My ramble about my morning. This morning’s B-Side: The reminder of one of the many things that are wrong with raising our kids today. The A-Side: One of the last things that sprung from Pandora’s box was hope.
Category: Family (Page 4 of 4)
So, it’s been a minute since I post anything, since I’m not always in a place, situation or mood where I can type a post, but I can voice record.
When I started this journey, it was with the intention of offering up some of my experiences/struggles in life as company to others with similar experiences/struggles in solidarity. I have failed to share, so I’m going to try it this way. I know it requires people to listen, instead of read. But hey, that way you too can multi-task.
Feel free to share your thoughts.
It’ll be four years this June since we’ve been separated. Four years. Who does that? Who waits four years for their spouse to wake up and say, “You know what hunny, I’ve been crazy all this time and I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking when I let you walk out that door.”
Although, I haven’t really held him accountable for a four year separation. It’s been more like we’ve been living apart and because of the grandkids or the step-kids we found these excuses to get together. While not a good time would be had by all – I would begrudgingly be upset that he was there, while at the same time be glad – I would think that maybe he’d see what the hell he was missing and want to work on making things right. Wow! Am I a bit screwed up, or a lot screwed up? Or, just hopeful?
We are weeks away from our four years and I’ve decided that too much time has past, not enough amends have been made and I’m moving forward with the divorce. While I have said this before, it feels different this time. This time I feel the same way I felt when I decided to move out. I felt, well, decided, resolved, without doubt. All I needed/need to do is do it. The other feeling that is lurking around is loneliness. I now feel loneliness. I guess in the past, I’d come home and find some craft to do – a card, a mache bowl, a resin tile, something. I knew that inevitably my phone would ping and he’d find some reason to come over, I wouldn’t deny him, I’d be upset about it, but then not and we’d have an excuse for him to be here and me to have his company. You see – I still love my husband. I love him very much. But I must also have boundaries and limits and I value myself as well. I want to be loved by him like I love him, maybe that’s not realistic, real or possible. But, I also want to be respected by him. And I want him to command respect for me from those around us. He does not.
It’s always the same. We talk it out. We lay out the concerns – mostly mine. He voices understanding and agreement, vows improvement, and within a few days or weeks we’re back to square one. I tell him I’m tired of going in circles and ask him to leave, only to do it again a month or so later – for FOUR years. Only this time, this time I’ve surrendered and I know that what I’m asking is beyond him to give me. There is something beyond needing to be a better husband that is driving his choices. Something with which neither I nor he can compete. Maybe he knows what that something is and he’s just not open, maybe he doesn’t. I don’t know what it is. But if a four year quasi-separation hasn’t brought about salvation for this marriage, then it’s time to let it go. I do not want to live my life waiting to be a priority for my husband. My husband can’t live his life waiting for me to settle for what he can give.
I’m in no way ready to move on and find myself another guy. But I’m realizing that I’ve been without a guy for four years. The sporadic week here and there and occasional mediocre sex does not a relationship make or a marriage fix. It’s been this weird boyfriend/girlfriend, 14-21 year old type of make-up/break-up/makeup “thing”. Every time we start back up and break back up we start the healing clock again.
It’s time.
So, I was listening to a news story about how the latest round of lost electricity in Puerto Rico has impacted life on the island. A woman shared the impact on her business, a local coffee shop, and how it’s had to close early, or not opening at all. One of her customers was interviewed. As he told his story, he focused on how the closing of the coffee shop has effected his daily routine. While I understand the larger picture of the story was the continued loss of power on the island and the ill-effects of that reality, what I clung to was his telling of getting his cup of coffee at the end of the day. He reminisced that it’s what one grows up doing from the time you are a little kid – at the end of the day, you drink your cup of coffee and you stay up late. I found something so familiar in that. I guess we do.
I grew up making coffee every morning for my grandmother. The morning ritual was to make the coffee, boiling the water very hot, leave it on her nightstand, next to her cigarettes, and empty her pee bucket – full of pee and cigarette butts from the night before. That way, when she woke up hours after I left to school, there, on her nightstand would be her two vices and her empty pee bucket. She would know if I boiled the water “bien hervida” if the coffee did not have white foam nesting on the top. If you’ve ever made a cup of instant Sanka you know to what I’m referring. At the end of the evening, I would again prepare the cup of coffee. I can still that almost translucent white cup with a brown border along the rim.
As an adult, when I started waking up to making my own coffee, I’d arrange my cup next to my spoon, next to my sugar, and I’d wait for the water to be “bien hervida”. I reflected that I may have turned into my grandmother – although I don’t use a pee bucket at night and I don’t smoke. But it wasn’t until I heard this man, with his Puerto Rican twang, talking about his late night coffee that I realized, Aha, that’s it. It’s not weird like so many point out, “Won’t that keep you up all night?” “How can you drink coffee at this hour?”
At a time in my life where so much is still changing, nothing has yet settled, and I’m finding the time to identify my identity, this tiny blip on the radio – this man sharing his loss of drinking his late night comfort cup of coffee made me feel connected. There are others out there that share my love of a late night cup of coffee and staying up late – even at the end of a long day.
It’s these tiny blips on my radar that keep me sane. Understanding and realizing that I live in a space where there are few like me. I find solace in these blips. I’ll keep a look out for more.
Arizona and grandson are visiting for the New Year. The baby is getting over a cold and was coughing, which got us talking about the age old tradition of parents “drugging” their children with Benadryl or Nyquil – to get them to go to sleep. Folks of my generation may remember this as quite the practice at one time. I hope the practice has changed – but I doubt it. I personally remember the “druggings”, except my grandmother’s choice medication was 5 mg. of Valium. Yes, folks, Valium. No, I’m not a drug addict, never became one. I think it was because of her “druggings” that I now seldom take any form of medication. I do have an addictive personality, and that isn’t only to vices, but behaviour as well (Valium, Asperger, who knows). So, I steer clear of whatever vice or behaviour may become a negative – with the exception of alcohol. So, grandma use to feed me Valium. What does this have anything to with “family being fucked?”
My father is/was an alcoholic (don’t know if he’s alive, so is/was). In one of his drunken stupors he decides to confront his wife about her possibly dating someone, although they were separated and heading for divorce. Being the daughter with the idea in her head that she was her father’s salvation from himself, I decide to go along. Little did I know what he really had in mind, and he was not the father to keep me from coming along one of his “wild rides”. We show up to her place of work – an injection molding factory where she worked the graveyard shift. Ironically, that night he almost sent her to the graveyard. Innocently, or stupidly, she comes out and gets into the car – where she is greeted with an attempt to slice her throat. At some point my father unlocked the doors long enough for me to get out and walk down the alley. I squatted near a puddle of water, stagnated in the road crown, which reflected the light of the full moon. I prayed for him to stop. Eventually he did. I ended up back at home where my grandmother turned to her miracle cure, 5 mg. of Valium, to put me to sleep.
Sometime between then and a few hours later, I was summoned when he returned home. There he was, sitting on the edge of his bed, scraping blood from the nooks of his car keys. I didn’t ask. I simply took him by the hand and led him to the basin. There I would run water over his finger nails and similarly scrape the blood from them. Following the Valium protocol and tuck him into bed. The following morning I rushed downstairs to check on my “poor papi”. Except, I would find my sliced up stepmother propped up in his bed, being fed steak and eggs for breakfast. What the hell just happened?
I leave in the middle of the night not knowing her fate and the following morning there she is, wounds cleaned and dressed, being cared for by my father – the very man that did this to her. Both hands were completely bandaged, as those were the shields she used to keep him from cutting her throat. Every slice he threw, up went her hands. When and how she got to the hospital, whether or not they knew what happened, who knows. No one spoke of it, until now I guess.
Hence, Family is Fucked. And yes, I realize there is a lot wrong with this picture. But wait, this is only one of my stories.
Follow