Where I am

Two and a half years ago, having just stepped into my life as a single woman, I remember feeling somewhat lost.  Not lost as in… OMG…I can’t cope…what will I do now?  I felt lost as in… What is this new place?  Surely in this day and age I should not be expected to navigate it without a map or an app or at the very least some key landmarks!

I felt almost euphoric about having made it through the long tunnel that lead to this new life.  The sheer relief made me giddy, cocky even, when friends and colleagues inquired as to how it was all going.  And yet I still felt an intense longing for the man I had shared most of my life with.  I didn’t want the marriage we had walked away from.  I just wanted him…the man I’d felt a deep soul-connection to since the day we met.  More than anything, I wanted to know when those feelings would become manageable and when they would be gone entirely.  I wanted to peer at a diagram or map with an arrow on it, indicating “you are here” at the gate.  I wanted to follow the map and know with some level of certainty what I would feel in sixth months, 12 months, two, three, five years.  I didn’t need to know what specific events would unfold.  I just wanted some assurance that I was making my way through the fog, moving at a reasonable pace away from emotional chaos.

There was no map.  But if there was a map, it would show me today, standing in a calm place where I don’t even need a map!  And it would show me how I got here. To get here, I had to walk out of that euphoria and fall straight down into intense grief.  I had to sit there and live with it.  I’ve experienced some losses in my life but had never before felt grief that caused my chest to hurt.  I still remember waking up with that pain.  It was 5 am on December 31st, 2012.  I had to eventually stand up and peer out of it and then take a single step up and out of it.  I remember that day, too.  It was March 10th, 2013.  I went to visit Roger, my ex, and have a 45 minute conversation during which I heard the voice of our collective wisdom, that had brought us to where we were.  My chest stopped hurting that day. I still grieved, but the pain wasn’t radiating out from my core anymore.  I stopped blanking out on stuff I was normally on top of, and making stupid mistakes at work.  I looked better and felt better.

Our family arrived at and seamlessly moved through the first anniversary of our break up.  We did the things as a family that we had always done before.  Roger and I remained guarded around each other, but worked as a team to parent our children and engage with our extended families.  We traveled together to an out of town family wedding.  We drove back and forth to our middle son Derek’s university each fall and spring.  We attended meetings together at our youngest son Graeme’s school, and with his speech-language pathologist, occupational therapist and his doctor.  We copied each other in emails with all those parties.  We co-operated with each other around Graeme’s schedule, so each of us could work and still care for him.  We fell into step with each other when my father died and gave each other what we needed to participate in the funeral of a man we both loved.  We worked together to manage a medication trial for Graeme, taking, recording and sharing data.  We approached his school as a team, formally requested one-to-one support for him, and shared the job of making a case for that support.  We slept overnight on chairs, side by side, at Graeme’s hospital bedside when he began having seizures last fall.

From time to time, I do see glimpses of the moody jerk I was married to.  I still feel an impulse to chase after him during those moments and ask what the problem is.  But that didn’t help during our marriage, and I know it won’t help now.  Our separation has given us so much.  When Roger is feeling irritated and moody, there is no one he has to explain it to, and lucky, lucky me…I get to open the door to my apartment, close it behind me and feel the peace awaiting me.  That peace, that safety is sweet.  But on many days since our separation, I still felt that old longing, and I still felt I wanted…I don’t know what.  Just… more.

This past summer, I definitely turned a corner.  Spring had been stormy on many fronts.  Graeme had been coming apart for awhile.  He was informed in March that a member of the support staff at his school, a man Graeme feels very, very connected to, would be leaving at the end of the school year.  Graeme began immediately grieving.  He may have become depressed, I’m not really sure.  His chronic constipation became acute, resulting in daily abdominal pain.  He was missing school.  I was missing work.  We were both a mess.  I began to obsess about the future and how I will earn a living when he ages out of the school system.

On top of all that, there was a major crisis at work, an unprecedented situation, in my 20+ years with this organization.  It was barely believable.  The non-profit agency I manage had three new board members.  One of them turned out to be a very combative woman, who in all likelihood has a personality disorder.  She was engaging in all kinds of alarming behavior, sending lengthy email messages that made little sense, with links to government websites which she intended to serve as proof that we were doing everything wrong. At her first board meeting, she declared war on me personally and then called our primary funder, who thankfully picked up on her apparent lack of stability. Our Chairperson and other executives managed the problem, and convinced a majority of the board members to request this woman’s resignation, but not before it got very, very ugly.  I was grateful that my board supported me and acted to protect the organization from this woman’s very toxic presence.

The morning after the crisis was resolved, I woke up feeling strangely numb. I went through all the usual motions…drinking coffee, showering, washing the tub, filling it for Graeme’s bath, getting him up and helping him into the tub.  Walking around my apartment, I found myself with a piece of hardwood stuck in my foot.  It came loose from the floor and was lodged in the fleshy ball of my foot.  About 3/8 of an inch thick and 5 inches long, it went into the bottom of my foot and came out again part way and was just stuck there.  I gazed quietly at it and thought:  Huh. Really?

When you are a mother, you can’t just have a meltdown when you impale your foot on a piece of flooring.  I had to get Graeme to school and didn’t see any other alternative, so I used a steak knife to slice through the skin, released the piece of wood and bandaged my foot.  It didn’t even hurt.

It’s only in hindsight that I realize I just may have been at my breaking point. But what I did know was that I needed an experience that would inspire, challenge and change me.  I needed to let go of the relentless, exhausting, defeating, repetitiveness of getting up everyday, carrying out all the activities that maintain my son Graeme and myself, only to go to bed and get up in the morning and do it all again.

For about a year, I had been thinking of driving through the Canadian Rocky Mountains.  I needed it, Graeme needed it.  I knew that somehow it would press a reset button in me. I almost lost my nerve.  Graeme’s distress was a constant theme.  Every day, often two or three times a day, he was banging on the floor of our apartment, banging on the walls and furniture, loudly vocalizing…howling almost.  I felt afraid.  If I could barely cope with him at home in a familiar environment, why would I put us both in an unfamiliar environment on the other side of the country?  Wouldn’t that just be flat-out unwise?

Once again, it was just a matter of taking a single step and leaving that fearful place.  I booked our flight from Toronto to Calgary.  We needed accommodations with full kitchens as opposed to standard hotel rooms, because Graeme can’t take the pressure of being in a restaurant everyday, so researching and finding suitable, affordable places to stay required a lot of research.  That took about a week, and once all those arrangements were in place, I booked our return flight from Vancouver.

We flew out of Toronto on August 3rd.  We got our first look at the Rockies about an hour out of Calgary.  Graeme was snacking during the drive and completely forgot about the food in his hand when the first mountains appeared.  I still remember that moment – I was trying to keep my eyes on the road while taking in the mountains, and loving the expression on Graeme’s face all at the same time.  We were on the Trans-Canada Highway and almost immediately a massive black mountain was looming ahead of us.  As we got closer, I realized we were driving, in the bright sun, toward a major storm system.  Soon we were being pelted with hail stones, with zero visibility. All cars were pulled over on the shoulder to wait out the storm, so I did too.  When the storm cleared, we made it to the resort we would stay at for two days before continuing on through the Rockies.  Although that was the only major weather-related event we experienced, it seemed to set in motion a continuing cycle of storms we endured together while falling in love over and over again with these massive land forms that take your breath away, surrounded by rivers and lakes that are bluer and more beautiful than anything I’d seen in my entire life.

Enthralled with the mountains, Graeme asked immediately, typing on his iPad, to go up into the mountains.  The next day, we rode the gondola up Sulphur Mountain and we stood on a platform at the summit, gazing down on the town of Banff.  At one point, I missed a cue that indicated Graeme needed the washroom and all his distressed behaviours kicked in.  A group of Japanese tourists stood and watched intently – apparently witnessing an autistic meltdown for the first time?  There were no unisex washrooms.  I had to escort him into the ladies washroom to pee – what else could I do?  We enjoyed the rest of the afternoon on the mountain top and went back to the resort for dinner and a swim.

Next morning, we were on the road to Jasper.  Just when we thought we couldn’t love those Rockies more deeply, something new came into sight.  The highway took us higher up as we approached Jasper, and we were at eye level with glaciers.  Graeme and I had fries and iced tea on a huge spacey terrace at the Columbia Icefield Centre, gazing at the Athabaska Glacier, and Graeme was too full of the experience to even sit down.  By early evening, we were settled in Jasper, Alberta.  Next day, we hiked for hours through the Maligne Canyon…watching and listening to the rushing water, staring up at rock forms, breathing in the forest.  This is what we came for.

 

Our itinerary included five days in Vancouver, BC which was a gorgeous 9 hour drive from Jasper. We drove through lush, tree covered mountains, along a highway that followed the Thompson River, with colourful freight trains running alongside.  Approaching Kamloops, the terrain was drier, with many of the mountains covered in black stubble – the remains of forest fires.  We stayed overnight in Kamloops, in a sweet boutique hotel, but the downtown area gave off a distressed vibe.  We had to go out for dinner and Graeme was very unhappy.  There was a local park I had scouted in advance of our arrival, but I couldn’t calm him enough to take him there.  He did settle for sleep and after a stressful breakfast in the hotel dining room, we got the heck out of Kamloops.

An hour out of Kamloops, Graeme was once again falling apart in the back seat of the car.  There was no where to stop.  No where at all.  I kept driving until we reached the little town of Merritt and we pulled into a gas station with a little restaurant.  I thought he needed the washroom, but once we got into the washroom, I saw that his hands were shaking and I realized he had not had enough to eat that morning.  We got some food into him and made the rest of the beautiful drive to Vancouver with no issues.  We easily located the little condo we had rented on Airbnb, returned our rental car, and took the Sky Train back to the condo, carrying a pizza.  Graeme spent the rest of the evening on the balcony overlooking a little courtyard.

In the morning, we swam in the onsite pool. But Vancouver didn’t really agree with Graeme.  In the Rocky Mountains, he was really in his element.  He had no need for another urban setting.  I let go of all the plans I had made to see Vancouver and we spent most of our time in Stanley Park.  We swam every night before bed.

While we were on this trip, my body struggled to adapt to the different time zones.  Our days were pretty exhausting, so once Graeme was in bed, I would crash.  After sleeping only a few hours, I would be wide awake.  In the early morning, I would finally fall asleep again, often to be awoken by text messages from Roger, one of our other sons or my sister, who were already up and at work.  Those early morning sleeps brought strange visits from both my father and Roger.  I remember being embraced by my father, who was once again whole, not the sick, frail man who left us.  I remember also waking up feeling the full-blown love I’d had for Roger.  That pure love that makes you see only the person’s goodness.  Where the hell was THAT coming from?  I can only guess that those Rocky Mountains had blown all the channels wide open.

Graeme was missing his father too.  By the last day in Vancouver, we were both more than ready to come home.  On August 13th, we headed to the Vancouver Airport for our return flight home.  We waited a long time to go through security.  He had some difficulty going through the scanner on his own.  He started quietly vocalizing while I was talking to a security staff about a  little folding knife in my purse, that had belonged to my dad, which I had forgotten about. So I had to let them take it from me at security.  Such is life.  But while I was talking to them, Graeme was saying “dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad..” on and on.  I wasn’t really paying attention to him and he became agitated.  We still had 35 minutes before our flight would board, so I took him to buy some water and nacho chips, but he didn’t calm down.

Waiting at the gate, he became even more agitated and was still saying “dad, dad, dad, dad…”.  I think he was asking to go to his dad that very night, which wasn’t in the plan.  He escalated into a meltdown.  There were 300 people in the immediate area, watching.  I worked with him to try to calm him, but he was slamming his fists onto everything he could reach and kicking at our carry-on bags.  I moved him into a corner so he had two walls to hit and wiped him down with an extra t-shirt as he was sweating profusely.  A Westjet staff approached and spoke calmly to me.  He told me they would do whatever was needed for Graeme – reschedule our flight, give us help at the Toronto airport, arrange a ride.  He assured me that he knew I was the best person to know if Graeme could fly right then.  I asked them to board us as soon as possible and they did just that.  They even asked me if they should wait to board the other passengers or not. Graeme settled into his seat and had a good flight.  Two fellow passengers who had witnessed the meltdown in the gate lounge approached us when we landed in Toronto, with words of encouragement and warm wishes.

The next day, Graeme settled in at his dad’s for a 17-day stay.  I had some much needed time to recover and recharge.  I took a three-day tour of Ottawa with my sister, so we could go back and remember places our family had lived, and remember our father.  I had frequent visits with Graeme at Roger’s and one evening he typed onto his iPad a message of appreciation for what we had experienced together on our trip out west.

September always rolls around, doesn’t it?  No matter how great or how lousy the summer has been, September comes.  I’d had the best summer in DECADES.  Truly.  I felt ready to do so many things I couldn’t find the energy for previously.  I felt a renewed commitment to my job, and to doing it well.  Graeme returned to school, used his iPad to ask to be placed in a specific teacher’s class, and was granted that placement.  The class is for the highest functioning students in the special education department, and has the lowest amount of support.  The one-to-one support we had asked for had not come through but Graeme was determined to make a go of it.  His classmates regard with kind curiosity this boy who doesn’t talk but otherwise can do most of what they do, and some things they can’t do.  Graeme and his teacher have formed a tight bond already.

So where the heck am I on this map today?  One day last week, as I was driving home from work, that deep love for Roger was bubbling up again.  And with it, a fully-bloomed realization came:  I was so, so wrong for him. BOOM.  It made me weep, thinking about the fact that this dear man, who is no more imperfect than most men, had spent 30 years of his life with someone who was just wrong for him.

I want his happiness as much as I want my own.  This is good – I used to want his happiness more.  I know I can never go back to being a woman who would try, and try, and try to be right for anyone.  I want to be right for me now.

I wouldn’t have recognized, two and a half years ago, this place in which I now find myself as a destination on a map.

A year ago

photo: kclanderson.com

I would have missed it entirely but for the little trophy symbol on my Notifier.  Apparently, yesterday was the one year anniversary of choosingmyownwellbeing.  Does this call for an Annual Report or perhaps an Executive Summary?  OK, I’ll run with it and see where it goes.

A year ago.  Yes, I sure can reach back and touch those days of  what was, for me, unprecedented desperation, anxiety, and anger that eclipsed most of the sadness I felt about my marriage ending.  I remember those emotions well, and now in the calm that surrounds me, some sadness lingers along with hope.  So much has changed in a year.

A year ago, I was running non-stop on adrenaline and anger.  Adrenaline because I needed the marriage to end and an unsold house was standing between me and peace.  Anger because my husband Roger and I had mapped out a plan for getting the work done, and he was alternating between doing little and doing nothing.  Now, that house belongs to another couple… a Canadian born Asian man and a white woman.   A young, still childless version of Roger and myself.  I’m glad they live in our house.  I mean, ummm…. their house.  A couple of times a week, my travels take me past that house and this morning I cheered their efforts to make the patch of front yard grow a decent lawn. 🙂

A year ago, I still had a dog.  My beautiful, spirited chocolate lab, Ariel gave me comfort during those awful days.  As I looked for a suitable place to live, I knew our days together were coming to an end.  I would eventually settle into a 3-bedroom flat and she would eventually go off to live her dream of being a farm girl.  Now, her image graces the wallpaper on my computer screen at work, and she’s my WordPress gravatar.

A year ago, I still slept next to my husband Roger.  Still in love with each other, but toxic to each other too, we forged ahead by day with plans to end our 30-year marriage and live separately come summer.  By night, we shared a bed.  I remember falling asleep to my own silent tears every night and waking up the same way each morning.  Now, I fall asleep alone each night, enjoying the space that is mine alone.  I do often think of Roger as I fall asleep, and sometimes wipe away a tear.  Most days, I wake with an awareness that I have dreamed of him or felt his presence in the early morning.  Are our souls carrying on an affair behind our backs?  Why not?!

A year ago, I carried the full responsibility of caring for our youngest son, a teenager who is profoundly impacted by autism.  Although Roger loves our son every bit as much as I do, he gradually withdrew from his hands-on care as our relationship deteriorated.  I got Graeme up and dressed every morning, gave him breakfast, washed his face, brushed his teeth, packed his lunch and put him on a school bus.  I got him off his school bus at 3 pm, and finished my own work day with Graeme at my office.  I took him home, gave him dinner, bathed him, brushed his teeth and put him to bed.  My other two sons helped here and there.  I also had 5 hours of weekly respite from The Geneva Centre for Autism.  Now, Graeme spends two weekends a month with his dad, and comes home to me Sunday evenings happy, with a fresh shave, finger and toe nails trimmed.  Now, I treasure the 48-hour breaks I get twice a month.

A year ago, I still wore a wedding ring.  Now, my wedding ring, a family heirloom, sits in a heart-shaped crystal dish given to me by Roger many years ago.  My ring finger still appears a bit disfigured, as ring fingers will.

A year ago, neither Roger nor I had shared the news of our break up with our respective mothers.  When we did make the 1 1/2 hour drive together to my mother’s home to give her the news, she gushed “It’s your 30th Anniversary this year!!” before we managed to get the words out.  As we did predict, Roger’s mother did not take the news well and continues to treat our break up as her own personal tragedy.  Now, we focus on rebuilding our own lives and trying to give our children a positive model.

A year ago, we had a very different understanding of our son Graeme.  Over the past 10 years, he has all but disappeared. Once a very engaged, happy boy who found ways to let us know what delighted him, frightened him, tickled his funny bone and intrigued him, Graeme stopped communicating with us as adolescence descended on him, pulling him deeper into an isolated place.  The human service system viewed our largely unresponsive son as an individual with severe intellectual disabilities.  No academic programming was offered to him at school. It’s a view we dismissed, actively fought and then, over time, it seemed we began to accept, seemingly without even being aware of it.  When we made our decision to separate, we sat down together with our neurotypical sons and shared the information with them.  We didn’t do that with Graeme.  We just told him that his dad had a new apartment and that we were moving, too.  So you can imagine how shocked, how thrilled, how amazed we were three months ago when Graeme began to suddenly communicate by spelling out his thoughts on a letter board.  Full, grammatical sentences, correct spelling, sophisticated thoughts.  A year ago, we had no idea we’d be buying our son an iPad with text-to-voice software, and that he’d be telling us how angry he is that we are no longer together.  And how great it would be to hear his voice as he told us we had screwed up so badly.

A year ago, Roger and I were still trying to figure out how to leave each other.  It took all our strength to do it.  Now, well… we’re building a new relationship a week at a time.  We shop together at Costco once a month.  We have dinner together with Graeme alternate Friday nights.  We send each other text messages most days about Graeme, about our other kids, about purchases we need to make jointly.  Roger reads the flyers and texts me about what’s on sale and where.  Yesterday, our text messages were about a funeral we will attend together this week.  In two months, we will also attend a wedding together.

A year ago, Roger and I still met weekly with the couple’s counselor we originally engaged to help us save our marriage.  The new focus of our sessions was to separate well and become good co-parents.  Even though we both acknowledged that the marriage had to end because life had become too painful for us both, and even though we agreed to set aside all our unresolved issues, we still found ourselves using those sessions to try to get the understanding from each other that had escaped us for so long.  Our counselor kept having to reign us in and remind us that our goals for the sessions had changed.  She told us that we each needed to pursue our healing outside the relationship or we would continue to disappoint each other.  It didn’t happen over night, but we do seem to be gradually releasing each other from unmet expectations.  It would be amazing and wonderful if a real friendship grew from this, but I’m afraid to hope for that much.  I’m reminded now of the Bare Naked Ladies song, Adrift and these lyrics:  “Your heart’s got a heavy load, there’s still a long way to go.  Keep your eyes on the road.”

We have come far in a year.  Are we there, yet?  No.  Neither are we adrift, but there really is still a long way to go.

Some days are like that

photo credit: da-integrated.com

I overslept this morning and had only an hour to get my 17 year old, Graeme, ready for his morning transportation.  Not a lot of time, considering his autism and motor issues.  Five minutes after his driver arrives, we make it downstairs to her waiting Dodge Carivan.  Phew!

Quick text message to Graeme’s dad, Roger:  “I was going to offer to pick you up but I overslept.  Can we meet at Coxwell Subway?”

I am 10 minutes late getting to Coxwell Subway.  Roger and I are 5 minutes late entering the meeting room where Graeme’s teacher and his Occupational Therapist are waiting.  We talk about some of the issues that are creating anxiety for Graeme at school.  The teacher thinks he’s doing a bang-up job, but he’s not.  I remind myself:  none of us knows what we have yet to learn, including teachers.  We talk about Graeme’s difficulty locating his  “motor maps” for the tasks of daily living.  His teacher doesn’t seem to think the Occupational Therapist knows what she’s talking about.  He becomes defensive and rude.  She keeps her cool and reigns him in with a professional tone.  She is there to rally around our son and get the school on board, and will not let anyone’s rudeness throw her.   Roger shows the teacher a weighted vest to support Graeme in remaining calm.  I show the teacher a compression panel to wrap around Graeme’s torso as another support device.  The meeting ends and Roger and I leave, having managed to stay on the same team and even reach out together to a teacher with a bad attitude.

We head to a fish & chip shop in our old neighbourhood.  We sit and have lunch, exchange tidbits of gossip about work problems and other neutral territory.  We chat about our middle son’s opportunity to teach English in Italy this summer.  We’re both anxious about, as well as supportive of the idea.

Next we go to our bank.  The proceeds from the sale of our house have been sitting in a joint account for over 4 months.  Time to divide them and begin conducting our financial lives independently.  Our marriage is over, but we are both indifferent to the idea of divorce as well as more aversive to divorce lawyers than we are to each other.  So neither of us has accessed any legal services.  We are seen by our bank manager and Roger informs him of the nature of our business.  The energy in the room is calm and casual.  I look at Roger, see the lock of grey hair that has fallen onto his forehead and notice how good he looks in his grey Eddie Bauer jeans.  I remove from my wallet a Mastercard of Roger’s I’ve been using, and I hand it to him.  He asks if I should keep it awhile longer, and I say no…  I’ve got another card set up.  At our request, the bank manager removes my name from the joint account, opens a new account for me and moves half our money into it.  He shows me the display of about 30 cheque designs and asks me to pick one for my new account.  I pick a lavender cheque with no fancy doodads or anything.  Roger says, “that’s the same one I picked”.

We leave the bank and I drop Roger off at his apartment.  He’s planning to shop a bit later if the rain stops and I ask him to return a pair of pyjama bottoms I bought for Graeme and get a larger size.  He takes the bag, kisses me quickly on my lips and gets out of the car.  I go to work.

At 8 pm Roger texts me:  he’s managed to find a second weighted vest for our son.  We can share the new one and the school can keep the one we’ve already got.  And he’s exchanged the pyjama pants.

A week from now, there may be shit flying back and forth.  It’s not like there is any lack of unfinished business between us, nor history re-writes.  But today was a pretty good day in the life of this newly separated family still trying to get the hang of things….

Separating Well

photo: http://www.uliad.net

I remember when my youngest son Graeme was diagnosed with autism, there was so much to learn, and it felt as though I needed to learn it all immediately.  He was our third child and I was a parent educator, so prior to this I considered myself a knowledgeable, skilled and experienced parent.  Many times since, I have described those days as a time when I discovered the vastness of the parenting learning curve and began to understand that not only was I not at its peak, I could not even see its peak.

I’m starting to suspect that once again, now at the end of a 30 year marriage, I’ve found myself at the foot of  a heck of a steep learning curve.

When the focus of our work with a couples’ counselor shifted from saving our marriage to “separating well” as our therapist put it, she emailed us a list of resources:  books to read, survival guides and tip sheets to help us navigate the unfamiliar terrain.  I suppose the information reflected the issues experienced by many who have walked, run, danced or crawled this road, but I don’t recall that there was much there that seemed like it fit for Roger and me.

At first, I thought we’d be fine if we could manage our grief.  But I completely underestimated the stress involved.  I realized around this point, that I had unfairly judged others who couldn’t get it together when their marriages were falling apart.  During the worst days, it seemed that there was a finish line somewhere ahead, and if I could just get to it… get physically out of “our” home and into “mine”, everything would be easy.  And in some ways, that proved to be true.  No question about it, the awful pressure, the adrenaline-fueled rush to get our house sold and get the hell out, is gone and there is a measure of peace in its place.

But now I do see the warning sign:  learning curve ahead.  Oh man, it’s got a flashing yellow light and caution tape everywhere!

photo: timmaughanbooks.com

Roger and I are getting along, I guess.  Sort of.  He’s become much more hands-on in the care of Graeme, and we communicate about him on a regular basis.  We sometimes shop together and on average, we eat a meal or two a week together.  Most of the time we’re together, we’re in the presence of one or more of our kids.  So, if either of us is tempted to steer the conversation toward relationship matters, there is little opportunity.  Which is good, except it often feels like there is an elephant in the room.  And it’s leaving landmines all over the place!  I never really know when either Roger or I are about to step onto a squishy, stinky pile of unfinished business and track it around for days and days.  Yuck!

Roger caught me off guard last week when he told me a woman who shops in his store had invited him to go dancing.  He said he told her he was recently separated, and not ready for that, but she insisted that he needed to get out and get busy.  He was doing something in his kitchen while he told me this and didn’t look up at me.  If he had, he would have seen my alarm and tears welling up.

Just because Roger says something doesn’t mean it’s an invitation for a discussion, so I said nothing and waited.  When nothing more was said, I went to the washroom to collect myself.  I found myself crying while I drove home and in part, that was in anger.  Roger knows I will hear him out calmly when he has something to say.  But if the topic of a man asking me out came up, Roger would be frothing at the mouth.  I have always hated that there is a double-standard regulating what is acceptable in our relationship.

A few days later, we exchanged text messages about Graeme.  I asked him if he was going out dancing with his new friend that night.  He said no, he wasn’t ready to date.  He also mentioned that he was unsure what I thought of the idea since I didn’t really react.  I said was sad, had felt some anger and also that I had since reflected that I already know I will be jealous of any new attachments he forms but that I really want him to live well in every sense.  He only paid attention to the anger part.  Then he said it really upset him to know that he won’t know if or when I venture into the dating world.  All this by text message because we don’t dare to talk.  I hate it.

I was tempted to say “don’t worry about it… I won’t be dating”.  The part of me that might respond to a man romantically or sexually feels exhausted and worn out, frankly.   But that isn’t really the point, is it?  Doesn’t a couple who decides to separate permanently, sells their house and divides their assets, also relinquish their rights to some kinds of information about each other?  He was acting as though divulging the invitation to go dancing was an act of supreme generosity.  Really?  He did that for me?

I do know that Roger wants a peaceful relationship with me – good to be on the same page.  And since we don’t have face-to-face conversations about our new relationship, it’s not easy to know what the other is thinking.  Add to that some moments of emotional intensity, and the terrain can feel somewhat unstable for us both.

But I think Roger said what he said because there just isn’t a playbook, newcomer’s guide or manual for this relationship.  I think he wants to know what he can expect from me and it was a bit of an experiment.  I wish I could be of more help to him.  But I’m standing next to him at the bottom of the learning curve.

Where is the damn owners’ manual?