and just like that…

I haven’t really known what to say… I know it’s been awhile.

I think I kept believing that things would get a little better, that something good would happen and I would come back here and say “SEE!!!! What a testament this is!” Rather than be the blogger who continues complaining about this mess of a situation. I’m (finally) coming to terms with the fact that this isn’t going to happen…

Chw flew out a few weeks ago and to say that it went horribly would be a massive understatement. If you strip away the resentment, he wouldn’t have many other feelings for me. He did agree to move towards reconciliation, but he yo-yo’d so many times over the next couple of weeks before finally admitting that was never going to happen. I’m still left with no reasons other than I’m not worth it and he wants something different. Everyone who knows him sits back and says this isn’t the Chw they know and it must be a midlife crisis. It’s a crisis alright, with eternally scarring consequences. I know that I look at the shell of the person I am now and I realize I will forever be altered by this.

There is an art to having a 22 year-long relationship. Better than any scrapbook, my heart and mind will always fall asleep to memories and moments we shared together. In the quiet moments my heart will always drift there and devastation will suck my breath away all over again. Despite his perspective, we had a really beautiful life, and I’ll always be so grateful. In many ways, my life is over. My world revolved around being a mother and a wife. I longed for the days that we would actively grandparent together and travel once our nest was empty. These dreams are dead. So many dreams are dead… As a (very nearly) 40 year old, it is amazing the things people don’t hesitate to tell you… I have been told I should have “considered” a career before it was too late, that I “need to look elsewhere” for a full-time job, I’ve been asked if I’m embarrassed to be this age with nothing to show for it. I was told, in an interview, that I was living her worst nightmare. I have become a nearly 40-year-old beggar, of sorts. It won’t be long until the full meaning of the word is my existence. I’ve juggled two jobs and education only to realize my debt is growing and I still don’t make enough. I’ve lost everything, be they material or the things which really matter.

I get up and go to work. I pray. I prioritize these people whose garbage I am. I try to be generous in every way possible. I give. I love. I educate myself and try to become a better version of myself. All the while, every day things get a little worse. When they get really bad, your credit card company withdraws unauthorized funds from your bank account and overdraft you and then closes the credit account after they have to right their wrong, and threatens to sue you for balance in full… When things get really, really bad a nice guy who shares the same name as your estranged husband rear ends you. When the latter happens, you realize you’ve been begging God for a break, and this last thing has actually been the thing to finally break you.

I am broken.

With no full-time job, there is no “getting better”. there is homelessness and starvation ahead. It’s been days of everything going wrong culminating in people telling me, multiple times today, that I’m not doing good enough, trying hard enough, etc. I am doing the best I can. I’ve done the best I could. I can’t try any longer. In a  job interview today the woman said “wow, you are nice, it’s too bad you have so many strikes against you or you’d land a great job. If only you were 10 years younger.”

In a few days my soon-to-be-ex husband and youngest daughter, both of whom want nothing to do with me, will be here in Idaho. They will be here over my birthday, a day that is ruined every year, in painful ways. It is a day that I personally struggle so much with. I’m turning 40. I just wanted a nice day. I just wanted to feel valuable for one day. I just wanted love. I want too much, because none of those things are going to happen. It is already an issue, already a complication and inconvenience. Instead I will celebrate a child who detests me, and make sure  I communicate all of those things I was aching to feel, on her birthday. I will juggle her with a man who can’t say, see or feel anything actually positive about me. My older daughter was trying to come too but it didn’t work out and she’s sad. We’re both sad. I’m being forced to look at the reality that her life and her family are things I will not be able to be a part of. When you can’t even afford to live, luxuries like travel and holidays become null.

On the brink of 40, I feel like my life is over and all hope is lost. I remember when Chw and I divorced in 99, a well meaning family member said to me “well, you screwed up your chance with the only man who would ever try to love you. your life is over now and it’s time buckle up and take care of your grandmother because the rest of us have families.” I spent my entire adulthood prioritizing my family and husband only to be left with neither. It feels cruel. I feel deeply sad.

After 22 years, he is woven into everything. I hate living here, every place is touted in a memory with him. Every street has some tie. Every song on the radio either echoes how I feel, screams what I lost or possesses its own playback reel of time with him. He is so stitched into the seams of my soul that I could never possibly get through a day unscathed by the new overwhelming sense of his rejection and dispose.