My two cents on...marriage (part two) - No Matter What:

Just so you know faithful readers, this post will possibly be more offensive to some than my others on topics such as divorce and politics.  I am going to let it all out, because I'm angry and I feel the need to speak openly and honestly about this subject as it's been weighing on me for quite some time.  Just fair warning.


In the last several months I've been faced with multiple friends and acquaintances of mine speaking of leaving their spouses due to various reasons I won't go in to.  If you've read any of my divorce blogs you'll know how strongly I feel about that subject, and you'll know how against it I am, even though I have personally suffered through it myself.  Maybe that's why my feelings are so much stronger than they were even before that incident, because I know for a fact now how detrimental it really is to a person's total life and general state of well being.  So in hearing these people talk about it as if it were as passe as a dentist appointment, I can barely keep my composure much less keep my words and thoughts to myself.  When I hear someone say, "I think I'm going to leave my husband because he's just so annoying" my blood boils inside my skin so hot I think it's literally going to melt away and I'll be left standing there a hot, red, bloody mess dripping all over the place.  Clean up on aisle three!

What does marriage even mean anymore?  Didn't we all say those same vows, when we stood up in front of everyone we knew and loved, and promised we'd spend the rest of our lives with this person?  "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish 'till death do us part".  I'm sure they went something like that, or some similar variation.  Basically, we told our God, our family, or even just our future spouse alone that we planned to spend our life with them, no matter what.  Come Hell or high water, we were in it for the long haul.  So what does it mean?  Allow me to break it down for you line by line, just in case you didn't know.

To have and to hold:  This is completely literal.  You belong to each other now.  You are mine and I am yours.  Not in the sense that you are an object, able to be calculated by a numeric or monetary value, but you are so much a part of your spouse that without you they are no longer completely whole.  They will have a piece of them missing.

From this day forward:  Marriage is immediate and everlasting.  There is no three day waiting period like when you want to buy a gun.  When you say "I do", you walk down that aisle into eternity.  There is no end.  If there were, the phrase would say "from this day till next Wednesday" instead.

For better, for worse:  This is the one that a lot of people skip over when they're thinking of walking away a few years down the road.  Marriage is easy when you're in the "for better" days, but when you're in the "for worse" ones, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  There's no clause in your vows that leave out things like: he clips his toenails in bed, she is a terrible cook, he never brings me flowers, she doesn't keep a clean house, he rarely compliments me on my looks, she's really let herself go lately, he hasn't done a load of laundry in two years, she wouldn't know how to please me if I drew her a road map, he constantly chooses his video games over me, she always wants to go out with her girlfriends, and the list goes on and on. 

For richer, for poorer:  Money can only buy you so much.  If you didn't realize what this section meant when you were marrying Mr. Moneybags, and then he lost his fortune in the downturn of the economy, you may be seeing now that you don't have much of a marriage left to stand on.  When a marriage is built on love, it shouldn't matter how much is in the bank as long as you have each other to hold on to in the unemployment line.

In sickness or in health:  Sickness is a much broader term than many people realize.  And things like cancer, Alzheimer's, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addictions, alcoholism, etc don't just go away with an antibiotic or a vaccine.  What is a spouse to do when their husband or wife suffers from one or more of the above, or even something different?  Do they walk away?  Dealing with a lifetime of doctor's appointments, counselors, hospital stays and endless piles of paperwork is a daunting task even for the most dedicated spouse.

To love and to cherish: Kind of like that having and holding thing, this part is pretty similar.  Here you're saying you will treat your spouse as something special, something you hold in the highest regard.  Even more special than that kegerator or your signed copy of the Backstreet Boys CD.  To cherish something is to treat it like it is the most prized and adored thing you have ever had in your presence, and you would do anything to make sure you never let it go.

'Till death do us part:  If you were to skip everything that was said in between "from this day forward" and "till death do us part", you really would sum it all up.  Basically, with the final line in your vows , you are saying that no matter what, even if you didn't cover it in all the fluff in between, from now until the end, you will never break the bond of marriage you just sealed.  'Till death is pretty heavy.  You didn't say, "till I get really tired of your crap" or "till something better comes along".  You said, "till death".

Now, here's where I get pissy.  I've been divorced.  I know what it's like to look at that man you said those vows to and want to throw up every time you look him in the eyes.  I've lived a life of heartache and shame and torment.  I spent years trying to mend all the broken pieces of a life that should have never even existed, before it ever came to the moment the Sheriff knocked on my door just days before Christmas holding the divorce papers in his hands.  I gave everything I had before that gavel fell on that hot August day, and then I left it all in the courtroom and walked away knowing I did everything I could.  I have no regrets.  I know there isn't one ounce of myself I could have given any more of to try and save what could never have been saved.  It was damned from the start.  Because of this, I know what it means to give it all, and I know what it means to leave nothing at the door.  Even when you might not like the person you see staring back at you, the fact is, that's the same person you stood at that altar with some number of years earlier and promised "till death" to, and until you can say you really did give every ounce of yourself and then some, you aren't done.

The last several reasons I've heard for people wanting to leave their spouses are just awful.  They have literally caused me to get sick.  On top of the fact that most of the couples have children involved.  I would never in my lifetime put my children through what my daughter is currently going through unless I knew for a fact that I had done absolutely everything in my power to save my marriage to their father.  I don't care what anyone says, a child needs their parents, and no, it is NOT better for them to have mom or dad be "happier" apart then miserable together.  Problems will follow you wherever you go, and if you just keep running from them, you will only teach your child how to hide from pain.  But if mom and dad stay together and work through their problems, the kids will be happier in knowing their parents love each other and them, and they will have learned that it IS possible to work things out, not just run from a problem because it's easier.

Hubs and I have a saying.  No Matter What.  We use it all the time.  It sums up our vows, the way we feel about each other, the way we feel about our marriage and our life together as a whole.  No matter what happens, no matter what comes our way, no matter what anyone tries to do to come between us, we will always cling to each other, we will always have each other and we will always love each other.  At the end of the day and at the end of our lives, all we have is us.  When the kids and the friends and the family and all of our worldly possessions have fallen away, all we will have is me and him, and if that's not good enough, then nothing else will ever be.  So no matter what, we must be eternally happy with each other, and then everything else is a just bonus.

Now, I'm not saying our philosophy is so amazing and everyone should follow it, but what I am saying is that if you get married you should know what your vows mean before you say them.  You should mean them and stick to them and believe in your marriage more than anything else.  You should believe in it so much that you know it's worth fighting for.  No one else is going to fight as hard to keep your marriage together as you, and you are the only one who can mend what is broken when it falls apart, but only if you give it the effort it deserves.  Marriage isn't easy, and it takes work.  It's a full time job, and you have to want it bad enough to make it into something beautiful.  Once you've figured out how to work with your spouse and not against them, I believe you'll realize that there isn't anything you can't overcome together.  I believe you'll see that your marriage is strong enough to survive whatever the world throws at you, no matter what.

My two cents on...divorce (part four) a short story:

I'm filing this under divorce because that's what it's related to.  I'm going to write this as a short story because I feel like I need to remove myself and my family from it as much as possible, even though it hits very very close to my heart.  This story is dedicated to my daughter, who will always be my superhero, even though she's lost hers.


A long long time ago, in a land far away, there lived a little girl named Ella.  She was a beautiful little girl, who was smart and kind, and had a smile that could turn anyone's stormy day into a ray of sunshine.  She was simply marvelous.  She lived with her mom and step-dad, since her parents had divorced when she was only three years old.  Her dad saw her usually every other weekend or so, but he also worked a lot, so Ella learned to count on him less as the years passed.  She loved all of her parents, but worked especially hard at loving her dad the most.  She thought he was her Superman.


When Ella was around eight years old, her dad became quite absent from her life all together.  He had squandered away all of his money for the millionth time, he had no place for them to live when it was his time for visitation, and he had absolutely nothing to show for himself.  This broke Ella's heart.  She wanted so badly for her dad to make his life better so he could spend more time with her, but it just didn't seem like it was as important to him as it was to her.  He always had some scheme or plan that fell through, followed by some grand excuse as to why he couldn't see her again that week.  Many months went by while Ella's mom and step-dad tried to comfort her in her sorrow, and then finally word came that her dad had found a place to live and they could spend more time together again.


Things started off great for a few weeks.  Ella couldn't have been happier.  Her dad picked her up on his weekends and spent time with her.  He even had a nice girlfriend that she fell in love with.  Her heart was finally starting to heal, and she was feeling like everything was going to be ok.  Her Superman was showing her just how much he cared.   He was trying, so she tried to overlook the other things he would do, like he would make her feel bad for loving her step-dad, or tell her things like "you shouldn't have to do chores at your house, they treat you like Cinderella, I wouldn't treat you that way".  Eventually, it really made Ella start to question her own family, wondering what was true and what was lies.  


Then Ella's birthday came.  The big 9!  She was spending the day with her dad that year, and all year he had been promising her he would take her to Disneyland for the weekend.  He said they would stay overnight there and everything.  She had been excited for months!  Ella's mom waited patiently till she came home the next night, wondering how the trip had gone.  When Ella walked in the door it was clear something had gone terribly wrong.  Through the cries and sobs, Ella's mom could make out a few things like "we didn't go to Disney...I didn't get any gifts, not even a card...he broke up with Christina and I didn't even get to say good bye".  She was a crumpled mess on the floor.  Not what a little girl should look like on her birthday, much less ever, after coming from seeing her father.


In the following weeks, Ella's dad found excuse after excuse as to why he couldn't see her, or why he couldn't call.  He even went as far as to tell her one day that she wasn't worth making a trip to see for a few hours on his day off, because he had other stuff to do.  When he finally did have the availability to see her, he did little to enjoy the time with her, and instead chose to sleep all day, Ella said, while she watched movies alone.  The final straw for Ella was when she was telling her dad just how special she was, because she had a gift inside her.  It was a gift for caring for others.  Her mom had told her about it when she was trying to comfort her a few months earlier, and Ella really held onto it.  Her mom called it empathy.  She said Ella had this gift of being empathetic to others in a way that was special and that the world would be a much better place if more people had that special gift too.  Ella's dad, upon hearing about this, told her she wasn't special at all, and that empathy is nothing but a word in the dictionary.  That was it.  Ella's heart had broken for the last time.


When she got home that day, there was something different about her.  She wasn't the same Ella.  Her smile wasn't as bright, and her eyes had lost their childlike sparkle.  Ella had grown up in the car ride from her dad's house back home that day.  She had sorted out a lot of things about the universe that no nine year old should have to sort out.  She walked in and laid down the most staggering statement of brokenhearted conviction a child has ever uttered: "My dad doesn't love me, he doesn't think I'm important and he never tells me the truth.  He says he loves me and I'm the most important thing in his life, but he doesn't act like it at all.  He doesn't know who I am, and if he did, he wouldn't love me that way.  My dad lives like there are two of me, and he spends all of his time searching for the me he wants me to be, the me who doesn't exist, that he has completely lost sight of the me who's standing right in front of him.  He doesn't even know I'm here.  He's never going to have time for me and he's never going to love me".


Ella's mom and step-dad loved her through the next several hours as she continued to sort out what she could and then she went to bed.  That night changed their family forever.  Ella would still have to see her dad after that, and they would still have good times and bad, but her heart was forever hardened that night.  Her Superman had fallen from the sky in a fiery ball of his own kryptonite, never to be found again.  She filled her heart with the love she received from her other parents, and clung to her step-dad, looking to him to be the true father in her life, but a small hole always remained.


What's the moral of this story...I don't know, do stories always have to have morals?  Maybe it's not so much a moral, but a warning.  A warning for those of you who are trudging through your lives thinking you've got better things to do than call your kids on their birthday, or go see them when you have some free time instead of do something for yourself.  You'll regret it someday.  Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or even next year.  But when you're old, and she's grown, and you see how beautiful and marvelous and stunning she has become without you, you'll regret it.  You'll regret how you missed out on all of the little things now, because they will seem so much bigger then.  Let me warn you now, that once you've broken something as fragile as the heart of a child, you have not only destroyed any chance of you being able to repair it, but also of anyone else being able to repair it.  That child will grow into an adult who feels a burn in their chest when they think of you.  They'll tense up when someone mentions your name.  Your birthday will come, and every year they'll debate sending you a birthday card or if they should call you.  Maybe one year, they'll stop.  You may not know the damage you've done till the day you also regret it, many years from now, but one day you'll know.


Whether you're divorced or not, treat your kids like the jewels they are.  They will only be small for a short while, and you won't be Superman forever.  You can either retire gracefully, still thought of fondly in the memory of your little girl who chuckles when she sees pictures of you running around with a bed sheet tied around your neck, or you can fall from the sky, shot down by the kryptonite from your own selfish, self-centered gun.  The choice is yours.

My two cents on...growing up:

Growing up is a tough pill to swallow.  Some of us grow up at a young age, and some of us, like Peter Pan, never grow up.  Or at least we never want to.  What exactly is growing up anyway?  What does it actually mean to grow up.  Literally it means your physical stature would get taller than what it is now.  You would grow in an upward direction.  If that were physically the case in this sense, I wish I would grow up a little more.  Unfortunately, it doesn't follow the literal definition so I'll never get any taller than I am now.  Super.  Instead, it's more of a figurative term really.  Growing up means you become more adult-like, you take on characteristics of someone who is mature and responsible, you are able to take care of yourself and be accountable for your own actions, and you've passed on from the ways of your youth and your childlike behaviors.  Unfortunately for Peter Pan, growing up is a fact of life, just like being born, paying taxes, and dying.


As a child, I looked at grown ups like they were so much larger than me.  Not only that, but they were just larger than life in general.  Grown ups were just huge.  Dad was a real superhero who could also fix anything, or at least he knew exactly who to call when he broke it while trying to fix it.  Mom was a whiz in the kitchen and yelled my name louder than any other mom in the neighborhood when I was in trouble.  My teachers knew so much more than I ever thought any person on the whole planet could, and I felt so lucky to have them at my very own school.  Then one day I realized they actually weren't that big, and I started to notice that they were just regular people with average abilities, mostly all about the same size and shape, and there really was nothing exciting about being a grown up at all.


Then, slowly but surely, grown ups started to disappoint me.  One by one.  They went from being my superheros to being my worst enemies.  They weren't so big anymore, but they were just big enough to leave a lasting imprint on my heart for the future to play with later. The ones I trusted the most let me down the hardest.  I didn't want to be like them.  I didn't want to be that type of person when I grew up.  But no one would teach me how to be a grown up the right way.  I found some pretty drastic ways to figure it out on my own, far too young.  I stumbled and fell along the way as I tried to walk the thin line between being a child and an adult.  That thin line is called being a grown up and it's not easy when you don't have a road map.  I made a lot of mistakes and I got hurt and burned and scarred and broken, but it brought me through the gap between childhood and adulthood, just like it was meant to do.


Now, as a part time grown up, part time Peter Pan and part time adult, I look at it all and think that things would probably have gone much smoother if I had just waited a bit longer to grow up.  Those things I stumbled over, and the fires I went through wouldn't have hurt so bad if I'd been a little older and probably taller (maybe).  I came to the conclusion that the act of growing up is sort of like the boat that ferries you from childhood to adulthood somewhere in and around the time you're in your late teens - early 20s. It's up to you to either take the scenic route, making sure you stop along the way for things like college and traveling, and lots and lots of early 20-something experiences, or to take the speed boat like a bat outta Hell, crashing through everything, on a mission to just get there whatever the cost.  I chose the later, and really wish I hadn't sometimes.


There's so much about being a grown up that can wait.  Like bills.  Take my bills, you can have them, just give me math tests back in return!  Or expectations.  Just the general expectations of you as an adult are so different from what they were as a child.  I wish I could be five again when I was only expected to know my ABCs, pick up my toys, and make sure I didn't hit anybody at school.  I can totally do that.  Make sure I keep the peace in my household while simultaneously running two businesses, working a part time job, being a full time stay at home mom and a full time wife, while also maintaining the bills, appointments, bank accounts and schedules of our family, and throwing in some time to do the few things I enjoy doing for myself or others?...every day...without messing up?  That's a lot, but sure, I can do that too.  Is it ok if I hit someone though?


So what is it about being a grown up that is so enticing?  Why are the kids of today lining up around the block to get on the speed boat, just to go crashing through the best time in their lives to get to adulthood?  It's not like they don't have everything they could possibly need that adults can have too.  Cell phones, computers, TVs and cars.  Am I missing something?  It can't be alcohol because no one who wants to drink that bad waits until they're 21 anyway.  It's unfortunate, but true.  And quite honestly, I know far too many adults who are of legal drinking age that are better off without it themselves.  So what is it?  What is that magical fairy dust that makes kids go ga-ga for growing up?


One word.  Independence.  Being able to say I want to eat peanut butter and pickle sandwiches for breakfast every day for a month for no other reason other than the fact that I want to, and then doing it.  As a grown up I can.  I would never in my lifetime eat that, but I could if I wanted.  I will confess, I ate a whole dozen chocolate chip cookies yesterday.  But I'm a grown up so it's ok.  At least that's what I told The Noise when she asked why I was allowed to and she wasn't (I wasn't about to tell her I was trying to make the pain of feeling like a failure as a mother go away through some cookie therapy).  And that right there is the proof as to why the cycle continues.  As kids, we just want to be grown ups so we can tell ourselves what to do. which would surely be infinitely cooler than what our parents want us to do.  Then, when we become grown ups, we don't like the responsibilities and expectations that are put upon us, so we plead to become kids again so someone else can be in charge.  


So cheers to those who take the scenic route and live life within every moment, instead of always waiting to get to the next step.  Remember, all we have is today.  Yesterday can never be changed or recovered. Tomorrow is never a guarantee, nor can you foresee what's coming, no matter how hard you look.  So if you're wasting any time worrying about either, you're losing out on the most important gift: The Present.