Tomorrow is the first day of school for my daughters. Normally, I would have spent the weekend at Mackinaw Island as a last hurrah of the summer before with them. We would have eaten good food, played in the hotel hot tub, ridden around the island, and laughed. On the way home we would have talked about what food they wanted to eat for lunch. We would have picked out their outfits, I would have hugged them both, prayed with at least one of them, and sat in their room until they drifted off to sleep. That is what my heart longs to do, that is what I know to be the right thing for me to have done tonight.
Instead I am sitting on my couch typing this having called them on the phone and tried to pick up the few things they shared with me over speaker phone. About the weekend on the island and then the day spent not with me but with my ex and her BF's family. Yet, they are excited about their first day and I am so happy for them. And when I got off the phone with them I bawled like a baby.
Blogging about all this is interesting. Opening my soul to no one in particular, sharing the pain, the confusion, the frustration, the anger, the sadness, the betrayal, the loss.....I am not sure what good it is doing? I know that at times it helps to put the tangled mess I feel inside down here, yet words rarely do justice to the feelings. I believe this lack of being able to communicate my feelings in a way that is understandable is among the reasons that I find myself in this crappy situation in the first place. Maybe I should be working on expressing myself verbally, instead of constantly writing everything down? That may be true, yet this is what I have for now. Since it is helping at least a bit I will continue for now.
Monday, September 7, 2015
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
What's the point
So I have a curious question to pose or that I have been asking myself. I wonder if I didn't have my daughters just how far down the rabbits hole I would slide? I mean that as a broad term: morally, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, etc. I know that I have the Holy Spirit to guide me and I know He is active in my life, yet that voice is easy to drown out or ignore all together.
I feel the icy cold fingers of depression grasping at my heart. I cannot explain it better than that, it is a feeling of numbness and withdrawal. I have a routine now that is pretty stable especially as I am about to enter back into the school year with my girls. Get up, clean up, eat up, read up, work. Come home if it is a girls night cook food, hang out, try to get them to talk and share( they seem so cautious to tell me about their days, which is weird as I don't pry or react strangely I just want to know about their lives.). Then we either jump in car and scream to the south side of town to get home by the minute I mentioned to ex so she won't text me 5 times about where I am or we clean up and pretty much get ready for bed. The school year night that I have them I also work at a church so I will rarely see my oldest before bedtime and my youngest will be in activities until it is time to scream home to get to bed. If it is an off night, no girls, I run errands, sometimes real sometimes contrived to get out of house, I run, I eat, I watch TV, I go to sleep. Repeat... Then weekend comes. Here again Girls = fun. Activities, up north, cousins, movies, games, etc. If off, no girls, hopefully work on the am Sat, small project if I can find one around home, run, eat, drink, TV. Sleep. Church, parents, girls, eat, drive them home, TV or read and sleep. REPEAT.
The highlights of my week are the girls. But especially during the school year its hard. I get them what feels like so rarely, definitely not 50/50!, and when I am with them it is great but it is shadowed. We are not the family we are supposed to be, we are missing someone, we are constantly rushed or meeting some deadline. The shadow is hard. Back to the icy fingers.
I have a hobby running and this time of the year hunting. Which is great but both of these hobbies give me so much alone time and that is something I have a lot of right now. I was talking to a friend who is a few steps behind me and he said that if his marriage falls apart as it looks like it is going to he would be perfectly content living up north alone somewhere. I get this feeling, I am an introvert. But we all need people in our lives. There was a study done a while ago with babies in Russia. I don't remember all the details but the results were that we need meaningful physical contact with other people a few times a day to stay sane for the most part. It is good that I have a mom and a few daughters because besides them I haven't had a person in my life who was or is intentional about this in such a long time and now I wonder if that will ever change?
I have had a few folks ask me when I am going to start dating. I have told them this line about needing to be healthy by myself first. What I wanted to say was I did that, I got married, I still love her and I always will. When I said I do I meant forever., but I didn't say that. Beyond that fact, I don't want to date. I think about it and it makes me cringe. I am so afraid of allowing someone to get to know me, the real me, and I am not even sure which version of me is real after all the wounds and scars of this travesty. I know I am lonely, but it's not worth the risk of my or another's heart. At least this hasn't made me selfish, I can still think of others.
To be very transparent I believe that divorce is a tool of Satan. You don't have to believe in Satan or if that name drives you crazy, maybe if I said I believe divorce is evil. It tore my family apart, my daughters are doomed to live this hop scotch life until they are old enough to get the F off the crazy train and even then they will have to choose how and when to see us both. They get to feel guilt, shame, loss, sadness, anger, frustration, betrayal, confusion, etc. My ex's and my union is destroyed, but you don't just divorce and that's it, sign the papers and you are good to go. Nope! We have entangled in the kind of permanent way that we will never be able to neatly pull apart. Firstly we have kids together and that won't ever change. But we also have shared so much life, survived trials, experienced joys, held each other in sadness, witnessed awkward, painful, embarrassing, horrible events. Shared intimate moments not just the ones we were naked for, the ones where we bared our souls. Even the pain we inflicted on each other has a way of bonding us. Besides all that we stood in front of friends, family and most importantly God and promised in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, til death end us. All of those things and more make it impossible, no matter the success stories that exist. So I say it is evil. Like many evil things them seem "right", "good", "just", "feels right", etc. in the beginning or maybe for a while. But all along under the surface it is causing havoc. I can't speak for my ex, but for me...I am broken. My heart is shattered, I am lonely, I am ashamed, I have no self confidence left(for example I ran a race, my ex happened to run it too she passed me at the very end I could have kept up with her I even considered passing her, but then I thought of what's the point, I slowed way down and thought about walking of the course), I am sad, I am furious, I feel weighed and worthless, I feel wronged, I don't know how to trust anymore, I assume the worst. (I was running past a parking lot the other week and I watched a woman jump out of her car and into a guys truck and start making out, I assumed they were having an affair not that it was some happy couple.) I am jealous. Yeah.... I am broken. Divorce worked it's evil on me, chewed me up and the version of me that is left is worthless.
Yet, I will solider on, I will hope for better(though I doubt it's arrival), I will try to put on a smile(maybe someday it will form without me having to force it), I will pray for healing, I will strive to be a good dad no matter what. I will keep forgiving my ex and seeking peace, I will restrain all of the feelings I have to pound her new BF's face in, and to not judge the Brady Bunch life style they are moving towards. In a sentence I will try to hold onto the tiny piece of me that is left and hope to God that I don't lose my grip.
I feel the icy cold fingers of depression grasping at my heart. I cannot explain it better than that, it is a feeling of numbness and withdrawal. I have a routine now that is pretty stable especially as I am about to enter back into the school year with my girls. Get up, clean up, eat up, read up, work. Come home if it is a girls night cook food, hang out, try to get them to talk and share( they seem so cautious to tell me about their days, which is weird as I don't pry or react strangely I just want to know about their lives.). Then we either jump in car and scream to the south side of town to get home by the minute I mentioned to ex so she won't text me 5 times about where I am or we clean up and pretty much get ready for bed. The school year night that I have them I also work at a church so I will rarely see my oldest before bedtime and my youngest will be in activities until it is time to scream home to get to bed. If it is an off night, no girls, I run errands, sometimes real sometimes contrived to get out of house, I run, I eat, I watch TV, I go to sleep. Repeat... Then weekend comes. Here again Girls = fun. Activities, up north, cousins, movies, games, etc. If off, no girls, hopefully work on the am Sat, small project if I can find one around home, run, eat, drink, TV. Sleep. Church, parents, girls, eat, drive them home, TV or read and sleep. REPEAT.
The highlights of my week are the girls. But especially during the school year its hard. I get them what feels like so rarely, definitely not 50/50!, and when I am with them it is great but it is shadowed. We are not the family we are supposed to be, we are missing someone, we are constantly rushed or meeting some deadline. The shadow is hard. Back to the icy fingers.
I have a hobby running and this time of the year hunting. Which is great but both of these hobbies give me so much alone time and that is something I have a lot of right now. I was talking to a friend who is a few steps behind me and he said that if his marriage falls apart as it looks like it is going to he would be perfectly content living up north alone somewhere. I get this feeling, I am an introvert. But we all need people in our lives. There was a study done a while ago with babies in Russia. I don't remember all the details but the results were that we need meaningful physical contact with other people a few times a day to stay sane for the most part. It is good that I have a mom and a few daughters because besides them I haven't had a person in my life who was or is intentional about this in such a long time and now I wonder if that will ever change?
I have had a few folks ask me when I am going to start dating. I have told them this line about needing to be healthy by myself first. What I wanted to say was I did that, I got married, I still love her and I always will. When I said I do I meant forever., but I didn't say that. Beyond that fact, I don't want to date. I think about it and it makes me cringe. I am so afraid of allowing someone to get to know me, the real me, and I am not even sure which version of me is real after all the wounds and scars of this travesty. I know I am lonely, but it's not worth the risk of my or another's heart. At least this hasn't made me selfish, I can still think of others.
To be very transparent I believe that divorce is a tool of Satan. You don't have to believe in Satan or if that name drives you crazy, maybe if I said I believe divorce is evil. It tore my family apart, my daughters are doomed to live this hop scotch life until they are old enough to get the F off the crazy train and even then they will have to choose how and when to see us both. They get to feel guilt, shame, loss, sadness, anger, frustration, betrayal, confusion, etc. My ex's and my union is destroyed, but you don't just divorce and that's it, sign the papers and you are good to go. Nope! We have entangled in the kind of permanent way that we will never be able to neatly pull apart. Firstly we have kids together and that won't ever change. But we also have shared so much life, survived trials, experienced joys, held each other in sadness, witnessed awkward, painful, embarrassing, horrible events. Shared intimate moments not just the ones we were naked for, the ones where we bared our souls. Even the pain we inflicted on each other has a way of bonding us. Besides all that we stood in front of friends, family and most importantly God and promised in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, til death end us. All of those things and more make it impossible, no matter the success stories that exist. So I say it is evil. Like many evil things them seem "right", "good", "just", "feels right", etc. in the beginning or maybe for a while. But all along under the surface it is causing havoc. I can't speak for my ex, but for me...I am broken. My heart is shattered, I am lonely, I am ashamed, I have no self confidence left(for example I ran a race, my ex happened to run it too she passed me at the very end I could have kept up with her I even considered passing her, but then I thought of what's the point, I slowed way down and thought about walking of the course), I am sad, I am furious, I feel weighed and worthless, I feel wronged, I don't know how to trust anymore, I assume the worst. (I was running past a parking lot the other week and I watched a woman jump out of her car and into a guys truck and start making out, I assumed they were having an affair not that it was some happy couple.) I am jealous. Yeah.... I am broken. Divorce worked it's evil on me, chewed me up and the version of me that is left is worthless.
Yet, I will solider on, I will hope for better(though I doubt it's arrival), I will try to put on a smile(maybe someday it will form without me having to force it), I will pray for healing, I will strive to be a good dad no matter what. I will keep forgiving my ex and seeking peace, I will restrain all of the feelings I have to pound her new BF's face in, and to not judge the Brady Bunch life style they are moving towards. In a sentence I will try to hold onto the tiny piece of me that is left and hope to God that I don't lose my grip.
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