Northward Midget

Tag: parenthood

  • Gonna Wash That Grey Right Outta My Head

    No. Not really. It ain’t going anywhere, is it? It’s part of me. To “cure” myself would be to kill my self, and I don’t want that now, do I?

    MAOI is done. See the log up top for the final entry. Next up is “Viibryd.” As noted there, WTF? That’s one hell of a random-number-generated space-name. Sounds like something my character would be smuggling in my Star Wars campaign.

    I haven’t bothered to look it up. What’s the point? Probably the same as the others.

    Over Thanksgiving, I went to West Virginia. Although I’d brought the girls down before, that was the first time without any of my real self-produced family coming along. I felt profoundly sad and out of place. Lay on the couch after the turkey.

    Christmas went surprisingly fantastic with regards to the girls. They didn’t seem to miss a beat, or me. I was afraid there’d be some great trauma when they woke up on Christmas morning and I wasn’t there with mommy to open the presents, but apparently not.

    They came over on Christmas Eve morning and opened my gifts to them. Highlights were Ani’s playable guitar shirt from ThinkGeek, and Celyn’s decorate-able treasure chest. Only three or four hours with them, and then I was off to West Virginia again.

    The day after Christmas, a friend of the family visited.

    A sexy friend of the family.

    I felt old.

    I left soon after they did. Mom cried. She always cries. I had to get away. Had to leave there. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t want the unconditional love of family. I wanted to get back to my man-cave apartment and drink myself into oblivion. So, I drove.

    On the way back, I emailed an old PlentyOfFish.com contact on a whim. We made a date. We’ve been seeing each other exclusively since then. She’s nice, smart, sexy, and 38, so I don’t need to bother with determining whether or not I should feel guilty about dating twenty-somethings.

    The role-playing has been going well. Still every first and third Saturday. Just did a write up on the previous session. My character, Kelyn, has become a full-blown sociopath. The end scene had him ready to blow a couple of his fellow party members and a few other “innocents” out the airlock.

    Speaking of sociopathy…

    I had my first appointment with he who would become my new therapist. A real psychologist, not a licensed clinical social worker. That sounds snarky. Sincerely, I did appreciate what the previous therapist had to offer, but I didn’t need it. I don’t need someone to talk to, and I certainly don’t need someone to affirm my questionable life choices. As I’ve told my friends and others: I’d have to rape someone to get criticism from her. Not just anyone, either. A baby. With Downs.

    So, this new fellow. At first, Donald Sutherland. Then, Ian McKellan. I even cajoled him into saying, “You shall not pass!”

    His initial diagnosis is “depersonalization disorder.” That’s a new one, huh? It’s close to sociopathy, but more a learned or trauma-induced behaviour. He mentioned he’d watched “Mad Men” and recognized the lead character as having it.

    And me.

    I tried to find the book he mentioned at Barnes and Noble. Not in stock. “Finding Unreality” or somesuch. 1996, co-authored by a doctor and her patient.

    I got more out of my hour-ish with him than I did from my full run with the prior therapist.

    I’m looking forward to seeing him again. He has the spark. He knows things, sees things. He speaks on my level. He appreciates my wit. Not quite as a consumer, but perhaps as a peer.

    So, I am in the Washout til Friday. Off the MAOI. As I mentioned in the MAOI log, it’s not nearly as bad as it was with the SSRI/SNRI. However, lately, particularly today, I’ve felt low — low dipping precariously close to the dark Empty.

    The gin and tonic and Sprite and sour mix seem to have held it at bay for the time being.

    Just a few days left.

    I’m doing alright.

    I still wonder why the wife did what she did — why she sacrificed the family for some vain pursuit of “happiness”. I want to know the timeline, the sequence of events, as related by her, that led to the demise of our marriage and our family. I still don’t know.

    I guess that was the problem.

    I never knew.

    Never saw it coming.

    Until it was gone.

  • Everybody Hurts

    I pick the girls up on Friday around 7PM and bring them back at 2PM Saturday.  Friday usually goes awesome.  We get something to eat, bring it home, and watch some movie or two.

    Saturday, not always so well.  It starts good, but as the leaving time draws nearer, the Elder will start to get grumpy, and sometimes go into a full-on tantrum.  Every parent knows what this means.  They’re hungry.  They didn’t get enough sleep.  Something is wrong and what they claim to be the problem probably isn’t.

    Worse, every parent knows the hell of this situation.  The kid won’t listen.  The kid tosses off her shoes and runs a block away and stands there, and every time you approach she moves further as if the bubble of your existence is pushing her away.

    We had an 11AM lunch at Old Country Buffet.  They had a hell of a good time there, picking at all manner of foods.  This one happened to be beside one of those Spirit Halloween seasonal stores, and they were looking forward to going there, so we do.

    It all starts fine, and they’re having fun being scared and looking at goofy costumes.  But the time wears on, and we’d planned to go to the mall for some shoes, and so I start telling them it’s time to go.  And I make the mistake of saying they can get one thing, under $5 or so.  But Elder can’t make up her mind, and eventually gets frustrated and starts out the door, so I have to tell Younger I can’t get her something and not her sister, so we’ll just have to go.  Younger is preternaturally easy-going, and though mildly disappointed, OK with that, and we go outside, where Elder is leaning against a post like some 50’s juvenile delinquent, casting me an icy glare as I approach.

    So, the usual chasing to and fro with her in her socks.  I finally get her to stand still, and she says she just wishes we had more time.  I tell her I’ll be taking her and her sister down to my mom’s next week and we’ll have the whole four days and she responds “But that’s a whole week from now!” and moves to another post.

    I follow, kneel down, and look at her, and she’s so sad.  And I did this to her.  Not all me (not by a mother fucking longshot, which is part of the frustration), but I brought her into the world, and once I told her  that “your mommy and I will never split up, honey.”  A horrible promise to make to a child.  So why did I say it?  Because mine did.  Half-dozen marriages between them.  And I was never going to do that to my kids.  And at the time, I was blissfully ignorant of my wife’s deep dissatisfaction with the marriage and still assumed she just adored me as she always had and we’d always be together as per the father/husband role I had assumed and settled into over the past decade.

    So, I am kneeling, and thinking these things, and knowing I have a part in making this poor little beautiful innocent girl cry.  I gave her life and then turned her life even worse than life usually is.  And I’m frustrated, because I can’t tell her why this all happened.  I don’t know, myself.  I know if I’d had my way we’d still be married.  Not to the woman my wife has become over the past two years, but in that apex of the marriage where all seemed right.

    And I start to sob.

    And I croak out, “I’m so sorry, honey.”

    And I grab her to me and hold her and cry into her chest, “I’m so sorry” over and over and I can’t stop myself.

    And she starts crying.

    And the Younger is nearby, just watching, and I tell her to come here and I hold them both as tight as I can and I’m still crying saying “I’m sorry” repeatedly.

    And the the Elder pulls up my chin and strokes my hair, but the Younger, she’s fucking laughing!  And I ask her, “What the hell are you laughing at, you stinker?” and she says, “I’ve just never seen a daddy cry before.”  So both of them start laughing, and now I’m laughing and crying, but mostly sobbing terribly.

    A side note:  My voice has been shot all week and I can barely speak as it is, so it really is with a croaking voice that I’m apologizing to them.

    Finally, I compose myself and the kids seemed to have achieved an exquisite cathartic release in seeing daddy cry, so we all start back to the car, but I’m still weeping and stuttering out apologies and trying to tell them I want to say something, but I physically can’t get it out through the sobbing and coughing.

    And that’s the meat of the story.  The epilog is similar to the final scene of “Ordinary People” where Conrad (Timothy Hutton, the son) and Cal (Donald Sutherland, the father) are sitting outside talking about Cal’s separation.

    
            CONRAD

    It's my fault.

            CAL

    Don't do that to yourself!               
    It's nobody's fault! Things happen.
    People don't always have answers.

     

    The Elder girl says it’s her fault, and so I snap at her, “No, it isn’t. Never say that. It’s not your fault.”

    She seems to understand.

    But she’ll always blame herself.  We always do, just a little, for everything.

    And everybody hurts, and everybody cries.

    Even daddies.

     

  • Suddenly

    I feel that this has given me the most incredible and wonderful thing that I have ever been given, and also, the worst. […] I’ve had my whole soul undermined by it — on the one hand. On the other hand, in one sense, my experience has been about finding joy.

    It was Memorial Day weekend. The day before, maybe. End of May. Sunday? She was taking the kids to visit with her parents in Rochester. As they went outside and she was about to leave, she turned to me.

    I was sitting on the loveseat (ha), sipping a cup of coffee, facing her and the door.

    I knew that look.  It meant she was pissed off about something, and I probably did not have any idea what that something was or why it made her so angry.

    This time, the something was a Facebook post: a link to a write-up on a role-playing session.  The tragic opening sequence contained characters she felt were too similar to our family.  I’ll skip the details, except to say that some of her … friends had told her that the story was grounds enough to get a restraining order against me.  She seemed more angry and embarrassed than concerned or afraid for herself and the children, and she left that way.

    Maybe an hour later, I get a message on my phone.  She’s not coming back until I’m out of the house.

    “OK.”

    I stayed at hotels most of that week.  I didn’t see the kids.  I frantically searched for an apartment while trying to work out a budget that would allow for us to maintain two households under my single salary.  There wasn’t time for me to feel much (if indeed I ever “feel” anything) except frustration and a kind of passive, harmless anger.

    It’s a month later.  I’ve got my little one-bedroom in the basement of a building in a park.  It’s nice.  Heat included.  I mostly eat tuna sandwiches and cereal, maybe pizza on Friday.  I’ve got Internet, and a great “open box” special of a deal on a big-ass TV from Best Buy.

    I’ve moved a couch, a California king-size bed, a dresser, a desk, a table, all by myself in my trusty old Forester.  I’m very proud of that.  It wasn’t easy, especially that goddamned $25 thrift-store couch.

    I saw the girls a few times while moving things after that first week.  Now I go over after work every Wednesday to spend time with them and put them to bed and whisper “I will always love you” to each of them until they get sick of it or fall asleep.

    They seem to be taking everything remarkably well.  Is that a credit to how they were raised?  Their natural temperament?  Do they truly realize daddy isn’t coming back to stay?

    God damn you.

    Fourteen years together.  Two kids.  Two years ago, she decides she isn’t happy.  Fuck it.  She has her reasons.  I won’t go into them, because quite frankly, I don’t fucking understand most of them.  Part of the problem?

    It makes me angry.  Sometimes, like just there.  However, surprisingly, most of the time, I am happier than I have been in years.

    No more dreading going “home” to a wife who despises me.  Ah, she may beg to differ.  Well, her behaviour, her detachment, the complete lack of any affection over the past years — that’s been a worse hell than anyone who hated me has ever put me through.

    I’m sure she suffered.  Poor thing.

    Fuck you.  This is my fucking blog, and it’s fucking about me.

    She thought I was a danger to the children!  My children. What’s the worst thing you can say to any parent?  That he’s a bad parent.  That he’s hurting his kids.  That he would ever hurt his kids.

    By all accounts, I should be angry, or hurt, or something.  Profane outbursts aside, I’m really not.  I’m content.

    I’ve also learned that I am not what she said I was.  I’m charming, considerate, intelligent, witty, and maybe even reasonably attractive for someone my age.  I add that last part just because it’s important with regards to finding someone else after being with the same woman for the best goddamned years of your life and expecting to be with her forever.

    Through sickness and in health, til death do us part.

    Was I ever depressed?  You know, she’s the one who prompted me to start treatment.  Treatment that has never worked.  Hell, maybe years of anti-depressants have made me worse.

    This was supposed to be a celebratory post.

    I’m as close to “happy” as I’ve been in years.

    I wish her the best of luck as a single mother, but when the kids are no longer kids, well, I don’t like to end on a down note. Here’s a song.

    Turn around.

    Every now and then,
    I get a little bit lonely,
    and you’re never comin’ ’round.

    Turn around, bright eyes.

    Every now and then,
    I fall apart.

    And I need you more tonight.
    And I need you more than ever.
    And you’ll only be making it right.

    We’ll be holding on — forever!

    That’s a joke. She’ll get it, but she won’t be laughing.