Our long national nightmare is over

Random post title. Sorry.

Told the kids today. It was difficult, as the day my parents broke the same news to me is still a strong memory. My son is about the same age I was. He started off ok, questions about logistics (when am I going to your house?). But slowly the emotions took hold. He was angry. He cried. It was uncomfortably similar to my reaction nearly 30 years ago.

But he got better. And the early signs are that he's going to be ok. We were able to laugh riotously at the SNL giraffe sketch. I'm so worried for him - he can be a sensitive, emotional kid. But he might be alright. My daughter was unfazed, as expected. She's too young to get it.

I'm moving in two weeks, on Valentine's Day. I always hated that bullshit consumerist fake holiday.

bonding.

Brevity this time, I hope.

My family isn't all that close. We care, but we're not the types to spend every weekend talking or staying in touch. There are intimacy issues, I guess. Emotions are awkward between us. Does it stem from my folks' divorce? Maybe. Don't know. Don't feel like talking about that. LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

(oddly, those intimacy issues don't extend beyond the family for reasons that aren't clear to me)

But dammit, it made it that much harder when I broke the news to my mom tonight. We talked for a long time, mostly calm talk about the realities and details of it. How to prep the kids. Where I'm moving. We talked about the Blagojevich trial (they live in Illinois) and her failure to have a screening colonoscopy at age 63 to which she said LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

No, not really. But she did steadfastly refuse to do it.

And then the conversation inevitably ended, and it became clear that I'm still her baby boy and she hurts for me. We didn't quite break on the phone, but it was horribly painful to hear her say "I'm going to have a good cry now." Too much emotion for me to handle.

Too much, because it's all sitting there in the back of my head. The pain, the guilt, the feeling of failure, the embarrassment of starting over, the fear of the future, the fear of the unknown, the worry for my kids, the worry for me. Even the worry for my soon-to-be-ex. I don't want to deal with it. I want to skip ahead to when I think the worst is past and everybody is doing just fine.

sudden unexpected emotional trauma

I'm going to miss my dog a lot.

Hit me out of nowhere when I was filling her water bowl tonight.

Oh son of a bitch

She returns from a party given for a European friend tonight, tells me she found a renter for the basement. Mid-March. A nice graduate school couple. She has to redo things, tear out a tub/shower in a main-floor basement to store the washer/dryer, make a kitchenette out of that former space, kick the au pair upstairs, out of her roomy space and into the tiny room I now occupy. This will happen at the time the au pair's parents visit from Germany.

It's going to backfire. Why would she want to put up with a downgrade like that? We'll lose the child care we were hoping to extend through next January for the sake of the kids and for the sake of having something set up for the long summer. It's being handled in the wrong wrong way and there's nothing I can do except voice my displeasure, which then falls on deaf ears.

Our kids will lose their main play area.

I'm terribly frustrated.

Date with Ikea

The timeline has been altered.

I was working under the assumption that any potential split and move would happen later in the spring. For many reasons, none of which are all that interesting, it just doesn't work out well to move before, say, April. But the decision was made to split and my future ex-wife wants it all done as soon as possible. Pressure has been applied, logic be damned.

This last week in clinic was slow - too slow, actually. Makes me nervous about having enough patients to justify having a job. But it did allow me to leave work early and explore the vast wonderland of housing in Vancouver (Motto: "Just like Vancouver, BC, only without the Olympics. Or charm. Or diversity. Or nightlife. Or ferries. Or skyline. Or Canadians"). Mostly what I found was horribly depressing. For my hoped-for budget I could select from a number of complexes chock-full of presumed meth users. Oh! A 400 sq. ft. studio in downtown in a secure building...for $700. The living space is the size of my current dining room. Ok then, here's a 1 bedroom with a fireplace, cramped but bigger than most and...huh...what's that smell?

I looked at about 12 places and found 2 that would meet my basic criteria: be cheap enough to not have roommates, be safe enough to have my kids stay with me. Not fancy places, but acceptable. Friday I stumbled upon one nicer community that was running a ridiculous special on a single unit. A couple hundred a month less than normal. It's close to my office, close to shopping, close to the freeway that takes me back to Portland and the kids. Gated complex (for no good reason). Pool. Hottub. AC. Big balcony overlooking a large greenspace. W/D, microwave. Vaulted ceilings. Covered parking. The apt is close enough to the clubhouse to let me steal their free WiFi. It's the biggest place I saw by a lot, and I even got a rent discount for working at the hospital.

I had to take it, even though I was hoping to slow down the divorce train. I suppose it could still fall through, but it appears to be a done deal. I'll be leaving sooner than I thought and sooner than I hoped. I'll have the place mid-Feb, be out by early March I'd guess.

I have to now figure out what I'll be taking and what I'll need. I haven't lived alone, or in an apartment for that matter, since '96. I came to this relationship with nothing. Everything I brought to LA from TX I shipped UPS. The FE-w is hoping to rent out the basement (finished, and currently the kids play area). I'll get that furniture: sofa bed, coffee table, another table for dining, entertainment center, big TV. I'll get the daybed I've been sleeping on and a dresser. But that's about it. I have to start over. Create a functional life - an adult life this time, and do it on a limited budget if possible. It would be nice if in the process of being a consumer whore I managed to pick out stuff that didn't say to visitors: this guy is one step away from living under the bridge in a dishwasher box.

So today it was off to Ikea.

I generally like the place, even enjoy the Bataan Death March they force you to undergo to get to the department you actually want to see. And I think I'll be able to cobble together a kitchen (plates, anyone?) and fill in the odd furniture gaps on the cheap (bedside table, etc.). But I found the experience bittersweet. Virtually everybody in there seemed to be cute young couples starting off on their experiements in cohabitation. 25, holding hands, getting amped over that EKTORP sofa and what do you think, honey? The MARKÖR or the HOLY SHIT I LOVE THE RAMVIK!!!!!

That was me a decade ago, cruising the Carson, CA store, picking out floor lamps and bar stools. And what good did all that do me? I'm back again doing the same thing but without the joy and without the promise. Didn't see a lot of single guys in there. Didn't share telling looks with other 30-something men starting over. Maybe I don't understand my demographic. Maybe I'm supposed to be resupplying someplace else. Army surplus? Bass Pro Shops?

half birthday/half excited/half traumatized

It's now January 18, 2009. My half birthday. I have yet to see the anticipated shower of cards, gifts and cash prizes, but perhaps that's because it's a Sunday and the mail won't come until Monday. It's a significant date, and not just because it marks this terribly important halfway point in my yearly birth cycle. It's a date I associate with transition.

On January 18, 1992 the relationship with my college girlfriend ended. In the scope of life events this wasn't such a huge deal, but at the time it was terribly traumatic despite being a mutual decision. I was 19, an overwrought AC-TOR (gen-ius!), and the emotional impact stuck with me for quite a long time. She was a great gal: fun, talented (an art major) and her looks honestly put her out of my league. As the time passed I often wondered if I had screwed up and passed on something that could have been real and lasting. Yes, I carried a torch. Sue me.

That being said, would I remember the date if it hadn't been my half birthday? No, of course not. We made it a minor joke at the time and that detail stuck.

So now the years have passed. I graduated, left Illinois, lived all over the place, got married, had two kids, owned a home, changed careers in a drastic way, adopted a puppy who now has gray hair. Lots of living has gone down in the meantime.

Living. Which includes being in marital limbo for the last couple years. Yes, years. We've stuck together out of financial necessity, out of love for our kids, out of convenience, out of some distant belief that things could be fixed despite a dawning realization that we were probably not good together from the start. This limbo has worn me down, worn us down. And it has to end. I know this. We're no longer parenting as a team. We can't pretend that we're modeling good behavior for the kids. We both long for a new chance.

I'm scheduled to sit down with my wife and hammer out the terms of a divorce. She'll get the house of course, since the seed money to buy our lovely home in LA a decade ago came from her inheritance. I don't want to uproot the kids or make my son change schools. We'll pretend that it's a joint custody situation even though I'll likely become my own father: the every-other-weekend dad living in an apartment in some faceless neighborhood. I'll probably have to move to (god help me) Vancouver to take advantage of Washington's lack of a income tax. Since I work there already it will be like getting an instant 8% raise. It's money I'll need.

These are givens. But the particulars are unknown and significant differences loom. I think it could be ugly. The finances don't work out after a decade of debt spending and graduate school (where is MY goddamn bailout???). We barely keep one household running, let alone two. And it's not as if I need to live in style. I refuse to have roommates and a studio won't fly with the kids coming over, but other than that anything goes.

I'm tired and bitter after living like this for so long. I've become withdrawn, uncertain, robotic, a ghost. I dread - DREAD - watching the effects of this on my children. But it has to happen. It's my - it's our - only shot to move on and have anything resembling a life worth living. Somewhere deep I'm hopeful that things will turn around in my life.

So we're going to sit down and make it official. Formulate the plan. End the marriage. I was given 6 days to get my thoughts together. I said no, things are very difficult at work as I adjust to clinic medicine. I need another day. Let's talk Sunday. There will be paperwork but it all essentially ends at this meeting.

Which I now realize is going to happen today.

January 18.

Happy half birthday to me.

Nobody's here, but...

for the record I'll likely be posting inanities here on a semi-regular basis. For various reasons I don't have the freedom to work things out/attention whore in the old locale the way I'd like.

So stay tuned. Or not. No, I guess stay tuned. 

(from the former super-secret blog)