dating is out for a while.

HUMILIATION #459

The most recent humiliation with my ex. On the phone. Presented in dialogue.

ME: Hi, P. I’m calling because my foot is really broken. Like seriously and I need some help with the kids.

P: Okay. Well, I have them this weekend so that should help.

ME: Yes, but what I mean is…

P: Me and Miss R. are going to decorate the tree. Just want you to know in case they talk about that.

ME: Okay, but what I was going to say…

P: She was pretty upset about you having all the Christmas decorations since somehow in her split she didn’t get the Christmas decorations from her ex. But I told her it would be fine. We’d just give the kids some money and they can each buy an ornament and we’ll hang them all together and it will be a wonderful bonding experience for our family.

ME: (silence)

P: So. What are you planning on doing with the kids?

ME: Oh, you know, I have a broken foot and can’t take care of them and I’m single and can’t offer them any family bonding so I thought, I don’t know, that they’d watch TV while I eat chocolate bonbons on the couch and cry my heart out. Thanks for asking.

END SCENE

That dialogue is true, except for the last part. The last part I just thought but wanted to say. He doesn’t even realize how his words affect me.

Blast.

THE FUTURE

I talked to my sister. “You know, you’ve got to stay off your foot.”

“I know.”

“Seriously. Because if you don’t, you could have surgery.”

“I know.”

“P. is a fucking asshole.”

“I know.”

“He’s going to get testicular cancer…”

“Heidi…”

“No. Seriously. It’s karma, man. And after all you’ve been through…you know what’s going to happen?”

“Tell me.”

“Something fucking great. You’re either going to transform into a real superhero or you’re going to be rich and famous because of your books.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I know it.”

With that thought, I sit back on my couch and change the channel on the TV. Good things are coming. My sister says it’s so, and if there’s one thing I know, you don’t mess with my sister.

The Universe--A Beast and Beauty

I've been quite the grumbler lately. Imagine me in a white tank top and cutoff jean shorts, hairy legs, belly sticking out, in slippers. Put some curlers in my hair, and while you're at it,  put a real grumpy look on my face. That's pretty much been my appearance (at least spiritually) these last few weeks, and with good reason too. Really!

Here's a list: over a two week period of time my ex told me he was remarrying ASAP, I had to meet his fiance and start developing a relationship with her for the sake of the kids (she's nice), my teaching gig was about to come to an end and I was facing no job and...once the divorce is finally finalized...no health insurance. Then, just because the universe is a real funny gal, my landlord wrote me saying "Oh, yeah, I'm going to put the house up for sale".

The only thing that would have made this even more stressful was if I'd actually stuck to that cabbage soup detox diet, but luckily I gave that up.

I really felt beat up. Really. Like someone physically tossed me against a wall. And I felt like all these things were happening TO me, all these things that were beyond my control. I couldn't MAKE my ex not remarry, I couldn't rewind time and make him not date for a few more months. I couldn't FORCE someone to hire me. I couldn't change my landlord's mind. All I could do was Deal With It.

I'd like to say I handled it beautifully. That I was a princess of sorts. You know though, those princesses, I'm pretty sure it's an act. Put any girl in a fancy dress with lots of makeup and she'll look all right, but inside, man, inside is what counts. I was no princess. I felt pretty much hopeless.

And now?

Now, my teaching contract has been renewed, I have two narration gigs, my ex's fiance is very nice, and though the holidays are coming and I'm not dating or in love, I have my kids and my health and my family and my friends...And I may celebrate by buying one of those crazy beer hats with the straws. (If I can refill it with liquid chocolate.) What I'm saying here is the Universe? She's a Beast, but every once in a while, she can be a real Beauty too.