Suburban Goddess

“You’re the reason men kill women.”

Me: I really don’t understand how we manage to stay friends, considering our backgrounds are polar opposites.

D: Our jaded sarcasm transcends all that petty bull$hit

Me: Yes… severe emotional trauma tends to level the playing field

D: Damn skippy

B: What are you saying? I don’t have your undevided attention.. AGAIN?

Me: unDIVIDED

B: Oh, like you never typo something!

Me: It’s not a typo if it looks like you sounded it out

B: Yeah, I guess you’re right

Me: And the “I” is on the OTHER SIDE of the keyboard!!!

B: Well, maybe on your n00bish QWERTY keyboard. I however, rearrange mine for optimal typing performance

Me: Maybe you should stick with the basics until you learn how to spell.

“Good grief.  What’s WRONG with you?”

“I’ve gone two weeks without caffeine!”

“Oh, thank goodness… we thought you were on something!”

“Am I that bad?”

“Kristie, you have a pencil sticking out of your hair.”

“But I do that all the time… I don’t like my hair in my face.”

“Yes, but you were just mumbling about where your pencil went…”

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.  - Ecclesiastes 1:18

Someone passed this verse along to me recently… I also remembered it from a Divorce Care seminar.  My therapist quoted it to me, as well.  Shortly after I found out about Darlene, I went looking for proof of Chip’s infidelity.  It didn’t take me long to find things.  Credit card records, bank statements, phone records, online accounts… those lead to even more painful things… photographs of them together, photographs of MY DAUGHTER with them, personal emails…

Darlene’s ex was more than helpful supplying me with more information than I wanted to know.  Yet, curiosity burned me from the inside out.  I HAD to see them.  I HAD to know.

My father is the one who finally brought sense back into my life. As we sat out on the concrete in my cul de sac, I remember him saying quite clearly:

“It doesn’t make a difference.  It was over anyway.”

“Yes, but…”

“You have a new house, a new life, and a beautiful daughter…. he will have to answer for what he’s done to a higher power someday… now, you just have to live your life. It doesn’t matter what he did then. It matters what you do NOW.”

But I wanted an admission of guilt.  I wanted to hear him say, it was his fault.

I never got that admission.

Two years later, I realize, it doesn’t matter.  And Dad was right, it didn’t matter then, either.  Holding onto the past, looking for photographs of them together, hanging on to all those receipts… it wasn’t helping me at all.  And by that time, he was long gone anyway… what was the point of holding on to all that pain?

It was eating me alive, from the inside out.

I thought about holding all that until the day that my daughter asks me what happened. I thought about saving it all and mailing it to certain in-laws who didn’t want to hear my side. I thought about broadcasting it to the world, one scan at a time… but what good does that do?  In the end, it will just hurt my daughter… and make me look like a raging, bitter lunatic.

At the end of the day, he was a bad husband… but he’s a good father. I’m thankful that I have an ex willing to work with me.  I’m thankful he loves his little girl. I’m thankful that I had so many wonderful friends and family that helped get me through those rough times. Two years ago this month, he told me he was moving out. One year ago, he’d moved the new woman in.  And a year later… my life is on track to be something greater than I ever imagined with him.

There are those who tell me this blog is harmful to my daughter. There are those who think I should have buried my dirty laundry, shut up, and cried to myself. There are those who have accused me of spewing hatred towards my ex, and that I will poison my daughter with it… to you people, I say this with the utmost respect.

Fuck off.

We are all human.  We all make mistakes.  He made one when he chose to step out of our marriage. I made many in how I handled that. But we both care about our daughter. To this day, he has never complained about my blogs, my feelings, or my anger.  He allowed me to vent… until the point that he simply couldn’t take anymore.  And that, honestly, was right about the time I needed to let it go.

Since then, I don’t go looking for things I don’t need to know.  I know he will take good care of Alex while she is there. I know he loves that little girl more than life. I’ve come to realize, for me, knowledge was a form of control, and control was the only thing I had to keep me from feeling powerless. But in the end, that knowledge did more damage than good… and I had to learn to let go.

This blog is a record of my life as I see it:  experiences as I feel them, love as I live it, pain as I feel it. Yes, there are things here that direct some venom towards my ex; there are opinions in here that my daughter will someday read. But my goal is not, and never has been, to poison my child’s vision of her dad. It is my goal to have her understand one of the greatest trials of my life…

… and how my love for her not only carried me through it, but gave me the hope & courage to try to find love again.

“OUCH.”

“You run into the same wall EVERY DAY.”

“Well, if people would stop MOVING IT….”

About once every two months I am hit with a vicious creative streak.  I wish I could explain it to people; it’s not just a need to make something. It’s a driving force that hits my rib cage, trying to claw its way out. Creativity, for me, is not a happy process.  It’s a frenzied, deep, and all-consuming passion.

I have three albums, a website, and four templates to build.  Gonna be a long weekend.

You know, the problem with people is that they talk.  People talk about people, who talk to other people, who skew and distort and twist and manipulate… until the truth is no longer recognizable. People come with perceptions, and opinions, and baggage.

Sometimes it’s enough to make me want to staple their lips shut.

I read over my entries of late and see myself caught in another litle downward spiral. If I would just learn to trust myself, everything would be okay in my life.  I’ve learned to recognize certain things within myself; certain behavior, certain thought processes.  Now all I have to do is stop myself, and turn them around as I see them unfolding.  So here goes.

New day. New life. Starting over.

I will not let the past ruin my future.

One after another… disappointment, betrayal, and now… this is the price I pay for the choices I’ve made. These are the consequences of my actions.

This is me making one mistake after another. When does it end?

All I ever wanted was a happy ending.

Sometimes there’s absolutely no satisfaction in the words, “I told you so.”

“When you’re really in love with someone and this happens — I never had anything like this happen. It’s like your faith in people is destroyed because the person you trusted the most you can no longer trust at all. … The person you know isn’t there anymore.” – Bill Murray

I saw this quote today on CNN, and it really hit home.  Trust is such a huge issue in my life. Heaven help the man who ends up with me, because I have enough baggage to fill a 747. I was making great strides towards letting the past go, moving forward, and trying not to make people pay for other’s mistakes… but damn if he didn’t screw up.

Why do we do this to each other?  Why do we hurt the very people we claim to love? We go out of our way to spare the feelings of complete strangers, but rarely extend that courtesy to the people in our own lives… the very people who pledge to love us, who put up with our crap, who willingly choose to stay with us.

All this distrust makes me want to binge.  Seriously.  I need a box of doughnuts right now.  Or a cheese danish.