The new podcast Do What Has Not Been Done discussion
Even after all the shit that has gone down, I still love my ex-wife. She showed up this morning to collect our son and take him to a dentist appointment. He’s getting two root canals today. I saw her car in the cul-de-sac and I went out and spoke to her. We hadn’t talked in months. A lot has happened. We were happy to see each other under less-stressful circumstances. I kissed her hand as she left, I would’ve hugged her, but she never got out of the car. It’s a cool 40 degrees this morning. The beginning of our Winter in Austin.
I don’t want to be with my ex-wife, let’s be clear. But we shared the most sacred of events and times. Growing children from zero, an imaginary future, to 7 and 9 when she flipped out and demanded a divorce, I still lost so much time with them, with her, as a family.
I can’t ever get that back. I am not trying to recreate that life. I’m heading in the other direction at the moment. Solo. Focused. Remodeling my mind.
I do have the idea about doing something unheard of. Something novel. We all want something novel, different, surprising. Like the time my ex-wife, then my wife, came out of the bedroom one afternoon while the kids were at school. She was in matching lengere. I lost my mind. We had great sex. Inspired. And… You guessed it. It never happened again.
She moved in odd seasons of her own making. Complications above my understanding. I do know that she became an empathetic and loving partner when she drank. “I’m so sorry I’ve been treating you so badly,” she said. We were parked in the car 500 yards from our house. The kids were with a babysitter and hopefully asleep. “I don’t want to be mean. I’m wired to fight.”
It was definately the fight that took her out of my life in a big way. She consulted with a law firm, “Just getting my options.” We were in the middle of our second round of couples therapy when she said something odd. “Have you been to see an attorney,” I asked. The room got very quiet for a beat. “Um,” she paused. “I wanted to know what it looked like.”
It took her two more days to finally say yes to my question, “Do you want a divorce?” She had already seen the divorce brochure. She was certain, in Texas in the year 2010, she would get the full package and she did. Divorce is rigged against dads in most states. In Texas, the mom gets primary custody 80% of the time. It was probably higher in 201o. What that means is this: my ex-wife got 70% of the time as a parent, I got 30%. She got to stay in the house. I paid child support that covered the mortgage and then some. I became a frational dad without a house. It gutted me.
I moved in with my sister. I kept up my end of the “every other weekend” schedule and collapsed into some fuge state when the kids were not sleeping on the bed and a pallete with me in my sister’s downstairs mother-in-law suite. It was hard. My sister and her twin kids, boy and girl, provided a ton of love and support of my and my kids.
“Why do you get to spend all this time with our dad?” my son asked at family dinner. My mom was essentially my sister’s partner, picking up the kids from middle school, making dinner, cleaning, being a mom. My sister was working like mad. Traveling. She had a high-profile job that required a lot of fundraising and their parties.
A transformational time. I did show my kids resilience. I was always up for their visit. I dropped their bags off at my old house twice a week. On Thursdays in my off week, I only had them for one night. Dinner with our temporarily expanded family. Homework. Back to school on Friday. Bags back to Mom’s house after drop off. Harsh reality. Hard times. Harder by far than this moment I’m caught in today.
The escape is close, I can taste it. Weekends. A schedule that doesn’t change from week to week. The possiblity of releaving some of my debt pressure. I’m not counting on anything until the first check clears, but there are still a couple opporutunities taking there damn sweet time to make a decision. That’s often a bad sign. Like, they are too ashamed at this point to tell me I didn’t get it. Oh well. I can’t wait around wishing and hoping.
Today, I have a day of self-care. I tweaked my back during a tennis workout yesterday, a day off. Today, I’m nursing a pain that prevents me from using my right arm very effectively. No doctors. I know the routine. Ice, rest, and ibuprofen. I add heating pad, good music, this writing (at this very moment), and some more downtime. Naps. Publishing a few books. Upping my game as my energy crests for my birthday, this year on Thanksgiving. My daughter will be in DC with my ex-wife. My son, most likely, will be here. I’ll either go be with the Campetts on the Lake or get invited to my best friends dinner. Not sure. No plans is okay with me.
I plan to be sixty-three. I am a happy and healthy old man. Well, age is just a number.
What hasn’t been done? Things that haven’t been said yet? Is there something I haven’t thought of? My escape plan hasn’t worked the way I’d hoped. That’s life, right? Things in God’s plan take their own time and have their own ways of working out. Or is it just our resilient spirit and optimism that keeps us going? The thing about hard times, and therapy for the hard times, is they eventually pass, even if the therapist sucks. It’s my own internal “yes” that keeps me moving forward.
Not always up, not always toward the goal. But stopping is not an option. Sleep is a powerful option. Learning to manage my rest has been the most powerful strategy I’ve learned in the last six years. It started with my Apple Watch and a software package that tracks sleep automatically. There is a little app on my watch for the program. I can give it a signal, “Lights Out” so it can more accurately track how long it took me to fall asleep.
In my relationship to the baby mama of my dreams, we both would set our “lights out.” She was used to averaging 30 minutes of deep sleep. It was a problem. She was a light sleeper by design. When she had her precious sperm-donated son, she would hyper-focus on him. She couldn’t sleep then, because she was vigilant over his well-being and physical saftey. There’s nothing to be scared of, I would say to her. It’s part of your problem. Here, let’s put this white noise generator in the bedroom. You won’t be able to listen for the pin drop in his room. You can sleep without actively watching over him all night.
It didn’t work. She would often get up and go sleep in the bed with him. Or she would go to sleep in the back bedroom. She was a light sleeper by design and my dysfunction. There was an issue. She was enmeshed with her 8-year-old son in a ways that made me uncomfortable. He still yelled from the bathroom for her to come check his bottom. At what age do you detach from your kid’s bowel movements? The two of them would yell across the house. “Mom, mom, mom, mom!” I interrupted him one morning before school. “Why don’t you get up and go find her instead of just yelling her name?” He looked at me. He couldn’t find his favorite underwear. “Mom!”
We had a swear jar too, but Mom nixed that idea after it was clear she was the only contributor. All of our relationship was warped around her son’s needs. She could not separate her own needs from his. Tennis was the only activity that she forced into the system. And for that, her son would just tag along. That was her time. The rest was his time. None of it was our time, me and the woman. It was either the three of us, or we were going to bed on a night when he fell asleep without five redos from Mom. Often, however, she would fall asleep in bed with him and never return.
Today is a new day. A new challenge. I have injured by back. I had to call out for work. (Amen.) And today, I will mix a combination of ibuprofen, naps, coffee, and later some other. I’ll call it that. Other. No need to go into if further at this point.
Other women. Other job. Other priorities. Me me me. Write rest write. Heal. Repeat.
