Confessions of an Insomniac or...Things that Keep Me Up All Night

It could be the flu shot that kept me from work today and has made me feel nauseated and ill for the past two days…

It could be that I’ve been pretty sad and lonely for the past several months

It could be that I feel a disconnect with other people, and miss having a large social circle

But it is none of those things that keep me awake tonight.   It is the devastation I feel when thinking of my boys.

I have two boys.   Two beautiful boys that brought me nothing but joy after I realized the best way to parent was not the way I was parented.   It took me a few years to catch on to that fact, but once I did, how I enjoyed those boys.

Son two no longer speaks to me, reviles me and has no qualms in not only sharing that with others but has in the past, and will likely again, tried to destroy me via his anger towards me.   I have long ago decided, as son one tells me, that having someone that angry and toxic in my life is not good for me and that God was, indeed, likely being merciful TO me.

I pray for him when I talk to my God, though and hope that his life is full, that he has love in his life, that his work is rewarding and that despite what it is he hates me for, somewhere deep down inside him, he knows no matter what he does, part of me will forever love him. It was during this prayer that it all started.

Thoughts of son two segued into thoughts of weddings.   Bear with me here. Son number one is now dating a girl that I truly believe is actually worthy of him.   He was married before to a little mousy girl that was never satisfied, easily bored, and ready for something new and exciting (the last new and exciting thing being an odd looking man of low character and low means).   This was never what son number one was destined for. He tends to the ornery and he has found a girl now that keeps him on his toes. I am trying not to like her too much because who knows. Next month, next year she could be gone, and that would break my heart, but yes...I like her a lot.   I could love her a lot...if given the chance.

So weddings...should son number one fall totally in love with this girl and marry her, in all likelihood I would again see son number two at a wedding.   This segued into thoughts of what he would do

1. To ruin his brothers wedding an attempt to be vindictive and hurtful to me.

2. How could I keep this from happening?    3. How what he would share would likely hurt my mother and sisters. Sisters I don’t care so much about, they are big girls but hurtful things said to an 82 year old, sickish woman are another thing entirely.  

I even went so far as to think how Left Brain and I could excuse ourselves after the service to keep this from happening.   Not only could son number two ruin a day of beauty for son one and his bride, but it could devastate an old lady. An old lady who still cries over him and wishes he were somehow near.

This then became thoughts of son one turning 40.   I had such happy things I wanted to do for him for his 40th.   I even talked to his girl about them. She sounded on board for anything I wanted to do that was nice for him.  But I then began thinking of why those good things could never happen.

I had thought to invite him to a family dinner at a local restaurant.   Book the whole upstairs of the place. Tell him we were having a dinner there to celebrate his birthday.   When he arrived...SURPRISE! I could have his friends there and he would love that so very much. He is super social, and loves laughter and people about him.

My second thought was to try to get my grandchildren, his children, over here and pick through photos to make up a book for him, have it printed and bound with their words to go with the photos they chose.   The girlfriend thought this an exceptional idea too and said she thought that is something he’d truly enjoy.

Here’s why it could never happen.

I HAVE NO CLUE WHO HIS FRIENDS ARE!  I do not know names. I wouldn’t know who to call. This hit me like a bolt from the blue. It is why I am sitting here now at 1:30 a.m. I couldn't name one!

I asked many times recently about seeing his kids then to try and work out the book thing, kept telling him I was lonely for them (I truly am...I am actually having withdrawal.  It is that bad) so that he would perhaps bring them by to talk to them about it….I even emailed my 12 year old grandson to tell him we had to talk about this for his dad….only to not hear back from him….so that was nixed too.

It then occurs to me that I could have called my son’s father (my ex) to ask him who to invite.   You see, he knows our son's friends.

This saddens me to the core. My ex has been to concerts with our son's friends, he has been to our son’s friends homes.   Shoot, one Fourth of July we ran into my ex, my son, my grandkids and some friends of my son's to find that my ex had been invited to their get together and fireworks afterwards.   

My son never even offered to introduce me to his friends. I cried all the way home about that. All that night it was like a tattoo on my heart. He is ashamed of you. You are less than less to him. He loves his dad so much more.

So I sit here at 1:00 am.   

Thinking.  

Thinking a lot.

Realizing.

Realizing a lot

1. Son 1 thinks more of his father than he does me.   Oh, he loves me. I know he loves me. He doesn’t THINK of me.   If I am a thought at all, I am not much of one. Nope, when it comes to me, he is thoughtless unless I am needed for something. He likely never will.
2. Son 1 feels a need to protect, entertain, and engage with his father because he feels my ex is alone and I have Left Brain...or maybe that is me projecting that need.   Perhaps it really is that he loves him more.
3. My ex takes full advantage of son one’s need to protect him, just as he doesn’t feel the need to tell son number two that he needs to knock off the horribly vindictive, slightly off behavior he chooses to let eat him up.
4. I don’t know the names or have never met son one’s friends because he chooses that I will not.   I do not know the why of this, nor does son one allow me the opportunity to ask. If I try to have a real conversation with him, he refuses to participate or he gets defensive and seemingly edgy, so I avoid it.
5. I think realizing this tonight has hurt me a great deal
6. The girlfriend has likely seen the ex 10 x to 1 in seeing me.   I am going to ask about this. What could it hurt?

What has all this pondering taught me?   It has taught me where I have been placed.   I don’t deserve the placement. It has taught me the only reason I will put up with it is to be able to hopefully see my grandchildren.   It has taught me that my life turned out not one iota of what I thought it would be.

But it has also taught me this…

When you think that your heart cannot be broken any more than it already is...it can be.

When you wish you could have a grown up conversation with your very grown up son, you should be able to.

When you can take no more...you shouldn’t.

When it is time to give up...you should.

Familial Loyalty...What Happened to It?

When someone becomes an ex…

A lot of people in my long years of life have found themselves in a divorce, in the process of divorcing or by golly, should be doing one of the above.

I was never much a proponent of divorce until it finally occurred to me that spending the next 30 years miserable and angry at everyone by staying in a marriage that was for all intents and purposes truly dead, or divorcing and being financially unstable, but finally able to breathe and be myself was something I was faced with.

I know couples that divorce and remain friends.   I will be honest here and say I am so very glad that this is possible in the world, but I don’t think it probable for the majority.   My son was on a youth baseball team where the ex-husband coached with the new husband and it was all hunky dory….the wives would show up and sit together.  That was impressive, but I makes me wonder what was said behind closed doors?

In my own extended family there have been a good many divorces.   My uncle divorced his first wife and married another and for years they didn’t really talk and be together but as age has advanced they seem to get on better than ever.  In fact, I think she sees the mistake it was to divorce him.   I wonder if that is because we are a bit more tenderized in our latter years?

My ex-husband and I are barely on speaking terms.  Of course our divorce was rife with the ugliness that killed it and my subsequent acting out and on it, but I have tried, since day one, to steer clear of things that would make others around us uncomfortable.  At our grandchildren’s games, I sit away from him and allow him the comfortable space to interact with others easily.  In doing that I’ve alienated myself somewhat from the “others” he so easily interacts with now.  I thought I was ok with that but am now finding that surprisingly…I too want that.

My son’s first wife left him for a troll, who she subsequently married, and when I see her at games I avoid her at all costs.  My words to her are few, and were it not for two gorgeous grandchildren they’d be so plenteous that no words would ever be necessary again.  One day this will happen.  

What I have difficulty understanding is loyalty to family members once a divorce happens.   I have a friend I work with who tells her brother that if he ever leaves his wife, they are keeping the wife and getting rid of him.   While that is amusing to hear and I can see where you may feel that way every great once and again, the simple truth is HE is family, and while she is currently family, she is family by marriage only.   Should they divorce and the divorce be contentious it is my HOPE that the family would tend, love and take care of the brother first and foremost.

When Left Brain’s ex, whom I not-so-affectionately call “the she-b (you can fill in the blanks)” gave him the ultimatum of “you will move me into the city, you will do x, y, and z…or we are done” (paraphrasing there) and then moved out of their marital home…you’d have thought his siblings would have become his allies in totality and familial love.   Alas his family not only put the dys in dysfunctional, but the word loyalty seems not to be in their lexicon, which is odd, as they all pride themselves on their wordsmithing.
The she-b treated him abysmally, leaves him and guess who they all interact with?   Her!   Loyalty, they have none.  Now I know there is history there between the siblings that may not be the best but they chose her over their brother.   They are on her Facebook page sending her greetings of love and their brother…nothing!

Left Brain had an aunt and uncle pass away and they didn’t even contact him to let him know!   Left Brain’s father died and to punish him they put in the obituary, his name as a single man and had him still living in Illinois while he was in Michigan and married to me…and they knew it!  Things with that family are very wrong, but one of the worse things is their lack of loyalty.  Yet they are loving the she-b like she was one of their own!

For myself, when I left my ex…my family was flabbergasted.  I didn’t tell them why for years, and then they understood, but it left them reeling prior to that knowledge.  

My own mother loved my ex.   She loved him more than she loved me which was always evident (as were her comments that he was too good for me, etc) and this was made very evident when she invited my ex to her birthday party at her house…and didn’t extend the same invitation to me after the divorce.  She had no loyalty either.   When confronted about this her reply was “this is my house I’ll invite whomever I want,” which basically said to me, her daughter…’I want him, not you, I prefer him to you.”

This brings me to the impetus of this blog post.  

My son, a good person, a loving person….well, his wife had several affairs on him and eventually left him for the Shrek she is now married to.  I don’t understand it, but to be intellectually honest, I am glad she is gone and he is very much better off without her. 

My immediate family do not post on her Facebook page or interact with her.   Too much ugly water has not only gone under that bridge but swamped that sucker.   My sisters want NOTHING to do with her, they’ve informed their kids that when you hurt one of us the family, by and large, are done with you.  (Seems my  mother is the exclusion to that rule).

My extended family, however, are not of that same deep loyalty thing.   My cousins and even an aunt are still on my ex-husband’s page, sending him all kinds of love.  They do this for me too, but I don’t buddy up with any of their exes, and never will.  My cousins, and an aunt also go on my son’s ex-wife’s Facebook page and make loving comments.   They say it is about the kids and I say while that is lovely….STOP.   They are part of us, to be sure, those kids are ours to the millionth power, but that woman, she is nothing or no one to us.  

I’ve even asked a few of them to stop interacting with her…but they continue to spread the love.

At a recent wedding of an extended family member, the ex-husband showed up and sat with his ex-wife at the family table.  They sat in awkward, ugly silence…but he came!  

I often wonder should my ex predecease me…should I go to the funeral home to support my son, or avoid that and hope my son understands.  I suppose this is something I should discuss with my son should that time come, but my preference would be to NOT go to NOT make his extended family feel anything toward me but to focus on their memories of him and to support my son.

I honestly don’t understand this phenomenon of choosing the non-family member over the close DNA types…but I don’t understand a lot of things. 

My hope is that one day my ex can be comfortable enough with me and Left Brain to hold a civil conversation at our granddaughter’s eventual wedding, college graduations….great grandchild’s birth.  My hope is that my grands never feel uncomfortable around both of us, but one thing is for sure…if you are mine, I’m going to choose YOU every time!

Love Worn Stones

I wear the diamonds that were once in the ring of my husband’s grandmother every day.   Sadly the state of her ring was so poor that I could not wear the ring itself as my engagement ring.   It was fragile and frail from years of wear and enjoyment.

We took her ring and had the gorgeous “nearly perfect, Old European cut” stones removed and placed into a setting quite different than her art deco design of the early 1900’s .   My preference would to been to keep her gorgeous stones and ring together but that could never be.   We did the next best thing.

Sometimes I’ll catch the glint of the larger stone and wonder. 

I wonder about this woman’s life.  I wonder what adventures she’d had while wearing these stones…where she went with them.   History she’d lived while wearing them. 

Did my husband sit as a little boy and play with the ring on her finger as my grandchildren had done with mine?   I like to think of him, little boy chubby legs tucked up in her lap talking to her while he twirled the ring on her finger watching those stones catch the light.

I wonder about the day she received the ring with these stones from her love.  Did he stutter and stammer a proposal, did she blush?  Was she surprised?  Did she love him as I love her grandson?  Was their wedding big or small, lavish or more personal?

I wonder what her thoughts were as she looked down at that ring and those stones in moments of sadness or happiness, contemplative moments or happy, silly moments. 

These diamonds have seen a lot of life.   I like to think they’ve seen a good bit of the good in people and life.  I like to think that the woman that had them before me knew grand love.  I hope she did. 

I wear them and see the photos of her that my husband has and smile to myself knowing that one day, although we have no children together, the granddaughter we share will wear these stones.  I plan to make sure she knows its history and all the things these stones have seen through the generations.  Laughter, tears.  Hard times, great times.  Adventure and mundane things.  Bread dough and garden soil, dirty diapers and happy tears of laughter.

I like to think that one day our granddaughter will look down and catch a glint from the stones and think of a woman she never met, who wore these diamonds with love and pride.   That she’ll think of me and the adventure that is my life, and wonder at the thoughts I think as I peer down at them.

The thought that these diamonds will continually be worn by women very much loved pleases me very much.  I hope it does my husband’s grandmother too.

The More Things Change...do they ever really?

I truly do like to post here about the joys in life.  Despite the heartaches that life often brings, the disappointments, the hardships, more often than not, life for me...has been beautiful and full of things of wonder and delight.   I don’t get here often to post, and that is because life is full, busy and rich.

Sometimes, however, I have a morning like I am having today and in those times I allow myself to reflect on things that have hurt me utterly and to the core of my being.

I’ve posted about being an afterthought before and I don’t mean to beat an already UGLY dead horse, but it has happened, yet again.   Not only happened again, but in the same manner…and by the same person.  Someone I would have hoped better of.   I suppose I need to reevaluate how he perceives me.

Nothing fills the deepest pocket of my soul and fills as many pages of my lifebook with joy as those two little spirits do.

Being a grandmother is one of my biggest joys, my greatest privileges, and the literal delight of my heart.

I love those grandchildren like I can’t begin to explain. I tell everyone who will listen that if you think you know love, if you think you cannot love anything more than your own children, you have no clue what awaits you when you become a grandparent.

The moment that baby boy and sweet girl were placed within my viewing vicinity, I was lost.

I attempt to explain it that this tidal wave of intense, indescribable love washed over me…no, it didn’t just wash over me but enveloped me. My brain was instantly hard wired to some yet unused portion of itself that reverberated with a need to see them often, be with them whenever I could, love them unconditionally, listen to them with my whole being, and to be so interested in their life that other things took second place. It is an instant bond that I can’t explain, don’t understand and never want to be without.

Love…well, love is my grandchildren.

When I am with them, I feel healthier. I feel more alive. I feel younger. That wave of love that hit me when they were just newly born still hits me every single time I see them.

Their voices, once little and high pitched, now growing deeper and more mature still thrill me the same. Their stories, no longer little sillinesses and jokes, but more serious, spiritual, or deep still mean the world to me. I hold each shared detail close in my heart. I ponder things after they’ve gone. I journal from time to time about them, and often post little anecdotes on my Facebook page, because those things are either so interesting, intriguing, witty or precocious they must be shared.

Each day that I drive to work, I drive near my grandson’s school. I blow a mental kiss that way and ask our God to give him a phenomenal day. It is important, because he is important. I see their photo on my desk at work and whisper a prayer that God will guide them and be with them.

They are the soul food of my life.

A couple years ago, their father took them on a vacation and took their grandfather, my ex-husband with him.   He’s taken their grandfather to several special-type events with them.  Making memories with them and him.  I’m glad they are getting these times, and I don’t begrudge the time they have together.  I want them to love their grandfather because if I know one thing about their grandfather, I know he loves them too.  That same tidal wave swamped him as well!

What hurts me is that I am often overlooked for these things.  I’m good in a pinch to pick them up or keep them, and I covet those times.  I wish I had more of them.   I wish, however, that I was the first one thought of, just one time, when making vacation plans, as a travel partner.   “Boy wouldn’t it be great if Mom could come, she’d love it and the kids would have so much fun with her.”   I’d love to be a person thought of when it was time to take them to a play or concert…even just as a courtesy.

I need to realize that this will not happen for me.  It is a hard realization for me.  I never thought it would end up this way.  My vision of grammy’dom was that I’m fun, I like to do fun things.   Because of health I won’t be able to do them much longer, so why the heck not get as many in as we can, while we can.

I'd love to have a real conversation about this.   I'd love to be able to share my heart.   I'd love to understand the dynamic a bit better because for me...with understanding comes peace.  I wish that could happen.

Instead I’m relegated to the nag pile.   Instead I’ve become a nuisance.  Instead…I am the afterthought.

No one wants to be the afterthought.   Ever.

I believe my only recourse is one of the two scenarios…

Let it go, but have a talk with my grandbabies and explain that I’d like to go, with my entire heart and soul, to be there when they experience new things to hear their thoughts on it, to tuck that away into my heart to ponder again when I can’t do things with them.   Tell my grands that to be with them is the joy of my life and that it is my deepest dream to have a great memory trip with them.   Tell them that I keep trying, and wishing, and dreaming and that perhaps one day it will happen.  They’ll remember that.  I know they have a deep abiding love of me.

Or…

Remain the nuisance and tagged nag, and keep at it until he relents, and then he’ll do it begrudgingly which will rob us all of any joy, and who wants that? 

This is a battle I can’t win.  I won’t win.   So what recourse do I have?   I think scenario one is looking better and better!