It's Friday afternoon and my motivation to do work has evaporated, so I checked out my old journal for a "This Day in History" moment. There were two entries that really made me pause. I'll start with the entry from 2008, which was about my ex husband trying, once again, to guilt me into helping him get his license. Please note, he hadn't had a valid license for the 3 years we were together, but every time I left/tried to leave, suddenly it would become THE most important thing he needed to do, all in an effort to guilt trip me into staying.
Anyway, the entry itself was not remarkable. It was a comment I made to a friend who was trying to convince me that it wasn't my job to help my ex become an adult. She had posted multiple comments lamenting her own husband's relationship with his father and how trying to help my daughter have a relationship with her father (at 1 year old, mind) may do more harm than good.
In response, I said the following:
"I don't plan to lie to kiddo about her father, I just plan to do my part so that if one day she wants a relationship with her father, she has the opportunity. If all she learns from my efforts is that she's better off without him, then I'll be there to help her through it. And if a day comes where she tells me that she no longer wants to see her father, then I'll stop making the efforts. I just do not want to feel like any relationship issues between her and her father are because of me. I want to feel like *I* did my part, and if that means going the extra mile for now, then so be it. I know her father is going to try to say that I didn't do something, and I want to have proof that I did."
Twelve years later, kiddo did tell me she didn't want to see her father anymore. Her therapist and I tried to work out a way she could maintain the relationship without forcing her to keep the same visitation schedule she had had since she was almost two, but he refused. He made a counteroffer, and when I asked one too many questions about how it would work, he stopped responding for two months. Then, when he finally did respond, it was to basically blast me and say that it was no longer worth the privilege of being in our daughter's life to deal with me. That was right around the time the pandemic hit. I haven't heard from him since.
My daughter has heard from him. He texts her sporadically, but she refuses to respond. I've felt guilt about it for the past year, but this entry makes me feel a little better. I gave him the opportunity to draft a new visitation arrangement, one that she would be willing to adhere to. Prior to this, she had refused to get out of the car at the last visitation attempt and began texting him every other week that she wasn't coming. Our court order is really vague on visitation and just says that it's to be "reasonable and liberal as agreed to by the parties." So, essentially we're supposed to work it out between us. In the past, I had initiated most discussions and tried to compromise if there were disagreements, but on the suggestion of my husband, this time I tried to let my ex lead. As I said, after trying to clarify his plan through a series of questions, he stopped engaging.
This leads me to the second entry I saw, from 2011. Here I was lamenting the fact that my 10 year high school reunion was around the corner and I felt ambivalent about it. I wrote: "It hasn't felt like it's only been 10 years. It hasn't felt like it because I feel like I've lived a lifetime in those 10 years." Indeed, it definitely seems like I had. I lost my mother just over a year after I graduated from high school, I dropped out of school, scored a job at a prestigious law firm, went back to school part time, bought a house, left the job at the prestigious law firm, was fired from my next two jobs, dropped out of school again, sold the house, got pregnant, got married, gave birth, got divorced, moved back in with my father, found a part time job with the government, and finally finished my associate's degree. All in that order.
At the time I wrote the entry, I was feeling really despondent about my life. I wasn't where I wanted or expected to be and, while I had a plan to improve my circumstances, it wasn't going to be a quick fix. So, I was debating on going to the reunion at all. I didn't go, and honestly with the uptick in social media, I don't really know if reunions are going to be necessary anymore. Not many people went, from my understanding.
Now that it's coming up on my 20th reunion, I'm somewhat disheartened that it doesn't appear we are having one. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with COVID, but now I'm in a much better place. I'm remarried, my daughter has grown up to be an incredibly kind and empathetic person, and I have a really awesome job with a master's degree under my belt (with another one partway completed). I was so ashamed of where I was 10 years ago that it's important to me to take the time to realize how much better the last decade has been. I wrote an entry in 2018, which was a decade after I left my first marriage, to discuss what a difference a decade had made. I don't want to repeat a lot of the same themes, but I think it's important sometimes to take a look back at where we were then versus where we are now.
There's still a lot I'd like to do in my life before I reach my 30 year high school reunion (assuming we have one), but I'm really proud of the progress I've made since 2011. Who knows, maybe by 2031, I'll have a few books published and be living a writer's life! A girl can dream!
No comments:
Post a Comment