Oh Why, Oh Why Can't I?

So despite my economic difficulties I decide to keep my word about going to Lil Sis's wedding on the other side of the country. I guess it wasn't really a promise as much as with was ... fanciful dreaming. I mean I had two criteria that had to happen to allow me to go, which were semi arbitrary. But when both of those things are nearly entirely out of your control it's hard to argue with when it happens. Call it fate. Call it my stupidity. Call it buying happiness. Either way ... I'm going.

Now I need to figure out how to do this. If I'm going to this, I'm doing this all out. I contact Sister #3 and tell her the vague outline of my plan to sneak across the country. I'm going to surprise her. And by her I mean the Librarian ... and her daughter, Dino ...  and while we're at it also her Lil' Sis. I just need a place to stay for two nights and some addresses of some sort to plug into my GPS when I get there. 

For the next month and a half I'm so slick. I act jealous that I'm not going. I make the Librarian promise to take lots of pictures for me, but accidentally forget to loan her my camera. Which means I wind up delivering it my co-conspirator, Sister #3 who lives only few miles from me, it's an easy and logical solution given this is a long distance relationship. It also lets me finalize all the travel plans.

The week prior to the wedding I work nine hour days letting me leave work four hours early on Friday. I drive an hour and half to the airport. The whole way I daydream how this is going to play out. I told myself "if I'm doing this, I'm going to do this all out" but what exactly does that mean? I haven't yet said that scary four letter "L" word to her. I can't imagine a better setup to do so though ... flying cross country to spent a weekend with her.

I get to the airport plenty early. The nightmare TSA stories are not reality, in this case anyway. So I have an hour to kill. I still at the terminal and ponder the ways it might play out some more. If I was doing this for my ex-wife she'd scream at me for wasting the money. still hearing her voice in my head. I convince myself this is not going to go down like that. 

I ponder chickening out and not telling her how I feel about her. Why risk a perfect weekend for that? I know she's not where I am. I've known from the beginning I'd wind up getting hurt by her. Will this be too much? Maybe I should just go home and forget about it. What's low self esteem and what's ligitimate worries?

I pop my ear buds in, plug them into my iPhone and put the playlist on shuffle. The sky begins to darken and I wonder if the flight will be delayed by rain. 

Suddenly the clouds let loose and it's pouring rain. As if on cue, a cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by Israel Kamakawiwo'loe begins to play. It's a beautiful Hawaiian take on the song, and anyone who knows me, knows I'm obsessed with cover songs.The rain lets up just as quickly, as it started leaving behind the biggest and brightest double rainbow I've ever seen. The lady sitting across from me points it out to me, so I'm sure I'm not dreaming. The song fades in perfect sync with the rainbows. If it happened in a movie I'd say it was unbelievable. But it just happened to me. It's the most perfect moment in my entire life. 

Yeah, I'm doing this. I decide to push all in. I board the plane and head off ... somewhere over the rainbow.

The time zone thing throws me off. I'm not exactly sure what time it is when I arrive at the cabin we're staying in. The flight was about four hours and I drove the rental car another hour and a half. Sister #3 greets me at the door. I'm exhausted. It's sometime in the dead of night, which actually is perfect. The Librarian has a habit of waking up around this time for about an hour, so no need to wake her. I haven't eaten since noon so I attack some left overs, about three bites in, she appears. "I thought you were up to something, I just didn't know what!" I'm exhausted and very out of it, but so glad to see her. We go to bed soon after. It's a big day tomorrow, wedding and all. We crash on the foldout couch and sleep for a few hours. 

In the morning her daughter wakes up, and as she emerges blurry eyed from the bedroom her mother asks "Guess who's here?" I'm tackled with a hug."Down Dino! Down! I'm glad to see you too."

Soon after the Bride-To-Be stops by. I hide in the bedroom until she asks "Who's car is out front?"  Lil' Sis squeals when she sees me. We hug and she exclaims "You're my oldest friend here!" I hadn't really thought of that. I mean I knew she moved cross country several years earlier, but who if anyone from before that relocation would be there hadn't even occurred to me.

At every wedding I've been involved with, including my own there's always been one guy, usually the boyfriend of one of the bridesmaids who winds up running around all day, doing every kind of errand and chore to make those last little details come together. 

I drive the girls to the hairdressers, I make a StarBucks run. I pick up and deliver the wedding cake. I get forgotten make-up from the bride's house. I get pizzas so the bridal party can eat lunch. I setup decorations. I do whatever anyone asks of me. I keep Dino the precocious six year old entertained. This time, I'm that guy. And I couldn't be happier.

About fifteen minutes before the wedding is to start I finally change into my nice clothes, only to realize in all my efforts to do everything for everyone else, I forgot my own shoes back at the cabin. Plaid deck shoes with no socks in nice suit will have to do. Hopefully no one will notice. Right about then I meet the the Librarian's mother, a local, for the first time. She notices the shoes. 

The reception is held at a Library, I wonder whose idea that was. I'm in charge of moving decorations from the ceremony to the reception. I'm stressing out, not because of that, but because I need to find that perfect moment to say "it." Those scary three words. I've all but talked myself out of saying it again when I enter the reception hall and the song playing ... that same damn cover of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." 

Okay, I get it. I'm not chickening out. As the sun goes down, I drag the Librarian up to the roof, we watch the sun go down behind a mountain. "How many times have you watched the sunset like this?" "Never" she replies, "But now it's getting cold, and my shoes are downstairs." She heads in. I think I may have just missed the moment.

The next morning we take the two hour whirlwind tour of town. See some sights, take some pictures, and by 1 pm, its time for me to head to the airport, my heart is beating out of my chest. We're saying our goodbyes and her daughter is dancing around us, pulling on her mother's arm and literally pushing herself in between us. Finally I can't wait any longer or I'll miss my flight. I kiss her cheek and whisper in her ear ..."I Love You" then dash for the car.

On the flight home I'm feeling pretty good about myself. I was "that guy" at the wedding. Damn near perfect weekend ... except for the shoes. It feels really, really good to be "that guy." The thing I forgot about "that guy" at the wedding, is they never seem to around very long afterwards.

I saw her once more after that before she ended it.

This is my life now.

If You Try Sometimes

Even before we were dating the Librarian was trying to get me to go to her Lil' Sister's wedding with her ... on the other side of the country. After about the twentieth time she asked me I finally told her how much I'd love to go and see Lil' Sis again, but that the only way I would be able to afford to go was if I got a better better job and someone dropped a lot of money in my lap randomly before September first. It's a pipe dream, but it's what I got.

One weekend the Librarian and I take her girl, Dino, to an amusement park, with her family. While we waited for the kids to finish riding a carousel, the Librarian and her sister, Sister #3 are sitting on a nearby bench and I can tell by the frequent glances my way, they're talking about me. Since the sideways glances my way are accompanied by sideways smiles, I'm assuming I have nothing to worry about. After their chat, I cozy on up to my gal and ask "So what were you saying about me?"

"Oh nothing much," she replied "My sister just wanted to know about you." "Yeah, and what did you tell her?" I asked. "That you're a great guy and that you're working in a cookie factory ... but that you're so much better than that."

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't lie to your sist ... wait a minute. You really think that don't you? What hell is wrong from with you?!? I'm crap and and this seems to be more than I deserve, and you think I'm better than all this? Coming from ... but from you, saying it with no intent of me hearing it, I believe it ... almost. What the hell is wrong with me? This is the result of being with someone for twelve years who spent every breath, every ounce of her energy putting me down and making me feel bad about myself. Making me doubt every decision I made, including the ones I made about the kids. Especially the one about the kids. I was so afraid to have fun, clean, cook, hell even do things with my kids for fear of being yelled at by her. I'm still afraid. I still constantly hear her voice, yelling at me, before I even decide do anything ... everything, even now, a full year and a half after she moved out.

I adore the Librarian's daughter. I play with her, I entertain her while her mother does her school work. I put her to bed. We read stories. One bed time story I read to her often talks about planting a seashell in the garden to watch it grow. So one week I bring a flower pot filled with dirt and a seashell. We plant the seashell in the pot, just to see if it'll grow. What she doesn't know though is that prior to all this I put in seed to a "money plant" in the dirt. It gets it's name from the fact it has large coin like seed pods. Could also be mistaken for sea shells by a wonder eyed six year old. I do "dad" things with her, which makes me feel guilty because I don't do those things with my kids.

At the same time however, it's also letting me finally do those things with my kids. It's like a practice run with this child, before I do it for real with my own. I don't hear that yelling in my head playing with her girl, so I don't hear how I'm doing it wrong. Then I can do it all over again with my kids, and know there's not going to be yelling because I've proved to that voice inside my head that I can do it. I had been with someone who didn't trust me to do anything, now I'm not only seeing someone who not only appears to think I'm not a complete fucking idiot, but actually treats me like a human being with feelings and even more amazing, she trusts me with the care of her offspring.

Fuck, now there's expectations and stuff. She believes in me, or at least doesn't expect the worst out of me. I suppose I should try to not let her down. I am, well not content, at the cookie factory but ... satisfied in not being in a state of total free fall. I'm not really out of the woods though am I? Maybe if I was getting forty hours a week, but I can't seem to get more than thirty-two, and I never know more than eighteen hours ahead of time if I have to work or not. It's more of a slow bleed than a free fall now. I've cashed out my 401k to stay afloat longer but I'm still spending money faster than I make it and that's just the house payment and other fixed expenses. I know I shouldn't be dating. It's too expensive.

Whoever said "money can't buy happiness" has never been this poor. So I start seriously looking for real work again. Something that I might actually use my degree for.

I apply for jobs here and there. I get an interview for a decent position about an hour away. Somewhere along the line though I get the interview time confused with the time I have to leave, a fact I don't realize until I'm pulling out of the driveway, an hour late. I pull back into the driveway, feeling like the fuck up my ex-wife treated me like.

I collapse onto the couch, trying to figure out how I'm going to own up to this to the one person who seems to have faith in me. I toss my phone on the couch, noticing the little speck of light indicating I have a voice mail. I check it and it's a vendor I worked with from my pre-layoff days asking me to come in and talk to them about helping them out. I have nothing better to do, and I'm already dressed for an interview, so why not?

An hour and a half later I have a real job again. Not a great job, but one I can put on my resume. It's three steps back on the career path I had been on pre-layoff, and the pay is just a crappy as at the cookie factory but at least I won't be mistaken for a Keebler Elf anymore, and full time with benefits.

It took me twenty minutes to pull out of the eight car parking lot because I was sobbing. Yeah, I screwed up, but I also managed to fix that mistake before I had a chance to disappoint her. It felt like a huge victory.

I get home from my first day of work. Grab my mail out of the mailbox. Bill, bill, junk ... Open the one official looking letter. It's an insurance check from when some distracted driver rear ended me months ago. I'd forgotten about it because the damage had been purely cosmetic. I check the date on the check ... August 30th. Well ... Logic be damned, I guess I'm going to the wedding.

This is my life now.

Walking On Broken Glass

So I'm still legally married but . . . I'm in a new relationship. Weird.

It's long distance, there's kids involved on both sides, and money is an issue. All reasons not to do this but the reality is my biggest hesitation about jumping into a relationship with this woman, is that her Lil' Sis is like a little sister to me. Nobody messes with Lil' Sis, and I'm pretty sure dating someone's sister behind their back, counts as messing with someone. "You have to tell your sister, if we're going to do this" I told the Librarian as the only condition to the relationship.

The bottom line is I feel like I have a life again for the first time in a long, long time. I feel like I have hope and a mission and that someone just gives a crap about me again. Sure, I still live alone, in the middle of nowhere, and I can't even see more than two neighbors houses from any point in my yard, but I'm not dismal. My life isn't on pause anymore.

Except that my ex-wife still torments me. I decide to apply for a position at our old employer. By "our old employer" I mean the one that I, my ex-wife and now my current girlfriend all worked for years. Good old Dining Services. It's not the same position I used to have, but I liked it there. Immediately after the open interview I pick up the kids, still dressed in my good interview clothes. She asks me why I'm dressed up and I tell her ... for some stupid reason.  I grab the kids and head home. By the time I get home I have two Facebook messages from mutual friends (including the Librarian because we're not exactly advertising this relationship, especially to my ex) telling me "I must have really done it now."

Apparently the ex is making bitchy Facebook posts because I have no right to apply for a job where she had been *thinking* about applying. Whatever. She never said anything, so how was I to know? I sure as hell don't want to work with her again. Her friends are apparently encouraging her to apply anyway because that's fucking smart. Sunday swapping kids again, I make some off handed comment that, while she claimed not to care that I applied there, she sure acted like it.

Deja Vu. I get home and I have a mess of angry messages from people. I piece together that apparently the ex-wife decided to dramatically and randomly unfriend thirty-two of our mutual friends. Including my girlfriend, so there was a plus side to that. I apologize to them for what I'm not quite sure. I always tell people you can tell who was right and who was wrong in a break up by who gets custody of the friends acquired during the relationship ... and she just handed over thirty-two of them to me. Some of them were her friends, long before they were shared friends. 

What kind of crazy bitch cuts ties with thirty-two people, only two of which told me anything? And really, the only one who did anything that was worth getting upset about was the woman I was dating? I'm convinced the entire reason I didn't get the job was because our mutual Facebook friends who still worked there didn't want to get dragged into all the drama. Can you blame them?

Things are going well with the Librarian. Often I grab my kids on the way to her place and we spend the weekend together, sometimes she comes to me. Sometimes my kids are there. Her daughter always is with us, as BioDad isn't around, by his stupid choice. Sometimes I feel guilty about spending more time with her child than my own and we skip a weekend. But for the most part we simply spend time together doing, for lack of a better word, family type things, taking the kids to Chuck E. Cheese, a beach or just lying in bed on Sunday morning reading books and playing with toys. In many ways it felt more like what I wanted a family to be, than it ever did with my ex-wife.

Then one day it happened. It was an ordinary day, we were doing ordinary things. The Librarian was doing her homework for her masters degree on her computer. Her daughter, Dino, and I were watching SpongeBob Squarepants. The light over the entryway flickers and goes out. I decided to do the manly thing and take charge of the home repairs. Yeah, I know not much of a repair, but still. I get a chair, climb up, take off the glass cover and replace the bulb. I then rejoined the girl on the couch watching cartoons.

Twenty minutes later the glass cover spontaneously falls shattering into a million pieces on the tile floor. SHIT! ... SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! I freeze. Every muscle in my body tenses up. My mind goes into defense mode and I wait for the barrage that's sure to come. The Librarian looks at me, sort of shrugs and says to me "Broom is in the closet" and motions vaguely to her right.

Uhm ... okay ... yeah. Broom. Dust Pan. I can do this. I sweep up the glass. I move everything and sweep again. I put it all back and sweep again. I sweep another two times even though I'm not finding anything because I'm so freaked out. I throw away the broken glass, put the broom away and slip upstairs without saying a word.

I collapse on her bed. What the hell just happened?!? I just legitimately made a fucking mistake and ... and ... nothing. She didn't yell. She didn't scream. The fallout didn't take three hours. The only thing that happened was I had to clean it up. Me. I ... cleaned it up. Unsupervised. Unverified. Unceremoniously. What was this?

Why didn't she yell at me?!? Doesn't she care about me at all!?! If she's not screaming at me then she must not care! Why doesn't she care?! I should have been yelled at for at least two hours for that. No, at least three. Three hours. Oh God? Why did I clean it up? I can't be responsible for that. What if it's good enough? She didn't even check to make sure I did it right. It's broken glass, someone's going to get hurt by the glass and it's going to be my fault. Oh God, what just happened here? She ... she ... doesn't care about me.

No ... No! No, no, no. She doesn't care ... that I accidentally broke a light. Accidents ... happen? She also then ... trusted me to fix my mistake? Is that what happened? I don't know what to do with this. Oh God. This is ... this is ... this is ... uh ... this is normal, isn't it? I don't ... Wait. Normal. What?!? Huh? This is how normal people react isn't it?

I'm sobbing uncontrollably now. Partially because all my defense reflexes kicked in and went unused, partially because I had this moment of panic because I feel like she didn't give a shit about me because she wasn't screaming and then finally ... because I realize exactly how fucked up that thinking is.

The floodgates have opened and I realize exactly how much I'd been lying to myself for the twelve years my wife and I were together. She treated me like shit. She yelled and screamed at me for everything.  She was so convinced that everything I did was part of some elaborate plot to make her miserable that she did nothing but yell at me. I got yelled at for cleaning the house because I didn't do it right. I got yelled at for bringing her flowers because they die and that's a waste of money. I got yelled at for neglecting the house and yard, and when I tended the house and yard I was yelled at for neglecting her and the kids. At the end I wasn't even eating any more because I was being berated for my cooking. I was told I was a selfish ass for deliberately making Ramen noodles too spicy for her to eat. Heat water, insert noodles, add packet. That's all I did. Nothing was ever right and nothing was ever good enough. 

I'd often ask her "What can I do to make you happy?" On a good day her answer was "Nothing." Most days the answer was "Don't fuck up to begin with." God forbid I ever actually really do something wrong like accidentally break a light.

That adds up over years. You slowly give up on things. First things that you enjoy, because you're trying to avoid the screaming and insults. When those things are gone, you start letting go of things you don't mind, to avoid the yelling and the put downs. Then when all you have left is things you hate, you find yourself clinging to them trying to hold onto something that doesn't incur wrath. The you wind up hating everything because everything you do reminds you of the yelling and insults. You lose track of what normal is, an miserable and happy are interchangeable.

I wander downstairs to talk to the Librarian. I sit against the wall beside her and tell her where I've been for the last hour. "So you were upset because ... I didn't yell at you?" she asks. "Yeah" "It was an accident right?" "Yeah" "Do you want me to yell at you?" I had to stop and think about it for a moment, "No?" "Okay, then there's no problem" and back to work she went. I don't even think I apologized. That's what I try to teach my kids. It doesn't matter if it was an accident or not, you apologize anyway.

I don't think she realized what a huge moment that was for me. I wasn't exactly free of the mental prison, but I think I was finally aware it was there, and the cell door was unlocked.  One that had been closed for a very long time. Damn, I'm pretty screwed up, aren't I?

This is my life now.

C Is For Cookie

The kids are now an hour away. Which means I can't see them whenever I want anymore. It's frustrating, but she wanted to be closer to her parents, so they could "help her out" more than I'm willing too.  I have the kids every other weekend and two nights during the week pretty regularly when she uses this logic on me, any more than that they're visiting her and not me. I point out she said her parents were supposed to be helping her out to her multiple times when she insists I should just drop everything and drive an hour there and an hour back so she can go to the grocery store without them or other such mundane errands. I can't afford to drive that far that often. Even if I have the time now, because two years after my layoff and I'm unemployed AGAIN!

So what's next? There's a hiring fair for a local appliance factory. I go, I get hired, I wait, and I wait some more. It's not a career, but that whole hunting for a career thing isn't going so well for me.

Finally I get the call. I'm being put on third shift. Not my first choice of shift, but it'll do. I show up, I work the eight hours watching the appliance parts moving slowly around the factory like waves of an aluminum ocean. I'm terrible at the job, but apparently not that bad for the first day. The guy training me jokingly asks on the way out "So you going to come back tomorrow?"

"Of course" I reply. I'm no quitter, not that easily anyway. I head home as the sun is coming up. My home greets me with an extra fun surprise that morning, the air conditioning has died. It's the hottest day of the year so far. I attempt to adjust to my new sleep schedule anyway, but the temperature of the house, even with windows open and fans on, is up around 96 degrees. I sweat, I toss and turn, naked and sweaty, but I don't sleep. The house doesn't move and flow like the assembly line did and I'm suffering from a reverse seasickness. I don't call an A/C repairman either, because I'm broke. I slept a few hours before work yesterday in a attempt to not be totally exhausted for work, but nothing consequence. Delirium starts to set in, I never slept.

 I do remember eventually getting in the car and driving to work in the dark for a second shift. I never arrived though. I woke up about an hour after I was supposed to start, in the cool night air ... in my bedroom. My brain echos for a moment what I was told at the hiring fair "No call, equals no employment." I don't care. I close my eyes and sleep till the sun again bakes the house to 96 degrees because I'm not coherent enough to care about anything but sleep. That's the end of job number three since my layoff. I try not to beat myself up over it because it's not my fault right? I mean, I didn't break the air conditioning, but ... keeping it working was my responsibility. I guess. Fuck.

The next day I call a repairman. It may take quarter of the money I have in the bank, but I can't have another disaster like that. Air is essential in that glorified excuse for a double wide. Luckily there's another hiring fair that very afternoon. So I find myself with a new, second shift, a factory job at a cookie factory ... at slightly less pay. But it's work nonetheless. As an extra bonus orientation is on my birthday. Just how I wanted to spend it.

On the eve of my birthday I strike up a conversation with a friend from college. She tells me she has read my writing and she can relate. She's fighting her own battle with depression. She asks me to come visit her the next day to talk and I agree. It's an hour drive but I know it's the right thing for me to do. So the next day after a painful boring session of paperwork and dated training videos I head out there.

We talk about nothing and about our battles with the demons inside our heads. She tells me that I'm the first non blood relation to be inside her home in years. This surprises me almost as much as it surprises her that I chose to spend my birthday with her. I head home after a few hours and do absolutely nothing the rest of the day. I think to myself that this is the best birthday I've had in a long time. It both makes me sad and proud at the same time.

New job, good birthday, I think I'll reward myself by doing something social, purely for the sake of doing something social. Shocking I know. My librarian friend is coming to this side of the state for the weekend to watch her niece compete in the roller derby. Perhaps I'll go . . .

Where do I begin with The Librarian? I first met her early on in college long before she was a librarian. Her sister had been a coworker of mine (and my ex-wife's) when we worked in one of the dining halls as burger flippers. The Librarian's sister was the "little sister" in our little work clique, the guys looked out for her and no one was allowed to be mean to her. I didn't find out until later she was mostly unaware of out protective nature.

One Halloween Lil' Sis invited myself and the ex-wife to a Halloween party held at Sister #3's. We were party hopping that night so we made no plans to stay at any one locale more than two hours. This party was our first stop and Lil' Sis decided to show up fashionably late. As in ... so late we passed her on the way out. So our time at the party was spent making small talk to strangers, the Librarian and Sister #3 among them.

Frankly, I had all but forgotten about her when several years, and several job promotions later, both the ex-wife and I were both working nice desk jobs in the main offices for Dining Services and it was decided that the ex needed an assistant. Due to a hiring freeze, the assistant was acquired via a temp agency, and the temp agency sent the Librarian.

Our working relationship was entirely unremarkable, she was still working there when I left several months later for that real post graduation job, the one that six years later laid me off sending me into this downward spiral of a life I am currently living. She eventually left the job for maternity leave, which isn't really maternity leave when you're working a temp job. It's more like semi-voluntary layoff. I lost track of her after that.

After I lost my job, when not searching for jobs, I'd use my abundance of spare time to search for everyone I'd ever met on Facebook. Eventually I found Lil' Sis, and through her, I found the Librarian. My ex-wife was looking forward to reconnecting with her as well, seeing as they were both mothers now and could bond over that or whatever excuse she was using to render my discovery somehow smaller and make it her discovery not mine.

We talk, off and on, at first for no particular reason other than working at the library afforded her the time to be on Facebook all the time, and I had no social life beyond the computer. She told me later that for the first few months she thought I was only talking to her because I'd mistaken her for her Lil' Sis. We talked and began to develop a real friendship.

She was there for me when my wife left, and the next nine months of unemployment and total social isolation. She was also there for me through my ventures into the world of dating and my battles with depression and everything else. Hell, she even offered to give me money for my date with the Magician. She was online all the working day, while I was online for the entire day because what the fuck else did I have to do. She was never my first choice to go to with my problems no matter the category; money, depression, kids, dating, ex-wife, job ... but she was my second choice each and every time, which somehow led her to becoming my best and closest friend without me even realizing it.

I guess that's not entirely true. She wasn't my second choice on every topic. She was my first choice to go to on the topic of "Who my (not legally but in every other practical sense) ex-wife was dating." You see at some point after blocking me on Facebook (the kindest thing she ever did for me) she created a second Facebook account, to paraphrase her actual first post, because she was tired of her family telling her she was posting inappropriate things about me so she created a new account where she could do just that. Of course my ex then failed to block me from that account, so back when I was still trying to work things out with her, I stalked that Facebook account, and discovered she went to a Halloween party in matching costumes with some dude from her medieval reenactment group. Matching Halloween costumes are a dead give away for dating someone. Anyway this dude is Facebook friends with the Librarian who also used to be a part of this LARP group back in the day.

The Librarian never told me much about him either way, save for the "He's an okay guy, you don't have to worry about him around your kids." That opinion seemed based on facts, even if they weren't being shared with me. If anyone else had told me that it would have been empty reassurances.

The Librarian had quit that group soon after her daughter was born. The story as I remember it, is that she brought her newborn daughter to some event to show her off and one delightful member of this group made a comment to the effect of "So what? it's a baby!" She decided she didn't fit in there much after that. The post-script to the story, "Oh yeah, that's you ex-wife's boyfriend's wife. He's the only guy on the planet who can date your ex and upgrade."

So after more than a year of talking nearly daily on the computer, I finally see the Librarian in person. I'm sitting in the bleachers at the roller derby when I see her and I remember thinking to myself with no specific concept of why, "I'm going to get hurt here." The night was unremarkable, we hung out as friends, with other (male) friends of hers she hadn't seen in a long time, who spent the entire night fawning over her, competing for her attention, much to my amusement.

I felt no need to compete for her attention. She's my friend and in one of our many electronic conversations about my so-called love life, she'd told me "Don't worry, unlike all those other bitches, I don't want to date you." That seems pretty cut and dry.

We talk the following Monday, before I head to my first day, on second shift, at the cookie factory. I don't recall the exact conversation but we had fun, and it'd been a long time since I'd had real fun. She tells me next time we're on the same side of the state, we should do it again. I tell her I'd be glad to make up some reason to be on her side of the state the next weekend I have without my kids.

The first two weeks at the cookie factory went by slowly. With something new and exciting to look forward too, it was all I could think about. The work was some days hard. Imagine shoveling cookie dough from a bathtub on wheels, into a hopper with a sewer grate on top of it, and then having to do CPR on it so that it filters through the hopper at an even pace, all while in an unairconditioned factory in the middle of summer next to hot ovens. Other days it was "Your line broke down, look busy or they'll send you home."

Over the next few months that one happened a lot, and looking busy for days on end isn't easy. People notice you walking around, or always carrying a broom and they suspect you have nothing to do. 

The best way to look busy was to not look busy. I'd sit in the break room for seven out of eight hours on my shift. The supervisors were always on the look out for people with not enough work on the factory floor, but if you were in the break room, it was okay not to be working. Supervisors only came into the break room when they were on break, so they would have no idea that I'd been there all shift. Half the time physically exhausting, half painfully boring. Then some nights I'd just come home and be covered in cinnamon from head to toe. The Friday before my first trip to the Librarian's was one of those nights.

I made the two hour drive to her place. I met her daughter. It didn't dawn on me until I met her child that while I talked to this woman every day, she didn't really talk to me. 

She was a great friend and great listener, but revealed remarkably little about her self, the least of which was her daughters name. Not that it mattered that I didn't know the child's name, as I'd eventually start calling the six year old "Dino" for the way she greeted me at the door, loud, bouncy and nearly knocking me over with her affectionate hugs that were more like football tackles. We went out to eat. We entertained her daughter. I spent the night, heading home the next afternoon. 

On the way out she mentions casually that she'll be in my neck of the woods the following weekend for a family reunion and how it'd be great if she didn't have to drive all the way back the same day. I offer my place with the note that my kids will be there. "No problem, then reunion's in the park, bring them with us. Free food."

Free food .. Score. Wait. With us? To your family reunion? Three out of four weekends together? Meeting each others kids is one thing  ... but family and extended family? I pondered that over on the drive home. It doesn't sound like just friends, but she specifically stated, unsolicited I might add, that she had no interest in dating. Plus we live two hours apart and are both broke and it'd just be a bad idea, and she knows every damn detail about every thought I've had about my love life for the past year. But ... yeah, I guess I'm thinking about it. More than I should be, which is to say I shouldn't be thinking about it at all. Maybe I already was thinking about it when I thought I was going to get hurt. 

The two hour drive home gave me plenty of time to think. Eventually I decided that I already knew it was not going to end the way I wanted it to, and while I didn't know what that meant but ... somehow I knew it'd be worth it regardless of what that meant. It may go nowhere, it may go somewhere, but I'll try anyway, to see where it goes.

The next weekend came, the five of us, her and Dino, me and my two kids went to her family reunion. We hung out at my house. She read stories to my kids. Sunday came and I took my kids back to their mother's. Meanwhile the Librarian had called off work at the library because of her college homework she'd not yet finished, or maybe because she wanted to stay one more night. On Monday when she went to leave we're saying good byes and ... she kissed me?!? Right there in my kitchen ... she kisses me?

This is my life now.

Words Are Very Unnecessary.

I had decided about a week after my first venture into the world of dating after the (unofficial) end of my marriage, ended in spontaneous combustion I was not even going to try again for a good long time. While certainly was mentally and emotionally prepared to be with someone again. I wasn't prepared to be again not with someone, if that makes sense. Although on the other hand, how many people are ready for a relationship to end when it does? I suppose spontaneous combustion actually isn't the right metaphor. That implies there was a large dramatic end. There wasn't. She just choose to disappear like fucking Houdini with no word of explanation or even goodbye.


So I closed the doors, but forgot to lock them. I told myself I wasn't again going to talk to start talking to girls for the purposes of dating anymore. Then, right before I started my crappy food service job, I got a message off a dating site. I rationalized. She messaged me, so I'm not doing the starting, so it's okay. We talked, we made plans to go out, we had a very good time. I was smitten with her amazing one dimpled smile and enthralled by nearly three hours intelligent conversation. We went our separate ways and talked some more, including the possibility of going out again before she fed me some standard rejection line about "not having time to date, but we can still be friends."


I tell her that's fine, as if I had a choice in the matter, not expecting to actually hear from her ever again. But I did, that Sunday night via text message as I was parked in front of the house of Ms. Houdini, pondering knocking on her door or other such foolishness. Just was I needed to push me back into sanity. I did hear from the girl with the smile again and again, on a near daily basis now, for several months later. Perhaps this one does really want to be friends?


After actually having seen the microscopic size of my food service pay check, I shut down my denial, I again decided dating is not for me. It's expensive and I can't afford it. So I revised my rules to include not asking women out because I can't afford it. Which lasted all of a day, until again I was contacted on an online dating site by a beautiful woman asking to buy me dinner. I didn't contact her and I won't be paying. Somehow they keep finding loop holes, and I keep going for it.


We go out to dinner where she's loud, very funny, mildly obnoxious and slightly inappropriate. I've met the female version of me. We go out for coffee. Nearly six hours after it began, we finally call it a night. I'm awestruck, terrified and confused. I ask myself if I can date myself? I usually like to be the biggest personality in the room, and it's clear she does too. I'm not sure if we'll compete or compliment but in the end I decide there's only one way to find out. So the next week I cook for her, we watch a DVD and play Super Mario Brothers. It's sounds like a terrible date, but for my broke ass it's perfect and besides Super Mario was her idea, not mine.


I see her again, and then again, and I'm enjoying just being with her, but I soon realize that it's not quite clear if we're dating, or just hanging out. I ponder and plot the best way to approach this awkward subject when she brings it up first. Neither of us are sure what we want, so we decide not to decide. Over the next two months we reach the same conclusion at least twice more, never crossing that line, but never backing away from it either. I meet her friends, she meets mine. I call her the "Girl I Might Be Seeing." She calls me her "Boyfriend Type Person." Vague titles for an ambiguous relationship, yet I'm enjoying her company, and for the now, that's all that matters.


Just as important, if not more so, she was able to give me a tool I'd been looking for. The ability put into words what I hadn't been. An abstract thought that had been bouncing around my head not yet forming a complete sentence. Life isn't graded on a curve. Sure I could go around and tell everyone my sad sob story of unemployment, depression and the failure of my marriage and get by on sympathy alone, but to the rest of the world I just look like a slacker and a fuck up. Maybe I am, even when graded on a curve. But it's all I've been able to do lately though ... Survive on sympathy. But really what has surviving like that gotten me, except once mind blowingly drunk? The rest of the world isn't going to grade me based on a curve, I need to stop doing so as well. I know this may plunge me deeper into my misery in the short term, but I feel like in the long run, this will serve me much better.


When I was a child the Never Ending story was about as cool of a movie as there was. A boy hero, a flying puppy dragon thing and big titted statues that shot freakin' laser beams out of their eyes. As an adult things change, and the harsh reality of the world sets in. You know what happened to Falcor? He was recycled into the dog car in Dumb and Dumber.


It goes something like this. There's a whole universe, a whole damn book going on inside a mind. But it's slipping away, giving way to the Nothing. It's nothing specific, not even emptiness. It's the Nothing. Fighting fights, winning some, losing others, but the Nothing still consumes everything. Seeking help from the weary and experienced who doesn't fear death because at least dying is something. And the quest to stay ahead of the Nothing goes on until the world implodes and all that's left is a single grain of sand, and it's not even clear if it's reality or fantasy. That's how the only way I know to describe a real depression to someone who hasn't lived it. The movie is a thinly veiled metaphor for depression.


I know this about depression and I don't know how to overcome it on a long term basis. A few days I feel like I win the fight, some days I feel like I lose. Mostly I feel like it's almost a draw. The bottom line is, working is not working for me. Food service hours are wild and unpredictable. One week I can barely get twenty hours, the next I'm pushing fourty. One night I'm closing, the next opening, then a three hour middle of the day shift then nothing for four days. I can't budget for the wild swings in hours. My schedule and sleeping and eating patterns are erratic. I'd been very stricic about those to keep my depression in check. I don't see my children the way I used to. Don't get me wrong, being out among people does wonders for me. Compared at least to living in the middle of no where with no one to talk to and nothing to do. Spending time with coworkers, most of whom are at ten years or more younger and still in high school and college hardly passes for socialization though.


My work performance is erratic. Some days I'm just thrilled to be out of the house. Some days going to work feels like a smack in the face reminding me of who I once was and what I've lost. I used to be someone. I used to be important. I used to be paid more than twice this. I used to be a husband. I used to a father who tucked his kids into bed every night. I used to know the last name of the person I talked to most every day. It's hard to take pride in a job well done when your pride has been stripped away to nothingness.

I hope this poor attitude is going unnoticed at work. I may not mentally be able to give it my all, but I thought I'd at least be able to hide it. I was wrong. I get a talked to separately by two different supervisors, within the last ten minutes of one shift. I want to tell them to cut me a break. I'm tempted to tell them that it's an accomplishment I even got out bed that morning. But they don't care, they don't want to be the ones viewed as a slacker for letting me slide, they're doing their job. I'm not. Maybe I do just have enough pride left that I'd rather fail than have my life graded on a curve again.


Still, even if I was over-performing, I can't pay the bills on this meager, inconsistent salary. I'm stuck in this odd middle ground between being poor enough to receive government aid and being able to afford the things that keep me alive. I get no aid, but I cannot afford to live. One month my soon to be ex-wife makes the house payment for me. Before you mistake that for generosity, it's subtracted from her half of the credit card bill we created together. Not to mention her name is still on the mortgage. Soon after I cash out my 401k, my last stash of cash, just to pay bills. I am afloat, for a few months at least. But I still have negative cash flow.


The Girl I Might Be seeing offers a solution in that her employer is hiring. While it won't replace the other job, it will get me to the break even point as a second job. She gets me the interview, which goes terribly, but I'm hired anyway. I think only because she's the best employee there, and any "friend" of hers might just be as good as her. I reflect on the judgement involved in working with someone you might be dating and decide that as long as neither one of is the boss of the other, it won't be a big deal. I also decide I'm too broke to make any other decision. I come in for my orientation. An hour after I leave she calls me to tell me about her promotion.


I now work for company that does telemarketing of internet advertising to lawyers and whose owner and CFO are former car salesmen. It's the three circles of employment hell in one convenient package. Some days I get Matlock on the phone and he needs his secretary to turn his computer on for him, mostly I get hung up on by secretaries and paralegals. I can handle the rejection, hell I'm an expert on that by now. But telemarketing is stressful. Make sales or you're useless. I feel like I'm terrible at it and that every day could be my last. I'm told by a coworker this is par for the course, so I try not to think about it.


I go to lunch one day, head out the back door to walk to the store for some grub. I walk through my new employer's parking lot, which conveniently bordered by the building I worked in two years ago before this nightmare began. The irony isn't lost on me. This tall imposing industrial building of my former employer dwarfing the small nondescript office of my new one.


During my walk to the store I see a former co-worker cooking lunch on the grill for my old office mates and I decide to stop and catch up. He asks where I'm working. I point. He asks if I like it. I shrug, "It's a job, and I earn a paycheck." He asks if my wife is working. I tell him with a grimace that she moved out over a year ago. After a moment of awkward silence another former coworker appears in the door and greets me, unaware the bombshell I just dropped. I'm told that he felt really bad when I left because he liked working with me, and he didn't even get a chance to say goodbye. He offers me a burger, for some reason, as a token of his appreciation of the five years we worked together and disappears back inside for a bun and assorted condiments.


The first coworker is still outside grilling, he looks at me thoughtfully and asks "So how much of you two splitting up do you think was because you lost your job?" A deep poignant question I've asked myself a hundred thousand times and was still completely unprepared to answer. I think he wanted me to crucify my former boss, I'm not sure. I mumbled some answer about how we had more than our fair share of problems and the job loss just made everything worse and took away opportunity to fix them. It was the politically correct answer, I don't know if it was the truth or not.


It wasn't a fair question. If I'd been better at my job, would I still be married? Would I still get to see my kids every day? Was it one project that cost me that job? Was it coming in late once? What tiny mistake did I make that pushed me from national-award winning employee, to completely expendable, costing me everything? Costing me my life and my dreams .. what was it? What one thing could I have done different to stop the demonic domino effect that's become my life? Not because I want to or even could fix anything. It's too late for that anymore. I just don't want to make the same mistake twice . . .


The second co-worker returns with the hamburger. At first I think about how I worked for that damn place for five years and a hamburger is the only token of appreciation I ever got. Then I think better of it and realize that as a spontaneous gift from someone I hadn't seen or heard from in two years, that burger tasted pretty damn good. It was nice to know someone actually gave a shit, that I was missed and even remembered.


During the months since our one-and-done date, the girl with the amazing smile and I talk on a near daily basis. We're roughly in the same place in our marriages; over in every way except on paper. We talk about our kids. We talk about dating again for the first time and how different it is outside of college, with children and after an marriage. We talk about who we're dating and we talk about how hard it is to trust again but at the same time you so want to skip all the getting to know you phase and just go to where you're comfortable phase. I wonder if that's where I went wrong with the magician. We talk of the pains of rebounding, dating and relationships in general. It's nice to be able to really relate to someone again, even if only as victims of the same unhappy fate. We talk and talk, totally intimate, totally honest and totally electronic. It's fulfilling, yet a little hollow because of the chosen method of communication. We talk of missing having conversations with out words, only a grin or a sideways glance. How comforting it was to have that, even if you were miserable.

I guess I still have that, my ex can still read me like a book. She's known about every date I've ever had since we parted ways just by looking at me the next time we traded kids. She even knew, with just a look, when the magician disappeared and then again when Girl I Might Be seeing finally decided that we weren't a couple. I think she even tried to talk to me once about her relationship issues with her beau. I didn't take the bait. I'm glad we're still friendly, but I do not want to be friends with my ex. Not now, maybe not ever. I offer her what little bits she wants to know about my life, because I see little point in hiding them since she still can read me like that, but I offer none without solicitation.


Speaking of solicitation, the telemarketing job does offer me one thing, other than a salary. It offered me the mental freedom from feeling like the food service job was the end of the world. My mood at that job improved and so did my work ethic. I was starting to enjoy the work, it showed, At least I thought so. Apparently I was wrong as I was cut to one meager shift a week. I am again desperately looking for work. I thought I was finally starting to fill in the hole I'd been living in, but instead I still merely slowing the downward spiral.


I'm feeling low about this and the end of that non-relationship when I called my kids the next day. I ask my five year old daughter about her day and she insists that I first tell her about mine. This makes me smile. We talk and she winds up crying, sad because she misses me and scared because she's moving an hour away next week. I want to tell her how much I miss her too. I want to tell her I'm scared too. But I don't and I can't. I'm Dad. I'm supposed to make everything okay. I just don't how to do that anymore. All she wants is to be held and told everything will be alright. Daddy wants that too sweet-pea . . . Daddy wants that too.


This is my life now.

Basket Case

With my unemployment having run out, the good news is I now have a job, the first job that came along. The bad news is that it doesn't come close to paying all the bills. I'm no longer bleeding money, I'm merely losing it at a rapid rate.

I've worked in food service before. Hell, I thrived in it. Of course that was in college where I was highly motivated to do my best and excel at it because I was using the money I was making to pay for that college degree, the college degree that was supposed to keep me from ever having to work food service again.

If you've never worked food service consider yourself lucky, and I don't mean a few shifts at a fast food joint after school, I mean serious employment. There's just so much piss and shit and pettiness that comes with it.

Scheduling for one. A predictable schedule is a foreign thought. One day you'll close and not get out of work until 10:30pm and then have to be back at it to open at 6am the next day. Not even enough time for a full 8 hours of sleep. You don't even get to eat at normal times because you're busiest when everyone else is eating. Your lunch is at 2:30 and dinner at 4:30. Never having two days off in a row, are rarely are one of those days on a weekend, a three hour shift one day, eleven the next, and still struggling to get enough hours.

The part that drives me crazy is closing. Work hard, do your job quickly and efficiently and you get to go home earlier, and a smaller paycheck. Then there's the petty territorial pissings of people not pulling their weight, having the time and knowledge to help, but not doing so. Or helping when not needed, thus insulting the sandwich making skills of the person being helped. It's stupid, it's petty and in the grand scheme of even a six hour shift none of it means jack shit, but everyone does it, because making the same food in the same way day after day, shift after shift is mind numbing and spirit crushing. Complaining, whining, being a total pain in the ass for a few minutes helps pass the time and break up the monotony.

Of course I can't start work without going to the company's orientation ... Bread-ucation if you will. For christ's sake. I spend nine plus years doing marketing in the food industry. I used to make up stupid names like bread-ucation and I'd make and design the training manuals. I'd forgotten more about food safety and sanitation than the trainer has ever known. That's not an insult to the trainer either. The trainer give the typical the company is wonderful spiel you'd expect, adding on for good measure that they employees are like a family, and it's "always so sad when someone goes off and gets a real adult job." Thanks for the reminder of where exactly I've fallen too. After a few hours of bread-ucational videos and paper work, we get to familiarize ourselves with the menu, in the form of free food, and make our very own name tags with markers, crayons and stickers. I set to work on creating my name tag, which apparently was good enough to solicit a compliment from the trainer. Seven and a half years earning a degree in Visual Communications, and nine years of graphic design and marketing have culminated in this moment. I want to take my fingers stained with green Crayola magic marker and gouge my eyes out.

The job, not bad at all. It's an honest days work. It was the last millennium when I last worked and wasn't in charge of someone. So not being "the boss" was an adjustment, but I soon settled into my role busing tables, delivering food and other such menial tasks including taking orders from kids not yet old enough to drink legally. According to a pedometer app on my iPod I'm walking about fifteen miles during a six hour shift. I could extrapolate from that what I walk in an eleven hour shift, but I was happier not knowing that. After nineteen months of forced lethargy, it's killing my feet. Each shift my feet callous a bit more and the pain subsides a bit, but usually I have to come home and wait at least an hour for the swelling and pain to subside enough that I can fall asleep.

Of course the inevitable happened, I just wasn't prepared for it on the second day. Someone from my old life came into eat. I don't think she recognized me as I was out of context for her, but it reminded me how far I'd fallen. Two years ago I had a job, with and office and a desk. I had a multi-million dollar advertising budget I was responsible for. Maybe even a little power and status. I had people who answered to me. I had a wife and kids. Now that's all gone. Job's been gone for nearly two years. The wife left with the kids a year ago as of Monday. It's all gone. I asked for a smoke break. Instead I went to the restroom a weeped for everything I lost.

I told myself I wasn't even going to acknowledge that anniversary. It's not an anniversary, it's a milestone at best, and certainly not one that should be celebrated. I do not miss my wife, I do miss the mother of my children, if that makes sense. I feel I failed my kids for not finding a way to make it work. I sought advice from a friend who told me "Do whatever you want to, just do right by your kids." Advice I think I'd given her a half dozen times before, yet, when I heard it given to me all I could think was "it's too late for that, I've already let them down" even though I'm not the one who gave up, even though I'm not the one moved out and moved on. I was willing to try despite all the shit, insults, put downs and abuse just to remain a family for the kids. Just to see my kids. Hell ... for my kids, I still would do it, if I thought there was a sliver of a chance it might happen.

I used to see them twice a week and every other weekend. Having a work schedule has totally thrown that off. Closing seven out of eight nights in a row, I haven't even been able to squeeze in my daily good night phone call in a week. I miss unemployment when at least then I could see my kids practically whenever I wanted. I had my kids two weekends ago for a overnight. At least I think it was the weekend, it's hard to tell anymore. I pick them from the ex's apartment after work, and as I'm leaving her new boyfriend shows up. That was even more fun than it sounds. I'm not sure if it was a planned accident or not, but regardless, I left as quickly as possible without saying a word.

The next morning I'm bringing the kids back and as we get to town my daughter chimes in from the back seat "Daddy! Daddy! I want mommy to go back to living with you." Six months ago I would have been able to tell her that's what I wanted too, but now ... now, I just don't know what to say to that.

I get to the ex's apartment and with the kids in tow, I knock on the door. No answer, so I knock again. A few moments later the door opens and I can tell by the fact her long hair is still inside her shirt this isn't going to end well. I quickly move the car seats from my car to her van and hurry back inside to say my goodbyes to the kids. My daughter is bouncing on the couch "Daddy! Daddy! Guess who's upstairs sleeping!?!" That was a wonderful double whammy in the span of ten minutes.

Fine, she doesn't have any respect for me anymore. At this point I don't care, but have some fucking boundaries for the kids for Christsake. I wanted to tell her off, and tell her what I thought, but ... reality is the bigger deal I made of it the more likely she'd do worse just to spite me. There's nothing I could say that she'd think wasn't fueled by jealousy.

A few days later she's dropping off the kids at the house. We're making small talk and she throws out there ... "So, on Saturday that was WhatHisName" I can only imagine the look on my face, "Yeah, I kinda figured." Cheerfully she continued "I was going to introduce you two, but I figured you'd both already knew who each other was." "Yeah." "So ... what did you think?"

Really?!? My (still legally) wife is asking me for my ... approval on her boyfriend? Because my opinion matters? Because I have an opinion? Because somehow I learned something about his personality for the twenty seconds we were in the same room, avoiding eye contact at all costs? Really ... what kind of answer was she expecting? What do I think!?!

I think he looks exactly like me. I thought that from the first time I saw pictures of him on her secret FaceBook account, long before I knew they were dating. Well, I suppose I should clarify, he looks exactly like me, right before I lost my job ... slightly heavier and with a blonde pony tail. Yes, I'm totally aware that sounds like the jealous rantings of a ex. It's not though.

Yeah, I'm not a blonde anymore. I dyed my hair a month ago, red. As the ex was dropping off the kids, my daughter was enthralled by this, and asked me why I didn't make it pink, her favorite color. I told her it had, at one point, been pink and grabbed a stack of pictures from the other room of my hair in various colors and lengths to show her. I show her a pink hair one "Who's that?"" "Daddy!" She would squeal at each and every picture. I set the pictures down and my ex picks them up to show my son and play the same game. "Who's that?" My boys looks, grins as big as he can, points and in his cutest voice and says ... her boyfriends name.

She tried to blow it off as if it was nothing. "He's almost two, he gets confused" and then laughs. As if that explains it away. No, that's not an explanation, that's the whole problem. He's two, he gets confused. He should never be confused on who Daddy is. They're my kids and nothing can change that. Move away, date other people, remarry, whatever, there still should never, ever be any confusion on who Daddy is. Never... Never! They're my kids. Mine.

It was soul crushing ... no. It was worse than that. It's like every decision I've ever made I now need to questioned. Every thing I thought I valued, I need to reevaluate. Everything I thought was important, maybe isn't.

I've been telling myself for nearly two years everything happens for a reason. I don't know the reason for all this. I'm beyond broke. I'm beyond lonely. I'm emotionally beaten. I'm exhausted. I'm defeated ... no. No, I'm not. If I were defeated I could give up and quit, but I'm not even lucky enough to be that far down anymore. Now I'm just slowing running into the ground deeper and deeper, using my skull a bore for the drilling. I tell myself I work where I work because I'm going to meet someone there. Then just to remind me of where I stand in the social hyarchy there one of them says to me "You're like old enough to be my Dad ... well maybe an uncle. But you're like up there." As if I needed reminding that I'm a dozen or so years older than everyone who works there except the management.

What? What do I have left besides my never ending supply of food pantry Panera Bread?

This is my life now.

Come Undone

I'd said it a few times jokingly. People would tell me it's time to move on, time to forget about my wife and move on. I'd half laugh and tell them "Then what? I don't have anything better to do but pine over her." I have no job. The kids visit me for a few sparse hours here and there, but hardly enough to fill my day. Somewhere deep down I knew our feelings for each other had irrevocably changed ... but I still wanted that all American dream family and the only way to have that perfect dream was to stay together. But couldn't happen anymore. She finally managed to hurt me in a way I knew I'd never get past. Just like that ... all those hopes and dreams and fantasies were gone. I had nothing to pass the time anymore. I was lost and aimless. Void of direction and motivation. Perhaps I should have told her I was done right away, but I felt like I owed it to her, to myself, to our kids, to the fourteen years we spent together to make sure that's what needed to happen. I gave myself a month, if I didn't change my mind, then I'd start moving on, planning for the future with out her.


Then out of no where, a mere day later, I met someone, if you can call it that. I messaged a random Facebook friend who was someone I went to High School with, but barely remembered, out of sheer boredom, due to all the extra time on my hands without spending my entire day pining over my wife. We chatted for a few hours. The next day it was a ten hour conversation, the day after seven. I'm alone and depressed, and I was smitten but still aware that my gauge of social situations was way out of whack. I knew that even the slightest bit of attention I was likely to blow completely out of proportion, so I tried to keep it friendly. By the end of fourth day and another six hours of conversation, she made it perfectly clear my social gauge, at least in this situation, was not off and she was interested. The challenges were plenty though. The timing was only slightly less than terrible, but I told myself, that's when you find it, when you're not looking for it. She also lives two hours away, back "home" near my parents. Not a big deal, just means for the time being, we could only see each other on weekends. Weekends we didn't have our kids, and our weekends with kids weren't in sync.


So I took a gamble. I asked my wife to trade our weekends. It sounds like a big sacrifice for a stranger, but in reality nothing actually changed for me, other than when I see my kids. I'd take them two weekends in a row, then back to trading. She hymned and hawed on it for a while, but in the end she agreed without condition. Then she asked why I wanted to trade. As I'd do a few more times in the near future, I answered with a truthful, but woefully detail free answer. "It's hard to spend time with friends when we have out kids on different weekends."


Should I even call her my wife anymore? She is still legally my wife. Doesn't feel like it though. We haven't lived together in eleven months. Calling her my ex-wife isn't technically correct, although it does capture the sentiment. Estranged wife and soon-to-be ex-wife both just seem to be too grandiose. It took me a month to make the adjustment from calling her my friend to my girlfriend. It took three months to make the adjustment from girlfriend to fiancée, and about five from fiancée to wife. If it takes six months to adjust from wife to the next appropriate title, then I guess that's okay.


It's slightly less than three weeks until my first first-date in fourteen years. I continue to talk with the new girl daily. Instant messaging, texting and phone calls daily. Anything less than four hours a day was disappointing. We're electronically attached at the hip. Every day we grow closer and I tell myself, and my friends, that I'm aware it'd be totally crazy it is to have feelings for someone you haven't seen in seventeen years and really only know online, but since she felt the same way, it wasn't crazy. She told me she she wanted to be "my sunshine." When I told her people were noticing how much happier I was lately she said she liked that she was the reason for my happiness. When I had a job interview she told me she was proud of me. I can only remember one other time anyone ever told me they were proud of me, and that was my mother after my daughter was born. The new girl also told me that she thought we could fall in love. I told myself my isolation and loneliness were amping up my feelings beyond what was normal and sane, but then she would say to me exactly what I was thinking, so it somehow didn't seem crazy. Boy, I was falling and I was falling hard.


The next three weeks went by with near constant communication with the new girl, and regular grilling from my wife. She'd ask me, "so who's the new girl posting on your Facebook page?" "Someone I went to high school with." "Are you dating her?" "I haven't seen her since High School." More questions, more truthful, but inaccurate answers. It was never like I was being asked these questions maliciously, or out of jealously. If anything they were asked with the same Cheshire cat grin she used to give me when she knew I was lying about having nothing planned for her birthday or anniversary. It wasn't like I didn't want to tell her either. I wanted more than anything to share this new, sudden joy in my life with the person who had been my best friend for a decade and a half. I couldn't do it though. But just having this happiness in my life made everything better. Made it feel like things were starting to come back together again.


Date night came and by then expectations were insanely out of control, and I knew that. There was enough of a real contact there that it felt real, but not enough to keep imaginations in check. I knew that when she opened the door and we first laid eyes on each other that time wasn't going to stop and the rest of the world wasn't going to cease to exist. We spent Friday night together and most of Saturday before I headed back home with unspecific plans for another date in two weeks.


Sunday we talked as we normally did. Monday I was barely able to get two words out of her, but didn't think much of it as her kid was sick, and I knew she was preoccupied. Tuesday was the same story and when my wife dropped the kids off that day she asked how my date was. I'm not sure who told her, but it didn't matter. I told her it went well. She pressed for more details, but I told her I didn't want to discuss it with her. Same Cheshire cat grin.


By end of the day Wednesday I was a wee bit concerned. Having spent hours and hours each and every day talking to her, going to barely a dozen text messages over three days, I missed her. So I sent her a message and told her that I knew she was busy with the sick kid and I understood why she was being not as interactive as she had been, but I missed talking to her. Two days later I hadn't heard back so I sent her an email saying "I know you've been preoccupied with the boy, but I'm not sure when I'm supposed to go from politely giving you space to taking the hint you're no longer interested." That was Friday.


My wife dropped the kids off for my weekend and she could tell I was upset, and asked me why. I didn't want to tell her. She pressed and I folded. I told by former best friend I was being ignored by a woman I had fallen for. It was strange and awkward and painful. She offered some vague words of encouragement, but nothing she could have said would have improved the situation. I'm fighting back tears and I'm not even sure which reason they're there.


Monday night, I decided for one last try. I sent an email telling the new girl it was obvious to me I was being ignored, but I had no idea why. I asked for at the very least an explanation. In my mind she was now on the clock and had twenty-four hours to respond. I send the email and almost instantaneously I was unfriended by her on Facebook. At least that was some sort of backwards acknowledgement.


The next day, I had heard nothing, it also happened to be my self imposed one month deadline on my decision to end the marriage. The irony wasn't lost on me. If I wasn't sure before, I knew then. Whatever the relationship was with the new girl, it was over, and it didn't send me running back to what was once comfortable, what was still a standby. Maybe I had nothing else to do, but I wasn't going to stew in my self pity over that failure anymore. I gave my wife the letter penned a month ago the next time I saw her. It's over in every sense but the legal one.


My life didn't fall apart. I had momentum. I did lose some of it, but I didn't fall to pieces. I started putting dishes away one day and thought to myself how much I hated the way the silverware drawer was organized. For some reason my wife always insisted it be, from right to left: knifes, spoons then forks, even though the middle slot in the organizer was flat, with a prong type shape suggesting fork, and the one on the end was rounded suggesting a spoon. So I fixed it to the way I wanted, the way I thought it should be. Then I rearranged the dishes and relocated the microwave. It was stupid and superficial, but I hadn't felt that empowered in a long time.


I started going out of the way to pack up her stuff. I'd avoided it previously. If I found something in need of putting away, instead of putting it away I'd pack it. Now it was an active effort to clear it out. I'm rearranging and cleaning. I go through the family photos and divvy them up. I expected that to be a painful experience, and while not joyful, it wasn't as terrible as I thought it could be. Yes, every picture since we'd been married had been digital, so it was copied onto a hard drive for her months ago. But photos from when we were dating and our wedding weren't difficult. Only one photo got to me enough to knock me off track. One I forgot existed. We were at a friends wedding, not even aware our picture was being taken and we were dancing. She's looking up at me and I'm looking down at her. You can't see our faces because of long hair, both hers and mine, but you can see how much in love we once were just by our body language. I remember that moment and how it ended when the tornado sirens started going off. I didn't keep a single printed picture with her in it, except that one.


Then out of the blue, ten days too late, I get a text from the new girl. "Hope you are doing well. I feel like you were trying to use me to be your excuse to act happy. You obviously are a nice guy but I don't want a significant other." What?!?


First you told me you thought we could fall in love. I'm sorry if I thought that meant there was a possibility for a relationship. Second, you made me happy, and that's a bad thing? Isn't that the whole point of dating? To find someone who makes you happy? It was such a terrible rejection line any feelings I thought I had for her were gone instantly. Obviously the wonderful, warm, caring person who I thought I had gotten to know didn't actually ever exist. I was tempted to ignore it, but since I was so peeved and her blowing me off, I felt the least I could do was respond. "As you wish" was my reply. She then told me goodbye and "good luck with your marriage." What ... In ... The ... Blue ... Hell!?!


I told her goodbye, but only to make sure I got the last word.


The next day my daughter calls me and invited me to go out to eat with her, my son and wife. After checking with my wife to make sure this was okay with her, I agreed. During dinner she asks me if I ever heard back from the new girl. I tell her about how the new girl didn't like that she made me happy. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard" my wife tells me, as I nearly choke on General Tso's chicken laughing. It's the first thing we've agreed on in months and the first time we've been out to eat with the kids in at least two years where we didn't want to kill each other when it was over with. It wasn't quite peace at last there, but it was a step in the right direction.


It's not that I want to be with her. She deserves happiness. It's that I don't want her to move on. It's that some day she'll meet someone, if she hasn't already, and that person will possibly be "on the clock" as a father to my kids more than I can be. That kills me. That's the thought that makes me sick to my stomach. I don't get a vote in that decision. I don't get a say. Just the thought makes me ill.


That's down the road, though. In the present, I still needed to get control of my life though. The job thing still was largely out of my hands. Make too much on unemployment to replace it with a minimum wage job, but nothing in my field seems to be hiring right now, same story as the past year and a half plus. So I rearrange stuff around the house. I purge this tomb to a failed marriage that I live in, slowing converting it into a fortress of solitude ... my fortress of solitude. It feels good, it's liberating and empowering. However, I do now have a pile of paper boxes piled to the ceiling waiting for her removal. I email her reminding her every time she drops off the kids she needs to take at least one bag or box of her stuff. Just for good measure I tell her I'm not paying her car insurance anymore and that'll we'll each be claiming one kid on our separately filed taxes. Perhaps on a little self empowered power trip.


She shoots back that we're filing jointly. We go back and forth on the issue until we both give up and said fine we'll do it your way. The next day, we actually discussed the issue I reminded her that I had paid no taxes in my unemployment checks. She says she remembered that and was trying to help me out. I don't understand, but okay. So I start digging up my info to file. I log onto the unemployment website to download the tax form. I decide while I'm in the system I ought to figure out when the last of the ninety-nine weeks worth of extensions kicks in so I know when to start panicking.


I find the info on the first four extensions, but not the last two. I can't find the information on the last twenty weeks of unemployment extensions. I look, I dig and quickly surmise that the last time congress voted to extended the unemployment extensions, they didn't extend all of them. Which means my unemployment runs out in ... four days. I am royally fucked. I'm such a fucking idiot how the fuck did I let this happen? How the fuck did I miss this.


Forget the taxes, I need a cash and I need it quick. I'm applying for every job I can find, fast food, retail, otherwise. I'm selling anything I can part with on eBay. I never should have packed her stuff. I should have just sold it all. If she hasn't needed in the past eleven months, she hasn't missed it, and as far as I'm concerned I've given her every chance to take anything and everything she wanted, so if it's still here, it's rightfully mine now, and I'm just giving it to her to be nice. But now she knows it's all packed and "hers." I'm fucked, I'm just royally fucked. I thought I had twenty weeks to find a job I have four days. Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!!! I may find a job, but I may never get to see my kids if I do. I finally accept my house as not my prison, but as my only asset and not I'm fucking that up too. Why do I always fuck up like this? At least I have no one to disappoint but myself anymore. I'm alone. I only have my life to fuck up right now, no one else's. Fuck.


This is my life now.

All Over You

The handwritten letter to my wife sat in my car for a week, maybe two.



The words on the letter sat in my head for a month, maybe more.



I'm not sure why I picked today to finally pass it on ... the timing was terrible. But I guess that's what made it the right time. I knew without a shadow of a doubt I meant them.



"I want you to be happy. If the only thing I can do to make you happy is to let you go, then that's what I'll do."



Two simple sentences that change everything that happens from here on out. I have no idea what's in store for me next. Part of me doesn't want to know.



I feel like I'm damaged goods, and always will be and nothing and no one can change that.



This is my life now.