Tag Archives: Divorce

Divorce is stupid

Posted on April 16, 2014 | 27 comments

I hate being divorced.  It’s so stupid.  It’s stupid that all of these years later it is still there.

I love where I am right now.  I love my husband.  I love my life and my children and my home.  I can even confidently say that I love myself.  And none of those things would be without my past.  But I still hate it.

I hate that it makes me cry out of nowhere.  I hate that it makes me feel like all of the things that should feel permanent might just disappear one day.

I hate it more now that we have come all the way out the other side.  Last week when we sat on the beach and exchanged pleasantries, I hated every minute. When I realized that more time had passed since I had seen him than ever before in the last 18 years, I hated it.  When we spoke last week and I said “how was your day?” and he laughed and said “not good” I hated that my heart seized up in my chest because I am so ready for all of his days to be “all good.”  He deserves that much.

I hate that I don’t know where he works exactly or what the inside of his home looks like because I used to know everything, even things I wish I didn’t know.

It was easier when I got to say that I was divorced but that he was still my best friend because he was the person that knew me best. He was the person that had known me the longest.  But the truth is, the last six years have changed us both so much that unless we are talking about “the good old days” (which we both know weren’t really very good at all most days) it is like talking to someone I just met.

If it is possible to stand side by side with someone and feel like it all happened to other people how can you not fear that the now, the present that you love so much could all just go up in smoke?

To recap: I love right now, today.  And I loved yesterday and I am certain that I will love tomorrow.  And in spite of the Fear that creeps up in me sometimes, I refuse to feel Doubt.  I will smile and hold on and be 100% certain that I will love my life decades from now.

10001246_602805879801095_4743717070025521868_oMQD made a wind chime this weekend. We talked about getting rocking chairs for the front porch and I smiled and teared up. I gave him a pair of rocking chairs when we had not been dating very long at all and said something cheesy about how it would be nice to sit and rock in them together one day a very, very long time from now.  That was years ago and that pair of old rocking chairs never made it to our new house.

Even though I am divorced and even though that first pair of old rocking chairs rotted beyond repair –  I still believe.  It won’t be easy.  And we might have more than a few pairs of rocking chairs in our future because it’s true, nothing lasts forever.  But dammit, I won’t let hating my divorce keep me from loving my marriage.  Because that doesn’t make any damn sense at all.

To second chances, spring time, windchimes and rocking chairs.  To divorce and marriage and Love and tears and starting over.  Cheers!

Edited to add: It’s strange that I am grieving now of all times. It was easier when it hurt all of the time. I understood that. This part, the part when it is ancient history is a whole new kind of hurt. J, it was really good to see you.  It made me happy.  And seeing you happy made me happy.  And then it made me sad.  Ugh.  Miss me?  Ha! -K

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Home for the Holidays

Posted on December 31, 2013 | 5 comments

You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. ~Thomas Wolfe

I am the adult child of a divorce.  (Is anyone ever the adult child of something great?  People are adult children of alcoholics and divorce and of narcissists according to Google but it seems there are no adult children of the well adjusted?)

Unlike many of my peers that struggled with a divorce as a young kid,  my family shifted after I was old enough to have already left the house.  I was in my early twenties when I was smacked in the face with the reality that my parents were their own people and perhaps their function in this life was not to wait by the front door to welcome me home bi-monthly.  There were growing pains and tears and eventually there were new family structures.

When my father sold the house I grew up in (affectionately dubbed the “free storage facility”) it was official.  I could no longer “go home again.” Boxes of notes from middle school, old prom dresses and family pictures were distributed to their rightful owners and it was over.  I drive by the “old house” sometimes and it feels weird.  My life was in that house.  My family.

Fast forward fifteenish years and here I am in a house with my own family.  A husband, two kids and a dog and a Christmas tree.  One would think I would no longer lament that original loss. But in the darkest hours, in the moments I am  flopped on my bed with over-tired, red swollen eyes and feel like I need a good cry I often say “I just wish I could go home.  To my mom and dad.”

1504079_10201924620548844_1484615996_nThat is what being an adult child is, I guess.  Instead of “I want my Mommy & Daddy!” the “adult” child laments the loss of their childhood in some way or another.  The “well-adjusted” adult child dries their eyes and doesn’t use the pain of being an adult anything as an excuse to be an asshole. Or at least that is what I aim for in my pursuit of being well-adjusted.  Try not to be an asshole.  I have lofty goals.

A few weeks ago I had a very emotional round of phone calls that resulted in an opportunity to go home again.  Thomas Wolfe says you can’t go “back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting” but when you realize that you will be having Christmas morning in your home with both your mother and your father for the first time in a long time and you never, ever thought you’d have that again… well, you get a little verklempt.

keep austin weird

I spent a few days trying to wrap my mind around it.

I mentioned to a friend that I don’t know how to process things I can’t write about.  The circumstances aren’t my story to tell.  I do my best to be respectful of my friends and family and find a balance between my compulsion to share my story with the world and the privacy of those that don’t. It’s a shame really because I had a great working title to the blog post – “The Christmas That Was Just Like Austin.”

I thought it would be weird.  I thought it might be sad and nostalgic and tense and wonderful. I thought I might go all Hayley Mills in Parent Trap only with wine instead of a twin sister as my devious counterpart.  But mostly I thought it would be weird.

I am sitting at my kitchen table drinking coffee this morning and I have no house guests. The Christmas tree has been taken down, the gifts have been relocated to their proper locations. Both of my parents have returned to their respective houses.

I can’t find the words.  This week we will all crawl out of our holiday holes and someone will casually asks me “How was your Christmas?”  I suspect my eyes will well with tears and I will say simply “It was great.  We stayed home.”

IMAGE_1367

 

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Happily Divorced

Posted on October 17, 2013 | 19 comments

“But you probably don’t want to hear about that…” you said.  You let your voice trail off the way you do when you aren’t sure if I am going to start talking. You were talking  about your girlfriend’s youngest daughter, her schoolwork.  If you were  just a casual friend the dismissal could have been interpreted to mean that every parent has conversations about homework with their teenager and it isn’t terribly interesting so why waste time talking about it.

But you aren’t a casual friend.  So, I have spent the last few days wondering what that single sentence meant.  Because that’s how we talk.  We laugh about old friends and trade “Did you hear that so and so got married?” and “Oh man, I had a sandwich with boursin mayonnaise on it and damn I forgot how much I love that stuff” and in between we say small things that we mean.  Things like “You sound happy” and “I’m glad you called.”

“But you probably don’t want to hear about that…”

Why?  Do you think that I am not interested in hearing about how you are settling in to a quiet life of doing home projects and arguing with kids about homework and being around at dinner time? I suppose it is fair to assume that it might sting a little.  Ten years ago I had imagined that you’d be putting down my hardwood floors, tucking our daughter in to bed and sitting on the deck with me wondering if we’d get one more warm weekend on the beach before fall quickly turned to winter.

I don’t hesitate to talk to you about the kids or my life.  It isn’t a secret that I am very, very happily married and I don’t hide that from you.  I talk about our daughter throwing a softball with MQD and I know that you’d imagined doing that someday.  I know that probably stings a little more than hardwood floors and a seat at the dinner table.  I don’t keep my life a secret because I know that in your heart of hearts you want us to be happy.  Even if it stings a little.

blurry jer

For almost a decade I have believed that you just never wanted the life that I wanted. It was easier to imagine that this life, the dinner seven days a week at 6 pm and a quiet life raising kids in the ‘burbs just wasn’t for you than to admit that maybe the only part of that life that didn’t work for you was the part that was me.

Maybe that was why you said I didn’t want to hear about your life now.

But you’re wrong.

A person can’t run wild and free in to their old age. Sooner or later they need to slow down.  For so many years I just imagined that you’d never slow down.  You’d just go at top speed until the end.  It is almost as if there is only so much life to be lived and you were planning on living all of yours before you ever hit 50.

I see you slowing down.  I see you happy.  You don’t have to hide it.  Because you know what doesn’t sting at all? You just might be around when Em graduates from high school.

I am glad you’re happy.  I am glad you’re slowing down.  I am glad I wasn’t wrong when I thought that you might settle down one day.  You know I love being right.  Turns out I just wasn’t right for you.  And I am glad about that, too.  Because in the end we’re both happy.

I guess if we couldn’t be happily married than happily divorced will work.   

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My Man

Posted on September 4, 2012 | 15 comments

Do you ever sit on the beach or at an all you can eat buffet and people watch  and think “Man,  Americans take lousy care of themselves….”? (You don’t refer to yourself as Man? I thought everyone did?) Slowly you point the lens of criticism back at yourself and you feel like an asshole for being so silently snarky and judgemental.  I look at my very not flat stomach or my plate piled high and think “who am I to judge?”

In the last few days I have spent more than a little bit of time on the telephone with several of my girlfriends.  They are all past the boohoo stage of a failing marriage and on to the nuts and bolts of where do I go from here.  They all have a different story, different backgrounds.  They picture their future quite differently from one another. Divorce, affairs, silent resignation.  But they have one thing in common.  At one time they looked at a man and thought “I will spend my life with you.”

As I hang up the phone each time I get quiet for a while.  And I turn that same lens that sees my imperfect body, my dinner plate filled too high with carbs and not enough salad at myself and my marriage … and I close my eyes and I do something that is as close to praying as I get.

I just think.  I think and I focus everything in my heart on that moment, the moment I said to myself “I will spend my life with this man” and I try to picture what is different about my moment than the moments that belong to my friends’ and their husbands.

There are very few upsides to divorce.  But there is one.  The second time, when you think “This could never happen to me, to my marriage” you know better.  I try really hard not to ever compare.  And on the slim chance that I do, I really think twice before writing about it.  And it isn’t just because both  my husband and my ex-husband have been known to read what I write here (ummm, hi, guys.) It’s because saying out loud and writing  “Wow, I learned a lot and now I’ve got this all figured out” is just too scary.  It’s not the kind of thing I want to risk jinxing.

But this weekend as I hung up the phone after speaking with a friend I melted against my husband. He hugged me, silently hoping that holding me close would be enough to eliminate the need for Conversation. I don’t recall exactly how it happened but he had me laughing in no time.  Moments later we were laughing about something else entirely.  And mere moments after that we were laughing again.

I went back to cleaning my kitchen.  I sighed as I shuffled one of his piles from the kitchen table to a chair.  It drives me nuts, the piles.  But he reads all of the time.  And when he reads he makes notes on notecards and cross references things in still another book.  He sticky notes and underlines and reads some more.  And then he stops reading and underlining and thinking and he picks up the baby because he can’t stand to let her cry, either, and sometimes Life gets busy and his books stay right where he set them down.

And it drives me crazy.  The piles.  But even the things that drive me crazy are things that I adore.  I like it. He reads.  And he makes me laugh.  I like him.

Hesitantly I tried to explain to MQD what was on my mind.  He asked me then “Do you need to think of how to say it?” and I answered “Yes, I really do.” It’s a feeling I don’t know if I have words for.

The benefit of being married twice is that I do have something to compare it to.  And part of what made it so incredibly hard to get divorced is what makes it easier to be and stay married.  I love my ex-husband.  I love him enough that my nose started to tingle and I started to cry as I wrote that ugly word “ex-husband.” I loved him very, very much and I still do.  To that end it is perhaps easier for me to know in my heart that marriage takes more than Love. And I know that.  And I work hard to remember that.

I have never liked anyone, not a friend, not a boyfriend, not a lover as much as I like being around MQD.  I just like him.  It’s pretty simple.  He likes me, too.

And when I was younger and in the middle of a passionate and fiery argument with my ex-husband I never stopped to think “Well, that’s not very nice, is it?” I never bit my tongue.  I relied on Love to keep us both forgiving. But I forgot that forgiveness does not mean  someone likes you.  Just because our Love did not erode it didn’t mean our friendship didn’t.

And now years later I have another chance to do it right.   And I won’t sit back and expect our Love to carry us through.  Because Love isn’t enough. My girlfriends that are struggling in their marriages are not questioning if they still have Love.  They are sad because they don’t like each other anymore.

I don’t feel smug.  Not for one second.  But I am confident.  I think if we work hard to try and be the kind of person that the other would like to be around we have a pretty good chance.

So, here’s my man.  I look at him and I think “Man, I am gonna spend my life with him.  Because I like him.  I like him so much.”

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She’s a Lady…

Posted on December 20, 2011 | 5 comments

Part of the art of being a woman...

There is a moment on a roller coaster, just before you begin the descent when you feel weightless.  Free.  If you had your eyes closed, if you had never seen the ride, in that moment you’d have no idea that moments later you’d be falling.

Christmas, 2005.  Emily was three months old.  We’d not yet decided that we’d not be opening the restaurant back up.   And what had been a tumultuous marriage even during its ascent was smack dab in the midst of that beautiful moment where everything is weightless. I was home full time with Emily.  And happier than I had ever been, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.  And wholly unconcerned with the past that had brought me to that moment.

Christmas of 2005 was my last moment before free falling.  I had a house full for Christmas.  Jeremy ran out to get a few last minute gifts (read: do all of his shopping, he is famous for last minute shopping.)  From a local antique store he purchased this ornament.

I love it.  I loved it then.  And I love it now.  But I have never understood nor asked why he bought it for me.  It is a small bell, filled with something that I imagine once held a stronger smell.  There is a ribbon with a quote.  A quote I have researched but for which I  have never found the origin. 

...is knowing when not to be too much of a lady.

Part of the art of being a woman is knowing when not to be too much of a lady.

We came out the other side of marriage with an amazing daughter to show for it and a friendship that has withstood more than  a few tests.  I am not without fault.  In our ten plus years together I can say that on more than a few occasions when the fault behind an altercation could be pinned on me it was because of what one could call less than lady-like behavior on my behalf.   My tendency to take out my frustration in a passive-aggressive manner often manifested itself in behavior best classified as such.

And now this.  An ornament. Bearing a statement that all but sums up my philosophy.  A philosophy I’d always suspected he all but completely rejected.

“I love it,” I said.  And I hung it on the tree.   From time to time since then I have wondered what he was thinking when he saw it.  It is undeniably me.  But not a me I ever really thought he appreciated.  Maybe the colored (and I am just going with colored, because they were certainly not rosy) glasses that had distorted the way I had looked at our marriage and at my life for all those years also skewed the way I imagined he looked at me.  Maybe  not.

More than likely he saw it and thought as the last minute shopper does, “She’ll like this” and that was all.

That is the story I tend to come back to time and again when I roll it around in  my head.  “She’ll like this.”

This ornament has tremendous weight.  For it is the moment our coaster went over the edge, when I felt the weightlessness leaving me and the descent beginning that I realized I’d not survive the landing if I didn’t abandon all hope of being a lady.

A lady is polite.  And keeps her gloves on.  And her mouth shut.

There would be nothing ladylike about the months that would pass between that Christmas and the Christmas of two years later when Em and I were in an apartment 200 miles from home, a divorce attorney’s business card the only thing on my refrigerator.

A lady would never have had the strength to fight through all that ugly to get to the Beauty that is today.  And I suppose that is the art of being a woman.  The strength, the wisdom to keep going until you find Beauty.

Merry Christmas, to the Ladies.  And the not so Ladylike among us.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Nonsense

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A couple of misfits…

Posted on December 19, 2011 | 4 comments

The holidays are about family. They can be a time of forgiveness.  Of letting go of the past and coming together to share a meal and a laugh and company.

In every family there is a Bumble.  In 1964’s Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer christmas tv special  Bumble is the antagonist.  To “bumble” by definition is to proceed in a clumsy fashion, to botch or bungle, make a mess of things.

This weekend I thought a lot about how much I hope our Bumble can come around like Bumble the Abominable Snowman. At the end of Rudolph Bumble is smiling a toothless grin and places the star on the top of the Christmas tree in ChristmasTown.  He may not be beloved by the whole town but at least he has stopped wreaking havoc.

For years now our Bumble has referred to the island he calls home as the “Island for Misfit Toys.” It seemed appropriate to post this ornament this morning as he heads back out of town.

Family weekends can be messy for any family.  There was a moment this weekend when I wondered just how much more I had in me.  How much love, how much forgiveness.   In that moment  I looked down and Emily was just standing there.  She took my hand and smiled and said “Here.  I have this fortune, it’s yours.”

And in to my hand she placed a slip of paper.

“Love, like war, is easy to start and nearly impossible to end.”

If that’s true, it might be your saving grace.  Tighten up, Jer.  You got this.  Merry Christmas, Bumble.

They look alike when they first wake up.

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Posted in Family, Parenting

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Long-term Sense Memory

Posted on September 23, 2011 | 1 comment

Last night Jer brought me a box of stuff.   Books I had written in elementary school.  “The Mysterious Furious Hill” is a real scream.  Badges I’d earned that hadn’t made it on to my Girl Scout sash. A report card from the second grade.  A picture of my preschool class at Prince of Peace, circa 1979-80.  I held that photograph in my hand and I could feel  these plastic egg shaped puzzle toys.  I could remember Mrs. Fish at my house.  She let me “fish” out my name tag with a fishing pole.  A magnet, a stick, a string and a safety pin on a name tag.  And thirty-one years later, I remember.

How do I remember this stuff?  We had a wooden iron in the “playing house/kitchen” area in preschool. I know this because I saw a shelf with a row of fingerpaint in yellow and green containers (the Crayola finger paint containers are the same as they were circa 1980) and in the same moment I saw a wooden iron  at Em’s preschool, and I could remember it. As clearly as if it was happening right now. I knew exactly what it would feel like to touch that iron. Continue reading →

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Posted in Family, Pregnancy

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If I knew then….

Posted on September 19, 2011 | 2 comments

September is a tough month for me.   Em’s birthday, her due date and the day Jer and I were married are all within a week of one another.  It’s impossible for me to think about one without thinking of another.

I told Em the story of the day she was born yesterday.  And it was hard.  It is equally hard to call her father and hear him tell her that he loves her.  On this day it is harder than any other day for some reason.   I don’t imagine it is a picnic for MQD to hear me tell her about Jeremy, either.  I do my very best to let Jeremy speak for himself. I never speak ill of him to her, nor do I tell her fantastic tales of a man she sees not enough of.  I do what I can to let her love for him carry their relationship.  She sees him with her own eyes, not mine.

I just dug up the letter I wrote Em on her second birthday.  I had no idea just how much her laughter would carry me through some dark days. When I wrote Em this letter I knew what was coming…. but I had no idea where I was going yet. Continue reading →

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Letting go and holding on…

Posted on April 6, 2011 | 10 comments

I have an unlikely friend. The Universe works in mysterious ways.  When my phone rang a couple of weeks ago and it was the young lady my ex-husband was living with soon after we separated you’d probably not have guessed that I’d have answered.  Or that she’d have been calling to ask for advice.  Or that I’d have poured a glass of wine and sat down on my back porch, giggling like I was talking to a dear girlfriend.  Or that I’d have been so very thrilled to hear the anticipation in her voice as she was preparing to catch up with an old boyfriend.

Then again you’d be just as surprised to know that a few years ago, when I was preparing our divorce papers it was Hillary I called.  To make sure it was a good time to send them. That she’d be around if he needed someone to talk to. Because I hated the idea of him hurting and not talking to anyone about  it.

Sometimes the world brings you the people you need in your life.  And sometimes you seek them out, asking advice from the friends that you know will tell you want to hear.   I knew Hillary would tell me to do what I needed to do, not take any bullshit, rip the band-aid off.  And when she called the other evening, I suspect she knew that I’d tell her to dive in, head first, heart and arms wide open, because what have you got to lose?  If there was ever a time to ask a woman if she thinks it is a good idea to be open to the possibility of Love I’d guess that the month before she gets married is a pretty damn good time.  I think my exact words to her that night were “What did you think I’d say?  Are you fucking kidding,  I love Love!”

So it was with a heavy heart that I read her email last week.  She told me that it was a no-go with the old flame.  I replied that she just has to keep putting herself out there.  And in what I declare a moment of genius told her that “our hearts are like earthworms. We have endless regenerative powers.”  Hillary is a tough cookie.  And when I didn’t hear from her I assumed that she was toughing it out.  Her earthworm heart mending itself in time to be torn in two for perhaps the gazillionth time, but all in all, no worse for the wear.  And then yesterday she posted this….

Dear Kelly Ann,
You never mentioned that once you try and finally let go….what happens when they try to force themselves back into your life? What if my guard is weak just like my heart? Why all these fucking games? Why all the constant tugs on my heart strings?
Sincerely, Hillary  from cantstopthebeattt

And I am at a loss.  I am a Dreamer.  A Believer in Love.  But I am not one to suggest to my friends that they keep putting themselves in the line of fire, earthworm hearts or not.    So I am not sure how to respond.  And when I am not sure of what I think I am prone to question what the asker thinks I am going to say… Did she ask me hoping that I’d tell her to stay true to her heart, to try one more time, to never give up, because after all wasn’t it me that was “in Love with Love” just last week?  Or did she ask me  because she heard the tearful struggles. She saw me crying in the parking lot of the Waffle House where Jer and I would  swap Em for the weekend.  She knew from our talks so long ago that I did leave once, but I never stopped loving.  So maybe she was looking for me to be the Kenny Rogers of relationship advice and tell her to “know when to walk away, know when to run.”

As is usually the case once I talk myself all the way through both possibilities I can see that neither is really right.

I can’t tell you how to walk away.  And I can’t tell you how to hold on and keep trying, in spite of the hurt.  Because I don’t think we every really make that choice.  Hillo, we don’t choose to fall in love.  And we can’t, unfortunately, choose to let it go, either.  I don’t think we ever really walk away, or put up a fence around our hearts, not when you love with your whole heart.  So, then when is it over?  It’s over one day when you wake up and you realize that you’re not crying.  That you fell out of love as wordlessly, as effortlessly and quietly as you fell in.

So, keep treading water if you don’t want to dive in headfirst, little girl.  But I’m afraid you can’t just get out of the pool.  I don’t think girls like us have that as an option.

*A few years ago you put a bunch of pictures of your past in a mirror.  A mirror that had been mine and had hung in my house, with pictures of my past in it for over a decade.  When I moved out I didn’t take it with me.  And it ended up in your hands.  I hope you still have it.  And I hope you keep looking in it.  For a little while longer, anyway.   And then I hope one day you don’t need it anymore.  I hope you get all the answers you need from your past.  And I hope you know how grateful I am for your unlikely friendship.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family

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The Weight

Posted on January 5, 2011 | 9 comments

So, a really smart person asked me another really smart question. And for a second I wished she’d knock that shit off.  But it was asked with just the right amount of “tell me if I am stepping on your toes and I’ll shut up” to know she really meant that.  And given that she knows whereof she speaks, I paused.  And really thought about the answer.

And the more I thought about it the quieter I felt like being… and now that I think I have an answer for her, I figured it was as good an excuse as any to choke back out some words right here so I can get past the pre-christmas pity party I threw for myself.  Barfing up some whiny mess here is like barfing up tequila at a party.  You’re not really even sorry you did it, because you really do feel better, you’re just sorry you have to see any of those people again, the people that saw you leaving the bathroom, sweating, dazed and stinking of a Cancun party bus.

So, what she asked me is if I was  “depressed.”  Or suffering from “minor depression” with an apology for the use of the word minor, which was fair, as all who have suffered from it know that it feels like being told you were in a “minor car accident,” only your car is totaled and uninsured.  Short answer.  No.  I’m not.  I have been, in my life, and so I took some time and stepped back and thought about it.  But nope.    But I am suffering daily.  On two fronts.  That I am hard pressed to believe are not related.

Several months ago when I had my IUD removed I started paying really careful attention to my body.  Oddly, at the same time I stopped taking  particularly good care of it.  Thank you very much, holiday food and drink.  But in an effort to keep my psychosis and paranoia from consuming me I started charting my temps and watching my ovulation signs so I would know when to expect my period, consequently limiting the amount of time I spend convinced I am pregnant mere months before the Biggest and Most Fun Party Ever, I mean our wedding.   At about this same time I started experiencing terrific back pain.  Being a nerd, I logged all these symptoms in to my phone.  Since the holidays were a bigger priority to me than running or the gym has been the last couple months, I couldn’t blame it on the gym.

Stepping back now I can see I am in pain more often than not.

In the morning I struggle to get out of bed.  Mornings are the toughest, as I wince through making coffee, struggle to get back up from a crouched position to get something from the fridge.  I am short with Em and MQD.  I am angry.  A hot shower and a heaping handful of Advil go a long way.  But it’s not my favorite way to wake up.  Angry.  Hurting.

The pain in my back lends itself nicely to feeling sorry for myself.  Not only does it contribute to my lack of exercise, but it causes me to dwell unnecessarily on the process of aging.  I think, and think about how lucky I was that I was so healthy for so many years, and really have experienced very little physical pain.

And as soon as I make that distinction….. no physical pain,  the pain I did feel all comes back, because I am already crying, might as well make use of it.  And before I know it, I am crouched on the floor in the kitchen in front of the fridge, or bent over the trying to pick up my shoes, crying… because my back hurts, and because I am sad I went so long without doing the hard work to get happy.  Now that I have it, this capital letter h Happy… I can’t believe I went so long without finding it.  The easier my relationship becomes with Jer the more I wonder why I didn’t just let him go sooner.  We have our family back.  Em’s got her dad, I have my friend.  And we have MQD.  Who daily is more than I ever could have imagined a man to be.

So… the short answer to am I depressed is no.  But I am in pain.  My back hurts.  And my heart hurts.  And hurting makes me angry.  And being angry makes me unreasonably frustrated with everything.

I am having a hard time reconciling the fact that I am really fucking sad. Right smack dab in the middle of the happiest time of my life.  And I am confused by it.

Marriage is a leap of faith.  One I am prepared to make.  I feel confident and secure.  As secure as someone like me gets anyway…. but all of it, all of this capital letter “H” Happiness is stirring up Sadness and Anger and Failure and all kinds of bullshit that has no repository.  So, how do just I barf it up like that cheap tequila so I can make it all over with quicker?  The same way I used to try to then… drink more of it.  I wallowed in it, hoping that one good splash of feelings would come up from deep inside me and the sweating would stop and I’d feel better.  But it’s just not coming.  So… where do I go from here?

To have someone help me  pull it all out.  Let me look at it and then step over it.

My back hurts.  My heart hurts.  And it’s getting in the way of me sucking up all the Good that is surrounding me.  So in the last couple of weeks I did a couple of things that were hard, but not as hard as carrying this weight.  I asked MQD to help me with Em so I can take care of me.  I made an appointment with someone “to talk to” so I can move on.  And this morning I called the chiropractor.  It’s either my heart making my back hurt or my back making my heart hurt.  I’m not wasting any more time….   gonna fix ’em both up.  And take a load off….

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