Happy New Year, or is it?

The total number of days between Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 and Tuesday, December 31st, 2013 is1,483 days.

This is equal to exactly 4 years and 22 days.

This does not include the end date, so it’s accurate if you’re measuring your age in days, or the total days between the start and end date.  But if you want the duration of an event that includes both the starting date and the ending date, then it would actually be1,484 days.

1,483 days is equal to 211 weeks and 6 days.

The total time span from 2009-12-09 to 2013-12-31 is 35,592 hours

This is equivalent to2,135,520 minutes.

You can also convert 1,483 days to128,131,200 seconds.

Today is 12/31/2013 and 12/9/2009 is exactly 1483 days before today.

I was curious as to how many days have gone by since D-Day.  I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning, but I can conger up D-Day like it was yesterday, although I rarely do.  That probably explains my lack of posting this year.  It has been quite some year.  Or years.  

As New Year’s Eve approaches, I look back on 2013 for a brief review.  Some of the momentous things that have happened:

1.  I stayed at my last job for more than a year and made a couple of really good friends

2.  I started a job in the field in which I trained and was educated but left when my first child was born, almost 20 years ago.

3.  I got engaged to my BF/xMM in April 2013.

4.  My youngest child started high school.

5.  BF’s xW got engaged to her BF.

Who would have thought this year would have turned out this way 1483 days ago.  Don’t get me wrong – there are still some big issues but the affair has receded in everyone’s minds.  In fact, BF’s mother who villified me, now calls me for my thoughts, tells me I am a good influence on her grandchildren and sends me birthday cards.  Ironically, she opted to close her Facebook account rather than ‘unfriend’ the xW because she didn’t want to “hurt her feelings.”  Hmmmmm, really?  I guess some things will continue to surprise me.

As for being engaged, I’m not interested in it.  We still live in different states, 3-4 hours apart.  He still has a shitty visitation schedule and is incapable of changing it, so at most, we have 3 consecutive evenings together before he or I have to make the drive/ride/flight.  It’s disruptive to my life, seeing my friends, and feels a bit alienating lately.  We’re trying to “figure it out” but in a few more years, it will have resolved itself when my younger kid leaves for college.  The bigger issue is his kids – they are not nice, not considerate, not polite, not decent and know how to play their parents and adults in their lives.  I am at the end of my rope; BF is close and their mother doesn’t really care what they do or who they do it with as long as it’s not with us.  Too bad for them.  I have offerred to take them to the theater, to the museums, to shows and concerts but they would rather play x-box or stalk on Instagram.  They have no friends and don’t care.  Their mother takes them nowhere, expects nothing of them and her BF talks about trade school for his own kids, which she now tells her own is good enough for them.  Poor BF.  How he agonizes over this.  While I don’t blame him, I told him – they didn’t become this way overnight.  They have had their entire lives to become this way – including pre-divorce, when the issues were already there.

As for the future – we never really know, do we?  We don’t have a wedding date set.  Why would we?  BF’s daughter shared with me that her mother bought a wedding dress the same week she got engaged but hasn’t told her BF.  Funny how she continues to prove me right:  she cares more about being married, than who she is married to.  Yet BF/xMM felt guilty when his marriage ended, yet his xW never said “I love you and you broke my heart.”  She said “No one has ever broken up with me before.”  She was posting bikini pictures on Match.com (a subscription paid for by her mother) 3 weeks after her birthday trip to the Carribean (when she couldn’t be happier!) and saying she thought a divorce was best until 2 weeks later, when she was bemoaning her dating pool of men 10+ years older than she and xMM’s pool of  late 20-early 30 somethings, when in reality it was only me – 6 years older than xW and 1 1/2 older than BF/xMM.  So she’s engaged to a guy who in jest holds a knife to his own son’s throat, yells at her kids and is happy to make her his 3rd wife.  He’s happy to no longer have to rent a shitty little apartment in a crappy neighborhood and hold down 2 jobs to pay child support to his 3 kids and soon to be grandchild of his eldest, unmarried, waitress daughter.  But he is only 7 years older than xW.  And he hasn’t hit her.  Yet.  No matter how attractive she tries to make her life, how thin she gets, whatever trips she takes, at no point would I ever have switched places with her.  She doesn’t seem to get that either.

So, as we usher in 2014, I’m pleasantly surprised at how this year has turned out, where I am 4 years later and for the first time in a long time, I’m whistful about saying good-bye to 2013, but happily looking forward to the future.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

 

What’s Worth Fighting For?

MM has an interim separation agreement and is working on the first draft of his final divorce agreement.  He had conciliation (like mediation) and court last week and he and his soon-to-be-ex-wife reached an agreement.  I can’t believe it.  A little more than a  year ago, (376 days ago, but who’s counting) as I’ve been blogging, was d-day; 12/14/09 was the last day we spoke until January 21, 2010.  I can’t believe what has transpired in a year.  I can’t believe when I think of that time, it STILL takes my breath away and I can’t breathe.  I still can’t believe the hurt and yet, MM had conciliation on Monday, December 13 and then drove 4 hours to come to see me.  We were together on 12/14 and I thought about where we were last year . . . but I said nothing.

We’ve been talking about Christmas and New Year’s eve.  He has agreed with his w that she would have the kids for Thanksgiving and he would have them for Christmas – starting Christmas eve through the end of the week.  He has asked me to bring my kids to his state for the Christmas.  I’ve waffled about it especially because my kids are tepid to cold on the idea.  He called me Wednesday, after his shrink appointment, to tell me that his therapist thinks it’s not a good idea.  There is certainly a part of me that agrees but I was angry.  We talked about it and I got angrier.  We decided to wait until we were together this past weekend to discuss it further.  He had mentioned, as I previously blogged, that he was considering going to his parents in Florida for either Christmas or New Year’s which engendered some bad feelings from me.  I tried, unsuccessfully to keep them at bay.  The reason:  historically MM, his W and kids would go to Florida from the day after Christmas (which happens to be his birthday) until New Year’s day.  Since 2007 we have emailed, texted, spoke while he was there and I was in my hometown.  Last year, he was “exiled” to Florida – without w or kids for 2 or 3 weeks (we still haven’t talked about what happened, and not sure when/if we will) and yet, he couldn’t/didn’t speak, email or text me while he was there.  I emailed him; I texted him.  My phone was blocked; my emails were blocked.  I want to vomit when I think about that time and how I felt. 

Finally, we are able to be together on his birthday and on New Year’s and he’s talking to me about FLORIDA!!!!!!  He’s telling me that he agrees with his therapist and Christmas isn’t good so he’s going to Florida!!!!  No discussion about his birthday, no discussion about meeting his kids, no discussion about how we’re going to do that.  Oh yeah – he thinks that sometime in January he’s going to bring his kids to my home and stay for the weekend.  That’s how he is going to introduce us.  ARE YOU KIDDING?!?!?!  I wanted to slap him.  I wanted to use his head for baseball practice.  I wanted him to leave; to walk away from me; to never see him again.  And for some reason, my brain lacked a filter and I told him that.  I am angry and hurt.  My kids know him.  He stays in my apartment, he’s vacationed with us, he spent Thanksgiving with us and his kids know what about me?  Nothing.  Zero.  Zip.  Nada.  He said that his therapist said that the kids would feel badly if they saw that he had a relationship with my kids.  I cut him off and told him that he has no relationship with my kids – they know him, they tolerate his presence, they can co-exist but he doesn’t have a “relationship” with either one of them.  It wasn’t nice of me to say, but it is true.  It was also mean and hurtful for me to say it.  He said to me later, in a quiet voice, that he would like to have a relationship with my kids and would I help him develop one.  It broke my heart.  I felt that I had won, but at the price of being vicious and cruel.  Sometimes I don’t know when to stop myself. 

He told me that we only get one chance to make a good impression with his kids and he wants to do it the right way.  I told him, that no matter what he hopes, I have no illusion that between his soon-to-be-ex-wife and her mother, that the kids will not want to be around me, will not respect me and will forever think of me as the reason why their parents got divorced.  I’m the whore, the bad guy, the reason.  I also told him that his reluctance to introduce me or talk to his kids about me, makes me wonder whether he and I are going to have a relationship down the road.  The biggest reason not to introduce someone to your kids (and believe me I researched this up the ying yang) is that they might not be there in 6 months.  Where the hell am I going?  If I stuck around this long, where am I going to be in 6 months or a year from now?  My best friend asked me today if I thought that I was going to marry MM, that there is no doubt in her mind that he wants to marry me, be with me forever, but I have never said the same about him.  Why is that?  Am I scared to do it or do I think that “marriage” and “forever” are best left for fairy tales?  Meeting his kids puts me in the “forever” category.  I get that.  It’s not that I’ve wanted to meet them as much as I’ve wanted MM to ASK me to meet them, to beg me to meet them, to set up a meeting without me nagging.  It’s not the same when you have to ask. 

I know that things haven’t been ideal and now we are here – the holiday season – again.  What I want is to get rid of the bad memories that are plaguing me this time of year.  So many have blogged about the holidays – when you are the “other” you don’t get that time.  Now I’m not the “other,” I’m actually the partner and I still feel like the “other.”  While I don’t think that this is a good time to meet his kids, I want to have been asked.  I wanted him to want me to meet them.  I’m angry or sad that whether he did or didn’t, he said nothing until I pushed him.

I spoke to MM tonight.  He has his kids.  They’re both sick.  His soon-t0-be-ex-wife has enrolled them in an after school program for 2 days a week at an exorbitant cost of over $1000/month.  Now they’re sick.  MM picked them up this afternoon and brought them to his house.  He was whining that the kids are “home sick” and the home is going to be sold in less than a month.  His daughter complained that the tree wasn’t big enough and not as big as the one that “mom got.”  The ornaments are the old ones, and mom got new ones.  So MM is sad. Depressed.  And lucky me, he shares it.  That’s a bit tongue in cheek – I’m glad he shares it but angry that he thinks I can be sympathetic all the time.  It taps me out.  It’s taking its toll on me.  I can’t listen to it all the time.  I don’t want to hear it anymore.  I’m tired.  The fight that we always have is that he sees the glass as half empty and I see it as half full.  You chose how you live your life.  You can choose to be happy or to be sad.  He seems to make a choice that sucks the life out of me.  I’m tired.  Tired of always being on the receiving end of his questioning, his gloom, his sadness.  I want him to call me and say, while today was hard, it was worthwhile; that he’s excited about the future, as difficult as it’s going to be.  As Dr. Kelso (“Scrubs”) said: Nothing worth having is easy.  And as Andrew Carnegie is accredited with saying: Anything in life worth having, is worth working for. 

Where do I fit in?

D-Day + 1

D-day + 1. 

366 days later.

365 days ago:

MM went to Florida to “stay” with his parents to think about his bad behavior and how he would feel if he were divorced.  He was punished.  His w punished him when she found out about us.  She punished me when she found out about us. 

I spoke with MM the day after d-day – what should he do, what should he say, what he was telling w about me, about us, about our relationship. 

I told him not to go to Florida.  He went. 

I told him to speak to a lawyer so he would have a realistic idea of what “being divorced” was all about it.  He went to Florida and didn’t call a lawyer. 

He told me the lies he was telling his W about our relationship and asked me, that should she call me again, to corroborate them.  He went to Florida, he didn’t call a lawyer and she didn’t call me again. 

He called me 4 days later and then he didn’t call me again.

He went to Florida, he didn’t call a lawyer; he asked me to lie for him; he disconnected me on Facebook, business networks; he blocked my cell phone & telephone numbers, my ip address from his computer. 

He asked me to be patient.  He told me he missed me. 

He came home; took his w to his company’s holiday party and stayed in the hotel we always stayed at; took his family to Florida in February and fucked his wife for the first time ever; and called me and texted me and told me that he loves me, misses me, needs me. 

He went to marriage counseling; he told me he was trying to reconcile/to fix things at home, to fix things with everyone – but me.

He & his w sent me an email telling me that “I’m sorry I hurt you.  However comma I love my wife and my family.”

He made plans to be with me then took his wife to the Caribbean for her birthday 3 days before our meeting. 

He didn’t want to hurt anyone.  He hurt me.

366 days after d-day and MM is getting divorced. 

366 days after d-day MM went to the police to file a complaint against his w for menacing and threatening to hurt him.

366 days after d-day, MM’s w has herpes.

366 days after d-day MM has a new home that he calls “ours.”

366 days after d-day MM and I have spent my birthday together, Thanksgiving together and have planned to spend Christmas and New Year’s together.

366 days after d-day, MM isn’t wearing a wedding band.

366 days after d-day I feel that there are some issues that we still need to address; that there are still questions and unresolved hurt; that I’m still owed some apologies.

366 days after d-day is completely different than I thought it was going to be the day after d-day.

“Why” is a crooked letter

You know how there are times when all you want to do is vent, scream at the top of your lungs, drink a bottle of wine, eat a pint of ice cream, sit in front of the TV but something inside you stops you from doing that.  And you do the responsible thing.  Get up, go to work, make dinner, do laundry, smile, exchange pleasantries.  And you feel like tearing your hair out.  Or ripping his face off.  But you don’t.

I have read a number of posts where the entries have talked about deleting MM’s old emails and how cathartic it was.  I have read them enviously.  I can’t do it.  I couldn’t block his phone and I can’t delete the old emails.  I like to re-read them.  Especially the ones that burn my butt.  I don’t know why.  I have most of our emails from all the pseudonym email addresses.  In the throws of the affair, I used to love to read them over.  The ones telling me how much he loves me, misses me, aches for me.  How I complete him, am his soul mate.  After d-day, and his bullshit no contact email, there were no emails for a while.  I called him towards the end of January to tell him how angry I was that he blocked me on facebook but refused to call him and refused to email him.  If he wanted to speak to me, he could call me.  If he wanted to email me, I would think about responding.   That ended our “no contact” but the pseudonym email addresses persisted.  I didn’t want to call him because I did not want to be portrayed as the crazy OW, and have some sort of restraining order against me.  That wasn’t me.  You don’t want to talk to me, I’m not calling.  That doesn’t mean I wont answer the phone. 

So today, I was looking through some emails.  My favorite is the “However comma I love my wife.”  But then, like a detective, I looked through some more.  The email from him, out of the blue, after we had talked that simply said “IMY”  (I miss you).  The date on that was February 13.  Was that before or after he went to down south with his W and kids to see his parents, while he was “trying to figure everything out” so “we shouldn’t talk that week.”  I found the emails where we talked about making plans to see each other.  Then a few intermittent emails, because he was sick.   Sunday night he writes to tell me that he got a lot of rest over the weekend, but now I know that he went to the Caribbean with his W for her birthday that weekend.  Must be why I got an email at 10:30 am and then not another one until 9:30 pm (when he got home.)   I was able to get angry all over again. 

I saw MM this weekend.  We were talking about funny names.  And he told me that when he was at a resort, he saw someone with a funny name tag.  When I asked him what resort, he said he didn’t want to tell me because I would get angry.  OH HOW RIGHT HE WAS!!!  I told him that I didn’t find anything funny about that time.  That I didn’t want him to raise that fucking weekend trip to me ever again.  That what was “funny” was that he has apologized to everyone but me and that I want a fucking apology.  That what I find “funny” is that he doesn’t ask about who I was dating, seeing, screwing, but that he should rest assured that I wasn’t sitting home, holding my blackberry waiting for it to buzz.  Because, “however comma” I was working on my future. 

Oh, I feel the blood boil, and the anger course through my veins.  Will it ever stop?  I told MM this past weekend, that I need to get it out of my system.  He treated me like I was disposable.  (In fact, I used those very words in an email to him.)  He wrote, in an email, that he was concerned that I shouldn’t hate him for the way he treated me during those months when he was “working on his marriage” and “going to marriage counseling” all the while telling his W that I am his soul mate but telling me that he is in MARRIAGE counseling!!!!  Why else does one go to marriage counseling except to work on their marriage.

Then I found the email where he told me that he told his W, and she agreed, that they should separate.  He was “physically” sick. 

I grew tired of looking at those emails and skipped to the ones that he has since sent me under his real name.  My favorite, as of late, is the 7 page email he sent to his W while in exile immediately after d-day.  I liked reading her email to him, attached to his string of apologies – telling her he loves her, wants her, needs her and their life and how after knowing each other for almost x-teen years he can’t imagine his life without her –  commanding him to write the email (which he obliged her with) and what it should say.  I liked how he referred to our love affair as a “stupid indiscretion” and something he would never do again.  How she yammered on about how he put his marriage at risk by getting involved with another woman, how he jeopardized her health and risked getting STDs, how she was hurt that he told me that he loved me “very much”.   What amazed me as I read (and of course, got angry) was that he never told her to go fuck herself.  He never told her the truth.  He never said to her “You’re right.  I was dishonest with you.  I should have left years ago, but I couldn’t.  Now I’ve met someone else, someone I love deeply, someone I believe is my soul mate.  I’m sorry I hurt YOU, however comma I’m leaving you.”  Why couldn’t he do that?  What was he thinking? 

Why?  Why?  Why?  Will I ever stop asking why?  Will I ever let it go?  Am I capable of letting it go?

When I was a little girl, and I would ask my parents “why”, they would oftentimes give me the non-answer:  “Y is a crooked letter.”  I never understood that it was a diversion, not an answer, never an answer.  Why is a crooked letter.

Easy bake Oven

I’ve had a lot to say lately.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading, commenting, thinking and writing.  The blogging community has been very good to me.  It has been a place to publicly vent, to display, solicit and begin to heal.  I have found it to be immeasurably comforting.

I don’t know why, 4 months after MM told me he was getting divorced, 4 months after he came to my town and slept over in my home, in my bed, 4 months after he was able to be with me publicly, 4 months after he started telling people that he was getting divorced, that I’ve been all consumed with the posts, with the bloggers and with writing.  I wonder, subconsciously, what’s going on with me. 

I struggle with how I got to be where I am on September 4, 2010.  Where was I on September 4, 2009?  2008?  Seems a bit blurry.  And did I ever, for a moment, think that THIS is where I would be?  Not in a million years.

I’m frustrated, sad, angry, frightened.  I think about words like “love,” “soul mate,” “other woman,” “married man,”  “discovery day,”  “no contact” and the list is endless.  Worse, sometimes is that it is all-consuming.  I don’t understand how the affair can take up so much of my time.  It’s like damned sink-hole or bottomless abyss.  And yet – my life is so substantially different on September 4, 2010 than it was on September 4, 2009.  And I’m not always sure it is for the better. 

I don’t know what it is that I’m seeking from the other bloggers, the other opinions, the other players in this shitty triangle.  Some small way to move on with my life.  Believe it or not, I envy those who have been able to withstand “no contact” until contact becomes a memory.  I envy those who have committed to their spouses, post affair, and are able to close the door to the life they had or could have had with their “other.”  I feel like I am in limbo – neither the girlfriend or the OW.  I liked being the OW.  It defined our relationship.  There were not expectations.  He had his W at the end of the day, and whatever I did or who I did it with, was never MM’s business.  I had a life that didn’t include him, that didn’t revolve around whether he could come to see me, what time he would leave and whether or not I should make plans.  UGH!  I hate that part of me.  The part that wants to see him at all cost.  The part that refuses to make plans “just in case” he is free.  For goodness sake, be  with me or not.  Commit to me or don’t.  Spend real time with me or go fuck yourself.  Simple.  Easy.  Not.

I got an email from a friend of mine telling me that she has a nice guy to fix me up with.  My best friend has a guy that she wants to introduce me to.  I have a great guy in my own town that wants to see me, that I keep turning away.  For what?  Would I have done that a year ago?  6 months ago?  Or 269 days ago? 8 months and 26 days ago?  6,456 hours ago?  387,360 minutes ago? Or 23,241,600 seconds ago?

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?

How about love?
How about love?
How about love? Measure in love

Seasons of love. Seasons of love

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes!
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Journeys to plan.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life
Of a woman or a man?

In truths that she learned,
Or in times that he cried.
In bridges he burned,
Or the way that she died.

It’s time now to sing out,
Tho’ the story never ends
Let’s celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends
Remember the love!
Remember the love!
Seasons of love!

Oh you got to got to
Remember the love!
You know that love is a gift from up above
Share love, give love spread love
Measure measure your life in love.

“Seasons of Love,” Rent the Musical, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson.

When I was a little girl I had an Easy Bake Oven.  I remember how neat it was to make the mini cakes, pies, cookies, etc.  It cooked under a lightbulb.  (Wasn’t my mother concerned with salmonella?)  I don’t remember them tasting great, but the idea of them was huge and wonderful.  When my children were old enough I got an Easy Bake Oven for them.  We baked those min cakes.  And you know what? 

 They tasted like shit.