(Initial warning: this post is a bit long. If you get a ways into it and just aren't that interested, that's OK. Feel free to check back next time, and it will probably be back to the normal "musings"-type post that you've come to expect here at The Daily Okie.)
Most of you have probably heard that great song by Sting, "Fortress Around Your Heart". It's a song that makes excellent use of war and battle imagery as a metaphor for the strife inside a relationship; in the song, Sting tries to repair the damage he has done and rebuild what has been destroyed. I bring this song up because it popped into my head today and it made me think about the strife I'm feeling in my own life, and the fortress I'm struggling with myself to build around my own heart as I continue to deal with the constant pounding of the siege guns I seem to be continually subjected to over the past several months. Much like a real war, it has its victories and it has its defeats. It has its moments of glory and its periods of devastation and despair. It holds times where you can feel finally victory and peace coming, and it holds times where it seems that the war will never, ever end. These are the times that try men's souls, the saying goes, and I can't disagree, and I wonder if I am building the fortress around my own heart, in this case.
I know this probably sounds a tad melodramatic, and maybe it is. I mean, everyone has difficulties in life and everyone has their own battles to fight...are others really interested in my own trials and tribulations? This was the ultimate irony I always found in the ridiculous, overused statement "I feel your pain" that eventually became one of the biggest jokes of the 1990s and the Clinton administration. Everyone wanted you to feel their pain, but they didn't want to feel yours at all. It is with this idea at my core emotional processes that I have intentionally worked to not use this medium to complain extensively or drag down others (where I can possibly avoid it), and even then, that's a tall order to fill. Why dump on others when they don't really want to hear it?
But then again, this medium is mine, and you don't have to read it if you don't like what I have to say. I'm going to talk briefly about my own recent experiences, mostly because I really wonder if everyone has it like this, if my experiences are unique at all; or if I really do have more difficulties or even perhaps fewer difficulties than the average person out in today's world. Most of all, I wonder if life is really supposed to seem this difficult all the time.
So let's start at the beginning. I'll try to describe my greatest difficulties as dispassionately as possible (no use getting angry over these things...there's already been plenty of that), and I'll let you decide regarding my musings in the above paragraph. I think my difficulties begin with the continued mess from my divorce. This has many facets and has left many scars on my psyche. First and foremost are the continuing difficulties with my children and trying to build my new blended family with them and with Heidi and Donovan. This has been and continues to be the greatest challenge in my life. There are the constant claims by my ex-wife that the kids aren't happy with coming over to see me and don't want to come over as much. I have fought hard and diligently to get 50-50 parenting time with my kids, something that I honestly feel is in their best interest. But my ex-wife hates this idea (and that's not hyperbole...she has been undermining my efforts for this and openly fighting against the idea since I first proposed it very early in 2005). In fact, we're going back to court on November 2nd to decide this issue once and for all. We hired a Child and Family Investigator, appointed by the Court to interview all involved parties and make a decision int he best interests of the children, and I was glad to see that she (the CFI) recommended for 50-50 parenting time, beginning with a transitional period to ease the kids over from the every-other-weekend schedule to the every-other-week schedule. We actually began the 50-50 schedule in late August of this year. While this was a great victory for me, it was short-lived; my ex has continued to fight this, both openly with legal tactics and the use of counselors, and subversively by using her extra influence over the kids to undermine my relationship with them and to do everything possible to exclude me as a legitimate parent. She refuses to communicate with me about the children's activities, school enrollments, doctor and dentist appointments, homework assignments, or anything that would normally be considered at least common courtesy in terms of communication about the children. I only find things out from her when she needs something from me, usually money for the kids' activities.
There are other difficulties. My daughter Katie can't seem to get along with Heidi and Donovan, and the more I talk to her about it, the less she seems to hear. It seems to be a continuing problem with no solution in sight, and it's a constantly open wound for me to have to see Katie constantly be rude and disrespectful to Heidi, despite efforts on my part to change that. Connor also has issues dealing with this at times; he seems very happy with Heidi and Donovan most of the time but the unpleasantness of dealing with this takes its toll on him, as well. My ex also claims that the kids' therapist says Katie could develop an eating disorder or start to physically hurt herself. I know Katie is under additional pressure these days, as much because she just started a very difficult school this year as well as the continued pressures of the divorce and its lingering effects. Heidi and I have bent over backwards to make both Katie and Connor feel happy and welcome in our home, and it frustrates us both to no end to see our efforts constantly undermined by Lisa's lack of support for my status as a parent and my relationship with the children.
Also lingering from the divorce and the resulting parenting time (and other) issues are my serious financial difficulties. I'm currently working two jobs (and up until this past week, it was three jobs). I work my day job, which has been extremely busy and has required a much greater level of after-hours work, and I work for my dad doing some additional things that he and I have been wanting to do for a few years but hadn't had a good opportunity (or sufficient additional motivation). My third job was going back to teaching three nights a week. I normally substitute teach for the college (where I taught part-time off and on for nearly two years), and this assignment started as that when one of the instructors went on a brief vacation. He was in a serious car wreck and my assignment got extended from two weeks to 5 weeks to the full 10-week term. While the extra money was great (and frankly, MUCH needed), it really took more time away from my other work and also, most importantly, from Heidi and the family. Not working is not an option right now, however; my child support payments are still at their previous level of nearly $2000 a month, which works out to nearly 37% of my take-home pay, and I have had to take on a substantial amount of debt since I moved out to make sure my legal bills and other needed expenses are covered properly. Divorce is always an expensive proposition, and with attorneys involved, it's even more so. My attorney passed away from a stroke a few weeks ago, and while I had some money lined up to pay him both to take care of the existing balance and to give him a bit extra to continue the fight, his untimely death meant I needed to find another, more expensive attorney who needed even MORE money up front as a new retainer for services. I took a huge tax hit last year, since I did not keep the house and thus no longer have any mortgage deduction I can make on my taxes; I currently owe about $5800 to the feds and about $600 to the state. I've kept my student loans in forbearance for nearly two years, and I won't be able to keep that going for much longer, so that's over $500 a months I'll have to start paying again very soon. Worse, my credit looks horrible because even though I didn't get the house, my ex doesn't have enough financial resources available to refinance it in her name only, so I not only DON'T have the asset, but I still have the weight of the liabilities for that asset on MY credit report. The same goes for her car; again, no asset, but I still have the debt credited to me. (She's pushing for me to give her quick-claim deeds but I'm very hesitant until she's ready to refinance.) The constant crushing feeling of this mountain of debt that never seems to get any smaller, no matter how much fat I trim away or how much I try to keep my head above water, continues to drag me along. I try to learn to accept it and deal with it, but it is so difficult to get away from, especially on the 1st and 15th of every month, when I see my paycheck dwindle down to very little. It's doubly distressing for me, considering my primary day job pays me just under 6 figures a year, that I have to take a second job and keep scratching and clawing to stay afloat. I hate having to ask others for help constantly, because it makes me feel even worse.
Finally, there are job difficulties. Sure, you say, everyone has job difficulties, but I can't seem to find a good balance of being able to do something that makes me really happy, with something that makes me enough money to keep my bills paid. I enjoy the consulting job I'm in enough, and I'm working with a former coworker from a previous job who I really enjoy working with. But I am doing lots of work and dealing with lots of clients and job assignments that are the kinds of work that I really want to get away from, not continue doing. I want my job to be a information security job, where I do nothing but information security work and can leave all these other things behind. But I am still shackled in this job with my former skill sets of network administration or even Windows and UNIX system administration, things that I can do but don't do nearly as well or with nearly as much passion or interest. Even a lot of the security work that I do is very basic, low-end work that our clients could do on their own for a lot less. Occasionally I get thrown a nice nugget of real security work to do, but it is rare enough that it really doesn't help. Even worse, I'm concerned that because I'm not getting much meaty, serious security work, my security skill sets are slowly ebbing away, and I don't have the time, between regular work, the second job, and family, to take the extra time for myself to do work on my own and read up on my own to keep the saw sharp.
Along with all of these issues and concerns that seem to constantly weigh on me are the usual home stuff that just never seem to go away. My Rover is having serious leak problems and those need to be resolved as soon as I have time and money. Heidi would like new furniture, but in lieu of that (and that's probably quite a ways off), she want to make slipcovers for the sofa and chairs; unfortunately, material of that amount takes money. The house and yard always need to be kept in good shape; mostly a time issue but there is also money involved, especially with the yard. With a baby on the way, we need more space for all of our kids, and we also need important things like a car upgrade; neither my 1998 Discovery nor Heidi's 2005 PT Cruiser really does all that well in carrying two adults and four children comfortably. So, we're looking at a minivan. But with my credit and Heidi's credit, plus with the amount that Heidi is still underwater on her PT Cruiser, we'd have to trade in the Discovery AND provide a good-sized down payment just to get decent financing, and even then, we're more likely to have a horrible percentage rate (and thus horrible payments). We would like to be able to own a home and try to settle down, but we have even more problems with planning that than we do the minivan. Even just dealing with the upcoming need for regular baby supplies like diapers and baby food and formula and medicine and all those things has me greatly concerned. I just never seem to have enough time or money to do what I must do to help keep up my end of things at home. We don't even have enough for Heidi and I to take a decent vacation/honeymoon, since we didn't take one after the wedding and we really haven't had a real vacation, just the two of us, since we started dating. I can count on one hand the number of just Friday nights that we've been able to get away, alone, in the two years we've been together.
All of these things together make it extremely difficult to be and remain positive about the future. I know there will eventually be some relief, but the continued pain of all of these challenges only weigh on me. As I said, it's not without its good moments. Heidi's pregnancy, for example, or the CFI's final report earlier this year that recommended 50-50 parenting time, or the opportunity to finally help my dad out and work with him as we've planned. I've discovered wells of strength I never knew that I had, and I've been able to step up, both at home and at work, in ways that I never thought possible. I've learned a great deal more about myself and my capabilities. But these good points so quickly seem to get swarmed back under by more bad news that it's difficult to really enjoy these good points when they come along. Heidi and I were able to bask in the news of the pregnancy, for example, for just a few days before we started having more issues to deal with. That is the worst part for me personally. The continuing run of serious difficulties and general poor luck (or lack of good luck) just drain more and more of my energy, and I don't know how much longer I can continue to fight off these issues.
All of these are also coupled with Heidi's concerns, which range from pregnancy and associated pain issues; to concern from her grandmother, who is still recovering from breaking her hip and shoulder a month ago and is not doing too well; to her own side of the continuing issues with Katie; to handling her son after his father moved away to Illinois nearly two weeks ago. These layer over my own concerns in a way that only seems to amplify my general feeling that life is piling on us these days.
Heidi, bless her heart...she tries so hard to keep me in a good frame of mind. She's always telling me to "try to pick up a penny every day," basically find one good thing in each day, no matter how small. She constantly reminds me of the motto of our relationship, which we had from very early on: "together, we are unstoppable". ("Unstoppable", in fact, is engraved on the inside of my wedding band, and I look at that word a lot as I ponder my good fortune and God's blessing in having this wonderful woman by my side.) A lot of the time these things help some, but they never makes the big issues go away. I think I could feel better about life if I had one or two less of the above issues to deal with. I pray to God and try to read my Bible for comfort or inspiration, but even that seems hollow at times, as though I'm doing it just to go through the motions of asking God for things He seems unwilling to grant.
Worst of all, I have a feeling that I'm going to just have to shut up and deal with all of this, as though this is all some great lesson that I need to just try to not think about myself at all or worry about these things and just go on doing what I'm doing until I'm dead. I'm guessing that this is where my Christian upbringing comes in, reminding me that my life really is a case of "there, but for the grace of God, go I," and that I should be thankful for what He provides, regardless of how horrible and unending it might seem.
So there you have it. I hope I didn't put you all to sleep with that long, rambling post...I haven't had one of this length in many months. But you all can at least see now how constant the struggle seems to be for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment