PT-LawMom

Today’s Divorce Care group was HARD. I started crying at the end (okay, sobbing loudly) and haven’t yet been able to stop the big, fat tears rolling down my face.

A couple of random thoughts shared in today’s session:

1) Co-parenting with your ex-husband is like an ongoing funeral where you can never close the casket
2) When we were married and Chapin called his 100% faithful wife a whore constantly, he was probably projecting his own behavior and guilt for it on to me (you wouldn’t believe these other ladies’ stories of cheating spouses…)
3) Past losses intensify current losses. I’ve lost all four grandparents in the past 18 months, almost lost a parent, lost nerve sensation in large portions of my body and had an organ rudely ripped out of my side. Can you say stress?!?!

Okay, so here’s what had me crying today. Yet another person said, “Maybe God is blessing you by keeping Chapin out of the country.” That person has absolutely no idea how much my son is suffering. There is a bible story about two women fighting over a child. King Solomon says, “Cut the baby in two and give each woman half.” The true mother begs him to give the other woman the entire baby because she cannot bear the idea of her baby losing his life over a petty fight. That is how I feel when someone tells me it is better if Chapin stays out of the country. If I accept that it’s better, I am ripping my child in two so, whether it turns into a nightmare for me or not, it is 100% preferable that he returns. Of course after I started crying, Pumpkinhead came in from his Divorce Care for Kids group and said, “You know what, Mommy? I really miss Daddy.” Waaahhh.

The video we watched today talked about the two becoming one flesh and how when you divorce, it’s not a clean break where each return to their separate selves. It’s more of a tearing, gaping wound where you each leave a part of yourself with the other and any dreams you had bought into for the future are ripped away, leaving you with a vast, desolate landscape as your future. Grieving that loss doesn’t mean you want the person back or even really have much to do with the other person as it does with yourself and your identity. You have to start seeing the other person as no longer being your ally and, even when there is anger and abuse and pain, it’s hard to stop seeing that person as a friend. One of the women in the video said she felt ambushed by grief, coming in the door at night and just sliding down the wall in tears to lay in the fetal position. That’s me. Grief for Pumpkinhead, grief for me, grief for Chapin even. Anger and sadness that I let him hurt me, that he didn’t value me or himself enough to get help, and that Pumpkinhead has to feel the repercussions. That I wasn’t enough for him and that he had to seek sex outside of our marriage rather than giving me the chance to give him whatever was lacking. I feel like an undesirable shell of sadness and worthlessness and, of course, as a mother, student, daughter and employee, I have to keep my shit together. It’s hard… I could never have imagined how hard.