Changes are taking the pace I'm going through

I know I keep saying this but this time is one step closer to success. I am going to change my blog. I have to do it.

Ugh. But change is so hard.

It's funny though, when everything that is happening is somehow exactly what we want or uncomplicated or easy or positive, we sing praises to change. Dance on tables and pop open champagne and embrace change. If it requires work, it scares us. We piss and moan and resist. Or at least I do. And in my defense, the last three years have been horrendously hard and mind blowing and a seeming torrential shitstorm.

But the sun does peek through those clouds. I may be don't share the good as much as I should. I have two terrific kids, a fantastic circle of friends and family. For all the unpleasantness of the past three years, I have grown. Maybe it doesn't always show, but I have and I know it and in some regards I can see how all of it fits together. Other times though, everything seems like a huge, hazy, jumbled, disambiguation of a mishmash of a tangle. Neither is 100% true.

I am not content with who I am right now because I know that I have so much more potential than I exude. The problem at the moment is that I don't know how to break free from the fear and doubt that keep me in chains. I know that I am playing small. So much fear. So much doubt.

One of the things that I am most grateful about that stemmed from the disintegration of my marriage is the opportunity to reconnect and make amends with old friends and the influx of wonderful new people in my life. I could write a weeks worth of material about that and why it happened but not this week. I am a work in progress and I have certainly been shown grace. And right now friends, I am sitting in a strange place of a bestie calling me on my bs and me actually taking it to heart.

Such a strange space I am in.

If I could just get over myself, I am sure that everything would be okay. Life happens outside your comfort zone. At least, that's what people keep telling me and with the looming possibility of Hell freezing over I am inclined to agree. I thought the final ruling on the divorce would bring peace but several days later I can see how it had to be the harbinger of taking corners on two wheels and letting go of everything that no longer serves my unfolding good. I just got broke free from a cycle that was killing me. I don't think I have been this fully confused and cocksure in 20 years. The good news is I am better judge of who needs to be on my team and which bridges to set fire to and which ones need serious repair and the fact that nothing and everything is as wonderful as I think it is.

Bowie was right...

Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time


And I am okay with that because as my children have been apt to tell me, time is a human construct. Everything unfolds as it is supposed to and in the time it should. If I could get control of my kicking and screaming and reconnect with the lady who raised children who say shit like that, I just might get somewhere fantastically wonderful.

Here I go Playin' star again There I go Turn the page

So, my divorce was final yesterday.

Super digressing except to my inner sanctum, League of Justice friends.

This has been going on 2 1/2 years. I was super unprepared for how this was all going to hit me.

I nominate Bob Seger to speak on my behalf.

Super Perfundo on the Early Eve of My Divorce

I have court tomorrow.

I don't know why the man who screamed at me to just fucking sign the papers and move on pushed the process this far. To be fair, there never were any papers. He screamed and fussed and kicked and moaned for like six months about this but would never produce the papers. Then, one day, his mistress paid for him to file for divorce. She's a real unmensch, I hope you never have the misfortune to meet her. I did once it was the worst 30 seconds of my life but I digress.

It's been nearly three years since all of this started. Once it started so to speak, it just got worse. Hindsight is 20/20 and not worth digging up tonight but still all of this happened it's all a piece of my life I have had to deal with. I have learned a lot. About myself. About him. About what loyalty really looks like. About hope. About healing. About bass. Seriously. Music is my Prozac.

For what it's worth, I am still very much dealing with the struggle and guilt that is seeing and fully recognizing that mistakes were made and the full gravity of the situation that was our relationship. I would be lying if I said I didn't occasionally have a fanciful unicorn thought of some miraculous restoration. There are a lot of years and tears and hopes and cheers tied up in this one person. From my point of view, we were a like minded, passionately attracted, perfectly complimentary power couple of sorts. But it wasn't true. He had all the power and anything he gave me was an illusion conjured to serve his own self-centered destruction. (It's take me a longtime to admit that without crying.)

He is a textbook something. I won't say what lest his minion of ridiculously delusional mistress should be creeping here as she does. (Or maybe it's him. No matter.) He is a textbook something and it took me longer than most to see it because I was still useful to him so he wasn't showing his true face. I spent a long time and a lot of energy thinking I had finally found my "perfect" relationship (no such thing I know that but I don't know what other word to use). What I had found was a dirty, little, shape-shifting narcissist who honest to God would throw his own parents, his family, his wife, his children under the bus to serve his own needs. In hindsight, I can see how he became whoever to suit whatever, how the man I loved was merely an illusion and subject to change when something more codependent and gullible came along.

But whatever.

For the love of God, please no one hold their breath in anticipation about announcement about the final outcome of tomorrow's court date. I do not know CPR and I am have an intuitive sense that folie a deux that is my husband and his mistress plans a full three-ring circus complete with an outdoor carnival. Come one, come all, free pony rides for the kids, this decade only. It may seem glib but um, we aren't the A-list celebrities. There's no beach house. No offshore account to fight over. No squabbling over a multitude of shares of well performing stock. The only issues are custody and support and as expected, he pulled the unfit mother card.

In case you aren't exactly aware of what that it is, it is a card low-life degenerates pull when they have no legitimate argument available against their looming support payments. I have jumped, jumped so much when he has asked me to I seriously considered changing my name to Kriss Kross. I have rolled with every punch and misfire that he has aimed my direction. Then one day, he ran out of delay tactics and the court put formal orders in place. BOOM. We went from having a rough agreement in place to him pushing the divorce to trial. Getting formal orders pushed things from me and our son from being at his mercy in regards to the informal agreement where he wouldn't pay the utilities and admitted to purposely withholding the cash portion because he didn't "owe me shit" or I was a "loser who was just using him". McFly, McFly, none of that was about me and what you were paying is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less than what you should have been, but I am sure you have noticed that. Bet you kinda wish you had played nicer now, huh? But no, you chose to fight the double-digit percentage of your income that now deposits to my account but deciding after walking out, walking away. giving up, etcetra that you want custody because I am not fit to parent.

Not my first rodeo, this is exactly what my daughter's father said in court nearly 20 years ago. He threw out a million and two reasons that he shouldn't pay child support because I apparently made Joan Crawford look like Mary Poppins. He lost. He never paid much of any thing but he lost nonetheless.

It's not about the Benjamins. It's not at all, in any way, shape, or form about the Benjamins. It's so insulting that dudes have this mindset. Anyway. So, tomorrow, once again I get to face the gauntlet of lies that is discrediting the mother so one does not have to pay support. Not even worried. Not at all. Nothing in their arsenal even pertains to my parenting so yeah whatever. I have two wonderful kids who love me. They may not always agree with me or understand me and God knows I am not always the perfect parent but somewhere in all of that they know that I love them and that I do my best to help them to grow into the adults that they are destined to be.

It is what it is and it's all that it will ever be. I hold onto the good. I release all the bad. I give up trying to rationalize with the irrational. For all the darkness that my soul has seen in all this, I have at least recovered, and I can be thankful that my dark was never the abysmal sort of self-hatred that manifest the way it does in men who cheat and the women who think what they have with them is love. So my friends, super perfundo on the eve of my divorce, here's to getting on with life and enjoying the good and the bad with people who genuinely love me...and my kids.

I have court tomorrow. It's all good because I know it's all in God's hands and He didn't bring me this far to not show up and show out. The best is truly yet to come.

There was a verse that I was gonna write I haven't yet but there's still a chance I might

I felt ever so much more together at 14 than I do now at 40. I had it all together then. Okay, maybe not really but it seems recently that I am far more awkward and unsure now than I was then. I am in a bit of tailspin and I don't know how to correct course.

It's making me a bit difficult to deal with, I suppose. I have this whole midlife crisis, crisis of faith, shadow of fear, flood of disappointment, angst-ridden, I don't know what going on with me right now. I hear it gets better but I am honestly not sure. Not sure about that...or anything else for that matter.

Sigh.

A good friend of mine said that all this is just part of the healing process. She said that she thinks because I was so accepting of it all in the beginning and that because I vowed that I was going to stay positive that maybe I didn't fully process my anger and disappointment and it has now just all bubbled up to the surface because nothing is how I thought it would be at this point. I suppose there is something to all of that.

And that being said, it gives me an opportunity to explain my crisis of faith and why am I am where I am with all of that. A lot lately I am hearing that I need to lean in, pray, trust and what ruffles me there is that I want to scream at these people "WTF do you think I have been doing?!"  Then, we get into the whole "God's timing" conversation and a landslide of Bible verses to reinforce how wrong I am about things. And next thing you I have alienated friends and family because quite frankly the trip is turning out to be nothing like the brochure. NOTHING. I have been in such a dark place that I actually started reading the Book of Discipline the other night to see if there is a point where my very vocal disappointment and despair would be cause to revoke my membership. Turns out it all kind of falls under the category of me working out my own salvation with my own fear and trembling which is probably good for me in the long run but right now it's a little bit of a disappointment because being kicked out of church would totally fit in with the rest of the shitstorm around me.

Sigh.

Don't get me wrong. Life is not bad. I have a lot going for me but it doesn't feel like this is where I am supposed to be and it certainly isn't where I used to be. That's hard some days but on the other side of the token I can totally see where I needed to see what I am seeing and experiencing. One day I am going to write about post about my shower and how hard water makes it look like I don't wash my hair. I am also going to write about how keenly aware I have become washing laundry as a luxury item. It's the discontent of disconnect that has me so completely off-kilter.

Life is not at all bad. I am doing well in a lot of ways. My kids are great. My friends and family, wonderful as ever. It's that verse I was gonna write. I think it haunts me. Writing has always been my outlet, my talent, my thing. Before all of this shook loose with my marriage and whatnot, I had been seriously outlining and business planning, trying to get myself on track to do more. I haven't yet. My life falling apart has been a bit of a distraction. I can't even focus my energies to write grocery list some days lately. The disconnect is within me. I have always put off what fed my soul in the name of pragmatism and practicality. I am truly my own worst enemy.

Past couple days, I have started to see how this whole midlife crisis, crisis of faith, shadow of fear, flood of disappointment, angst-ridden, I don't know what going on with me right now insanity has reconnected me with myself. I have been slowly admitting to myself and a few select others my truths and my misperceptions of others. Making friends with my powerlessness and buddying up with all my flaws. I am seeing now how different life would be had I got my way at each and every turn. No joke I have lived, laughed and love more in the three months since I moved than I had in the time since my husband left. I have also kicked, screamed and cussed but that's to be expected. This is not an easy time and mine is complicated by the egos and delusions of people I have no influence on. It is what it is and I really mean that this time.

While kicking and screaming and brooding and crying, the living, laughing and loving didn't stop. I have been an absolute black hole of delight and I have been surrounded by absolute angels of grace and mercy. I still have some kinks to work out and some chapters that need closed. I have become more fully aware of the parts of me that need healing and let go of my idea of how this is all gonna play out. After all, it is God's plan, and as point of clarification, I have never once during this recent storm said I didn't believe. So yeah, God's plan, not Jenny's plan and I'd be an absolute liar if I didn't admit just a tad that I am seeing evidence of the way He works things for the good. There's an entire novel to be written there.And still those verses, of course.

I haven't yet.

There's still a change I might.

I'll start today because someday has a funny way of slipping past and withering into regret.

And life's too short and too precious to squander it on speculation.