Almost Divorce Part 27- Between Two Lungs

This series is  published no less than once a week on Thursday’s.  Or you can start at the beginning here

A timeline can be found here.

I progressed through the summer in this surreal dance of becoming myself again.   Around me was a  whirlwind of holding on, spinning and weaving as I tried to find that centered path to somewhere worthwhile.

Side bar: Seeing my old stick figures  actually has me thinking I may draw this one. Just consider me your special friend who draws like a 4 year old.   Don’t laugh so when I start my  Dancing with the Stars is the pinnacle of my fame world dominance in motion with a self-published .99 cent e-book of a collection of drawings I don’t have to hate you!   And for the record starting world dominance with a 99 cent e-book wasn’t even MY idea, I totally stole it from People I want to punch in the throat’s blog. Her posts about the Duggar’s and the Elf on the Shelf are awesome.    Just think of what DWTS would do for my new year goal of a tighter ass and leaner legs.   I didn’t have 8 asian kids with a pudgy spineless loser or get a TLC sponsored tummy tuck, but I have personality!  My little curly haired stick figured girl could be famous some….nah really the drawing is just kind of cool to do during and see later.   Plus, who doesn’t like to draw? Which is another conundrum, because how is an artist a sociopath? Don’t you need to feel to be any good at art?  I’ll admit I never saw anything he ever created, I think that is  interesting considering most artists love to show their work.  In his defense I never once asked.

The whirlwhinds around me were The Husband holding on, Match.com spinning, PJM weaving.   All around me was chaos, even my own personal path was rocky.  I was a divorcing single mother.  My emotions were all over the place and I had  no lasting way to control it. I was learning to identify issue driven behavior, observe when I was doing it, live with the uncomfortable feelings that drove me to do it while simultaneously NOT doing it for as long as I could, observing my choices in behavior and observe the reactions from others and inside myself after making a choice, use that data to learn and modify my behavior, rinse, repeat, repeat repeat until the  range of behaviors and emotions surrounding whatever “it” was started to pull in from the sides of dichotomy and form a new tighter range.  This new tighter range would then be lived in for a while, and the process of observance, living with the yucky feelings while trying to work through what changes in MY behavior could lead to changes in my FEELINGS about my behavior and therefore, about myself as a person.    That is the best way I can describe what working on yourself feels like while you are doing it.  You are in your own world because your brain is over engaged on observing and molding you, while trying to keep the beast of your emotions at bay long enough to let the positive changes stick and the lessons settle in.   It sucks, those feelings are awful, the failures are frustrating but the victories, how ever small at the time are the fuel that kept me moving along that path.  It was through working on myself and finding an excellent  therapist in Tab that I learned that I could create another place in my world, a bubble I could step into that  refused to allow the chaos inside of it. That place is where I could step and choose to work on me, not control the events going on outside of me. It was the place where I could mold my behavior, pick my battles. It was inside that bubble that I was finding my grey.  I don’t think we have a line inside of us that we do or don’t cross. I used to think life  was like that but I have learned that it isn’t.  There is no black and white, there are only shades of grey. In order to be able to love myself I had to define my grey, sometimes I stumbled through that badly but this was when I was first learning to actually do it.   I don’t know that I think of my soul or personality as a morphing bubble but for point illustration purposes it seems to work.     It was in creating that bubble that I was able to learn that I could choose when to step out into the chaos and how to deal with it when I did.   who or what was allowed into the bubble with me.  God was in that bubble and  He had been waiting for me.  I will get to more of that later. For now let’s talk about the forces of chaos holding onto my heart between two lungs. I just love Florence and The Machine.

The Husband Holding On: 

The Husband was still holding on. We were still having sex, going on dates. He was still choosing to start fights about PJ and was still occasionally pushing me on why it couldn’t work between us.   The thing was, I was no longer in love with my husband.  I hand’t been in some time, that is part of what got us to this place.  I could remember a time when I  was falling in love with him.   I was still critically questioning if I’d settled while that was happening.  But we had   12 years of being a couple under us.  We had been together in a time spans almost as large as the age gap between PJ and I.   We had two children who were unwilling victims in this.  We built a life together and it was full of promises we made to each other. I honestly didn’t know if I could ever fall in love with him  again.  This was a question I asked myself often,  I am a PM, Risk Mitigation is part of my job.   I would ask myself, If I end up without PJ, am I going to want him back?    Each time I pondered this question I could never imagine a place where my Sweet Babu and I were ever going to be able to be ok for long.   I could see an initial reconciliation poisoned by the pain and issues of trust and forgiveness.   I could see bitter, hateful people married to each other feeling trapped because there is no way we could do this to the kids twice.   Even though we went on to reconcile and have remained together our reconciliation process had hints of those things.  Amazingly by the grace of GOD we work through them to land where we are today. But when PJ was accusing me of using him to fill a hole left b y The Husband I did not agree, because I honestly felt that there was no hole left by The Husband. I still feel like The Husband won’t let go and that he doesn’t have my heart. I’m more eager about option C- none of the above than choosing between he and PJ.    I hadn’t started to mourn the almost divorce yet.  That hits in early August and my little  4 year old  Destroyer sets it off. The Husband was the thing trying to hold me back from moving forward.  He was blocking my escape.

Match.com Spinning:

The Match.com dudes were culled into two categories,   young and old.  There were very few my age that even remotely interested me.

Hints for Dudes on Match.com and some for  girls too….

• If you put a picture of yourself on a dating site please do yourself and everyone else a favor and put a face and full body recent picture, not something from college.  This will allow you to not look like an insecure douche bag and will probably get you more dates.   I am not a skinny girl, so I made sure that the whole package was displayed, take it or leave it dude I have plenty to keep me busy.   You should love yourself to put who you really are on display, you only want those who are attracted to the real you right?
• This does not mean unpack all your crazy on the phone before you ask me out on a date.
• Most girls prefer to actually meet you in person prior to receiving a picture of your privates, no matter how fabulous you think they are.
• Every girl know that ” No one has ever complained” is code for my dick is small, because dudes with large penis know they have them so you know you have a small one.   We really don’t care how big it is, sure all girls have preferences but the most important thing is that you can get it hard to something other than porn and last longer than the time it takes for Chasey to do her thing.  We aren’t Chasey, slow the fuck down and enjoy it for a minute. No one likes to fuck a rabid monkey.
• No you cannot stay at her house after the first date because it will be late and you work early and you live “so far away”.   You should probably not ask her this before the date actually occurs, or it won’t happen.
• We know what kind of guy you are by the bars you tell us you frequent.  So don’t try to tell us you are looking for an eventual relationship when we can see the only bar you go to is MILF town.  Just say, I’m into fucking MILF’s and I’d like to fuck you.
• The truth with the right girl will get you so much more than lies with the wrong girl.    

I was lucky enough to make one actual friend. A guy a little bit older than me that as it turns out also had some online experiences to share. Though we have not been nor do not go to the same online circles.     Dr. Kink and I went go carting for our first meet up and then occasionally out to do stuff. Mostly we have come over and play cards time while we talk about whatever drama I am currently experiencing and he tells me about all of the adventures going on in his life. We became pretty good friends.  I had to stop talking to him last Spring after the chat round 2.  The husband requested I cull my male friends list, he provided a few suggestions that were not negotiable and he was one of the victims.   I also had Sunshine and VinD as platonic friends and they were both doing their part to teach me what kind of man I should be seeking.   The other  boys were simply spinning devices. There to take up time and energy, but not really going anywhere on either side.  One I spend a lot of time sexting with, and even sample the grass and move into phone sexing him.   I do the phone sex thing simply to purge my memories of shouting out PJ’s name while recording it, with new memories.   I’ve often subscribed to the quickest way over someone is under someone else theory.  I didn’t say it was a good solution, but it is  one I was used to.   The thing about match.com is it is a lot of work.  Keeping up with it is a huge time suck and there are a lot of weirdo’s out there.    One of my final match boys teaches me some more about what boys are really thinking when they choose not to call. Turns out they just don’t’ want to call, they assume you know this by their act of not calling you.   The silence is the message.   He tells me this while he is talking about another girl he met once, but I know what to think later when the replies stop.  It is easy to take note and move along because a- he already honestly spelled out for me what it means when he doesn’t call b- having sex with that dude was like being fucked by a rabid monkey.  I was so ready to go to bed alone when that was over.   The last match.com guy is a borderline psycho.  I never let him get past g-chatting me and sending me some pics.   As August approaches I am winding even that down.  I think it is probably best to quit dating for a while as the divorce gets finalized and then figure out what to do.  I do not wind down match.com in PJ’s mind though. I make sure to keep the idea of other guys working their way into my life very fresh.   I regret that game a little bit.   I was more hinting than lying  and even though we now know he was lying the entire time, I’d still like my Karma to be a little cleaner in that arena. These diversions were little or large spinning forces, just sort of  buffering me about as I  fought to learn to be able to engage them in healthy manners.  It was within those experiences that I was able to find those uncomfortable feelings I needed to work on and give  new behaviors a shot.   I was so very bad at it in the beginning too. But between staying in the fray and talking more and more with Sunshine I got better and  better. The match.com boys were fun and funny, but they kept my focus scattered. Thanks Match.com dudes! It was a fun couple of months.

PJM Weaving:

Lastly there is the weaving of PJ.  The way we climbed this  last hill. I refused to run to it, so he lured me slowly.  He worked for it, took his time saying all of the right things.  He dug the hole of his identity deeper.  He attached himself  further to me.  I allowed myself hope,  I willingly went along for the ride. I had my doubts, but a very large part of me still wanted to be there. I was just getting healthier and smarter and closer to me.   Instead of running from PJ and the pit of despair, I was always running back to it, looking around, opening it up, peeking inside, shouting Hello in there? Pj? Are you going to come out yet?. I don’t what the hell is is about that boy but something would not let me let him go.  Instead I just wove around like little Billy in Family Circus when he is supposed to just go get the mail and instead he is all over the hood.     Even as I was pulling away from him  I was investing more emotion in wanting to know who he really was.  In my mind all of the things that came with the identity were  real and the details would be validated once we were actually around each other.  PJ once told me “something always brings me back to you” and ” we have something we just have to figure it out“.  I could say he was pulling me through his little mind fuck, but that would not be 100% of the truth. I was letting him, but I was tired of how it made me feel.

Getting to that  somewhere worthwhile involved letting go of PJ and running toward whatever was going to happen instead. Apparently  I was just about to queue that up.

More to come soon Lovies.