Fragile

Sometimes I feel like the most unbreakable piece of granite. At other times, I feel like something you would find in a jewelry store... something very precious that is easily broken.... a crystal butterfly that could smash into a million tiny pieces at a moments notice. At those moments I know that it is time to put my head down and get some rest. These sleepless nights that I have been experiencing, I know are due to the fact that I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. There are many things that have to be dealt with in my life at the moment. I am selling my house and trying to sell (or at least rent) my parents house. I am buying a house in Nfld sight unseen. I am trying to buy a car, and in the midst of all of this, I am trying to go through a divorce. Any one or two of these things would be enough to shatter a normal person. But all five at the same time while trying to keep a relatively normal lifestyle for the daughters and help my parents maintain some equilibrium, is starting to take its toll.  At times I feel the rush of tears at the back of my eyes and it comes at the oddest moments. I might be putting a load of washing in the washer or I might be ordering a cup of coffee from a waitress... and suddenly there is a familiar pinprick at the back of my eyes and I have to force myself to think of the beach in Nfld... or I have to think of Daughter #1's facebook profile picture in order to hold the tears at bay. When they are pushed back, then I can go on.

Each night now I try to be in bed by about 9:30 p.m. so that I can catch a few extra minutes of exhausted sleep since my inner clock seems to have decided that I am not going to sleep past 3 a.m.  regardless of what time I go to sleep.  Sleep is a precious commodity since it is the only thing standing between me and complete collapse. I am tired. Tired to my bones. Tired to the synapses that continue to go on in my brain regardless of me wanting them to stop for just a few precious moments. From three in the morning till around 6 a.m. I lie awake ruminating on all the events of the previous day, or shredding apart my feelings for Sir Arsewipe.

Yesterday was once again a day of revelations about him and my life with him. We left here yesterday morning and headed down to DC to meet with the notary there who is handling our side of the sale of our house. Yes the legal forms are all signed and so I expect that on the 31st everything will go through as planned and I will vacate this home of mine that I for so many years said, "it would take a bomb to get me to move out." Well the bomb came in the form of Sir Arsewipe. I sat in the office of  the notary and waited for the ending of a way of life and then when it was all over I walked out of that office into the harsh northern sunlight a walked across the street to the truck as my husband walked a mare few feet away from me. Not a word passed between us as we got into the truck and in the back of my mind I wondered how in the world he could face himself each morning in the mirror knowing that he had ripped apart his family and told the person that loved him the most that she was not good enough. I wondered how he could look at the Daughters knowing that he had ripped their world open and screwed us all over. This house which he so greatly resents, this house which I have tried so hard to make a home, was the biggest and best thing between us and financial disaster. It was our biggest investment and the thing which would give us the biggest return on our money and we had just signed it away without a backward look.  I just couldn't fathom how easily it had all happened.

We had spent the two hours going to DC barely exchanging a word. I had nothing to say to him and so I tried to catch a few winks of sleep which I think I did but you know how car sleep is.... sometimes it is not very deep and you know everything that is going on really anyway. After DC it was the same thing... and though I didn't sleep there was barely a word between us as the trees and scenery passed by outside. It kept going through my mind... how can you look yourself in the mirror each morning.... how can you live with yourself. Knowing that didn't change the fact that I knew the worst of the day was yet to come.

I had him drop me off at the Arts Post in FSJ so that I could meet with my spinners and weavers friends and go for lunch with them. I don't know what he did... but my friends took me out for lunch where we chatted and gabbed and I got to see some of the ladies who I haven't seen in a long time... one who has been fighting cancer for many months and is looking so good (I'm happy to say) and I was so glad to see her. But all the while that I was being enfolded into the arms of my friends I held in the back of my mind this little part of me which was thinking about a face in a mirror and the white mustache and the balding head and the hollow eyes. I was thinking of Sir Arsewipe looking at himself in the mirror and I wondered what he saw.

After lunch was over I headed to the Fairways Divorce offices and got there a few minutes after 1 p.m. which is when our meeting was supposed to be held. I walked into a board room where he was sitting and once again looked at that face and all I saw was the mask.   I know that somewhere deep down there has to be some feeling but I am no longer privy to what he thinks or does and so his face remains impenetrable.

During our negotiations, I stupidly agreed to a couple of things that means the bulk of the debt is being paid out of my portion of the assets. But I will address that in our next meeting because the bulk of the negotiations is yet to come. I had to cash in one of our RRSPs after the negotiations for the afternoon were over. That was ok since it means that there will be one less debt since we will use the money from the RRSP to get rid of a jointly held credit card. That is how it goes... Divorce does not mean that you split everything 50/50 it is a back and forth so that our individual net worths come out in pretty good shape. But then no one ever wins in a divorce. Dividing everything and deciding who gets what is a horrible job and as is the case no one ever wins except the lawyers.

We came home in the truck and I have discovered that the only thing that we are able to talk about any more are the girls. They are our common ground now... We can speak about them without it deteriorating into a bitch/butch fest. About halfway home I felt a serious case of fidgets coming on and so I asked if he would pull over and let me do some driving. He was ok with that and so we switched places. It felt good to be behind the wheel and I felt a surge of independence that I haven't felt since before we were married. It felt good and I felt the corners of my mouth starting to relax and just slightly go up.

With this little tiny bit of positivity in me, I felt that I had an opportunity to talk to him a little bit about something that I can't mention here yet, but it needed to be talked about since it was giving Daughter #1 some sleepless nights. So I broached the topic cautiously. There was a few moments of discussion before I backed off and felt I had dealt with it at least some. After I got home I sat down for a few minutes and realized that Sir Arsewipe was out on the deck with Daughter #1 now discussing what we had only moments before talked about in the truck... it was ok because they needed to get it sorted. Afterwards he was leaving and Daughter #1 came in with tears in her eyes and I wasn't really surprised about that since it was a fairly touchy topic. I asked her if she was alright and gave her a big hug and that's when it all came pouring out. She really doesn't believe a word he says. I wish I could talk about it more but I can't... but suffice it to say that it was based on that discussion of what he had said to her that I realized why Sir Arsewipe can look at himself in the mirror each day. It was in that moment that I realized that the man that I married is a Peter Pan...

You see my very great understanding came when I realized that he doesn't think that he has done anything wrong.  He thinks that he is completely in the right.  He sees his relationship with the other woman as just friends.  He sees himself as embarking on a way of getting rid of an overbearing and controlling woman (me).  He sees me as the fault for all of our problems and he sees our house as not the investment into our future that I understood it to be but as a noose around his neck. That is when it hit me that he is 49 years of age going on 20 years of age. That jackass got to the age of twenty and never moved beyond. When he looks in the mirror he sees someone shackled to responsibility and when he is finished dumping me and the girls and my parents he will be free of that responsibility... he will be free to pursue his own interests again.

So you see I have lain awake tonight a mulled it all over in my head and I am tired of being mother to this man child. I am tired of my responsibility for him. He was supposed to be my partner but instead I became the Wendy to his PeterPan.  It is one more responsibility that I do not need. It is one more burden that is make me quake under the weight of it. It is one of the things that is makig me so very tired, and fragile.

But when I look into the mirror what do I see? I see a woman who is tired and alone in this world with nowhere to turn and nowhere to rest. I just keep plodding along in the hopes that at some point I will be able to shed a little of this burden that I am under.  And the first step will be to see if I can get our stuff moved, because that is one of the dastardly things that I have had to pony up on in our negotiations. Debts paid means that I have less to money to get us home... basically to get me through this divorce I have had to give up the amount of money that I would have used for the movers... and so I am left scrabbling and trying to find a way to move our stuff across Canada.... unless I sell Mom's and Dad's place.

It is 5:41 a.m. and I have been awake since 3 a.m.  I am tired and so I am going back to bed to try and get a couple of more hours of sleep before the sun comes up. (It's raining out and so I expect that the sun might not be out today.) I will call Narmie up on the bed in the hopes that he will cuddle up to my back as he sometimes does and I will drift off into a peaceful and deep sleep that I so greatly need to keep my equilibrium.... and if not... then the next couple of hours will be devoted to a little of this....