And another month has gone by since I've written! I guess that tells you that I haven't been in a very reflective mood lately. This morning, I actually typed up a rather scathing post about my ex-husband, as I've been incredibly angry with him lately... then we had to go to a joint meeting to get assessment results from some psychological evaluations that I'd taken our oldest to, and he wasn't a complete tool, and managed to have an almost normal parental conversation with me about the kids on the way out of the appointment, and all of a sudden I hate him a little less.
Okay, truth be told, when I see him acting like he cares about his kids and not treating me like utter dirt, I don't hate him at all. I'm never going to want to be married to him again, but bitter pill of the nearly $80K it has cost me to divorce that man disappears. This gives me hope that I am, in fact, not just an unreasonably bitter woman.
However, I still have to do a better job of managing my expectations regarding Jason (my ex). I can't assume that because he wasn't a raging asshole today that this is any reflection on what I can expect for the future. In fact, it's more likely the opposite... whenever we have a moment in which we aren't being assholes to each other, I think those times make Jason more angry that we aren't together anymore, and he amps up the dick behavior as a defensive move. We had been getting along okay when someone (of course, I can't prove it was him, but honestly, the list of suspects is rather short, and I don't exactly live in the sort of neighborhood where people randomly vandalize stuff) turned on the outside water to my house in the middle of the night, presumably hoping it would back up the hose and flood the house. You have to crawl underneath my front steps to turn the water on, and while I may not be perfect, I also don't think I have attracted a random list of people that want to do bad things to me just because. Fortunately, my neighbor's son came home at 1AM and saw the water running and was willing to crawl under the porch to shut it off. I have since turned off the outside water, but if you knew my ex, you would know that this sort of activity has his name (or someone motivated to do it on his behalf) written all over it.
I have to do a better job of not letting that sort of stuff get to me, and just keep things focused on the kids. The juvenile nature of the water stunt is irritating, but not as big of a deal considering that there wasn't actual damage. The stuff that gets to me is the poor parenting stuff... and being unresponsive to outreach about simple things like homework assignments and the like.
It's funny that this very issue that I'm encountering right now is one of the biggest reasons why we got divorced. What I wanted from Jason was always so simple - I didn't have a big, long list of ways in which I wanted him to pay tribute to me, or super rigid expectations regarding how Jason was supposed to behave or what he was supposed to do with his life. Some times, it really felt like my expectations were so ridiculously low that any effort on his part could have met them. But, it is what it is, and part of my problem has always been that I've never been able to square my expectations of Jason with the reality of who he is. The sad thing about that is that I've always had a higher opinion of him than he's ever demonstrated himself to be deserving of.
So, I have to let go. I have to accept that for today, I'm not angrily hating his guts, and he wasn't a complete jerk. For today, he demonstrated that he cared about his son, and didn't treat me like I was garbage. And it is only for today. I can't hang on to it for anything more than what it was, and just be grateful that right now, I feel slightly less messed up than I'd been feeling before.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Monday, November 9, 2015
Restart
Not that I had that many followers before, but if you read the blog a few months ago, you will know that this is not *really* my first post, even though it is now the first active post. I scrapped my earlier writing. Some of it was worthwhile, but I was largely dissatisfied, and embarrassed that I hadn't written for over two months. And, fortunately, my blog is one of the few places where I can push the restart button any damn time I feel like it (Hah! Take THAT life!).
I started this blog a few months ago because I wanted a place to be real without having to let the other people in my life know about it. I'm sure there are all kinds of things you can infer about me from this, and some of those things are probably even true. Morgan is not my real name, though I chose this moniker out of my love for the book The Mists of Avalon, probably my favorite book of all time. If you haven't read it, even if you're not a fan of fantasy / science fiction, it's worth a read. There are so many layers to the book. And, I chose the name in part because even though Morgan's character experiences some objectively terrible things, she manages to never become the victim.
I'd like to believe this is true of me, also... perhaps I take it a little too far sometimes, and end up flat out ignoring the ways in which others have contributed to where I am. But the point is that I like to think that I'm a survivor, and that eventually, I will figure a way out of the holes I dig for myself.
And what holes are those? Well, I'm 35 years old, and feeling a little bit like I'm failing at life. That statement is probably a little dramatic, but I will say that my 11 year marriage / 16 year relationship ended officially in May, but it was about a year ago now that I knew it was going to end. I share custody with my ex-husband, who I really don't like at all and think isn't anywhere near as interested in parenting as he is in maintaining the appearance that he's parenting.
Through the divorce proceedings, in addition to losing my precious boys 50% of the time to their less-than-adequate father (no, I'm not just being uncharitable - he's really not that great of a parent), I also have the pleasure of paying him alimony and child support because while he's nine years older than I, he's manage to make a complete cluster of his work life, and I became (unwillingly and unintentionally) the primary breadwinner for the family. And, in the great state of Minnesota, the laws are no longer gender biased, and shared custody is presumed unless you can really present a strong case for why it shouldn't be. Attendant with that comes the reality of getting to write a check to your worthless ex-husband each month, give him half (or more) of your retirement funds, and if you are extra lucky like me, you can walk away with all the marital debt.
I shouldn't say it was luck; I was trying not to rack up legal fees, and I just wanted things done with. And, I felt guilty for leaving the man. While one might suspect the reverse considering that I was 18 and he 27 when we met, I had done an awful lot of caretaking for him, and was genuinely worried about his future, and didn't want to screw up his life anymore than necessary with my bid for freedom. Unfortunately, the end result of that, and his willingness to take me to the cleaners financially to wring as much out of the divorce as he could, combined with my habit of overspending, has left me in significant debt - right now, roughly $40K of credit card debt, another $1800 in student loans, $9K on a car that's worth about $6K, mortgages totaling $200K on a house that's worth roughly $175K... you get the picture, and it ain't pretty.
Unfortunately, I have a decent income (see where I have the privilege of paying alimony and child support in this new "equal" society where my ex-husband gets to elect to do the bare minimum for work while I supplement - fun!), so bankruptcy is not an option, and I genuinely don't feel right about letting go of the house because I think it's better for my kids to retain it... and, honestly, the mortgage payment is on par with what I would pay for rent someplace. I have no capital to purchase something else, though nicer is available for less than I pay now.
Anyway, in addition to my debt crisis, I am also working a job I don't like and don't feel like I'm doing particularly well at... I'm sure I'll write more about that at a later point.
This has wandered a bit, but I think I'm okay with that for now... while I hope that some people who might need to either a) feel better about their own lives or b) want to know that they are not alone in the world of colossal screw ups do read this, this writing is largely for me. A space to be honest about the things I'm really feeling without worrying about the judgment those I know might level on me. It's a space to be honest about what's really going on, and to give myself the sense of telling someone without having to bend the ear of a specific person. I have more to say, and lots to sort through. Stay tuned (or don't - I'll still write that pretending that someone is going to read this :)
I started this blog a few months ago because I wanted a place to be real without having to let the other people in my life know about it. I'm sure there are all kinds of things you can infer about me from this, and some of those things are probably even true. Morgan is not my real name, though I chose this moniker out of my love for the book The Mists of Avalon, probably my favorite book of all time. If you haven't read it, even if you're not a fan of fantasy / science fiction, it's worth a read. There are so many layers to the book. And, I chose the name in part because even though Morgan's character experiences some objectively terrible things, she manages to never become the victim.
I'd like to believe this is true of me, also... perhaps I take it a little too far sometimes, and end up flat out ignoring the ways in which others have contributed to where I am. But the point is that I like to think that I'm a survivor, and that eventually, I will figure a way out of the holes I dig for myself.
And what holes are those? Well, I'm 35 years old, and feeling a little bit like I'm failing at life. That statement is probably a little dramatic, but I will say that my 11 year marriage / 16 year relationship ended officially in May, but it was about a year ago now that I knew it was going to end. I share custody with my ex-husband, who I really don't like at all and think isn't anywhere near as interested in parenting as he is in maintaining the appearance that he's parenting.
Through the divorce proceedings, in addition to losing my precious boys 50% of the time to their less-than-adequate father (no, I'm not just being uncharitable - he's really not that great of a parent), I also have the pleasure of paying him alimony and child support because while he's nine years older than I, he's manage to make a complete cluster of his work life, and I became (unwillingly and unintentionally) the primary breadwinner for the family. And, in the great state of Minnesota, the laws are no longer gender biased, and shared custody is presumed unless you can really present a strong case for why it shouldn't be. Attendant with that comes the reality of getting to write a check to your worthless ex-husband each month, give him half (or more) of your retirement funds, and if you are extra lucky like me, you can walk away with all the marital debt.
I shouldn't say it was luck; I was trying not to rack up legal fees, and I just wanted things done with. And, I felt guilty for leaving the man. While one might suspect the reverse considering that I was 18 and he 27 when we met, I had done an awful lot of caretaking for him, and was genuinely worried about his future, and didn't want to screw up his life anymore than necessary with my bid for freedom. Unfortunately, the end result of that, and his willingness to take me to the cleaners financially to wring as much out of the divorce as he could, combined with my habit of overspending, has left me in significant debt - right now, roughly $40K of credit card debt, another $1800 in student loans, $9K on a car that's worth about $6K, mortgages totaling $200K on a house that's worth roughly $175K... you get the picture, and it ain't pretty.
Unfortunately, I have a decent income (see where I have the privilege of paying alimony and child support in this new "equal" society where my ex-husband gets to elect to do the bare minimum for work while I supplement - fun!), so bankruptcy is not an option, and I genuinely don't feel right about letting go of the house because I think it's better for my kids to retain it... and, honestly, the mortgage payment is on par with what I would pay for rent someplace. I have no capital to purchase something else, though nicer is available for less than I pay now.
Anyway, in addition to my debt crisis, I am also working a job I don't like and don't feel like I'm doing particularly well at... I'm sure I'll write more about that at a later point.
This has wandered a bit, but I think I'm okay with that for now... while I hope that some people who might need to either a) feel better about their own lives or b) want to know that they are not alone in the world of colossal screw ups do read this, this writing is largely for me. A space to be honest about the things I'm really feeling without worrying about the judgment those I know might level on me. It's a space to be honest about what's really going on, and to give myself the sense of telling someone without having to bend the ear of a specific person. I have more to say, and lots to sort through. Stay tuned (or don't - I'll still write that pretending that someone is going to read this :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)