www.novemberjuliet.com

Okay … perhaps it wasn’t momentary … perhaps it was brilliance attained in my usual fashion - through loads of trial and error, add a dash of frustration, and the odd curse word.

Finally I have managed to get this archived folder looking pretty close to the way I thought it ought to look.

I’d like to tell you more about why this material has been tucked away … but that will have to wait b/c this particular quest for brilliance has left me plum-tuckered.

Had a wee problem with my attempt at archiving.

Thanks to E and Google - all is right with the world again.

It will take me a bit to get the posts re-established and then the content will be moved to the archive tab for storage.

Today’s new content is posted as a follow up to “It’s All Rather Anti-Climatic”. You’ll have to scroll on down to see it.

Yes, I know I’m repeating myself … but the hamster was running his little o’ legs off.

More interesting content is on the way …

When relationships deteriorate to the point of absolute division some things divide neatly and completely, some things cannot be divided and are simply his or simply hers or simply yours and simply mine … whatever the case may be … and some things …

We do not live in isolation. How’s that for a newsflash? I know it’s an obvious thing, but it’s easy to forget about the impact - good and bad - that each of us has the power, the capacity, the audacity to make.

Sometimes I wish for isolation. Sometimes I simulate it. But no matter how long I hybernate … hours … days … weeks … I struggle to deny that somewhere something is relying on me to do my part as a player in the universe. Grass cut, kid fed, email answered. As an adult, I have had to come to accept and respect that I live in a world that does not belong solely to me. My world collides with that of others … sometimes the collision is forceful and sometimes it is ever so slight. Whether it is a pleasant experience for me and the other players is hardly up to me alone … for all the factors and variables in motion, I can only take full responsibility for that very one that I control … me. It is a constant shaping … “me” … affected by the experiences of living … growing from the encounters with sorrow, offense, guilt, and joy.

Negative experiences give me great cause to reflect. Could I have done something differently, should I have done something differently, would it have made a difference had I done something … well - differently. There aren’t always answers to these very fluid questions. One thing done differently could yield an infinite number of unique results or it could yield just more of the same. It is really hard to say. I can say that from every negative experience I am determined to yield something positive. I know I have grown. I have learned countless lessons about myself and know I will learn countless more. I have gone to great lengths to understand me - not where it … the relationship … went wrong, but where I began to go wrong in my head … where I began to lose myself to my titles of wife, mother, professional … where I began to let others shape me instead of assuredly standing on my own. I know I have issues and I own them. Divorce has forced me to do this in isolation of the relationship that was my marriage, which is what makes it so sad. I most likely will never get to know what, if, or how. We certainly had our collective issues, and they were most likely born out of the issues we each carried in and throughout our marriage. With the marriage severed, those issues continue to remain, maybe even worsen - flawed communication … fraught with tension and frustration … always on the precipice of anger … held back only be willful restraint. It is from this place that I shared how I felt about his “girlfriend” … not about her as a person, but about the “it” of it all … It was articulated in the context of restraint. There are emotions, very bad emotions, that catapult to the surface when we are suddenly confronted with the reality that someone we so desperately want to love only wants to create a further divide. I acknowledge that he makes me feel. I own that most of what he used to make me feel was bad, and for that I have chosen to forgive him. I know I have forgiven him, because I actively chose to and knew it was essential to my own recovery. I feel I have forgiven him, because he no longer wrecks me just by being him. That’s a process that has moved me. I felt it. One day I will forgive myself.

I own my issues and I own this forum. This forum … this blog is my voice. I own that I will sometimes use my voice unwisely, unlovingly, raw and honestly. I do it for no other reason than to write about my life … my divorce … for what it actually is … for me. It is not always nice, but I strive to keep it real.

No matter how much I continue to cultivate my understanding of myself, nothing will improve my ex-husband’s understanding of me without his desire to gain that insight and vice versa. There are boundaries there and that’s understandable. I have my issues, he has his issues. I can hope he’s acknowledged, embraced, and maybe even worked through some of his, but that’s not for me to know. The only thing I can know is that I no longer own his issues, and had no business ever making his issues about me. I am separate and apart from him, and although a player in his life, I was never responsible to create his personal happiness and well-being. He has his issues … we all have issues … and they are his to own.

He recently shared that he had read my blog … that “they” had read my blog. I respect his courage in telling me that he was greatly offended by the comment I had made. It reminded me that I don’t live in isolation, that there are times when I collide into another’s space … that there can be a ripple effect. The productivity of that post-game analysis ends there. I tried to put it into context for him, but he was not interested. He was only interested in standing on his higher moral ground exclaiming his disappointment in me … pinning the issues that he says he doesn’t have on me … which is an old dance that I no longer know the steps to.

I don’t know if he’ll ever let that guard down, but I no longer pine for it.

If I were to describe divorce as an object, I would have to describe it as a shapeless blob of goo. It has many dimensions, many layers, and oh so many sides. On one side, there is you and on another side there is him. No matter how jolly and amicable you are, at the core, where the nuts and bolts are, there exists some measure of you against him … and if you are that amicable, well damn you for giving up. I can’t put a value on marriage, but I sure can attest to the cost of it falling apart. How bittersweet it is - from this turmoil, priceless gems of insight, experience and growth have emerged, but most of that has been born out of recognition of something lost. I have wasted my fair share of time grieving stuff, literally “stuff” - washer, dryer, garden, house, home, and the pinnacle side-by-side stainless steel fridge I bought with the extra bonus pay from my first overseas mission … it’s so hard to be graceful when you’re in denial about your bitterness. This has been and continues to be silly. It is just stuff and it far under weighs the other far greater expense and reward of divorce - relationships.

Looking back, my ex-husband ceased to be my most treasured and valued best friend very early in our marriage. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m not sure if our relationship even ever got to that stage. There was a very brief time in those first few years that he was my most present and attentive friend, but there were always things that remained safely hidden behind the fences each of us kept hedged up. We never grew to that stage of bare-bones raw honesty. My earliest memory of being sad about those fences is the period of time when we were trying to conceive … I got pregnant quickly and lost the child in the same amount of time. “He” … the dad … was stressed and overwhelmed about work, and I let him focus on that, and was dishonest about how much I needed him. Instead I turned to my best female friend, and she was an incredible solace. I underestimated the significance of the loss - I packaged it neatly and tried to tuck it away, and she didn’t just give me permission, she encouraged the grief … what I failed to recognize was that I needed to be sharing this grief with the father of my lost child. Hence the divide began and swelled quickly from there. I began to run … from myself, from him … and he let me. If there had ever been a chance for us to grow together, that might have been it. Might have … might. Who knows. It’s history.

When you divorce, the loss of the relationship with your spouse is pretty obvious … unless you’re catatonic … which you are some days. There are also the tidily connected relationships. Your parents will always struggle with how to relate to your ex-husband, the father of your child. His parents share that struggle with you. There is tension and frustration. Not very long ago they shared in every occasion of your life … sometimes uninvited, but usually welcomed. They sent cards, they occasionally called. They cared and had the freedom to show it … now they don’t. I’m sure some in-law … or more accurately “ex-laws” choose to overlook this and continue to acknowledge your presence on earth - and I’m sure people in that situation are just as bothered, because the whole thing is quite naturally bothersome. What is far less apparent is the loss of your peripheral acquaintances. People you enjoyed staying in touch with, if only once or twice a year. People your husband went to high school with, guys he played hockey with and buddied around with … you know, the dudes who acted like buffoons at your wedding, and even though you glared you were secretly chuckling a wee bit at the spectacle. There has been so much going on that I’ve barely had the time to notice the evaporation of these loosely connected relationships. There in lies the odd catch-22 of it all - they aren’t necessarily the people you even think to share any of your news with - you failed to inform them that you got into law school, didn’t even consider telling them you bought your first house, and they are the last people you will declare your ecstatic-glee-filled news of new love to (if and when that ever happens) - yet you are bafflingly disappointed to realise that you are no longer the recipient of their news. Yessssss, just as you realize that your friends are magnificently yours, you understand that there are others you sort of miss hearing about on a more routine basis, his friends, who were sort of yours, in a very peripheral way, and they are just not there anymore … they have no reason to include you in their lives. So, you have to be satisfied hearing about these folks the old-fashioned way … through the proverbial grapevine. It is awkward … it is real … and ultimately, it is so not a big deal … save for the fact that you’ve discovered the magnificence of your true friends.

Mmmmhmmm. Now there’s something that’s worth wasting your time on. That’s a magnificent thing.