Brave Little Gerda Faces the Icy Game of Reason

[job]

Gerda,

I am so sorry that things aren't any better. I am going to wish you a Happy Anniversary because you've stayed the course and believe in your vows and the teachings that we have been taught through the bible.

I think your h realized what today was and he didn't want you to say anything about it. He's made at himself and the world. I think the problem is that he is stuck in the anger phase of the crisis and he feels miserable and he wants others to feel the same way. When he sees you and the family being calm and happy, he can't stand it. This is no excuse for bad behavior, but that is what I think is going on. The calmer you are, the more angry he will become.

I use to feel that being "divorced" was a horrible title, but I don't any longer. Why? Because I can sleep at night, look people in the eye and know that I was not the one who wanted that document filed in a court of law. I wasn't the one that went out there and had an affair and did not try to vilify him to others, i.e., like he did to me. I did not set out to destroy my spouse, emotionally and financially and I am at peace now w/the guidance of the man upstairs. I forgave my xh many years ago and today, well, I look at photos of him and do not recognize him, but I do pray for him because he needs to find peace.

Once I felt better about my life and my situation, I didn't give the title of "divorce" a second thought. Divorce today and a dime a dozen and doesn't have the stigma it had back years ago. Everywhere you look, people are divorcing because it is so much easier to get one than do the hard, necessary work to repair a damaged relationship. So, please do not think of a "divorce" as wearing a crown of thorns. Hold your head up high, back straight and look people in the eye and do not be ashamed...you've done nothing wrong.

Stay strong. You've got this.

[DnJ]

Good Morning Gerda

I am thinking about, and feel for you today - 19 year anniversary. I am sure your emotions and thoughts are a little mixed and scattered, which is perfectly understandable.

There are no words to erase the past or the pain, just the slow forward progress towards the unknown future. Progress towards compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. Progress towards your healing.

I am happy to be a companion on your journey, even if it can only be mantle sized.

I am stronger now, as you have all noted. As I return to a more confident self, the one I was before marriage, it erodes other aspects of myself and gets jumbled into my lingering feelings of ugliness and then the whole temptation issue I have alluded to, etc., so it's all a bit confusing. But I am definitely stronger and clearer. I am glad you noticed.

I am glad you see it Gerda.

Be patient and gentle on yourself, things will be a little confusing until it all gels and settles.

As for the title of divorced woman and your view of it being horrible. I do empathize. That was one of my big fears - divorce! I hated the idea, the stigma, the thought of it, how others would see me, would think of me, etc... A divorced man - what did he do? Why did she leave him?

Why do we blame the victim? Why do we blame ourselves? Cause and effect. Except the cause is not of our doing.

Understand and believe this - it gets so much better!

As job said, hold your head up high. You have done nothing wrong.

This is a step you must go through, this horrible divorce self blaming thing. We all do it. And then see and believe the truth of it. Be patient answers and insights do and will reveal themselves, especially when you’re calm and at peace; you really cannot force them.

Letting go of fear, especially the fear of divorce, is a big step. Facing my divorce, was difficult. I think I overcame my fears regarding it. I can’t really remember how I felt.

It seems so weird now. I am divorce, it happened, there is nothing left to fear. Something so big, so irrationally consuming, just becomes nothing - really - just like that. Very weird. As things snap from possible futures into the present reality, fears disappear. So why fear them up front?

My XW pushed abandonment, a separation, and a divorce. She is a sad broken woman, and I do feel for her and all she has thrown away. I look at her with compassion and forgiveness, there really isn’t much else I can do. Hatred and vengeance isn’t the path I want to walk, and it isn’t me. I know who I am, and where I stand.

I see your path following a similar direction. The twists and turns, the dips and valleys, may be different; the heading is the same. Knowledge of one’s self, one’s values and convictions, one’s faith, one’s capacity to understand and forgive.

Today, on your 19th anniversary, amidst all the jumble of emotions and thoughts - I ask you to just acknowledge there is a different future coming. A future with acceptance and understanding. A bright and wonderful future for Gerda.

Stay strong.

Stay in the light.

(((Gerda)))

DnJ

[sjohns6]

Gerda,

I read what you wrote to Gordie on his thread. It really got me thinking. You have changed so much since you first started posting (at least in regards to your relationship with H, but I believe it to be more than that). So much that it got me thinking about myself and I realize how much I have changed too. How you described your feelings for H summed up really well how I've been feeling about W. I don't feel like I love her anymore. Or, actually, I know I loved her and the person she was. She has not been that person for some time and I do not love who she is now. I don't hate her, but I don't love her either. I feel like I may still have love for her bottled up somewhere deep within myself, but it isn't really for HER, its for who she was, and maybe who she could become in the future.

I really wish you had not been living with H for the last 6 years. In the beginning I did not want W to move and it was very difficult on me when she did. But, in retrospect, I do not feel like my healing/detaching really began until she moved out. In a manner, her moving out might have saved me from hating her in the long run. I think that had she been living at home treating me bad for the last year that I might have ended up hating and resenting her eventually. Currently, I just don't think I love her anymore. I hope you are able to live away from H soon.

I hope you are doing well today! Thinking of you!!

(((Gerda)))

[Gerda]

Grace, this note meant a lot to me, I read it many times that day. I always feel that I am stumbling but then I realize I am still walking and that indeed, God must be helping me, He is hearing me for sure. Sometimes I can feel Him walking with me.

Lately as certain things in me get eroded, I finalize understand that struggle I read about other people having, to feel that I am worthy of God's love, that I don't have to be perfect before I ask him for help. I am struggling with this now but I do see it as a grace that I can understand that, as I never really did before, when I read other people seeing that.

I want to thank you for your friendship, it means a lot to me and is a real gift. I have been following your sitch and am so impressed with the joy you have been taking in your daily life.

Here's a prayer for you for today --

Holy God, Your beloved Son has called me “friend!” As I quietly come to You to contemplate the great gift of His gracious friendship to me, please calm my mind and still my body. Bring me to a deep awareness, O My Father in Heaven, of Your presence to me right here, right now . . . . above me, below me, behind me, before me, around me, beside me, within me. I lovingly thank You for Your infinite goodness to me, in particularly today in the gifts of Jesus’s friendship with me, and what an example He has given to me for my friendship with others. I ask You to grant me the gift of holy friendships in my life, with individuals who will walk faithfully side by side and arm in arm with me, back to You, as we travel our pilgrim journeys on this earth together. Amen.

[Gerda]

Job, your notes are so helpful to me. I read what you wrote a lot that day and since. Your heart is so kind and you have really used your own pain to gain perspective that helps others gain it too.

About the Crown of Thorns -- all that I said about hating the title is still on me, though what you are saying makes total sense, I still wish I could have avoided it. But seeing it as a crown of thorns is the way I DO wear it with pride. A friend reminded me yesterday not to expect too much of myself. Christ willingly chooses to suffer for us, but for us, we never or almost never choose to suffer. I mean, choosing to stand is choosing to suffer, but it's certainly not something I would choose in advance! But in willingly taking that crown, I think that I actually can walk with my head held high. There is not really a way for me to wear the title of divorced woman proudly but if I see it that way, I can feel some peace and even pride --

Philippians 3:8-11

Thank you a million, Job, for caring about me!

[Gordie]

Gerda

I think you should take the kids out tonight

Dinner? Movie? Ice Cream? Anything.

Just for fun.

[Gerda]

Hallo, DnJ. I risk redundancy as usual in thanking you for your extremely thoughtful (in all senses of the word) replies to me, and for your very clear empathy. The benefit of our suffering through the same thing at the same time in history as well as at nearly the same time in our lives (age-wise) is that when you tell me you are thinking of me, this is no Hallmark card with a little wilty pink flower on the cover, and some cheesy blue script lettering, "Thinking of you" on the inside. I know it means that a friend whose name I don't even know who lives in some tiny town in some cold Canadian somewhere knows with both scientific and emotional exactitude just precisely what his friend is feeling, a friend whose name he doesn't know who lives in one of the world's biggest cities far away -- and that his heart is bleeding just a tiny bit on her behalf even as he can see the trajectory ahead that leads to a brighter moment.

And that's a rather intense comfort!

I wish you had been on the mantle in the last week because I really don't have the energy to explain all that happened --but in short, the devil has definitely built a hot little nest in my H's heart and mind and all I can do is keep pushing to get him out of here. His L is demanding $3500/mo in spousal support, not even off the top of his share of our house TBD later, for 7 months at which point I have to buy him out or sell. Right in the middle of the school year.

And on top of all that, on that anniversary day, I started suffering some signs of a kind of cancer that I am at risk for because of the drug I take since having had breast cancer. So I had to rush to doc for biopsy, and I only mentioned it to H after he kept texting me about using the car and some other stupid stuff as a way to force him to leave me alone. He never asked me about it and mercifully left town again this weekend. I told his mother and all she said was that I should tell him so that we could "be ready" for any outcome. I guess she means if I die?

Well huzzah! in that case H would finally get all the money he wants!

Sadly for him i think the worst case scenario will be a hysterectomy.

But the other good outcome of that was that my L turned into a knight in armor when I told him about it. He has gotten all fired up to fight for me and keeps telling me not to stress, he will take all the stress, and I should just take care of my health. We have court on Wed and he will be filing a motion for sole use of marital residence and for H to actually pay the child support required by law now that he has signed a visitation agreement. I have not been wanting to force the visitation stuff because now not only my S but my D do not want to see him. More on that below in response to Gordie.

OK, DnJ, I have a large pot of tea here and it's a beautiful cool day, sun pouring in but breezy, so I can bake whatever it is you are in the mood to have with the tea. What is your favorite?

[Gerda]

You have changed so much since you first started posting (at least in regards to your relationship with H, but I believe it to be more than that). So much that it got me thinking about myself and I realize how much I have changed too.

I have been thinking about what you wrote for a few days now, sjohn. I mean, all the nice things you wrote and your care and concern for me is the most important part, I can't tell you how much this means to me to have your admiration, friendship, concern. But also just this part, about how much you and I have changed.

I don't know you well enough to know if you have changed. But I kept thinking about it and I do not think I have changed really. Not my core. I have been at this standing thing for six years now, and I think I did realize that the vows I took meant something more than what I understood when I took them. Or that the kind of person I thought I was really is who I am -- in some ways I returned to her, she was a tough cookie and had a lot of confidence -- tough, witty, can make almost anyone laugh, can cut a business deal like no one's business, can fight in or out of court like a mongoose on a cobra, but still has a heart that only wants to love.

And now, unlike when I was her before, I think I understand what it means to really love a man. Not just to find him handsome or to love his ways or to love to cook for him or to let the thought of him invade your mind all day long, but to stand by him when he is no longer handsome and you don't love any of his ways and you can't cook for him and mostly don't want to and when the thought of him brings only pain or total detachment.

Now my stand has become a willingness to take him back if he ever tries to return. Even if I don't love him. I just trust that God will help me love him again if I say yes to his return as a way of saying yes to God.

What I think changed in the last year was H. I think that this entire time, his whole MLC, he was half in and half out. He wasn't mentioning D, he was cheating and had monstering periods and didn't show me any care or help me or anything, often disappeared, etc. But there were so many times when he seemed to be coming back, and in the times between, he was still pretending on some level to be my H and my kids' dad. He was a terrible H and a terrible dad, but the kids and I could still feel like he was in some way ours, and that we were waiting for the "real" version of him to come back.

In the last year, I think I finally experienced what many of you have experienced all along. There was no longer any pretense of him still being ours. He became totally wicked, and all his life is devoted to destroying me and to destroying our home and to weaponizing our kids instead of just ignoring them.

So his change -- his transformation into someone ready to not only believe the devil's lies but act on them -- forced me to step up my game. I couldn't just rely anymore on hope and prayer or I would lose my actual home and kids. I had to go to God and ask Him to stand by me in a different way because I couldn't just be the patient sufferer, I had to play the D game, something I never thought I would ever have to do. I became active instead of just waiting, but I saw that being active in this way, to deflect all the blows from my H and his L, could still be part of my waiting. Even getting rid of my first L and getting a tough one was a way for me to stop being in denial, to realize that my H really was undertaking all these horrific things and I had to walk through it with strength and confidence.

Maybe I am only proving what you meant about me changing. But I think I want to be sure of myself, of who I am, and to know that I have been consistent before, now and in the future, even as this new role is thrust on me. It reminds me of when I had an MRI when I had breast cancer -- I was of course alone, my H was crazy by then -- and in the MRI I was not only worried that I was going to die of cancer but just in the moment I was in this dark tunnel of totally mind-numbing noise, and I was praying really loudly and crying the whole time -- and I heard the guy in the booth say, "I don't know what you are doing, but you are moving, and I am going to have to start the whole thing over if you can't stand still," so for a moment I stopped praying, and then I felt myself fainting because in the noise and the darkness and the fear, I couldn't even find a thread that was myself. It was like I was dropping out of myself into nothing. So I had to pray with all my strength inside my head, without moving, sure that there was a light somewhere and a thread that was me, even if around me all was darkness and noise.

So I guess that is how I feel now. I am forcing myself to know I am still here, me as me, and to trust that there is an end to this horrible noise and darkness and all I have to do is pass through it until I can hear myself again.

And I consider you and my other friends here to be like a kind friend outside the MRI, just beyond, standing in the light, urging me not be afraid, promising me that we will walk out of that place together into the light of the daylight beyond.

[Gerda]

Gordie, you always leave a little gold nugget for me. In just a couple of words, you say an entire volume of things and encourage me and inspire me.

I know exactly what you meant. And you are right. I wish I didn't have to work so much to get food on the table, I wish I could be like that more often. But I need to try everyday to have some time like that.

And the funny thing is that yesterday I did put down my work and really just hang out with D10. She has been struggling a lot and I noticed that in the last few weeks as my H becomes more and more demonic, even she seems not to want to be with him anymore. And she keeps telling me about how he gets very enraged and talks about how awful I am, how I take all the money and won't give him any, etc.

So I lay on the couch with her in my arms and just listened and asked her questions.

She totally broke down, started crying like crazy but in this way I never saw before, sort of squeezing her face with her hands. She told me, "I hate Papa. He might be the worst person I ever met in my life. He’s a meanie, he’s just a meanie! A Meanie!"

I said, "I see. Did something new happen?"

D: "No."

"Are you mad because of how he is to you or because he doesn’t love me?"

D: "He doesn’t love me."

"You don’t think so?"

D: "Well, he says he loves me, he is nice to me sometimes and says nice things, but he doesn’t love me with his heart. He doesn’t live that he loves me."

"I think he loves you as much as he can right now. But I know what you mean. You want him to be in your life and be a dad."

D said, “I don’t know if he will ever love me. But he just isn't someone who can be like that now. It's part of the same thing. I don’t think he can love me unless he loves you too."

[Westo]

The sooner that man gets out of your home, the better you and your kids will be.

You know I’m not religious but I’m praying that it will be soon, for all of your sakes.