Posts Tagged ‘divorce’

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To do or not to do

Sunday, December 12th, 2010

I have written before about the choices we are faced with and the deliberating we do as a result. The do-we-don’t-we-have-a-baby? … The what-if-it’s-not-enough-not-having-one? … The will-I-regret-it-if-I don’t? … The pressure, the peers, the drama and the confusion … that doesn’t go away until you eventually just have the damn baby and deal with the consequences. Except consequences are never quite what you expect.

Life can either just continue to be the same or you can mix it up a bit and hope for the best. And, until you just do it, you will always wonder.

Now that I sit on the brink of divorce, I go through the same … the pressure, the peers, the drama and the confusion. The deliberating is the same really since I will wonder what it will be like to be divorced … until I just do it. Not that that helps in the slightest since I know what happened last time I took the plunge and things haven’t exactly been pretty ever since.

I love my child so much it hurts sometimes. But that doesn’t mean I am still not acutely aware of the person I would be without him, the life I would be leading and the relationships I would be having. I wouldn’t change a thing but I am fully aware of my parallel dweller living the life I could have had (Note: not should have had since my path is MY path and it is how it is and as it should be). So what of the other choices to be made?

Like those childless couples I listen to lament with tangible indecision about their need to procreate … or not … will I forever wonder about whether to divorce … or not. The first thing I always say when people say they want to start trying for a baby … followed quickly with the usual back-peddling about timing and differing opinions on the subject  … is, “Listen, guys, until you just fall pregnant, you will always talk about whether or not you should. Once you have the baby, however, you will never again have this conversation because whether you are happy with your decision or not, the social pressure will never allow you to utter your dissatisfaction with your decision since that would diminish the life of the baby you are obligated to love from the moment it comes out of you … even though you may as well invite a perfect stranger off the street to live with you and be expected to love it with all your heart. Whether you plan it or not, it’s a huge fucken surprise when baby arrives.”

But then I have a lot to say on the subject … almost 60,000 words worth in fact … which has always been half the problem.

Does the fork in the road prompt the decision or does the decision create the fork in the road? Who knows? I wish I had the answers but you’re not going to get them here … these are just the overactive ramblings of a woman clearly in the throws of your possibly not-so-typical midlife crisis.

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Seriously …?

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Does it erode for everyone … that wet-your-pants hilarity? Does everyone get so serious when they have children or was it just me?

I went out to dinner with possibly my oldest friend (and I don’t mean age) and we got to discussing my very fuzzy predicament … as I – and almost everyone I know – got to do each and every time I went out for several months. It was boring. But it was necessary. She leaned in close. “What makes you laugh, Penn?” she asked in a low deep voice that indicated the conversation was taking a serious turn. “I don’t think I’ve heard your laugh in ages,” she added. I blinked, pulled back, swallowed and stammered something incomprehensible … then changed the subject. I hadn’t laughed in a long time and we both knew it.

There was a time when I couldn’t remember when the last time was that I cried but now I could remember that clearly since it seemed to be daily. But the laughter? I had given it up without even noticing. I had somehow slipped from post-natal-depression into the throws of a divorce and could no longer remember the moments of resurfacing in-between. The Art of Living course medicated me: it drained the puss and patched the wounds. It healed and soothed. But it also guided me to a different pathway that ripped me apart from all things familiar.

The Dalai Lama once said, “Just because someone is on a different path, does not mean they are lost.” We all get to the places we are meant to be eventually … even if we do have to endure the whispers … “You know Penny’s having a midlife crisis?

But at the moment of disentanglement, the moment I became the whole, I not only reconnected with myself but I gave myself to others … in a way that I remained me … and I reconnected with the joy that I hold in abundance. And I have been laughing ever since.

Sometimes we wish we arrived at the place of familiarity and friendly faces but, regardless, we will get to the place that’s waiting for us. I was on a different path before but it was the right path even though in retrospect it feels like it was so wrong.

If you’d seen me a couple of months ago, you might also have leaned in close. You might have scrutinised me. And you may even have offered to call a doctor.

“How’s the midlife crisis?” my friends now ask. It used to make me nervous but now it just makes me laugh.

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Full disclosure

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

One of the reasons I started this blog when I had a baby was because I was amazed at how mothers gossip about each other. Everyone has an opinion on how other mothers are coping, whether they have PND, what they feed their babies, when they wean them, how their mothering effects their child’s behaviour, whether they follow a routine, if smacking is condoned and a range of other general issues including reasons for bedwetting and tantrums. Mothers, in their search to find balance and normality in a mind-blowing situation can become … well, they can become a bunch of bitches.

I was, however, determined to let people know how I was doing and what I was failing at and I wanted to make it public so that people could either empathise or just feel like they weren’t alone. I know most of this generation was brought up with a side of shame and guilt at every family meal and I wanted these to be the only things I was willing to conceal under the gem squash skin.

People have commented over the years about things I have written, they have empathised and they have disagreed but they have always taken this blog at face value. Now that I am being public about other areas of my life, however, people have been coming out of the woodwork like bora that you don’t know is there until it’s done a whole lot of damage … people are now judging me about having been so public about baby.

The purpose of my blog is to create a bit of unease; some tension to provoke debate … it is not about causing damage but alleviating pain, both for myself and for others who may be going through the same thing. Like I said in an earlier post, we are all part of the same humanity and what is happening to each of us is also happening to millions of others … so where is the shame in sharing?

People I have known for years, and some I have never met, have used my frank discussions to finally open up about going through the same thing and close friends have only gone public once they have already been through it. I can’t express the pain involved so I know that those people have been to hell and back before they have even told anyone what they were going through.

Despite judgement and criticism, I will always stand on my soapbox. Other people’s secrets are sacred to me but my own life belongs to the collective. I may be scrappy and I may offend people with my lack of regard for issues that some consider too private to divulge so publicly … but I believe my life should come out of my own mouth, not the mouths of others. And when people try and silence me, I only shout louder … only this time I can shout to a lawyer.

However my soap opera plays out in the end, I think I owe it to myself to explore the world out there for an opportunity to grow and connect to those millions of people with whom I share a part in this tragedy. If nothing else, I owe it to myself to rip the words right out of the mouths of people who would rather discuss my life with others.

Gossip is always easier than confronting any issue. It’s not surprising then that it is the people who devour magazines such at Heat and Hello! who are the ones that choose to base their opinions on the gossip that they hear rather than my truth that I publish.

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Pandy’s box?

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

I have taken the below passage out of my latest book club read, Mitch Albom’s, tuesdays with Morrie:

“I’ve learned this much about marriage,” he said now. “You get tested. You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how to accommodate or don’t.”
Is there some kind of rule to know if a marriage is going t work?
Morrie smiled. “Things are not that simple, Mitch.”
I know.
“Still,” he said, “there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.
“And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?”
Yes?
“Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”

There has been a minor Facebook war over my going public about my relationship, which, incidentally, has been neutralised. It had to do with balance and blame. But the above passage gave me a kick up the arse. The above passage showed me what I should have seen years ago. It isn’t so much about a lack of belief in the importance of our marriage so much as a total lack of importance. Importance comes from communication and my husband hasn’t spoken to me about anything in months and about very little in years. And that is the truth.

But people find it hard to hear the truth about things they have already formulated an opinion on and especially on something that makes them shine a light on issues in their own relationships. I continue to shine my torch under the carpet revealing what others believe should remain there. (see also: http://www.bhalababy.com/2010/06/28/my-life-as-an-open-book) I want people to see that there is no shame in sharing a very human failing. I won’t be silenced because people find what I say uncomfortable and the only thing I am sorry for is how vague I was previously.

Morrie used an analogy I think is appropriate to share: we are not all individual waves crashing on the shore but part of the same ocean.

I am a work in progress. But I have the courage to recognise my flaws, and the inner strength to erect the scaffolding and do the work. My husband, however, is a derelict building site … absolutely fine if it wasn’t for the fact that he thinks he is a palace.

I was asked recently by a lovely young man to be his life coach. He was sweet, I was flattered … tempted even … until I realised that I have done all the coaching I care to do for a while and the next man I am with will climb the scaffolding with me, chat to me while I work and add value to the renovations. He won’t be afraid of the change.

For almost two decades I have loved a man so much I thought I would die without him so I can tell you all that you can love someone with all the stars in the sky but unless he loves you back with the moon, he has the ability to snuff out every one of those lights. He loves me ‘in his way’ he says … but then so do wife beaters and adulterers have a ’way’ of loving. Love needs to shine for the sole benefit of the person it shines upon.

Love is a gamble – sometimes you put everything you have on the table and all you end up with is change for the car guard.

I am not a victim, just a student on one of life’s very cruel courses on love.

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Fizzling friendships

Monday, July 26th, 2010

I was caught up in a cheesy email chain letter (try and say that fast) recently. It was about friendships, relationships and those people who drift through our lives passing on a little wisdom, or gathering some, before moving out of our lives again. Being close to those midlife crisis years (allegedly) has given me cause to seriously reflect on the words in the email even though I feel slightly ashamed to have passed it on. Having a baby shifts things with friends, as does getting a divorce. You change, situations change, others change … and you shift up and down rungs of friendship ladders all the time. Yet you still feel like mourning the loss of a friendship regardless of whether the parting is good or bad.

Escaping to Durban meant my child was away from his school friends again for another month. He forgot their names. Everywhere we went he played with other children, behaving like he had a new best friend each and every day … only to forget that person the next time he met someone new. I couldn’t help but wonder why we fixate on the breaking down of long-lasting friendships when often the best thing to do is just let them run their course and then let go.

There are a few friends that have just drifted away and then there are those I have turfed out intentionally. I can count on one hand only the ones I have turfed intentionally. They are: the girl I shared digs with who slept with every guy I brought home for ‘coffee’ … hence having to wait an extraordinarily long time before I could find someone to harvest my cherry tree; the guy who almost beat up my husband on a small road in Putney outside the house we shared with him … I suspect it had something to do with pent up frustrations over my forbidden fruits; and there is the guy who I have known for longer than I have known my husband who, like all good gentlemen do, has backed the horse he feels will come out tops and is giving my husband advice on our divorce.

I used to obsess over the severing of these relationships as though they were limbs I could still feel even though they were no longer there. But through my child I am learning to look at what I have right in front of me … not only the magnificent friends I have and love but the incredible people all around me waiting to be delved into; waiting for that spark that begins it all.

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Forking off

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

My mother asked me what my next move would be. She was referring to the next step in the process of taking myself and my child through a divorce after my husband’s decision to fight for our marriage was followed swiftly by amnesia.

“To go for a run,” I replied.

On the brink of something so huge, I can no longer think in terms of years, months or weeks … sometimes even a day ahead is a stretch … so I think as far as the next few hours, and the only steps I can think of are small … and usually involve running. It ties up quite nicely with my intention to run a full marathon before the age of forty, a milestone that is fast approaching and one that I intend to reach in clichéd fabulousness. It means I can take all these next steps in a positive strength-gaining manner and achieve something solid when everything around me is tumbling down.

Or is it?

There is something to be said about rights of passage, something that begs the question on the outset: Is this really necessary? As it is with climbing mountains, the view from the top always surpasses the obscured view at base camp and the feeling of getting to the other side shifts all previous protestations into cries of, “That was so worth it!” So why are some mountains so damn difficult to climb? Is it because of the baggage we’re dragging … or the people?

Adapt or die. Is that the thing it boils down to? It’s taken me five years to adapt to life back in South Africa; five years to find my way to the life path I was searching for during the money-spinning days of London’s investment world; five years to turn my world on its head and redefine my life and who I am. Adapting to save a marriage would be devolving … it would be like both adapting and dying simultaneously.

I embarked on a spiritual journey just over a year ago. It is not a conventional journey but one that has led me to make choices such as giving up alcohol, caffeine and certain foods. Peer pressure aside, it has been relatively easy because I have come out with a greater sense of clarity, a strong, healthy body and energy I so desperately need to summit the next peak, baggage in tow. The feeling that I have gained from this journey has made my decision relatively simple. Not easy – never easy – just simple. I have realised if someone can choose a house, a bedroom, the TV, a bag of crisps and a pint of beer ahead of a marriage, then not choosing those things to the detriment of the marriage should also be acceptable.

But then in divorce no one is right. I desperately wish it wasn’t over but I am doing what I am being pushed to do – I am forking off down the road less travelled where my pioneering skills will lead me to a place of no mountains for a while. Or perhaps I will just have to go climb a real one.

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Grey’s Anatomy

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

I could say I only watch Grey’s Anatomy because it is filled with some of the most delicious men on television but it’s not the whole truth. I watch it because it makes me cry. I watch it because the script writers have a beautiful way of pulling ever so gently on my heart. And this quote from the latest series is a perfect example:

“When we say things like people don’t change, it drives scientists crazy because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy, matter … it’s always changing, morphing, merging, growing, dying.

It’s the way people try not to change that is unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting them be what they are, the way we cling to old memories instead of forming new ones, the way we insist on believing despite every scientific indication that anything in this lifetime is permanent. Change is constant.

How we experience change, that’s up to us. It can feel like death or it can feel like a second chance of life. If we open our fingers, loosen our grips, go with it, it can feel like pure adrenalin … like at any moment we can have another chance at life. Like at any moment, we can be born all over again.”

Lately people I know have been telling me that getting divorced suits me. Perhaps it’s not so much the divorce that has changed me but rather the way that being separate from my other has forced me to be enough on my own. Just enough. I believe we spend too much time trying to not change, and trying to convince ourselves that the people we love are incapable of it, when it is impossible to remain unchanged on almost a daily basis … by the things we experience and the people we meet. It’s simply impossible not to walk through the flames of transformation with every single thing we do. Being enough, and being happy with that, should not by any means exclude change.

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