Ready for an new year

Without question this year has seen the most changes ever in my life. I have gone through the end of a marriage. I have ruminated over how many clients and friends for that matter who were about the same age as my daughter when their parents divorced. I have seen or they tell me how hard tit was for them and the role it still plays in their lives now. I know it has a profound impact on how children view adult relationships. I really grieve over this part of my decision. I fell in love this year and then that too went away. Along the way I had a great time and I am learning how to survive without the things you want.  It is not an easy thing to let go and I never want to stop being willing to take the chance. Then what else have you got? For me I too social of a person to close off that part of  human experience. I finished school this year 8 long years after starting. Too long. Ridiculous in fact.  I rekindled a lot of friendships that really had gone by the wayside out of neglect and circumstance. 

Three days till I see the kids.  I start to get overwhelmed with feeliings when I think about it.  The ywill be bigger and different. I hope I never take forgranted another second I have with either of them for as long as I draw breath. I am ready for a good time with them. I certain I will be really sad to see them go. If anything this year has taught me it is how to process feeling s of sadness and loss. That comfort comes from within and not from the outside in.  It feels as if my life will never be easy again, but I do not regret the things both good and bad that I went through this year. I n the end I think I better for it and will end up a happier person.  Still working on it though I still struggle and hurt people along the way. It is  a bad feeling to take the anger you have with yourself and direct it at other people, which is what I have done at times this year only to feel very small inside.  I am still growing up and I guess that is better than not growing up at all.

2 weeks and counting

14 days. I will not have seen my kids four four months to the day when I pick them up at Newark Airport on December 24th. I cannot describe what this past four months has been like for me.  I chose to let my kids move out of state. Not for my benefit but for theirs. I am not sure I can explain this decision to anyone. I made this choice based on what I thought would be best for my kids under the circumstances at the time I sought a divorce from my ex wife. My business that nobody really needs to know. I know what I did was the best choice. I have been second guessed by almost everyone I know. Fine. Gut wrenching, difficult, lonely heartbreaking and so forth. I have manged to get through it with the support of family (thanks Mel), friends (Kelly, John, Matthew, Keri), therapy and hard work.  Anyone who gets frustrated with the daily grind of their children, know that you have a treasure that you should never take for granted. I have hurt my kids in a way that I cannot take back and yet in the long run I hope that it was for the best. Really I will never know. I hate flying and yet I have never looked forward to getting on a plane more than I do now. Thank you to everyone who has helped me in any way shape or form. Those of you who know me know how hard this has been. My best Christmas gift ever will be having the kids for a mere seven days.

Thank you.

At peace with it all

After a week of ruminating over the kids, my decisions on personal matters and generally not getting much done I have finally unstuck myself.  After getting some good feedback from a number of friends I trust I can’t help but be thankful for the people I have relied on over the past 6 months.  Not long ago I was asked by someone what do I think I should do when it comes to matters of the heart and at the time I couldn’t really answer the question.  Maybe I just process things slowly or maybe I just didn’t really know.  Or maybe I had just kind of lost my way. Whatever the case I feel as though following your heart is the best choice. This has been a difficult year and it would be easy to see everything from some sort of negative or whoa is me point of view but that would just be setting myself up for creating some story about how I decided to get divorced and nothing good has come out of it. I lost the kids, relationships didn’t work out the way I wanted and that in general relationships are things to be avoided.  The reality is I still get to chose I view my experiences and I can continue to create my own life in so much as I do not need to be a passive participant in the whole process.

 

This week was full of conflict via e-Maill between my ex and I. She refuses to speak to me over the phone so all contact is via e-mail. After shutting me down on picking up the kids 2 days early over the Christmas break I finally did what I should have done from the beginning and looked up the kid’s school schedule for the year.  I have the kids more that I though over spring break and the parenting plan is written in such a way as there is a conflict in when I can have the kids over the Summer. When I pointed this out to my ex she of course believed that decision should be in her favor despite there being conflicting allotments of time. Mediation here we come.  It is sad that we can’t just negotiate these simple things so that we can both have some flexibility to the agreement. But that seems unlikely to happen so if at all. Too bad.

when is enough enough

I can honestly say that my ex is now just starting to express how angry she is at me for seeking a divorce.  It is obvious in so much as she has not spoken a word to me since she moved out of state.  Noe though when I pushed her on something that was a reasonable request, an accommodation really, that I sought from her she took it as an opportunity to say no and to tell me in so many words how selfish I had been over the course of the summer and how much pain I have caused the kids. All true to one degree or another. A page and a half detailing specific past transgressions. Which I understand. She is angry at me and this is not what she wanted.  In an attempt to appeal to the idea that making the kids stay in NY to finish the last two days of school and then fly back fly back to Seattle on Christmas Eve was probably not in the kids best interest, I earned some sort of written tongue lashing.  It is too bad that things were not better between us but they weren’t. I needed to make a change for my own sense of self and my health. Now when I ask her to consider deviating from our written parenting plan I am accused of selfishness and looking out for my own self interests. To be sure I would rather fly to NYC on the Friday before Christmas and return the next day. Much easier for me but really this is about not making the kids fly across country on Christmas eve when they could already be back two days earlier. even one day would be better than the day of.

 

What can I do? What do you say? Wait try and be patient continue to appeal to the notion that this kind of response is ultimately not good for the kids. The divorce has happened. I made the most generous sacrifice I could make. I let them move out of state, that was not some sovereign right you had to take them.  Not to appease you but that I thought in the end it would be best for the kids if you were as happy as you possibly could be.  I can deal with the issues in a more positive way, I never anticipated that you would or could. And you are proving me right.

Much to think about

I have been wondering why people stay in relationships that are not satisfying. I stayed in one for a long time. There were a lot of reasons why I did. Many of them perfectly reasonable and acceptable. Primarily it was for my children. My desire to raise them in a family environment like I had been raised.  To this day despite my own divorce I tend to think that problems can be resolved, the issues worked out. No relationship is satisfying all the time it requires patience and sacrifice and hard work. A friend of mine who’s parents’ divorced sees thing very differently than I as did my ex wife who’s parents divorced. IT always seems as though the man chooses to leave. Is that true? Well yes it is. But that is really very small portion of what actually happened in my marriage and I suspect that is the case most if not all divorces. Nevertheless I see the pain that my friend experiences at the loss of her father and I feel badly for her. Today I was thinking about my own children and how this will eventually play out in their lives.  It burdens my heart. I still ask myself was it all worth it? What did I gain and what have I lost.  The only way this makes any sense is if I do the things I felt I was not able to or could do in my last relationship that I was so dissatisfied with that I chose to leave. Make the changes, demand more of yourself and your partner. Don’t settle. Still it is hard to live this out at times especially after your feelings are involved or when you are unsure of what it is yo want.  This is why I need to take my time. And admittedly I struggle with this. Particularly now as I continue to have very strong feelings for someone and I am not sure what to do with my feelings.  I am learning, though I am learning. It is funny how willing to take risks and say what should be said at work and I often struggle to do the same in my personal life. My feelings and my desire not to have bad feelings may be a motivating factor. I just sense that people who are raised in divorced households expect that nothing lasts, “men” always leave, life is painful and ultimately so are relationships. I don’t want my daughter to view the world this way. What can I do I wonder?

I didn’t see it coming

I had the kids for the weekend starting tonight and my daughter wanted to go back home and stay with her mother. In fact both of my kids wanted to go back and stay. It has been a long week but i wasn’t prepaired for that. It broke my heart to see her crying about not wanting to stay and then feeling guilty about wanting to go. I am emotionally drained. I took them back and we will try again tomorrow. I am counting the days until they leave for NYC. My ex is telling my kids I am the lucky one because I am keeping my job and my friends. Problem is I am losing my kids. How can that be lucky?