My first post and I am posting it from home. Well, not from where I live now, but from my mother's house, which in a sense is home. I lived for 22 years in the state of Louisiana, here where my mother's home is, before moving to Illinois with my husband after marrying for the second time in June of last year. It was a tough decision to leave here and yet, it felt at the time I knew it was what I needed to do. My children were in college and wanting to spend less and less time with me, which I suppose is natural, or so I'm told. However, being the neurotic woman that I am, I blamed myself for what I perceived as the lessening of our relationship. I blamed myself because I left my daughters' father in January of 2012 after years of fighting and emotional distress and opposite views of life that made every day existence unbearable. I didn't handle the separation very well, being the non-confrontational person that I am. I dreaded every day how I was going to tell my husband I wanted to end our marriage for fear of his reaction. I had become accustomed to walking on egg shells to avoid angering him because his temper was so awful and his face when he was mad, frightening. It was only when he found out I had secured a small apartment for myself that he knew my intentions of leaving. That was such a traumatic and devastating time for me, but I know even more so for my daughters. To this day, I have nights where the thoughts of what emotional damage I may have done to them keeps me awake..imagined emotional scars and newly formed warped views of life and love, thanks to my divorce. And yet...my daughters are thriving in their lives, one about to graduate from college and the other excelling after her first year. There are no obvious, stereotyped rebellions from them, such as outrageous drinking or drug usage, tattooing or piercings or bad-boy boyfriends. For that, I am thankful and take some comfort.
Today is Memorial Day. My youngest daughter, Melissa has moved out of her dorm and back to the house I helped build with my ex-husband. And when I say helped build, I mean that literally. I helped nail, and paint, and sand...I helped spackle, and conceal and stain. And yet, I can not call it my house because it was never mine. My ex husband, Scott never put the house we built on his father's land in our name so I had no ownership in my own home. It remained a nondescript structure on Scott's father's land, according to the parish tax assessor. I was assured by Scott that this was for the best so that we could avoid paying property taxes and we couldn't be forced out of our home should we have to file bankruptcy some day. I had never lived that way - purposefully living under the radar in a sketchy way and living with a backup plan for when things might get even sketchier. I had lived with the view that home ownership instilled a sense of responsibility and motivation to be productive to support the home - to be able to have a good income to pay the mortgage and any taxes or insurance or whatnot. I was not of the mindset that you create a situation where you have no accountability or obligation so you can experiment with different business ventures and have the luxury of failing each time. This was foreign to me and it put me at a disadvantage as the wife in the relationship. But, I trusted my husband at the time and went along with it. For years after that, my father who was a lawyer and a judge urged me to get the house put in Scott and my name, and I tried to convince Scott to but he wouldn't do it. And so, in the divorce I was awarded $25,000.00 for any community property money we had put into the "structure" and a few pieces of furniture. I have not seen any of the money and I don't expect to. I don't know how you put a value on the love and labor I put into that house as well.So, this home I helped build, where I raised my children is now the home my children return to during college breaks. Of course, I am not there. This is heart-breaking to me, that my kids can't come home to me. It's unnatural in my eyes. And in many ways, I blame myself. If I had just stuck it out and suffered and not broken up our family, I would be in that house waiting for them when they came home over college breaks. I try to counter that with the fact that Scott made my life so sad and miserable, that I was moved to the point of leaving regardless of the fact that I had no home, no savings, my church family would be shocked,as would God himself and I would devastate my kids in the process. One really must appreciate how desperate for peace of mind a person has to get to in order to cause such upheaval in their own life and in the lives of the ones they love most.
So, Melisaa is at home today and not alone. Scott's girlfriend lives in my house now. She is repainting the walls and replacing wallpaper. Soon, it will no longer look like my home, it will look like hers. But, my daughters' rooms will still be their rooms, and that is what I wanted for them when I left. I left as much as I could so when they went home, it would look and feel like home...except their mother wouldn't be there. But the familiar furniture and wall hangings would. Melissa is at home. She was supposed to come up to my mother's house and spend Memorial Day with my mother and me. But she sent me a text message this morning saying her professor had sent her an e-mail telling her the assignment she had submitted was done in the wrong format and that she needed to redo it and submit it again. And so, she would need to work on that all day long and couldn't come up. I was very disappointed as I drove the 10 hours from Illinois solely to see my daughters and my mother. And when I checked her e-mail, I didn't see anything from anyone telling her that her assignment was done improperly.Perhaps there was another e-mail address he used. So, Melissa will spend Memorial Day with Sonya, the girlfriend and Scott's parents. And I will spend it with my mother. However, this evening I will go and visit my dear friends whom I have missed very much since leaving Louisiana and we will catch up and visit. End of post one...so much background missing, but it will come in time. The holes will be filled in a time of my choosing..nobody is going to read this anyway..but now it is not just in my head anymore, which feels really good.
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