Pete and Repeat were sitting on a boat. Pete fell overboard. Who was left on the boat?

Its wild that when your eyes become opened to past trauma, previous destructive patterns, old unhealthy coping mechanisms, you keep identifying it.

The push towards filing for divorce continues. I was venting to my sister in frustration about all of the things that I have that I won’t have a place for when I move back into our mother’s. She says she’ll buy my deep freezer from me. She is going to come out to this side of the state to help me go through all the stuff in the garage. The idea is that if we get the garage cleaned out, we will have a place to store some of my things and her trailer.

I don’t want to get another storage unit. And I don’t want to leave my garden bed at this house, so I’m contemplating deconstructing it and taking it to our mom’s. We discussed what it would be like if I had a bunch of people over to help with that and to hang out so I could have a bonfire with people and burn off the massive pile of wood that I have in my yard.

Even the process of moving all of my stuff out of this house and into the other… all of the people from work who would be willing to help me with the move… an entire fleet of transits showing up at my house with an army of people. We could move everything in one trip! Not realistically, but it was a humorous thought.

Sunday I came back home after a couple nights away. Joe is supposed to be laid off for the next 3 weeks so that means it doesn’t matter what time I get home, he’ll probably still be up. I don’t know what to expect. Every time we have a productive conversation he finds a way to be passive aggressive about something and its like an emotional knife jammed in-between my ribs.

I came to the realization that used to when I would ponder over what a divorce would look like I would worry about what alimony would do to him financially, but after the conversation on Friday, I don’t have that worry associated with those contemplations anymore.

That’s not to say that I actively wish to cause him financial distress. But I’m also not going to made to feel bad for surviving. I will not be guilted into letting him shirk his responsibility to our child, even if she is an “adult”. When you bring a child into this world, especially as fucked as this one is (and rapidly getting worse), you have inherent responsibilities. One of which is making sure they can access further education, if that is what they choose to do.

*CORRECTION - He works this week, but he’s off for a minimum of 3 weeks after that.

Today there was more discussion about “where we are at.” Him probing about if I had taken any steps on our divorce journey. And probing for what I want out of the divorce. I told him I hadn’t, which is true. Then immediately asked him if he had, and added that it only takes one of us to file for the divorce.

He said he had talked to a lawyer to see what the process and cost would be.

We discussed a little about the cost, and how complicated everything is now. Out of frustration I said something about how things might have been simpler if I had been able to just keep lying to myself.

Then he asked me if I was happy. I asked him “Happy? In regards to what?” He clarified that he meant if I was happy that I had come out.

How the fuck was I supposed to answer that? Sure, its great that I’ve been able to accept something that I had tried to bury for most of my life. Does that outweigh the stress and anxiety of the situation that caused… right now, no. I’m still in survival mode. It may be a while before I know what it is to really be “happy”.

I don’t know what I can say on happiness. I don’t know what it feels like to be happy all the way through, there is always some doubt lingering about something, always waiting for “the other shoe to drop.”

I can tell you that after discussing with my child about the recent divorce conversation, the fact that they says it would make more sense to come live with me, makes me happy.

The idea of finally having all of this behind me also makes me happy. The prospect of finally being able to move on with life has a sense of freedom to it.

We discussed name changes, and I confirmed that once the divorce is final I would be changing my name. They discussed the idea of changing their name, but also voiced the issue of having difficulties with the idea of a new name attached to their current last name. There was discussion of possibly changing their last name to the same one I’m going back to, but that they worry that the name change would be taken as them trying to cut ties with their father. Which isn’t the purpose.