Turtle

I haven't posted here in a month. Truth be told, I haven't even been reading blogs lately, much less blogging. I realized last week while chatting with a friend that I've been "turtling"--pulling my head and limbs into safety, shielding myself from the world, because apparently the world has gone insane. I'm trying to get through without going batshit crazy, and apparently that has lately meant cutting off most of the interactive online world. Blogger, Facebook, all that: I've been MIA and struggling to even care.

The country where I grew up blew up into civil war (again) just days after my parents flew out. While one side (the side we support, remarkably) has technically won, the violence goes on. At this point I rely on the news my parents give me. Most of the news centers get it wrong, anyhow. Contrary to popular opinion, it is NOT a religious conflict, among other pieces of disinformation.

The reality of politics and legislation in this state and region and nation has shot my blood pressure through the roof. It's all or nothing for me: either I tuck my head down and shut my mouth, or I'm ranting. I need to find a career counselor. I've never had a back-up plan for an alternate career: now I may not have a choice. I need to be prepared.

I hate politics. I hate most politicians. I hate the greed and corruption and rampant corporate capitalism that has washed over us all and isn't even pretending to care about 98% of the population any longer.

I wish I could just pull into my shell indefinitely.

Vent

I know I shouldn't let her get to me, especially when it's stupid shit that I bring on myself, like clicking on her Facebook info and noticing that she "likes" some childish FB thing, but still. I'm allowed to just not like her very much, right? RIGHT?

And I'm sure she feels much the same way about me. Civility or no, I'm sure we both get under each other's skins in special little ways that only an Ex and a Current (and Forever, mind you) can.

There are certain things I just won't do as far as my Ex and his Current (and maybe Forever if she gets her way, You Go Girl!) are concerned, though, and some of them I'm learning from her.

Which is why I'll keep my venting and my own passive aggressive and better-than-you crap over here. Don't you feel special?

Because bitch, he's not your "used toy" and I sure as hell am not "less fortunate" than your sorry ass.

There. All done. Now I'll move on with my life, thankyouverymuch.

Telephone

My brother recently mentioned that it's one of his goals in life to never have an Ex. That means no Ex, period--not just Ex-Wife, but Ex-Girlfriend. In other words, I believe, not getting into a relationship until he knows it will Last Forever From Day One.

As MTL and I said to each other later, after biting our tongues (for the most part), there's also another way to never have an Ex: never have a relationship to begin with.

It's all about risk, really. If you're not willing to take the risks, you never experience anything at all--joy as well as pain. And I will say, failing teaches us the most about life and ourselves.

That being said, there are definite drawbacks to having Exes, especially the sort that don't go away. A friend of mine recently got divorced after only two years of marriage, with no children involved. I'll admit to some jealousy, not of a marriage doomed so soon, but of her divorce reality: she is not tied to that Ex for years and years to come. She can, if she so chooses, simply never have any contact with that particular man ever again. They didn't even own a house together, for goodness sake.

MTL and I are in the relatively fortunate situation of having Exes with whom we are amicable. Since there are five joint children involved and we are doomed required to interact with those two people for, well, ever (at least to a point), I'd rather we all be amicable than otherwise. No argument.

But I'd much rather we didn't have to interact at all. I don't care how well we get along. I don't care how friendly we can be. I don't care how helpful we are. If I had my druthers, I wouldn't ever have to call or email or talk to or see either of them again. I'd rather not be Facebook friends with either of them--and interestingly enough, I am with both. (Don't bother telling me I can defriend them--there are reasons it's better to just keep things As Is. For one thing, it keeps them both thinking of me as Friendly. Heh.)

There are things that irritate me about each of them, enough to write a book. Lately, however, there's one thing in particular about MTL's Ex that has been driving me absolutely up the fucking wall, and I simply don't know what to do about it.

She calls him Almost Every Single Fucking Day. On top of the texts that I know she sends him, and which I don't see and honestly try not to think about. And yes, I know the kids are generally what the calls and texts are about, and yes, there has been lots of drama about The Dark One lately, and yes, I know that arrangements aren't quite as streamlined and clear as they are with me and The Ex and therefore there has to be more communication to handle things as they come up, and yes, I know that she doesn't really use email and therefore doesn't communicate that way as much as I and The Ex do.

I also know that MTL has absolutely no interest or romantic attachment to her whatsoever and generally finds her irritating and frustrating and doesn't particularly enjoy communicating with her. It's not a trust issue, not really. (Yeah, yeah, I know there's that infinitesimal part of me that has issues simply because they were married and have children as a common bond and spent way more years together than we have and all that shit. I'm working on it.)

BUT.

I hate it when his phone rings. It's almost always Her. I would venture a guess that about seventy-five percent of the phone calls he gets are from Her. Sometimes he'll just reject the call when he doesn't feel like talking to her. Most often he answers, because it might be important.

He just got a call from her a little while ago. It's what put me over the edge into writing this post today. There was no reason for her to call--not a good one, at any rate. She has the kids this weekend. We aren't even picking up The Padawan today as we usually do on these weekends, because he has tomorrow off school and will be staying there until tomorrow afternoon. From the sounds of the conversation, nothing had happened with any of the kids. There was no pressing issue. She was just wondering about something.

I'm sure it was just a question that popped into her mind. So she picked up her damn phone and called.

That's what she does, so often. Almost every day. And every time she does, I feel that anger and resentment building up inside. Shut the fuck up, I want to say to her. Leave him alone. Leave US alone. Go the fuck away, you jealous bitch!

Because that's part of it, you see. Whether she wants to admit it or not (and she actually has, to MLT, a bit at least), she's jealous. It doesn't matter that she's remarried and even has another child with her husband. It doesn't matter that there's no way in hell they'd ever get back together. She's never completely let go of him. The life we're leading was supposed to be Theirs. The plans we're making were supposed to be Theirs. He was supposed to be Hers. 

It doesn't help that we are, in pretty much every way, much better off. We have good jobs. We aren't wealthy, but we are comfortable. We live in a nice and (rather importantly) large home. And she and her husband? Well, they really, really don't.

From a purely objective place, I can understand the jealousy. From a more subjective place, less so.

And I sure as hell wish she would just give us space. Even when all I'm talking about is the interruption of two minutes time when we're just relaxing on the couch.

Because this is OUR time. OUR space. OUR relationship. And it feels, every time that goddamn phone rings, like she's shoving herself into it, with the constant reminder that we will never, ever, be completely free of her involvement.

I know that I need to just let it go. But that's just logic.

Emotion has never listened well to logic.

Maybe that's because they can't talk on the phone.

This Isn't My Version Of The Fairytale

I never pictured myself as the Evil Stepmother in any of my visions of the future. The Loving Stepmother--great. The Funny and Just A Bit Odd Stepmother--sure. Sarcastic, Snarky, Cynical-With-A-Heart-of-Gold Stepmother--naturally. Evil? Not so much.

And yet, here I am. I suppose I should have seen it coming, and I even did just a bit, but I was truly under the impression that The Dark One liked me well enough--and "like" was just fine. It would have been wonderful to be loved, but that would be pushing it with a girl already in her teens by the time I came into her life, and who is not terribly tender towards parent types to begin with.

When things got nasty three months ago and she ended up moving in with her mom, it seemed as though I was the neutral ground. She seemed to see me as someone she could talk to about certain things she couldn't say to her father. We tried hard to keep it that way.

But since then...since then things have become increasingly difficult with her. I have found myself enraged with her attitude: her use and abuse of people around her, her self-centeredness, her downright bitchiness. I cannot stand the way she treats her father. I have to bite my tongue. I have to not tell her exactly what I think of her. Sometimes a little bit of it sneaks through.

I know, I know. She's a fourteen-year-old girl. And I'm realizing that a part of my reaction is, as MTL so astutely intuited, guilt over realizing how I treated my own parents when I was her age--though it should be noted that I wasn't quite so bold in my mistreatment. I'm the adult in the situation. I can't control her behavior, but I can--and should--control mine.

Today, though, she quite suddenly took several steps beyond the boundary with MTL. The trigger? Apparently, me. Somehow, she has twisted my presence in her father's life into a Grimm's fairytale of evil stepmother and evilly-influenced abandoning father. She is using me as a tool to manipulate her mother and strike out against her father.

It's not all me, of course--she has issues that go back far before I ever was even a blip on MTL's computer screen. But my presence is a weapon she's choosing to wield...and she used it today.

I won't go into the details, but the result is that she is persona non grata here. If she wanted to see how far she could push her father, she found the limit--and surpassed it--today. She isn't to come back to our house. She isn't welcome here for Christmas. She's done.

And honestly? I can't blame him.

Now we're sitting here in the wreckage of what had been a rather good holiday weekend. It's yet another adjustment among all the other adjustments. Where it goes from here? I don't quite know.

I hope that one day we will all find our way back together, to something approaching a more whole family. But for now, we gather up the fringes around the ragged hole torn in our family's fabric, and figure out how the pieces fit again.

As for me, I have to make sure the label does not become the reality, regardless of provocation.

Why It's Hard To Love

They left again.

As they always do. As they always have. It's a part of the life they've chosen, and all the pain and sorrow they feel at the leaving cannot change the essential truth: they leave me again and again and again, and I have felt that pain since I was a child.

Not just them, you see. Always there was the leaving, with me in tow, friendships made torn asunder and only sometimes fed fuel from time to time, rekindled in later years.

It made me angry. It makes me angry.

And I feel ashamed of that anger.

How can I be angry when their lives hold so much meaning? When they do so much good? How can I be angry when that life gave me a richness of experience that I value to this day? How can I be angry when I know that others have never had the depth of love I have been given since the day I was born, who have also been torn from friends and family, who have suffered tragedy of such dimension that my pain is dwarfed by theirs?

How dare I?

So guilt and shame is mixed with anger and sorrow, and the poison cocktail has soaked the crevices of my heart for three decades. I bandage the wounds but let them fester, ignoring the ache until they crack and bleed again.

I would not let myself fully love, for love means loss. Love means pain. And if everyone always leaves, than it must mean I am not worth staying for.

They always leave.

********************************

He bears many of the same wounds, though from different poisons. He too built the walls.

We dared each other to take the risk. And, gambling on the outcome, went all in.

I still panic about it. There are times when I want to reach out and pull back just a little of my Self, keep some in reserve, Just In Case. There are times when I can barely breathe with the momentary certainty that he will throw up his hands and shake his head and walk away.

I was angry this last weekend: they had left, and the anger I cannot admit was welling up into overreaction to everything and everyone else. He came to me, and I found that with him I could admit the truth, and with him I could weep, and he held me, and then he said the words that told me that he understood the deeper truth behind my fear and sorrow and anger and pain: I'm not going anywhere.

He's had to say it to me before. And I know he'll have to say it again. The fact that he even understands that need says so much about why I have allowed myself to love him as I have never loved anyone else--not just romantically, but at all. Some of those wounds are healing.

But not all.

The anger is still there, and it has washed me in darkness this whole week. I have been taking offense to the slightest things, feeling unintended insults from all directions, fighting back a shadowing of despair. Yesterday I had a moment when I had to remind myself, again, of his words. I'm not going anywhere. 

Becoming part of this new Us, this larger Family that reaches beyond just me and him, is a terrifying thing at times. I'm choosing to take more people into that circle that involves risk and loss. I'm choosing to open up my heart to the possibility of pain.

Because they always leave.

Even when they don't want to.