PB & J

“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate.”

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Yesterday, I sat down with this idea for a blog post to work through my past weekend. I wanted to talk about places where I have been letting fear and exhaustion kind of drive things. I was trying to write about this contrary feeling of not actually being afraid anymore, but still making choices driven that way. I wanted to talk about how avoiding problems is a solution, but one that sits awkwardly. I wrote:

Which is not really new, but I had things stirred up this weekend. In a weird way three different areas where I avoid things lately, intersected with small signs. The universe was pushing gently and writing it out helps me kind of clear up things. Yet, this post took a weird turn, but I think an important one. I ended up writing about peanut butter and jelly. It wasn’t the clarity I thought I was trying to find, but writing stories is like that.

We had a weekend. In broad strokes: My Ex, although not verified, recently hit a milestone of moving from a hardship license to a full one. A milestone that means he now legally would be able to drive after 7PM. This moves us to a provision in our parenting time agreement where he can see her once a week after school instead of a day visit one Saturday a month. Which is different and more work on his part with a whole set of challenges and logistical decisions to work out. These are the same challenges and logistical decisions that existed when we made the agreement two years ago. These are the same changes he asked for and wanted two years ago. He wants something different now. Historically, this is how it always is. M’s Dad envisions things one way, makes agreements, and a short time later wants something else. I think he should figure out how to make the original plan work. The same situation challenges– distance, challenge, jobs, relationships– existed then as now. I think it’s what’s fair to us as each parent and what would be better for our kid. He thinks the change, his milestone of being able to visit later, is unfair now and I’m selfish to want him to commit to it. As such we have a conflict.

Miss M, although she does not realize the extent of it, has been walking a long road with her Dad. The place where things are now is the best I think she’ll ever have. She’s gone from visitations where she was returned with a mystery gash is her head, to no visitation due to a restraining order, to supervised visits, to day visits, to single overnights and then back to no visits when he drank too much and passed out her a few summers ago. We’re now at the point where she sees him regularly, he pays child support, and he takes her on family vacations. Things are as good as they will ever be for her.

Listen, I probably should have know at 21 that secretly eloping in Las Vegas and just not telling anyone was never bound for whirlwind romantic tales, but instead disaster. Except I had little life experience. I had a life with little trouble, I didn’t know all the pain the world held. My marriage and divorce was an education and it is hard not to be grateful for it.

This weekend he kind of burrowed into new ground. I don’t understand it, but I can’t say I ever thought he was really above it. Friday night shortly after he picked up our ten year old for a visit, texts start to come about a later pick up on Sunday. It is a demand and one I can’t accommodate. I remind him she has drama practice that night. He answers, “Probably not going to make it,”

My phone dings. This time it is our ten year old, “Mom can you pick me up at three and just do the Saturday visit.” I still haven’t found the word for how I feel about this twist, but I know it wasn’t shock. Nor anger. Nor brokenness. I took a beat and realized now I have to teach her how to handle these moments with him too. Not just how not say no to an adult and decide if something is safe, but how to have an internal barometer for these type of things. That’s harder. That’s daunting. That’s parenting her actual life and it makes me a little sad that her life isn’t a little different.

A few texts. Same message to both: I’ll be there to pick up at the usual time. Regardless of it all– I will be there like always.

“Dad says you said I am going home at six.” “Dad said I will not be ready at six.” “Dad I will not be ready and that is a fact.” “I am not getting in the middle.” “Please help me.”

Here is the thing: Dad says a lot of things and not much in life is ever his responsibility or fault. Her Dad was an addict the first years of her life. Not just one thing, but many: alcohol, cocaine, gambling. I’ll never have proof but there most likely was a fair amount of infidelity. I was just dumb to believe the half ass excuses he gave when I used to catch him in lies. Who’s this naked woman sending you an email? What is this little glass pipe in your pocket? I got up at 2am and you weren’t home? At the end of our marriage, before M was a thing, I found out he stopped paying the mortgage. He had opened credit cards without my knowledge in my name and used them for cash advances. We had borrowed money from his Dad. I never knew. He had emptied his 401K. Our cars we repossessed. Our cable, phone, electric and gas were shut off far too often. It was a disaster, but I figured other people had done this and fixed it– I can figure it out. Lots of people were underwater with their homes. I thought, “We must really have a love story. After all this struggle, we’ll have earned such a great life together.” I roll my own eyes thinking about it now. Time and space between the me then and the one who’s here now.

The timeline is a little wishy washy. Somewhere in the the middle of the above, he got into a car accident, ended up out on leave, and there were pain meds. Eventually, he never went back to work. There was depression and no showers, never ending gambling where he chased payouts to fix our mess, lots of drugs, and apparently driving hookers around in my car to pay for the drugs. Drug dealers began parking on my street, I sat on the kitchen floor, holding onto his pants leg, “Just don’t go. Just stay. Choose this and we can fix it. You just have to stay. ” He left every time. Nothing felt safe. Eventually, I slept out at friends houses. Came home for the dogs when he wasn’t home or crept in when he was sleeping. I know I would look around my house like I had been someone who broke in looking to see if he was still alive and being relieved and sad at the same time that he was. Eventually, one night, I came in after work. I took care of the dogs, checked the house for him– alive or not– and he was in bed eating peanut butter and jelly with no bread. Just out of the jars. He hadn’t showered. There was trash and dirty clothes and all things that one might envision with the word hovel. He was eating with a knife. Now here’s where my memory of this moment 12 years ago is tricky– I can’t recall if it was a sharp knife or a butter knife. Either way: we argued.

I begged him to shower. To clean himself up. To get help. He told me to get out or he’d kill himself. I was in the doorway. I decided it was a good time to take a stand. He hurled the peanut butter container at me. I ducked. It hit the wall and shattered into gooey mess. I tried again to reason with him. I had worked with volatile kids and so a little violence didn’t rattle me. I stayed calm. He threw the jelly jar. I ducked again. It shattered against the wall. My mom had bought it for me the last time I visited. She’d been packing groceries like she knew things weren’t right. He held the knife up to himself and suddenly it seems sharper. I wasn’t sure what to do. There was lights on, but for how long. He was yelling. He said I had to leave or he would kill himself. I didn’t want to go- I was scared he would hurt himself. I had been scared he would overdose, or get murdered, or kill himself for months. And then, the thing I never said, my Ex started to get up clutching the knife. My fear shifted. I suddenly was scared for myself. I left.

I called his brother in Arizona. I was so worried about making things worse that I couldn’t decide what to do. I was afraid to go home. I was afraid of what would happen if I had the police come. I was afraid all together. His brother called the police for a wellness check because I didn’t. I was crying in my car at my office parking lot when the police called. They needed me to come home. He had barricaded himself in the house and threatening to unleash the dogs if the officers enter the house. I drove home on autopilot. This was new ground. When I got there, my Ex was in cuffs on the hood of a cruiser. We had three or four police cars in front of the house. I felt exposed. Embarrassed. Lost. The dogs were barking hysterically. The neighbors were out.

He had run into the woods through the side basement door. They didn’t arrest him , but an ambulance came and took him to local hospital. He kept yelling, “Lori, they are hitting me. Why are you letting them do this to me? Why are you doing this to me? They are hurting me?” It was hard to muster any thought at all, but all I could think was stop being an asshole. I tried to calm down to ask questions. I don’t remember much except they asked me to take care of my dogs. He was committed for weeks and finally for the first time in a long time went through withdrawal and was sober.

I had good friends. I’m not close now to many of them, but I had really good friends who loved me through it. They fed me, they commiserated with me, waded through bills, sat my ass down until I called the mortgage company and worked out payments. My friends who had harder lives than me, well, they raised me. Their hard lives had taught them and they in turn taught me and I was a willing student.

Some things you can’t exactly be taught though. You have to live them. They couldn’t teach me how to abandon my husband. They couldn’t teach me how to tell which of the many things he said were the lies. I, for whatever reason, drive him home from the hospital. I did even though I said I wasn’t sure it was safe. He asked to go to McDonalds. I had ten dollars maybe. He put his hand on the shifter and demanded McDonalds or he would crash the car. It wasn’t just him not being sober and fighting addiction. That guy was clean and clear minded and still unsafe. He hadn’t figured out what to do with his pain. He– to this day– spreads his disappointment in life and wields his anger and makes it like it entitles him to things over other people.

But here is the thing: We all got our shit. My pile is from him. I figured out how to make it do good things.

The funny thing is: Our baby still came even after all that. She was, even then, a thing he did to try to manipulate me into staying. Instead it was the thing that made me leave most of all. I had to choose her life or his. I finally knew exactly what the right thing to do was.

Now, my Ex, is human. He is so very funny. He is very proud to speak grammatically correct and takes it as a token of his intelligence. He can fix a few things. He is a great conversationalist and successful at sales. He does feel regret and remorse, but you’ll never get an apology. Yet, her dad is also just a mean cuss of a person who never dealt with his own pain in life. That’s her Dad. Good and bad.

So this weekend was full of: “Mom. Mom. I’m scared.” “Dad says you are trying to hurt him through me” “Dad says he hopes you turn up on Sunday at 3 with kids and he calls the cops on you and makes your life miserable.” Combines with books from him saying things like, “Your daughter is very upset because I just explained t her how selfish and vindictive her mother is. I was honest with her, try it sometime.”

His time and relationship with M became a tactic. I fucking hate it and I am disappointed. I had thought he might not cross that line. But here we are. Yet, like all things, it is a gift too.

I was kept in so many ways. Not all cages have fences you can see. He never hit me. He never called me names that would seem abusive. He never even directly threatened me until the divorce started. It was all that gray area outside the classroom behaviors they teach you to watch out for in high school. It was subtle and builds and you find yourself so deep in it you don’t know what would happen if you ever made it out. My life is so fricken good now. It really is. It isn’t always easy and I have headaches, but I love the whole thing– problems and all.

Yet, from the day he came home and put his hand on my shifter, I learned some days our kid won’t be safe with him. Some days he needs someone to make him feel safe from his life. I have managed a lot of it through a stack of court agreements. Our file is thick and heavy. Then, because there is a plan in life bigger than mine, M was made for her life in ways that left her anything but helpless. I just have to let her be herself most days. Yet, somehow, this weekend illustrated I missed something. I haven’t taught her how to manage crumbs of doubt. He’s good at those. At making a situation seem desperate when it is just not. At making you look at things emotionally even though it might lack sense. She handled things really well for being ten.

So now, I know I have to teach her how to look at things with clearer eyes than her runaway emotions of guilt and fear and shame. She’ll know more about some things at age ten than I knew when I was 21. She’ll know at least how to avoid being not kept. Not trapped. Not blind. I can teach her how to recite facts like a rosary. How his– or anyone’s truth– should be verified before she buys into it. I can make sure she knows she doesn’t need to worry or fear about what anyone will do. You can’t make people do the right thing. You just prepare for the different scenarios. There are worse things than disappointment and coping with it is a great skill. And while we glossed over it, I think I need to have that hard conversation: she doesn’t have a Dad that makes her feel safe all the time and that’s why she has to really appreciate the times things fall together in a good way. And that she knows enough that she can keep herself safe. Even if its not suppose to be that way, well, that is how it is.

I was thinking a lot today about broken peanut butter and jelly jars. I hadn’t meant to even touch that piece of history. Yet, in the shards of this weekend, I realized she should know she never have to duck. Let alone having to duck twice. My hope is she’ll never even have to lean in such a doorway. She’ll already be educated to know better.