I’ll Be No One

Fuck you! Fuck your insensitive analogy! Fuck your unsolicited advise! Fuck your request for friendship! You fucked me! Now I am fucked. No wonder you can’t sleep at night. But you do have the ultimate control- just what you need! I will never forgive you for slamming the door in my face with your closed mind and heart.

Robin’s Nth attempt at reconciliation led me to make the analogy that we were like a loaf of bread. We brought the flour, yeast, ingredients to the relationship. Our shared experiences were the heat of the oven. I told her that you can’t unbake a loaf of bread. But that I still love her and would like to remain friends – true friends. The above was her reply.

A friend recently suggested I’m going through a premarital divorce. I laughed so hard I nearly spit my wine. Literally.

I don’t regret calling things off. I feel sure it wouldn’t have been right for us in the end. Except for the times I don’t feel so sure. Like, say, tonight. She dissed my kids. Right? Had Katherine for a sleepover and then refused over and over again for Francis. Never even offered for Kaitlyn. She had one foot in the boat when it was time to cast off. Right? She told me she didn’t want to sell her house. Just in case. I mean, she’s been screwed by guys in the past. Except she interviewed 3 different schools for a spot for her son with special needs. She’s not really family-driven. Right? She didn’t want my kids at her son’s soccer games. Except she did come to the zoo with us and we had a ton of fun. Then again, she came to Great Wolf Lodge with us and pretty well phoned it in.

When I think about Robin, I think about how un-driven she is. How much TV she watches. How she let her career just slip away from her. And her older son too. How, from my perspective, she just lets life happen to her. How she has no health insurance even though she could get it through the state. How she never reads books. How she has literally one friend in town and two long distance ones. She thinks I’m too judgmental. Can you not judge, evaluate, the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with?

Her beautiful, beautiful face comes up on the slideshow on the computer, smiling, and I ask myself what the fuck I’ve done.

Talking last night with a friend going through a rough divorce (as opposed to those smooth divorces, right?) and she told me about having recently hooked up with an old boyfriend from high school. How strange it is to sleep with someone after being monogamous for 15 years. I told her I totally understood that. First couple of times Robin and I slept together I found myself thinking she was from another species or something. Her body is *so* different from Frances’. My friend said the thing she enjoyed the most about the hookup was spooning. I heard that loud and clear. I sure, sure do miss that. I’ve now learned, for the first time in my life, how to share my body but keep my deepest soul to myself. It’s fun and certainly scratches an itch. And my friend is a good friend that I’ve known for many years. So it’s very comfortable. And I do likes to have some fun, so it’s not like I’m necessarily…reserved. But. You just can’t, well, let your guard way down. Which is my modus operandi since Francis died. Kids need me on the ball every day. Can’t let my guard down. I’m a “Principal” at work (i.e. top rung of the technical ladder). Can’t let my guard down there. Now I can’t even let my guard down in bed. I guess spooning, quiet cuddling is a symbol of having found your One Safe Place. Which I haven’t. Thought I had. Maybe I did and just couldn’t handle it.

I love Kasey Chambers’ “The Captain”. The lyrics are, in some sense, reprehensible.

“You be the captain.
And I’ll be no one.
And you can carry me away if you want to.
You can lay low. Just like your father.
And if I tread upon your feet, you just say so.
You’re the captain, I am no one.
I tend to feel as though I owe one to you.”

About as anti-feminist as it gets. Yet I completely understand the sentiment. It’s the same sentiment as Elizabeth has in 9-1/2 weeks. How liberating it would be to have someone make all the decisions, do all the work, bear all the stress, tell me when to eat (feed me no less), when and how to fuck, when to sleep, when to dust the furniture, when to shit. Robin thinks I have control issues. Maybe she’s right. When it comes to my kids, she’s definitely right. Letting go is not a natural reflex for me.

God, I’d like to find someone that is my One Safe Place.

Five for Silver, Six for Gold

I woke up yesterday morning in a funk. When I sat with my feelings, I realized I’m pretty pissed off at Robin.

I looked back at her match.com profile and found it ironic that it said “I need someone who is not afraid to commit”. Her lack of commitment is what did us in. I found myself pissed because I put what ends up being just over what I make in a whole year (I’m working half-time since Frances died) into finishing the basement of what was to be our house. For space for her kids. I’ll be paying that loan off for 20 years. And another big chunk for a bedroom set that I’ll be paying for for the next two years. I’ll be a bittersweet memory for her in two years. I knew she was on the fence throughout our relationship, but it’s just not my style to do something halfway. Once I was in, I was in with both feet. So if she said she was in, I took her at her word. I would have been wise to look a bit more closely at her deeds in addition to her word. She didn’t want to sell her house “just in case.” “You know, I’ve gotten screwed over in the past”. She hadn’t packed a single box. She didn’t want my kids at her son’s soccer games. She didn’t want my kids to come to Michigan the first time I was to meet her brother. She couldn’t find it in her to drive 6 hours to spend Labor Day weekend with my family but made almost the same drive a few weeks later to visit her aunt and uncle that she can’t stand. She wouldn’t go on vacation this summer with us because she didn’t want to leave her disabled son with his dad for a week. Which is fine except for the fact that she assured me when we started dating that she gets two weeks “off” so she could do just that type of thing with us. She didn’t want my kids to have a play room on the main floor of our house. She would have preferred to have them keep their toys in their rooms only. She just wanted a kid-free world. I love having kids running underfoot and am looking very forward to having that play room right off the kitchen where I can enjoy hearing, i.e. Katherine pretending to be Angelina Ballerina and Francis being a Jedi Knight. She was concerned that, because the play room was right there as you come in the front door that it would be the first thing people saw. Hello? It’s a house with young children. What did she expect? Windsor Frigging Castle? I plaster the walls with my kids’ art. She wanted a single corkboard.

My stepfather told me last winter that Robin just wanted to be a “kept woman”. He’s a man I like and admire and respect, so I didn’t take that comment lightly. But I didn’t want it to be true either. Then I decided that it was actually ok if it was true and that’s what got me over the hurdle to decide to ask her to marry me. I now see in hindsight, that was a mistake. I didn’t compute the fact that being a “kept woman” meant not wanting to take any real responsibility for my kids. Maybe it’s a role no one can fill. Except that I have a very good friend that did just that and did it with great honor and love.

Robin told me once right after she quit her last job, “I’m just not born to work.” Perhaps that is so. I mean who is, right? But the life of a parent of three young kids in a middle class family with a job and a house and involvement in church and community is a lot of work and a little play. Which is great by me. There’s a lot of gold in that work. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Robin would. And that’s why it had to end.

—

My funk is mostly dissipated since I wrote this two days ago. I’m looking forward more than back at this point. I’m generally a positive, optimistic person who sees life as a grand adventure. I’m glad I’m generally back to that place. My good friend Tammy pointed me to a fun mailing list at tut.com that sends you positive messages from “the universe” every weekday. Reminders of all the blessings we have if we take a moment to look. Mine are countless. As we say at mealtime in the grace I wrote for our family years ago “Let us give thanks for our friends, family and health. Amen.”

Three for Girls and Four for Boys

Nature vs. Nurture.

Robin and I haven’t spoken in over 48 hours. This is primarily at her insistence. When we spoke Monday evening, we chitchatted despite the crushingly narrow depth of field brought by the lens of our crumbling relationship. She said she wasn’t up for talking about the issues we were facing until we had time to devote to it. A few minutes later, she sent an email about the issues we were facing. Initially, I was frustrated by this, but I quickly realized it’s actually an opportunity since I write better than I speak.

Since then it’s been all text messages and email. Tonight she sent a pretty well worded and pretty well considered email about the issues we were facing. She pointed out an example of how she just kisses her kids and tells them to go to bed where I do stories and singing and tucking for all three. Well, Kaitlin is kind of over my singing So we just talk more. Robin illustrated, by this example (and it’s one of many), that she’s not really a nurturer.

I can say with certainty that the reason my kids have not only survived but have thrived despite the catastrophe of losing their mother is due to the fact that I have nurtured them with the veracity of a thunderstorm. Robin and I just see nurturing differently. Love is enough in her estimation. I think love is necessary and nurturing is critical. You only get so many years to nurture your kids. So our differences in nurturing have led us to deadlock. It’s the kernel of the problem.

I replied with these observations and the fact that they are no longer avoidable. That I don’t want her to change, and that I see that it’s not going to be the right fit for everyone. I finished by suggesting that now our task is to find a graceful exit. I think we will be able to do so. I’m not sure what to say to my kids who have grown fairly attached to her, but I’ll sit with it for a while and something will come.

We’ve had two more exchanges via text since I started this post. Perhaps it’s fitting that a relationship that started with a wink on match.com ends via email and text message.

One for Sorrow Two for Joy

We fell in love on a bridge over the river playing guitar, singing songs, and reading poetry. She hasn’t wanted to hear me play or sing with me in months.

How to Heal? Use a Razor.

2nd night in a row unable to sleep.

I’m thinking more about the wire monkeys and Imago. I think the baby monkey with the wire surrogate is a pretty accurate model for the type of damage I carry. And I think the ideas of Imago make pretty good sense. That we find a partner that helps us recreate the wounds of our childhoods so we can find a way to heal those wounds via direct experience. With Imago Therapy, the idea is that you are in a committed relationship and you do various types of communicating in order to heal those wounds inflicted on you in your developmental years. In my case, I think the way to heal is different.

I believe, when I look honestly at it, that marrying Robin is not the right thing for my kids in the long run. I have 13 months of experience and more than a few journal entries that confirm this. I’ve put this nagging feeling aside quite a few times in the past and hoped for the best. But it just keeps coming back to knock on my door. We spent the evening at Robin’s mother’s house, celebrating her 75th birthday and I observed that, while Robin responded to requests from my kids for various nurturing, she didn’t initiate it once. This is consistent with my previous observations. That is to say it’s very infrequent when she initiates nurturing and she often declines opportunities to nurture my kids when they naturally present themselves.

The healing I did in my 20s had to do with letting go of my anger toward my stepmother and forgiving my father. The work I did last year helped me heal from the loss of Frances.

I think the work I have to do now to heal is to do what my dad couldn’t do. End things with Robin when I know it’s not right for my kids. That’s a crappy realization to come to, but it’s sort of Occam’s Razor for this relationship and it would be a waste of my and my kids’ psychic energy to pretend there’s a another way.

Dear Congress, I Need a Bailout Too

It appears that we are in a full-fledged sub-prime emotional crisis now. Experts have been predicting this for some time now. Analysis to follow at 11 on Larry King Live. Or maybe Dr. Laura.

Robin called me on Monday morning. After a brief hello, she was in tears. She told me she wasn’t sure she could go through with this after all. That she was afraid she’d lose her freedom. That she’d have no personal space in our new home. I told her I could understand her fear and that I realize this is a massive undertaking for her. After some more reassuring, I told her that I think the truth is that she wants me but doesn’t want my kids. She denied it. I said, “let’s be honest, you really don’t want to take on the responsibility of raising my kids.” Silence. No denial there. I told her that I love her and I want to spend my life with her. I also said that if she commits to me, she has to commit to my kids. I reminded her that I hit a point this past summer where I realized that if I never got married and it was just the kids and I indefinitely, that we would all be ok. That if things didn’t work out for us, I would be initially upset, but would be fine. I also told her that I now see it’s not quite that simple. That if she and I move in together and if we get married, she’s committing to my kids. If things don’t work out for us, my kids lose another mother. I told her that’s not at all ok for me. That if she’s not totally committed to this effort from the start, she’s going to do these kids a world of harm, especially my two youngest – Katherine and Francis – she would be the only Mom they have any conscious memory of. Yes she will lose a lot of freedom and personal space. And she’ll gain three of the kindest-hearted children in the whole world and will have the satisfaction of raising them with love and compassion.

Because my kids are my blood, I don’t have the choice of not raising them. Of not orienting every effort, directly or indirectly toward ensuring their success and well-being. They are the reason I live. They joy of having them in my world in unassailable. Even when they’re being bratty little cretins, even when I lose my temper with them, it’s still easy to find the infinite reservoir of love I have for them.

I miss the old Robin. The one that used to be really excited to see me every time. That used to be glad to hear from me on the phone. The one that used to like foreplay. The one that used to help me read and sing my kids to sleep. The one that would run with me in the afternoons to pick up my kids.

We had dinner tonight and I asked my Francis about his favorite part of going to the local mid-18th century French trading post re-enactment. He said there were three favorite things. As he proceeded to rattle these things off, Robin picked up her phone and started checking the weather. Later when he started telling another story, she turned the wine bottle and started reading it.

The issue that is becoming more and more critical is that of Robin having Francis down to her house for a sleepover. Just before school started, Robin had Katherine down for a sleepover at her house. They had a great time and it was a big thing for Katherine. Since then, Francis has been asking for one as well. Robin was very non-committal to Francis when he asked. That sent the very wrong message to him, so I pressed the issue with her later and asked her to set a date. She did and when the date approached, she said she was having a hard time regarding my kids (this was two Fridays ago) and postponed indefinitely. We’re all moving in together in less than 4 weeks, so there’s not much more time left to do it. Yeah, she could take him down there after we move (she doesn’t want to sell her house yet “in case something doesn’t work out”). The longer this draws out, the more Francis gets the message that he’s in second place in her heart.

Francis had a soccer game at 4pm tonight and Addison (her older son) at 5pm. It wouldn’t have worked, logistically, for her to come to Francis’ game. But we were going to come up to Addison’s and get there sometime during the first half. The first time I suggested it, she said something like “You can come, but I won’t really be able to spend much time with you. I’ll probably be up in the corner cheering with Julie.”

Families sit together and cheer together at soccer games.

Then, 5 minutes before the game was to start, when we were already en route, she left me a voicemail saying, “Maybe it would be best for your kids to just go home after Francis’ game – they might be cranky if the had to watch some more soccer.” Truth is, she had no idea what kind of mood they were in. As it turns out, they were in pretty good spirits and were well behaved all day, for the most part. She assumed they’d be distracting brats.

Families at least try to be together when the opportunity presents itself.

Robin started talking about marriage *very* early on in our relationship. Making half-serious jokes about it 11 days into dating. I had my doubts for a long time. All through my doubts, she was tenacious. Unwavering in her drive for us to move forward. Now I’ve worked through my doubts about marriage in general and about her in specific and have decided I will spend my future with her, loving the positive sides and accepting the negative. Funny that now she’s the one who is having earth-shaking ambivalence. Funny that her match profile said, “I need someone who is not afraid to commit.” Perhaps a bit of a case of “Be careful what you wish for, you may actually get it.”

A big part of her difficulty is the fact that she’s leaving her mom behind. She lives around the corner from her and spends time with her daily. Her younger son, Johnson, spends time with his grandma daily as well. This is a hard, hard thing for her. I understand this. This is one of the big reasons I wanted her to have more ambivalence earlier on. I think she was being a bit naive about how much was at stake. By postponing working through some of these feelings, she’s dragging the rest of us into it too now.

What I’m asking for in a mate is a steady companion, a commitment to helping me raise my kids well and help with the burden of running a home. What I offer in return is a genuinely good heart, a generally positive spirit, a guy who can talk about feelings, and financial security. Right now, I feel like Robin wants to have her cake and eat it too. She wants a good man and financial security, but doesn’t want the kid part. Her mood was pretty low all spring and has been so a good part of late summer and early fall now as well. So the steady companion is not going so great. Haven’t seen the old Robin in a while. The running a home remains to be seen. Tidy is not the strong suit for either of us. Perhaps working together, our space will be in better shape than either is alone.

So, as you know, I’ve asked her to marry me. Since I’ve done so, I’m not so sure that was a good idea. I do want to marry her. But only if she’s on board 100%. And she clearly is not.

I mentioned Imago theory in my last post. The idea is:

• We marry someone who is an Imago match, that is, someone who matches up with the composite image of our primary caretakers. This is important because we marry for the purpose of healing and finishing the unfinished business of childhood. Since our parents are the ones who wounded us, it is only they who can heal us. Not them literally, but a primary love partner who matches their traits.

I don’t want this to be true. But I think that I probably is. Robin is definitely a composite of my mother and my stepmother. I’m tired of working. I don’t want to do this work. I just want to hang out with someone and enjoy them (and their kids, if any) and have them enjoy me and my kids. Maybe I should have learned to like the Indianapolis Colts or NASCAR or something that otherwise seems completely incompatible. I should have dated a few Republicans. My mom and stepmother are both commited liberals.

My mom is, admittedly, not much of a little kid parent. She “doesn’t do little kids”. And she really didn’t when my brother and I were little either. She was a pretty good parent of us as pre-teen and teenagers. And a great parent as an adult. My stepmom is a terrible parent. Period. Never showed any affection. Is a very damaged person that everyone in my extended family has great dislike for. And I so needed the love and affection of a mother at 9 years old.

Sometimes I feel like one of those monkeys in a Harry Harlow experiment that they took away from its mother and gave it a wire model instead. Can I avoid this for my kids? Am I so broken that it’s impossible to discern? This is one of the things that gave me comfort with Frances. She was good with little kids. I knew my kids’ formative years would be ok. Sure could use a bit of that comforting feeling right now.

Late Binding

You know, in the cartoons, when Wile E. Coyote is running at full speed and all of a sudden, the cliff edge passes and he’s just floating there, suspended in mid-air? I’m kind of in that place right now. I’ve never been much for taking leaps of faith. I’m pretty rational and have always relied on the terra firma of science and reason. It’s the laws of physics that allow me to sleep at night. Avogadro’s number is my pillow. So jumping off of a cliff, while it may offer a momentary sweet taste of real freedom before you fall, seems to be too salty of a brine in which to marinade once gravity exacts its toll.

I started writing in earnest during the fall of 2006 to give shape to my grief. To mourn publicly. Perhaps more importantly, to have an audience so that I could hold myself accountable for every word choice. So that, by trying to say what I mean, I have to first distill what it is that I mean. I still like that constraint. Now there is more at stake. Another (living) heart to which I have become inextricably bound. And hearts are good for what they do. Beating on, day after day. But they’re made of muscle and they’re only the size of a fist. If only they were pilings of concrete or steel. But then they’d be poorly constructed to push blood through our arteries and veins. If only they were made of the steam coming off a pot of boiling lentils, disinclined to be so fixed in our chests.

I write here now because hearts are only made of muscle.

I also started writing in the fall of 2006 so that my babies might have some sense of who I am beyond cook, chauffeur, rule-maker, laundry-maid, homework-checker, story-reader, tucker-inner, cheek-kisser, soccer-cheerer, and band-aid-fetcher. Frances left more than some, but far less than they’ll want when they get to the point in life where they have to know more. My other blog and this one will give them some sense, perhaps, of some of my other hues once my sun is set.

There are plenty of mornings I still wake up and feel married to Frances. Most mornings. I never left her. She never left me (except, perhaps, in the limited, physical plane). She and I invented normal. Nothing, NOTHING feels normal since she died. Some days are reasonable approximations of normal if I squint hard enough.

So here I am, floating above the canyon floor. If I keep running hard enough, maybe cartoon physics will get me across to the other cliff wall. Some days it feels like I can reach out and graze the far edge with my fingernails. Other days, I can already feel myself plummeting toward the canyon floor.

What I found myself dwelling on today is this question: “What truly binds Robin and I?” Frances and I had our college times together, mutual friends and concerts and studying and history. We had 5 years of relatively low pressure to court, live together, slowly form into complementary shapes. We brought velveteen satchels of dreams to our own private commons and matched them up, walking away with a set that would fuel us far into our shared future. Now our future is our past. Except that some of our matched up dreams included having a family and those matched up dreams manifested themselves in the bodies and spirits of our three babies. And so our dreams live on in them. In that sense, Frances and I are still bound. We’re still married and will always be. When seas got choppy, it was, at the very least, our kids that provided the reason to find a way through. And they always did. And we always did.

So what’s going to bind Robin and I? We don’t have kids together and never will. What’s going to keep me committed when our seas get rough? What’s going to make me turn away when some shiny new person comes along?

What’s going to keep her bound to me in tough times? With no assets and 5 years working just above minimum wage (doing work she enjoyed), there’s a financial imbalance. It would be a dramatic step down in standard of living if she were to leave. That’s an imbalance I wish we didn’t have.

So what’s going to keep us together? I truly love her. She truly loves me. This is undeniable. There’s an inexplicable pull that keeps me oriented toward her. Imago? I’ve only done this once before, under very different circumstances, so I hope love is enough. It’s just so hard sometimes for me to raise my sails sometimes when I feel like I’m still at the helm of another ship, ghost or otherwise.

“Sometimes you just close your eyes and jump
You don’t think too long or maybe you just won’t
Sometimes you follow your heart
You don’t analyze too long
Or maybe it might just be gone”
-Carrie Newcomer, “A Whole Lot of Hope/Another Thunder”