Ziggin' When You Should Have Zagged?

So are you still persevering? I am but, I’m disappointed to report, just barely..

Have you ever wished you’d “zigged” instead of “zagged” in the decisions you made in your life? Not over things like what you ordered off the menu, or the route you took to work, but the big decisions in life?

I am not someone who has EVER regretted her past… seriously.. I’ve thought it all was part of making me who I am today… I honestly believed that I wouldn’t be who I am, or know what I know, if I had changed anything… If I hadn’t gallivanted all over the country, seen what I’ve seen, done what I’ve done…But is that really true?

This train-wreck-tail-spin of a heartbreak with The Him has made me doubt myself. Doubt the decisions, choices, exceptions, I’ve made with him, and made me doubt my future wisdom. How do I not make the same mistakes again? How do I believe anyone again when I was so wrong about him?… oops.. did I say that out loud? No, just on a tumbleweed… whew…

While I do understand that you can’t move forward if you keep looking back, I believe the saying about those who don’t learn from history being destined to repeat it. I don’t want to repeat the pain and misery of the last month if there is ANY WAY I can avoid it. Heck, what am I saying, I don’t want to repeat the misery of the past 13 years.

The recent happenings with The Him are not the only thing that has brought me to my knees of late. This current tour of regrets has been brought to you by The Ex, also known as-the father of my children. He’d actually been being civil since finding out The Him is out of my life, but yesterday reverted back to being a complete jerk.

See, he’s STILL pissed that I divorced him. HE never wanted to be divorced. Though he’d said, at least weekly since getting married, that he wished he’d never got married, but he now says he didn’t mean it.

He admits to hearing me tell him he couldn’t keep treating me the way he was, that he would have nothing good in life from me if he didn’t stop, but NEVER thought I would DIVORCE him over it. Just get mad, and yell, and get over it like I always did.

He’s FURIOUS that I won’t give him that 1000 and1 chance because he THINKS he might can change and treat me nice. Though he can’t do it now for more than a day and a half, but that’s also MY fault cause I don’t give him a reason to change by saying I’ll take him back someday. He is magnanimous enough to understand that it might not happen today, but I need to at least give him hope that it will happen someday if I want him to be nice to me.

He has girlfriends out the wazoo, and THAT pisses him off cause he doesn’t want them, just wants me, but can’t tell me why he wants me. Can’t even carry on more than the most superficial of conversations with me, and those only on really good days.

He’s a complete hypocrite with our children, behaving like a spoiled brat, slamming doors and stomping around to show how mad he is at me, that he has to go to his girlfriend’s house, because I won’t give him a reason to stay with me… The same kind of behavior he would punish the kids for if they acted that way, but it’s okay for him cause he’s mad.

They love him and want to be with him but he can’t stop complaining to them about me like they are adults, telling them the divorce is all my doing, that yes he acted bad, but I won’t let him fix it. Tells them daily that it’s wrong that they have to decide which parent’s house they want to stay at, they shouldn’t have to decide, and we should all be together. The argument I make is that they are lucky they GET to decide. To which he responds that I’m just a child of divorce so I don’t “get” it. He says that I think it’s alright to be divorced and it’s not. According to him, I am just being selfish at my kid’s expense.

It’s like riding a psychotic horse through a burning building.

You know, it makes it really hard not to regret this marriage. Think there’s any chance I would have had the same great kids without him?

Yesterday also would have been our wedding anniversary, the first since our divorce (possibly another reason he decided to get pissy)…. And *I* forgot!!!! I knew it was sometime the end of August but I couldn’t remember the exact day.. 27th? 30th? 31st? It was the day Princess Diana died and I thought I was going to have to go Google (I love to Google, but that’s a whole other post).

Then, night before last, as he was dropping off kids he said “well I guess 13 wasn’t lucky for us.”
I said “huh?”
Then I got it. I said “you mean that in ALL these years you only remember our anniversary when we’re NOT married?” He just shrugged. He’d NEVER remembered it once in the 12 years before.

Even though now, in hindsight - the clearest of visions, I know that he not only never really understood, and therefore couldn’t have liked me (oh how that sentence is making my “editor friends” cringe.. email me and I’ll fix it.) I also really “get” that he doesn’t like himself either, for all his bluster and smarts… How can you like anyone if you don’t like yourself? You can envy them, covet what they have, but not honestly like… At least I don’t think so.

Soo…. Was marrying him a mistake? I can look back at a 100 times I should have left him the first few years. He’d had a hard life, but he was smart, but I watched him learn lots of things about life. I thought he could learn to love if I just showed him enough love. Then the kids came and for the first time in his life he actually knew what it was to love someone. I told myself that while he didn’t really love me, and had not really been kind or respectful to me, at least not since shortly after we got married, he was an honorable, hard working man.

I reminded myself that I had known great love in my life, and convinced myself that this, marriage to him, was what God or The Universe was asking of me in return for that love. To live without love, so that this man could know the love of being a dad to make up for his loveless childhood. De-Nile isn’t just a river with pyramids.. I’m pretty sure Rashi-Nile-Zation is one of it’s tributaries.

All that came to a screeching halt when I heard myself saying to my son “you can’t treat me that way (nasty & disrespectfully) just because your dad does.” I knew then I wasn’t doing my kids any favors by staying in a marriage where I was constantly treated unkindly and disrespected. Their own father is the prime example of what comes of that.

So how do I protect my kids from their father’s anger, that he is so addicted to, and absolutely UNWILLING to move past; yet not deprive them of his presence?

Let’s say he actually could at least stop being disrespectful to me (like when we were married) if I do like he wants and take him back, am I wrong to not want to raise my kids in a loveless marriage? I can’t believe that is what’s best for them.

Should I have never married him? Would I still have my sweet babies if I hadn’t? Would they have come to me some other way?

What if I never left Los Angeles and moved home to the prairie?

Or didn’t live with the drummer in Los Angeles? I’ve long said I should have dumped him when I was on the road with his band and never lived with him, but then I would have dated that camera man for The People’s Court who pursued me so headily….and…. well?

What if I’d never have left Alaska after meeting the drummer?

Or not divorced from The Him in Alaska? Not that I had any choice? He wasn’t willing to work on being married. We were both babies at the time, and he had the firm belief that if it’s “right” it shouldn’t be work….

What if I had NOT married The Him? Well, I WAS pregnant at the time… we eloped and I had a miscarriage on the wedding night… cue the Twilight Zone music please… what was THAT all about? It might have changed things drastically if we’d waited a week later to elope huh?

Were we just “supposed” to be married so that he could come back 23 years later and remind me that I’d once been “magical” and “vivacious” and that it wasn’t ONLY people who “didn’t have to live with me” who thought so, as The Ex told me almost daily for 12 years?

What if I’d not have moved to Alaska to have an adventure? Though, it was one of the best times of my life.

Well then, before that. Should I not have traveled with that southern evangelist and had a torrid love affair (and brief wedding engagement) with his right hand man?
Well, probably should could have done a couple things different there (blush) but man, I saw the most amazing things and people traveling with them…

What if I had not have left the prairie my senior year in high school when my mother took a job in another state? What would I have done instead you ask? Why let my mother sign for me to marry my fist love. A farmer, who was several years older, and crazy about me. Still is to this day. He is also married to the girl he rebounded with.

My mother is now wishing for arranged marriages cause she would have had me marry him she says. “He would have never hurt or used you like you have been hurt and used” she says…

Yes but would I still be me if I’d never left the prairie?
Would I still have my sweet babies?
Does any of it really matter at this point? Kind of like crying over spilled milk isn’t it?
The question that plagues me every day now is how do I stop screwing up?

Should I do as some of my friends say and “just stay single, who needs a man!”

I know for a fact I do NOT need one. I lived alone quite peacefully for many years before The Ex. I swore my whole miserable marriage to him that I would never want another man, would never never never get involved with another man not to mention marry again. It was JUST NOT WORTH the trouble….

That brings me to the legacy, or the curse, of The Him. He showed me, in the first 6 months we were back together a kind of relationship I had never known existed, let alone hoped for. I never even dreamed I could dream of communicating with someone the way we did. Being understood by someone the way he seemed to understand me.

In a conversation I had with The Ex a few days ago I said something about the fact that he had no desire to know what I had to say, thought, or felt about things, and he said that we “just needed to agree to disagree” about things. Just be different.

I said great, fine, if you talk about things and know what you’re agreeing to disagree on. It’s also fine to never speak and just know you’re different if you’re the only two people on Earth, or stranded on a deserted island, but if you have a choice wouldn’t it be better to be with someone who wants to talk to you? Wants to know what you’re thinking, feeling, learning, believing, and wants you to know that about them? Someone who when you call up and tell them what you just read in an interesting book and how it’s made you “think,” doesn’t say “what the heck are you reading that crap for?”

Which brings me back to the curse of The Him. Now I know that he’s a fraud, cubic zirconia, but am left with a longing for….communion…. togetherness… partnership….the kind that can’t be completely achieved with my girlfriends.. And I feel guilty, and ashamed for wanting it. Scared that I’ll never find it for real, and will grow disillusioned and hard hearted.

I have been so judgmental over the past years. Saying that women with children who get divorced should just stay single until their kids are grown. Not bring anyone else, man or their kids, into their lives. After 12 years of what I’d been through I couldn’t imagine ANYONE being worth doing it again.

Look at me now. I feel weak and pitiable… Never say never is a cliché for a reason.

I have become someone I would have judged just over a year ago. I’m sure there was something about that in Sunday school… I should have paid more attention.

But is it really wrong to wish for a loving, affectionate, harmonious (meaning that when there are problems but you work them out respectfully) relationship… with a MAN? Is it wrong to want my children to grow up seeing that, living with that, so that they can know that not only does it really does exist but THEY could have it too? After all, their mama did. Is that… weak? Too Pollyanna of me?

I am trying to persevere. Trying to survive my present and still have the strength and hope to believe for a better future.

My wise angel friend Sally keeps telling me to believe, just believe…

I’m trying to believe…. I want to believe… more than anything I want to believe… in love between a man and a woman that lasts. Believe in happily ever after….By the way, Sally does have one of those relationships I wish for. Not perfect, but married for 27 years, have 4 amazing, happy, and successful kids. They have overcome countless challenges, and they still enjoy each other. Still want “date night”. Still make each other laugh. So I have a tendency to listen to her.

So, for today, my wish for you and me is that we can believe. Believe that close on the heels of every death of a dream, set back, failure, disappointment, or loss, is the possibility of a new beginning.. If we can doctor our wounds, and muster the courage to set off down the road again and seek it out.…

If you decide to keep walking.. watch for me.. and maybe we can walk awhile together.

Angels on your body,
Prairie Girl