Hiding
The worst outcome of a broken marriage is bitter loneliness. You focus your energy on having a family and that sours, and you are left realising you don't have any friends.I am feeling it today because I am hiding in my room. I was playing poker at the dining table, but M is cleaning so he put on heavy metal because "it's good cleaning music". Yeah, but it's not great poker music. So I put my iPod in my ears to shut it out some. That was okay; everyone happy.
So he turned it up. He saw that I had my iPod on and it was obvious why, so he turned the music up even louder. I don't begin to understand why. Maybe he was upset that I wasn't cleaning too. Maybe it was just a favourite song and he wasn't thinking how unpleasant it would be for me. I don't know. I can't ask because I have to avoid confrontation. If I can't live here, I have nowhere else to go. I have no work and very little money. What little I have, Mrs Zen wants half of. She wants to turn her trip to the UK, which was to be to begin our new life, into a holiday. It will cost me, I figure £4000 to pay for her to go and to have the holiday she wants. I don't think I will be able to go to the UK. I just can't afford it. I had other plans, but I'm going to have to forget them too. I am pretty much stuck. If I spend my money doing what feels like it will be good for my soul, I risk not having the money to live.
I should be used to living like this. I have lived in a relationship that is unbalanced for some years. Mrs Zen never bothered working at being married because she knew that worst case she would keep my kids and live at her dad's rent free. I had to work at it, and I did, because I wanted her to do something other than that. This is a way relationships can work. One partner creates inertia and the other has to try to budge them. In the end, the price I had to pay, for way too little reward, was too great. Now she laughs with M that our marriage is over and it's great that I will find someone new.
I, on the other hand, am not laughing. I am fucking distraught that my marriage is over and what makes it 10x as bad is knowing she is content. I am left feeling I was 10K miles from home, isolated and lonely, and she did nothing for me. She still won't. She still doesn't see any reason to change. And what is worse for me, she thinks it's just dandy. That really hurts because I invested in her. I trusted her to try to make life good for me when I came here because I was making a sacrifice for her. She didn't and she still won't.
Well, that's her. I'm done with worrying how other people are. It hurts me that they're shit, but they're shit. I can't do anything about that. All I can do is not be shit myself.
I have been. I don't have any illusions. I am deeply ashamed of how I was with Mrs Zen, and some of what I did makes me very ashamed (although probably not the things you or she thinks I should be ashamed of). Some I just feel I had no choice, and some I felt was just an outcome of sorrow breaking me into pieces. I feel less sorrowful now, mostly because I have given up hope. I am accepting that I have nothing to hope for, and as long as I stay numb, I will stay alive.
I don't want to be lonely but I don't know how not to be. I don't know anyone like me here, and I don't know where I would find them. For years, most of the companionship I've had has been online. I know, you could say that I should have made real-life friends and not wasted away my years on the internet. But you know what? No one who says that has any idea how I would do it. Everyone's good with directives; no one ever has instructions. I know what I'm supposed to do: I'm not an idiot. I just have no idea how to do it. I doubt it's even possible here.
posted by Dr Zen @ 2:59 pm
10 Comments:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html
I scored 32, and no one thinks I'm vaguely autistic. I am slightly OCD but no one knows LOL.
I scored 20. Finding it hard to talk to people you don't know doesn't make you even close to autistic and you should steer clear of amateur psychiatry.
I took it again less hurried and scored 14.
Yeah. I hear you. And guess what? It's a brand new fucking year with the same shit sandwich on the menu.
I've been hungry for another bite my entire life, but this year I may just fast a bit.
Here's hoping your new year is calm and peace-filled. And mine, too.
Amen, bro.
I don't think I will be able to go to the UK.
That's just wrong no matter how you look at it. You're stuck in a place that's been driving you insane, and SHE gets a holiday with your children to YOUR homeland WITHOUT you? That's just wrong, wrong, wrong.
WRONG.
A
The friends thing. I see myself as having enormous difficulty stepping into someone else's circle. Online friendships on the other hand are easy because they can be conceived of entirely within the mind. You can be true to yourself, and true to your online friends, and still not have to step over someone else's wall and into their circle.
I feel for you, your loneliness.
Though I've hinted around forever, it seems my wife and I are too good at being friends to be able to decide on getting divorced. Keen as I am on getting out and about a bit, I can't seem to figure out how to do it honestly.
Just remembered: Before I killed my blog, I cited yours as one I admired. It was because you tell your truth, you write without fear. I aspire to the same, and so I had to kill my blog. Unknown what is next, if anything.
Maybe you should express to her what you need and give her the chance to reformulate your relationship on a footing that keeps what is good but allows you to be free to get the other things you need.
On the other hand, who am I fucking kidding? People just aren't creative or imaginative enough to realise that the structures they force themselves to abide by are hurting them unnecessarily.
Maybe you should express to her what you need and give her the chance to reformulate your relationship on a footing that keeps what is good but allows you to be free to get the other things you need.
On the other hand, who am I fucking kidding? People just aren't creative or imaginative enough to realise that the structures they force themselves to abide by are hurting them unnecessarily.
No, you're not wrong, that is exactly the direction we are headed. It might work, it might not. Simply put, I am working to transform a lose-lose into a win-win. In other words, open doors, choose paths with care, and if it all falls apart anyway, accept that result as inescapable. Of course, the major challenge is in determining why I think I need what I think I need, and expressing it in a way that doesn't make me out as an emotional fifteen year old; though, being a middle-aged male, that too is inescapable.
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