Why Blog About This? What’s The Point?
Two summers ago, my ex-y was hipped to this blog. She called on the phone.
“I saw The Off Parent.”
“Okay.”
“And as a parent, trying to trust you, I want you to take it down.”
“You’re right,” I said. It was a very low point for me. “I’ll take it down right now. I’m sorry.”
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And then something happened a few weeks ago. I was thinking about a post, I was angry with my ex-y (go figure) and I wanted to write about it. I remembered how my depression returned with a vengeance right after the conversation above. “What was the point?” I asked myself.
And as I was walking across the parking lot of the local grocery store, I said, “When my kids are grown up, I want them to know the truth. I want them to understand what I was going through.”
The point being, my kids are on the internet. They are not searching for me or my blogs. And this blog, The Off Parent, would be hard to trace back to me. You can do it. There are some threads. If you really wanted to.
BUT why would my kids be searching for a blog about divorce? Um, unless they are searching for a blog about divorce. (Good point.)
My friend said to me, “Do you think Bob Dylan’s kids have heard Idiot Wind?”
So this is not for them, this is not for you. This is for me. I am attempting to share the truth, and release the bitterness and sadness, so that I can heal and move on.
This is also a document that will be revealed. I’m sure it’s my ex-y’s worst nightmare. Well, sorry, hon, it’s up for keeps this time. Oh, and it’s not for you, either.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
Info Source: Sara Dylan on Wikipedia
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Iron Man 2: Divorced Dad’s Review – Hidden Messages At My Ex – I’m No Tony Stark
I write a tech blog during the day. And occasionally I do a movie review. Just for fun, I call it. And I did one a while back on the release of Iron Man. But it was a thinly veiled slam on my ex-y. How could she walk out? There is NO GIVE UP. I was mad, I was confused… Here’s the review.
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There’s a critical juncture at the end of Iron Man 2, where Pepper Potts throws in the towel. In the romantic version she is doing it because she loves the real Iron Man too much to keep going through saving the world over and over again. She’s had enough.
From the Wikipedia entry on Pepper:
Paltrow reprises the role in Iron Man 2. In the film, Potts is promoted to Stark Industries’ CEOwhile Tony is attempting to set his affairs in order due to his impending death due to the poisonous side-effects of the arc reactor’s power source. When talking to Nick Fury at the end of Iron Man 2, Tony also hinted that he and Pepper were in a relationship and his life was back on track.
So in the movie version of reality, I guess we don’t really know if they are going to hookup. It’s not like there hasn’t been some tension in Pepper’s “caretaker” role. Sure she’s holding his life together. And sure she’s an amazing organizer and champion for all things Tony Stark. And being promoted to CEO and essentially bazillionaire of Stark Industries might be nice. But, she is DONE.
So in the non-movie version, in real life, for example, when the CEO says, “I quit.” Are there any further options? Is there a way to “talk” the leader back into the leadership role? Back to the movie, do we even care about the CEO role at this point? (I imagine the sap inside all of us was yelling, “Kiss her, you fool.”)
So my personal reaction was something along the lines of “What? She’s done?” Again, I’m sure I’m projecting here, but… “After all that? Sure it was HARD, and sure you’re TIRED, but you’re QUITTING?”
In my mind we’re talking about something bigger than HARD and TIRED.
On the flipside, the new agent is also a winner. And quite a feisty contender, that Natasha Romanoff.
And what CAN you do when the leader, or the other person, says, “I’m done.”
What I think Tony Stark has to do is let her go. At what juncture in the future might the stress be too much for Pepper yet again? How can you count on that prior bond/faith/strength, after the other person has opted-out? Won’t they be likely to opt-out again?
I don’t remember the final scene in the movie. Did they kiss? Did they talk about a vacation in paradise somewhere? But I do remember being stunned and a bit frustrated that she’d quit. Perhaps a little bit mad at the sugar-coated ending. Because the failure was devastating. Or is it a new beginning?
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
Note: Learning not to send sizzling zingers at my ex-y has been one of my most valuable growth steps. It does no good. I remember writing this and hitting the publish button… “Heh heh heh.” She’ll get the message. It will be humiliating. (Self-reveal.) Oops. That’s not a good thing. She’s the mother of my kids. She’s a person I loved. She’s still the woman I married. So even putting together pointed txts and emails together was fun, but was also destructive, and in many ways, still holding me to the woman I so desperately wanted to leave behind at this point. No thrashing. Barbed emails and messages are just thrash.
Just Being Dad Is Enough: A Hot Summer and a Ghost Horse
Living at the crossroads of sainthood and bullshit
Since my divorce, in August of last year, I have been rebuilding my life and my relationship with my kids. Too much time at work, too many economic ups and downs, too much stress, have all brought me to this point on the journey. Today.
As I was walking alone in my new neighborhood this morning the slowness of the activity and the drowsiness of the heat had me recounting summertime with my Dad. And the contrast between those very sparse memories and the more generous memories I am working to create with my kids on Fridays and alternating weekends this hot hot summer.
My new neighborhood is very conducive to bikes, so when she is here, my daughter and I ride every morning, “before it gets too hot.” And I have seen streets and areas we might never reach on foot. And we zoom together around the quiet streets. Fearless. Explorative. Together.
And my son and I often go for walks, since he does not like bike riding at this point. We mostly walk to the lake/pool neighborhood complex, and occasionally to the convenience store where he partakes of his favorite summer drink, the mango slushie. The last time it was just my son and me, and we were walking along up the hill in the picture above when he noticed a horse.
“Dad, that’s a horse in that yard over there.”
Sure enough, there was a large brown horse staring at us as we puffed up the hill in the heat towards the mecca of slurpiedom. We stopped and said a few words to the horse. He said nothing. And we walked on.
On our return, the horse had moved out of sight and we talked about how wild it was that a horse was “just standing there.”
Now every time we pass this place on the road we look for the horse. My daughter and I ride by the field looking for him every day she is with me. She was disappointed not to have seen him. We are both hopeful, but so far the horse has not reappeared.
So this magical moment reminds me of the optimist’s Christmas joke when the child is given a bucket of horse poop as a Christmas gift. He opens the present and laughs, “I knew there was a horse in here somewhere.” A nice summary of making the best out of a bad situation by keeping our perspectives on the positive side.
And here’s one other thing that I find entertaining. The name of the street to my house is San Juan, or Saint Juan. (As if…) And even better is the cross street that accurately marks this crossroads in my life, is de vaca, or “of cow.” Or as I refer to it, at the crossroads of sainthood and bullshit.
UPDATE 7-29-11: This morning, Friday, the three (plus dog makes 4) of us trekked to the local taco trailer for breakfast. And along the way we saw:
Again, the horse said nothing, but we are almost certain that we saw an actual horse and not some mirage from the heat. My son said he saw the horse breathing.
We were blessed with one other creature (our dog Scrambles, pictured below on his favorite chair) who enjoyed the walk as much as his ride back on my daughter’s shoulders.
We’re pretty sure the dog didn’t see the horse. There was no acknowledgment of either one by the other.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Depression is No Joke: Suicide is Not the Answer to Any Question or Problem
As I’m thinking about some of the darkest times in my life, the fall from having it all to having nothing was the harshest thing I could imagine. There were moments…
(Disclaimer: I am not a counselor or mental health professional. I am not offering advice on how to treat your depression or suicidal thoughts. I am saying GET HELP and GET IT NOW. See also the Divorce Reference Library page)
For now, here are a few things I learned about depression.
Your brain is fooling you. You can no longer trust your own thoughts. Even the negative thoughts are not accurate. What was critically important for me was to realize when I was getting depressed and go into humorous observation mode. “Wow, my thinking is really fucked up.” There’s nothing funny about depression, but sometimes if I could amplify my dark clouds to the ultimate extreme I could remind myself how silly my thinking could get. I mean, I was probably not responsible for nuclear war. But that’s how it felt sometimes.
Soft thoughts about suicide are actually suicidal thoughts. Harder to admit the word “suicide” into my vocabulary. But I had vague ideas about jumping from a bridge or crashing my car at high-speed. And while those are called “ideation” they ARE actually suicidal thoughts. Take them seriously. Again, remember, your brain is crazy at this point. Even odd thoughts about how you “might” kill yourself are actually thoughts about killing yourself. I know that sounds kind of circular, but it’s easy to discount the “concept” rather than the “plan” of killing yourself.
Tell your care team about your “ideation.” Even the littlest thing can be a clue into what’s going on in your brain. And once you get over the hurdle of talking about it, you can begin to disassemble the issues and problems that are making you consider that ending your life might be a solution to ANYTHING. It’s not a solution!
If you ever find yourself with a plan, call 911. Do whatever it takes to get yourself to share your planning with someone else. This is serious. If you have a plan, call your healthcare provider now. If you’re plan is in motion, call 911. Only you can take the action to prevent this.
Everything else can wait. Everything else, every problem, every situation, can wait for you to clear your depressive thoughts. There are a lot of helpful things you can do to move forward and out of depression. I have some powerful references in the Library. But for now, just know, that ANYTHING you do to stop your depressive acting out is worth it. Ice cream, funny movies, computer games, whatever it takes to break the spiral of dark thoughts.
Isolation is your enemy. Those dark thoughts can seethe and spin unchecked when you are staying in bed or blocking and not returning phone calls. What you need but can’t seem to ask for, is companionship. Just another soul to be with, to check in, to ask, “What are you doing tomorrow.” Do what you can to find that one person who understands. And then thank them for providing you with a check-in. That’s all you need at first. A “check-in.” Someone who is going to call and who you cannot block. It sucks, but the longer you dig in to the darkness the harder it is to pull out.
In my case I used some of the 12-step literature to help bootstrap myself back out of my dark cave and into recovery. The concept of MASSIVE ACTION really spoke to me. The idea being, that little incremental steps were not going to be enough to pull me up out of depression. So I signed up for a divorce recovery class (10-week counselor-led group) and joined an Aikido class. And every day, I made a plan to get out of bed and out in the world for a healthy lunch.
Just beginning these commitments toward health signaled to my depression that I was not going to take it lying down any more.
Some people have the idea that depression is a weakness. That everybody should be able to pull themselves up if they wanted to. Fuck that. Depression is a real beast. If you’ve never felt the weight of the black beast on you, you are lucky. But if you have dealt with, or think you may be dealing with depression, GET HELP.
You don’t have to do it alone. And trying to do it ALONE might even make things worse. The shame of depression is still real. But you cannot let it prevent you from getting the help you need.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
See also: Followed By the Black Dog of Depression
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
