Prepared

An Heritage #3 lost her job.  Because she called out too many days.

This was odd because I only knew of three days she missed (two because she had her wisdom teeth out and one where she threw up everywhere at 3am in the morning). It kept worrying at me and then she disappeared for two days (her crappy boyfriend finally texted her).

So I found her kindle and looked at her facebook messenger.   I found things that no mother wants to find including drugs. 

I was prepared.  I recalled Elder Uchtdorf’s conference talk: 

Our Savior, the Good Shepherd, knows and loves us. He knows and loves you.

He knows when you are lost, and He knows where you are. He knows your grief. Your silent pleadings. Your fears. Your tears.

It matters not how you became lost—whether because of your own poor choices or because of circumstances beyond your control.

What matters is that you are His child. And He loves you. He loves His children.

Because He loves you, He will find you. He will place you upon His shoulders, rejoicing. And when He brings you home, He will say to one and all, “Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.”

You may feel that your life is in ruins. You may have sinned. You may be afraid, angry, grieving, or tortured by doubt. But just as the Good Shepherd finds His lost sheep, if you will only lift up your heart to the Savior of the world, He will find you.

He will rescue you.

He will lift you up and place you on His shoulders.

He will carry you home.

If mortal hands can transform rubble and ruins into a beautiful house of worship, then we can have confidence and trust that our loving Heavenly Father can and will rebuild us. His plan is to build us into something far greater than what we were—far greater than what we can ever imagine. With each step of faith on the path of discipleship, we grow into the beings of eternal glory and infinite joy we were designed to become.

And I thought of her baby blessing where she was promised that at a point in her life when she questioned she would remember the Savior and come to the truth.

And so after many tears, and shaking, and desperate gasps for air:

Step 1:  I am powerless

This is her struggle.  I am not her savior. I can only tell her I love her no matter what she does and if she needs help I am here, but not as an enabler. 

Step 2 & 3: She is in God’s hands and I will wait for promptings from Him so I know what to say and when.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/04/he-will-place-you-on-his-shoulders-and-carry-you-home?lang=eng

Safe

Recently we had a special stake conference.  Four stakes were reorganized into five stakes and a bunch of new wards were created as well.   One of the seventies spoke after all the reorganizing and shared a story that really struck me. 

He said that we are given two types of children.  The ones who bring us joy all the time or the ones who really make our lives a struggle.  He said he was blessed with only children who make it a struggle.  But finally, through years of effort he and his wife had finally gotten their children reactivated and Elder Ballard called them in and asked them to be Mission President in Africa.  He said “I can’t leave now, I’ve just gotten my kids back to church.”  And Elder Ballard looked at him and said “YOU don’t understand.  YOU are not their savior.”

It has taken me a long time to come to this understanding but I finally do.  I feel this way about H-er and about An Heritage #2.  My next post will share some of the things that have happened over the last month with her and how I’ve had to hold on to that principle so that I didn’t start trying to save her. 

The sweetest experience I had though, was one night when An Heritage #4 sat next to me and asked why she was suffering so much.  And the primary song “Keep the Commandments” popped into my head so I sang it, emphasizing “in this there is SAFETY and peace”.  And he got teary eyed.  

Distressed

At yoga tonight I cried.  I'm still not exactly sure what I was crying about. So I'm going to just brainstorm.  Whatever thoughts come to my head i'm going to write them.  Because once I stop suppressing them, they can get out and maybe what's under it all will be illuminated.  It may look or sound disjointed. But here they are:

It's so easy for him.  I don't even know where he meets them.  Is he just randomly friend requesting people?  He says he is "targeting" good Mormon women.  Where is he finding them?

He probably started going to karaoke again. He probably has a dating profile.

He was at a freaking gas station and a woman asked him for his number.

It makes me feel unattractive and less because i don't really want to date anyone. Yet at the same time no one is pursuing me. No one comes up to me at random places and expresses interest in me.

Part of me is horrified.  I guess I could do profiles on dating sites.  I could go to the firesides.  I could get a tinder profile. And those ideas are just so unappealing.

I think my boys would freak out if I dated someone. So am I just stuck. Yet I don't want to really put myself out there. They are probably all porn addicts anyway. 

I'm guessing I still have too much betrayal trauma to feel any enthusiasm for it. Yet at the same time it kind of hurts how easy it is for him.  That women just crawl out of the woodwork and come from nowhere.

And A is going on a mission. She made it into byu.  She clearly has Friends and does fun exciting stuff.  She is where I want An Heritage #2 to be.  Instead she is not in school and spends her nights who knows where and has nothing to do with the church.

This is just so how I didn't see myself.  I don't really want to go back to the time where men were just not interested in me. I think that's how I ended up with H-er in the first place. I took the first guy why showed interest because I thought I was getting old and it was never going to happen.

I'm just not what guys are looking for.

It would probably be better just to break off communication with H-er. Like a clean break. Otherwise it's going to just keep getting rubbed in my face. 

And focus on having girlfriends and spending time with my sisters and kids.  That is my future and my life and that can be more rewarding than superficial dates with lustful men who really aren't interested in me as a woman of God.

I think that's where some of the pain comes from.  Being who I am is just not appealing to men.  They want exciting, fun, sexy, and young. And that's just not me.

I'm cerebral, practical, have emotional baggage, and a homebody.   I'm not going to meet anyone sitting with my boys in sacrament meeting, doodling in Sunday school, and playing the piano in relief society.   The righteous man of my patriarchal blessing isn't going to just happen to sit next to me at church, introduce himself, and propose. 

My patriarchal blessing doesn't say ANYTHING about divorce. It does say that thru my good and righteous associations I would be privileged to meet a righteous priesthood holder who would take me to the temple.  And that my companion husband would need my support to lead my family in righteousness.

So vague. Is it too late?  Was this about my second marriage? was this supposed to be about my first and that opportunity has passed me by?  Should I just reconcile myself to my single unappealing state? 

I'll have to share with my sister who is divorcing because of porn addiction.  Hopefully she won't be blindsided by her emotions like me when I realized just how easy it is for him to move on to other women. It makes me sick to my stomach.

Because even though mentally I think about dating or meeting someone e or putting myself out there, when push comes to shove I just can't do it.  My very self rebels against it for whatever reason. Distrust?  Disinterest? Feeling that it's just not worth it? That I'll create a profile and no one will click on it?  That the men will decide it's just not worth it? 

So there it is. For now.

 

 

 

Despondent

I know there are emotions roiling under the surface.  I know I don't want to face them.  But I also know I just need to cry. So maybe by writing it all out I'll break past my numbness.

First An Heritage #2. 

She was in a car that rolled six times. WHAT THE H!  She says she should be dead.  Yet her behavior continues.  She still stays out all night.  She still hangs out with S.  She wants to be in a relationship with S.  Who has said he is incapable of loving anyone including his family.  He wouldn't care if they were dead.  Who has been to a mental hospital twice.  Who didn't graduate from high school. Who was addicted to drugs.   Who smokes.  Who doesn't go anywhere unless he's alone. Who wrote a suicide note and weighted himself down and threw himself into a pool. This is the kind of person my daughter wants to be with. This is the person she says she can never get tired of being with.  That she can sit for an hour and just watch him fold laundry.

All because of my choices.  I chose to sin with h-er.  Then I chose to marry him.  And then she was sexually abused by H-er's nephew.  And witnesses H-er with his hands around my throat and heard him say "get out.  I'm going to kill your mother" and she ran and hid in fear under the desk. And then in my anger I told her of her father's adultery and now she wants nothing to do with him.  Who tried to take her own life and now wants nothing to do with the gospel.  Who was jealous of her best friend and wanted her family instead.

This is the consequence of my choices.

And I have two more children.

The cycle will never be broken. It will just continue on.  I should never have had children.  There is no comfort to be had. I don't see how the atonement or any of the plan can possibly make up for any of this.   How am I supposed to tell my children to turn to the gospel and the atonement when I can't find comfort from it?

When I was a child playing with markers and colored pencils and crayons and light-brite pieces and sorting them into families.  Families were my whole world. I sang "when i grow up.  I want to be a mother and have a family" over and over.

This was never what I imagined. I never imagined being married outside the temple, cheated on, abused, divorced, distrustful of all men and anything H-er says, and broken.  Sobbing on my bed and hating the plan. 

And letting go of H-er isn't so easy.  Maybe if I never heard from him.  But he texts just often enough that it keeps the link there.  But I distrust EVERYTHING he says. That's no way to live.  I should just let go. I should just move on. IT IS OVER.

 

Self-Flagellation

Apparently I have just been deluding myself that I don't feel anger towards H-er anymore.  Because something triggered me and the anger came boiling up.

Maybe it’s a combination of everything over the last few weeks: 

The spring break text promising his sober attention but then I walked into my room and he was sitting on my bed talking to a woman he is interested in.   Undivided sober attention?

Or that a GORGEOUS woman hit on him at a gas station on his way down. (And he told me about it)

Or when I woke up at 3am and he had left my house...for hours.

And how he would be on his phone constantly shielding it from me and when I joked about it he said "I don't want to hurt you".

When he came home from eating with B who asked him if he really thought it was realistic thinking we could work things out because B can't go more than two days without sex so how does H-er think he can and H-er thought that made perfect sense. 

Or when he said he was only seeking out faithful LDS women and I pointed out that he'd have to abstain from sex with them before marriage and he didn't have an answer.

Or when he started loading his car at the end of the week and picked a fight with me over An Heritage #2’s PS3 controller in front of everyone and made me cry. 

When he still says he loves me and asks if I'll remarry him in 90 days if he checks himself into a rehab facility.  

And how it was so easy to fall into old patterns as if we were still married.  (Except no sex).

It's cruel is what it is.  It's cruel how easy he can find women.  It's horrible how I struggle to even create a dating profile and how it really just makes me sick to my stomach when I think about dating anyone.  It's horrible that I feel old, uninteresting, used up, hopeless, and that this is the end for me.  That my only options are porn addicts.   Because why else would any man be my age and available.  There just can't be a good reason for any man to be 45 and single. And so I have no good options.  Single and alone by choice, single and alone because no one wants me, or a magnet to sex addicts.

Because from what I hear there are few good men and astronomical numbers of porn addicts.  That's just crap. So much for the promises in my patriarchal blessing.  I turned my nose up at that all those years ago when I got desperate and settled for H-er because I was afraid I was getting old and ON THE SHELF.     I wish I'd had more faith and strength of character at 21.

So really the anger is hiding my disappointment in myself, fear of the future, betrayal (yet again), and the pain of broken promises (again).

So just feel the pain of it Girl because anger sucks and is debilitating. I want the peace of facing my pain and moving past it.   And darn it all I need to stick to boundaries.  Boundaries. Boundaries. Boundaries.

Familiar

After 20 years of marriage, physical boundaries are very fluid. 

When he was here for spring break it was like nothing has changed.  There is a certain lack of physical boundaries or personal space between married people and we just seemed to fall back into that.

In fact my sister joined us at the end of the week and was shocked to see him there.  He was leaving that day and after he left she said "I hope you aren't having sex with him.  I know a lot of people who have gotten divorced and they still get together just to have sex".

I was taken aback and quickly assured her that this was not the case with us (she doesn't know the extent of his sexual addiction so how could she possibly understand that my betrayal trauma will not allow him to touch me in a sexual manner?). All she could see was the physical ease in each other's company.

I didn't tell her that he had actually asked me to have sex with him and that I had said under no circumstances was I going to do that and lose my temple recommend and that he hadn't asked again.

unfinished

I've noticed that most of these blogs stop at the divorce.  There's nothing to read about immediately after.  Nothing about the struggle to find normalcy or adjust to what is supposed to be a new relationship.  So for those of you who wonder what it looks like--here it is (over the next few posts) with all its awkward and painful mistakes.  These posts were written last month but not posted until now.   

Spring break was approaching which meant visitation.  So I called H-er to schedule drop off and pick up times. 

He suggested that because of his uncertain housing situation it might be better for him to come down to Arizona if that was all right with me.

That felt safer for my boys so I agreed under the condition that he understood that we are no longer married and he has no rights when it comes to me.

He sent a text to me:

I have realized how much I neglected you over the years and have felt much sorrow and loss the last few weeks. I want to give you something this next week that I haven't given you nor the kids in years. My undivided, sober attention.  I love you.

So he showed up that Saturday night and Sunday morning he went to church with us. It was all very civil.  Then Monday night I came up the stairs to find him in my room with the door closed on the phone.  He was talking to a woman.

This is where I was blind-sided by emotion.  We are divorced.  I should have no expectations right?  Yet he sent that text to me.  So I did.  I expected him not to be in my room flirting with another woman over the phone.  And it hurt that it appears that he so easily was moving on.  Intellectually I know he is checked out and he needs that constant fulfillment of women desiring him. But emotionally it was devastating to see how easy it looked.  I mean just thinking about seeing other men made me queasy.

So my reaction:  I started an online dating profile.  I got just far enough to feel better about myself and now it sits half-finished--reflecting perfectly my emotional state.

 

Uncomfortable

An Heritage #4 had a birthday.   I was impressed because at 9am I got a text from H-er asking what we were doing for his birthday.  Is this a sober H-er who is aware of others?  He was completely oblivious to An Heritage #3’s birthday in October and didn’t call him.   I tried to call H-er later that day to coordinate with him and got his voicemail.   He didn’t call me back for 4 hours.  When he did it was to tell me he didn’t have his phone with him because he’d been playing Frisbee with a kid that lives with him.  He didn’t mention the birthday and kept implying that he would only be able to communicate via text the rest of the evening. 

 
He never called. 

He didn’t speak to his son on his birthday. 

Here is why this kills me.
 
Just the night before An Heritage #4 came up from watching Studio C.  He loves it.  But he said “I stopped watching because that last sketch didn’t make me feel good”.    Boom.  I am at code red here.  So I asked him to tell me about it.  Long story short, the sketch was about a kid who looked man sized but had a girl’s voice and some other odd characteristics.  The sketch ended with a joke along the lines of “what do you get when you cross my mom and my dad” with the punchline being this undesirable kid that everyone makes fun of.  And I knew why he felt uncomfortable.  

“It made you uncomfortable because you got the idea that the boy was unwanted or an accident didn’t you?”   He nodded.

And so I made sure to tell him how much he was wanted and that he hadn’t been an accident and I was so glad he was part of my life. 

Betrayal Trauma is for kids too.  That sucks.