I want to be there
Last year, on September 24, I wrote a long post about my insecurities in my marriage and then nervously made it private.
One week later, we got into a three-day argument. We worked it out. We had a plan for how to make things better. I felt tentatively optimistic, like we had hashed it out and unsettled all this uncomfortable stuff but now it was out in the open, we could do something about it, we could heal.
One week after that, he left and never came home.
We are getting divorced.
It’s been 8 months now. I live alone in the apartment we used to share. Our cat died. Our sweet baby Tater Tot got sick two months after M left and died. My life as I knew it was ripped away from me. I have a new cat, my Millie. I have new furniture. I turned the apartment into the place I wanted it to be. I am trying to do the same with my life.
I don’t know how to write in this blog because honesty has always underpinned everything I say, and I don’t know how to divulge my feelings without airing our dirty laundry. As Beyoncé said, “You know I’m not gonna diss you on the internet, ‘coz my mama taught me better than that.” Gotta listen to Beyoncé. I still want to be respectful to M, to a point. We are civil but we aren’t in each other’s lives anymore. We have a business relationship. Getting divorced is a business. Taking each other off the insurance. Dividing up our things. Delivering mail that’s been sent to the wrong place. It’s all cordial but there’s no love in it. I write friendlier emails to colleagues I know 1/10th as well.
And another reason, which is also the reason I hadn’t written for so long before, is that poly just isn’t a huge part of my life right now. It hasn’t been for a while. The problems between M and I were deeper than that. We split for much more foundational reasons than that. The things I want to write just aren’t really relevant here. Maybe I’ll keep it alive in case anybody cares. Maybe.
I’m still dating Crow. Our relationship hasn’t changed. There was a hot second there when I thought it would. After M left, and my body broke down, I left my house for two weeks, left Tater Tot with a sitter. Part of that time I went to go stay with Crow and his wife. They were there for me when I needed love. I had my birthday during that time. Yes, he left five days before my birthday. We had had plans to celebrate in the town where Crow lives. I guess I kept those plans. They took me to the place where M was supposed to buy me cake. I didn’t eat normally for about two weeks but I still bought a cupcake. Crow’s wife tried to buy it for me, but I said I wanted to buy it because my money was still technically M’s money, and I wanted to do it out of spite. That made her laugh. Spite won over her ingrained need to be a good hostess. That night Crow cooked a delicious salmon dinner for all of us. It was the first time I had eaten real food since M left. We watched Ratatouille. It was as good a celebration as I was going to have, given the circumstances. I felt loved but gutted.
A few months later and Crow and I were talking about changing the nature of our relationship. Exploring an attachment relationship. I wanted to get closer to him, to rely on him, and he wanted the same. He talked with his wife and she was into it. All the pieces were coming together. But that fell apart, too. Part of it was when Tater died. My world was shaken up again. Five days before Tater died, Crow and I were talking about marriage. He’d said that if he were allowed to have multiple spouses, he would have proposed to me years ago. But when Tater died we kind of stopped talking. He also had a lot going on. A close friend, like family, was in the hospital. Another friend’s mom died. All in the same week. Crow is caring and he doesn’t know how to set boundaries around his caring, so he burns himself out and then isn’t able to help others or himself. He’s a care worker by profession and I’ve seen him set those boundaries in his job, so I don’t know... anyway. The world was dead to me at that point anyway. I didn’t feel close to him anymore. We talked about moving in together, with his wife, and that fell apart. That’s when I realized that we aren’t going to get closer. It’s just not in the cards for us. And I’m okay with that. Really, I am. I always liked being his secondary, and him mine. And now I’m on my own, I need to be my own primary. I can’t jump out of one person’s life and into my own. Before M left, I’d only been single as an adult for a small handful of months. Now I’m not single, but unattached. I like that word. It describes what I am beautifully. I’m dating Crow, I love him, but I’m unattached. I would like to be attached to someone, some day. But not any time soon. Only myself. And Millie. I need to figure out what I want my own world to be.
I’m reading The Midnight Library and questioning everything. In it, she quotes Camus. “If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.” I haven’t been there in many, many years. I need to find my way back to myself.