The Bittersweet Divorce

There are approximately one million reasons that I should keep a journal of the events of my divorce. The main reason is because, at least now, I'm so numb from the simple fact of the divorce that I can't really wrap my head around what's really going on. Only through me writing and talking about what I'm going through will I be able to actually understand why this happened and figure just how I'm going to move onward and upward to a life that's the best for me and my children (my use of the plural children is an odd one, because its not technically or legally true).

I also understand that when you get into a situation where there is at least a chance for anything ugly in court having some kind of documentation of the events in question is never a bad thing, so long as that stuff isn't incriminating.

At the end of the list of reasons to do this is because I know that it's important for me to know that people have been through this and dealt with it in their own ways and gotten through it and that when someone who is going through this as well stumbles upon this blog maybe they'll read and it will help them sort through they things they need to sort through.

I'll start simply with the basics and move on from there.

In December of 2007 I met a young lady from Boston using the online dating site Geek to Geek. For the sake of her privacy I'll refer to her as Carol Brown, which isn't even close to her name. She was amazing and we quickly fell in love. Carol Brown had two children from a previous relationship, for the sake of keeping their names of of this we'll call the oldest one Jermaine, who was going to turn two in March. He was already a perfect gentleman. There was also Mel, who was born in Mid-November. She was absolutely adorable and remains such to this day.

Now I mentioned that Carol Brown was from Boston, what I hadn't mentioned was that I was living in Texas at the time. Two lovebirds feeling incredible pain because of a great distance we decided that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together in, oh, let's call it January (for anonymity's sake). In that we made this call we knew one of us was going to need to make a big sacrifice. We bounced back and forth over which option made the most sense. We had pretty much agreed that it would be me who would make the move to Boston instead of her coming down here. It would be much easier for the kids and I was far less attached to Texas, being a resident of several years that she was to Boston, where she had lived her life to that point.

Until something very strange happened, the specific details of which I am very fuzzy on. I was half way packed when she called in tears, begging to move down to Texas instead. Fine. We'll make this work. I was crashing at my folks place at the time, as were my grandparents, so their spacious home suddenly became very very cramped until we could find a place to call home.

She moved here in March and we were married on the 29th (exactly one year ago to today, for those of you who love those unfortunate coincidences.) By May we were pregnant with our wonderful little, uh, let's call him Bret. By August were were living on our own in a condo my folks had been renting out that was recently abandoned.

It was an interesting pregnancy, which I'll get into at a later date. Bret was born in late January 2009 and it was from that moment on things seemed to just get bad.

Her mom came down a couple weeks later and events from that week, which I will get into later, caused a great deal of duress. I think that's when the marriage was actually over. It was even mentioned a couple of times but we decided that we needed to see marriage counseling and that getting the support we'd receive from attending church on a regular basis. This never happened. Granted, this is ultimately on both of us, I had asked her to find the church since she was very insistent that it be a Catholic one. Not being Catholic myself I wouldn't know what to look for.

Finally comes this past Tuesday. I get home from work (I work 2nd shift hours) around 11pm and she's acting funny. She says I seem tired and that I need to get some sleep as I had work in the morning. She's never concerned about that, and I wasn't tired. I tell her that I just needed to unwind for a bit before going to bed. About twenty minutes later she tells me that she was talking to her friend from Boston who was in the middle of a very personal crisis and that for the sake of her privacy she didn't want to have the conversation with me on the room. Fine. I respect this and adjourn to our bedroom with my laptop to get some work done.

Only our walls aren't all that thin and she's not all that quiet. I hear snippets of conversation that made it very clear to me that she wasn't talking to her Bostonian friend at all, but rather a guy she had met that weekend. Nothing sexual or racy, but she was having a getting to know you conversation. The kind I can clearly remember us having WAAAY back in December.

I confront her on this and she continues to insist that it's her friend. I press a bit more and she admits the truth. I ask why she had to lie to me about it and what was I supposed to think if she's having this kind of conversation with a guy when her husband's in the next room. The fight heats up a bit and I ask her if she still loved me. She told me she didn't. At this point we quickly came to the conclusion that the marriage was over. No working it out, no attempts at trying to fix whatever issues we have. Over. No negotiations.

We're trying to be civil about all of this. She's planning on moving back to Boston and she wants primary custody of Bret, the other two I have no leg to stand on. I wants what's best for my little guy and havn't quite decided that that's the best call.

Regardless, she's got the other two, who I've grown to love just as much as my own, with no exception. I'll never be daddy to them again. That ship has sailed and sunk and I don't think I'll ever be able to get over that.

I'm kind of numb about this whole situation. I wish we had stayed together as I still love my wife and that if we were able to fix whatever issues we have and maintain the loving relationship we once had the kids would be better suited. It's the best chance they would have at having a stable environment.

As it stands now she's planning on moving back to Boston with all three, live in HUD housing, get government welfare and live off the company dime as it were while her mom watches the kids and she goes back to school to get a culinary degree.

I can't wrap my head around why she would throw her kids into this situation without trying to work it out. She says she doesn't love me and doesn't want to try and in doing so opts to put her children in a really shitty place. I wish someone could answer that for me, because despite all of this, she's still a great mother and to breakup a family that includes a father who has all three of those children deep into his heart and would do absolutely anything in the world for them without trying to make it work confounds me.