The toilet overflowed in the bathroom. 

The pond’s pump stopped working.  I’ve done everything I know how to - still isn’t working.  The mosquitoes are having an orgy in there and breeding like there is no tomorrow. 

Thora’s life was saved when Lily stuck her hands into her mouth and pulled a toothpaste cap out of there.  She was about to swallow it whole. 

I am total Robo-Mom this weekend:  “Does not compute. Danger Will Robinson.  Children Play Quietly.  Mommy Needs A Martini.” 

My schedule is killing me.

The house is falling apart.  It’s dirty a lot these days. 

I accidentally threw out a 2 page fiction story Lily wrote. She’s been crying for the last 2 hours.  Major #momfail.

I am upset with a lot of people.  Most of them are upset right back at me. 

My upcoming weekend without the kids just got shot down. 

You should see me up in this stupid home - running around with towels, mopping stuff, cussing out the pond, wondering how I’m going to squeeze these little facets of my life into boxes and move them somewhere.  I look like a maniac.  I’m thinking of filming myself so the self-deprecating laughter comes more easily.  Right now it is very, very hard to laugh about anything.  I feel like I’ve been pulling all-nighters for 6 months.  The high I had two weeks ago is not with me anymore. I no longer feel like SuperWoman, able to leap divorces and bankruptcy in a single bound.  I am very much human, very much flawed, and very much in need of some respite from my own brain. 

I made the mistake of thinking it was almost over.  Seriously though, it really is - but for some reason now that the majority of the hard stuff is done, I am faced with stillness and I have to think and digest everything that has happened.  I don’t regret anything but damn, I want my life to stabilize so I can be a friend to others, a better daughter, a better mother.  Despite feeling fat, I’m as thin as I’ve ever been - in the sense that I’m stretched to the breaking point in all directions.  Self-pity is something I loathe, but I am wearing it like a comfy bathrobe these days.  In my head:  “I did this.  I did this.  My fault.  Live with it.  Deal with it.”  I follow it with affirmations like “This is the right thing.  I’m doing the right thing.  I will survive this.  It’s all noise, emotions.  They come and go. For every depth of despair there is a peak of joy to offset it.” 

When I run and my hip doesn’t feel like it’s going to fly out of my skin like a surgical discus, everything falls away.  I understand the addiction now, but I can’t indulge in that.  It hurts too much.  So I spend the days thinking, being still, making long lists I don’t complete anymore.  Most of the times I meet my deadlines but sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes I don’t call people back.  More often than not, actually.  I am scared to crawl back into the hole from September.  I am deathly afraid of it.  I can see the edges of it and I dance around it.  Distraction, writing, therapy.  Medication that mixed with the aforementioned has saved my life in the most literal way. 

I love the cheesy phrase “Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or just an oncoming train?”  It sums up any kind of journey, or deviation from how your life was supposed to look. 

So, I’m not sure what the light is right now.  My heart tells me it’s the end of this particular tunnel, but I’m not dumb enough to assume that’s the only tunnel.  The dark parts make the light so much brighter. 

The house sold.  We are now waiting on bank approval for the short sale.  Our first mortgage company will probably grant it; the second, well, who knows. They aren’t going to get paid at all.  President Obama recently announced a new program that is supposed to help people in our exact situation, where the 2nd mortgage company holds up the short sale.  Not sure it’s going to be really underway in time to help us, but hopefully it will help others.  Today contractors are being deployed to look at a “huge crack” in the garage floor.  It was there when we bought it, but our home inspector never said a word about it.  I just assumed all garage floors cracked over time.  Stupid me. 

I know the people buying our house.  Their daughter is a good friend of Lily’s.  I haven’t gotten around to telling her that in all probability, her friend who has spent the night here before, may be living in “her” bedroom.  I had a mini-pity party yesterday as I looked at the first rental house on the list.  It was quite undesirable.  Arden’s first words as we pull up to the house:  “This house is HIDEOUS, Mama!”  Lily’s words, a few minutes later, “What is that SMELL?”  followed quickly by a whispered, “Mommy, I don’t want to live here.  This house is scary!”  Scarring my children by looking at random weird houses is really not fun.

It was a cross between the homestead on Little House on the Prairie and a crack house.  $1200/month I might add.  Pass.  Next.  Looking at 3 more today and one tomorrow.

The Property and Settlement Agreement (a nice way to say, All The Crap We Agree To Before We Can Get Divorced) is signed.  Neither of us got everything we wanted.  Actually, Mike wanted none of this entire thing, so he really got the short end of the stick.  I am still trying to figure out how I’m going to live on my monthly allotment.  When I heard the papers had been signed, I was on my way to Yorktown to visit Anja and family.  I cried in the car.  I was careful not to get snot on the interior, however. 

A few people have made it clear they have no sympathy for me.  I don’t want sympathy so that works fine for me.  What these people don’t get is that even though this was my “idea”, it’s still hard. It’s hard to get your marriage boiled down on 17 pieces of paper with neat paragraphs and lines dividing your assets and debts, dividing the two of you.  If marriage is an unnatural state, as many have asserted, divorce is a genetically engineered goat with 5 heads. 

I cried again last night while eating cheap Mexican food with Robey and Nicole. It’s easy to point to my hospitalization as the reason for my divorce.  Writing me off as crazy is a quick way to say, “She’s stupid, and doesn’t know what she’s doing.”  I personally believe that my visit to CrazyTown was the end result of not being crazy, and not the other way around.  There were some factors that finally pushed me to separate from my husband, and those factors pushed my brain to separate from my body.  If it makes it easier for others to write off my behavior as irrational and bipolar, I’m okay with that.  It fits into a nice box and is easily dismissed. 

That is not what happened, however. 

The factors that led me to the place where I realized how it really was for me are hard for me to look at now.  I don’t want to be reminded of anything that resembles the hospital, the music I was listening to at the time, the smell of the ambulance, or my lack of sleep.  Something happened last week that reminded me of that time in my life, and it threw me for a huge loop.  I couldn’t figure out why at first.  Robey kept poking at me last night, asking questions, digging.  She knew I hadn’t figured it out yet.  Turns out I associate many of those things with the end of my marriage, and looking at them even months out is very, very painful.  It was truly the worst time of my life.  I was weak, I was needy, I was exhausted, and I wasn’t rational.  It is an understatement to say that I wasn’t acting as I normally did.  No one wants to look at that kind of stuff again, once you are past it.  Being forced to look at it wrecked me for a couple of days.  I didn’t even bring it up in therapy.  I promise to next week. 

There are many endings happening right now, followed closely by beginnings.  I’m started to feel less like I’m living in a nightmare and more like I’m living in a resigned state.  Resignation by its very nature is not a negative state.  It means finished and accepting.  I am resigning from my old life, and starting a new one.  It may not be the prettiest year of my life in terms of finances or high end furnishings, and unless Robey can get me a big discount on designer jeans, it won’t be a year of dressing well either.  It has been harder than I’d like to admit letting go of the house and the suburban perfectness that is Wyndham.  I hate it, but seeing my kids looking at me with big eyes made me want to crawl under the Lexus SUVs in the carpool lane at school and end it all. 

(reality:  kids are resilient, and pretty bedrooms don’t equal happy children)

(reality:  i am not going to shrivel and die without a sunken tub or a screened porch or grass to cut)

For now, one major obstacle is over.  We wait to sell the house; I wait to sign a lease.  After that, there is a wait for the divorce to be final - which will be at the end of August.  And after that, I find out if it’s a train or a beautiful blue sky with lots of sunshine. 

Every time I think I’ve had one of the hardest days of my life, or hit the biggest speedbump, I can be sure that there is another larger, bumpier and sharper one up ahead.  It’s good to have this mindset because life is definitely a journey, and it’s not always smooth. 

Ever heard of collaborative divorce?  Now you have. 

Mike and I had our first meeting with a “divorce coach” this morning.  If we proceed down the collaborative path, she will be our main point of contact.  Involved in the collaborative process will be a child specialist, a financial analyst, and two lawyers trained in the collaborative approach.

I could go into the details of how it’s supposed to work, but I’m really quite raw and very tired from this morning and I don’t feel like it.  If you’re curious you can read all about it at the link above.  One thing I came away from the meeting with:  if divorce is a shit sundae, collaborative divorce is a scoop of ice cream with shit sprinkles.  It puts the family first, especially the kids, and contractually binds you to negotiate the terms of the divorce in the most reasonable way possible.  There were a lot of tears during the meeting.  There’s nothing like saying the words outloud to make reality set in and force you to face what you may have been avoiding.  It was not easy and it was more than a little bit heart-wrenching, but we took that first step and it was a doozy.

Someone once remarked to me that ending a relationship is a series of tiny steps.  The doubt in your head, the acknowledgement of issues between you, the first vocalization that something is not right - they are all tiny steps in one direction.  Sometimes they can be repaired and turned back.  Sometimes they can’t. 

After all the head shaking and confused looks we’ve gotten after explanation how we are doing our separation, it was very validating to be commended by the divorce coach. She commended us for truly putting the kids first even though she can tell we are both suffering from our living situation.  For those who aren’t aware, the girls stay put in our house and the parental units rotate in and out of it.  We rent a small room about 25 minutes away from here where we stay on alternating weeks.  It is difficult even at its best; for Mike who hates change in any shape or form, it’s incredibly difficult.  She also told us that if the kids are still not acting out in school, we are doing something right.  The Child Specialist will help us to determine how they are actually doing and suggest therapists for them if it comes to that.  In the meantime we try to be open with them, answer the questions we are asked, and reassure them that we love the hell out of them. 

Divorce is a terribly sad thing, no matter what.  Mike and I still remain calm and mostly quiet with each other.  It makes it worse.  Neither of us seems to want to fight about things - at least not yet - and that makes it worse. There is no anger to propel me forward.  I’m sure there will be on his side, sooner rather than later, but I just have a large empty hole of sadness and it makes me want to take very long naps. 

This whole process will be draining, financially and emotionally.  It adds another layer of guilt onto a sandwich that is already piled precariously high with guilt meat and mustard and shamed lettuce and pickles.  This process is going to be expensive.  The divorce coach and child specialist run around $175/hour.  The lawyers require retainers.  If we both end up with a divorce coach instead of using one, it will be twice as much.  The financial analyst takes a retainer too. Emotionally the costs are not countable, at least not now.  We fumble toward some resolution, mostly in the dark, trying not to fall down.

Nothing lights a fire under your butt like a signed lease on an apartment you can’t afford unless you are gainfully employed. 

I’ve been job searching earnestly for about a month now. Me and 400,000 other people.  Marketing jobs are notoriously hard to come by.  Add this crap economy into the mix and it is nearly impossible.  Still, chin up, campers - something will come through.  With my shining positive attitude, razor wit and intrepid personality, who WOULDN’T want to hire me?  Really.

I got my first rejection letter. A friend told me about the position.  She knows the CEO well; she wrote a letter of recommendation that made me blush.  I’ve known one of the business development people for years; she also went to bat for me. The interview went well, I thought - the job was nothing particularly difficult and everything they wanted were things I’ve done a million times over the past 12 years.  I was flexible on salary - I know the base I need to make - and was willing to take less in exchange for flexibility with days/hours.  I did not tell them that - I know you wait until you are offered the job to start negotiating.  Apparently there was someone better than me (I know, unbelievable), and it’s entirely possible they had experience in this industry whereas mine was in a parallel industry.  I have to keep going - I have no choice.

Thankfully I had another headhunter call me today for another position that pays WAY more than I actually need to make to survive, but will probably require way more out of me as well.  It’s hard to let go of being a part-time mom and part-time business person.  However, I must.  Unless the ideal part-time job that pays me well falls from the sky, I’ve got to be prepared to slog into work between 8 and 5 daily and be grateful I even HAVE a job.

I signed a lease on a 1 bedroom apartment about 1/3 mile from our house.  Actually, WE signed a lease.  Since I’m completely dependent on Mike for money, I couldn’t qualify for a lease even if I wanted to.  Oh wait, I do want to.  The apartment is directly across the street from Lily’s school.  In my worst case scenario, if I do not have a job by January, I will pull Arden out of daycare which will free up about half the cost of the apartment per month.  The other half will have to be squeezed (blood from a stone, really) from my business or from thin air.  I looked at our budget; it’s already cut to the bare bones minus some little things that don’t add much to the bottom line. 

Mike and I will share it.  Each of us will do one week and weekend on, living at the house.  The other will be in the apartment.  At the end of 7 days, we’ll switch.  Although it’s about $100 more than some places per month, its location makes up for it.  We haven’t told the kids yet.  I don’t think we’ll have to until right before it happens - preferably after Christmas.  While looking at apartments, the leasing agent kept trying to steer me to the more expensive “upgraded” apartments.  They had granite countertops, polished nickle track lighting and black appliances.  The “unrenovated” apartments are exactly the same, except they have Formica, no microwave and *gasp* WHITE appliances.  I laughed out loud and said, “I’ve had enough granite countertops to last me the rest of eternity.  Formica is FINE.  White is fine.  It’s all fine.” 

It will take approximately 15 minutes to clean the apartment, and that’s being generous on time.  It’s tiny and I’d be even more excited if I didn’t have to keep cleaning the monstrosity, which takes more than a day.  Mike and I are of one mind on the house - we both know it’s a huge anchor pulling us down and we need to cut the chain.  Unfortunately, until the market turns around or we stop paying the mortgage long enough for the bank to take us seriously (and therefore consider doing a short sale), we are stuck with it, and I have a very large bonfire under my butt crackling and spitting and saying, “GET A DAMN JOB, YOU!”

So I’m looking.  If I can cobble enough small projects together, and writing gigs, I can scrape by without selling my soul to The Man again.  My business friends have banded together and are trying to throw me enough scraps to keep me in Ramen noodles (or just a tiny apartment), and I’ve been applying for a ton of freelance project work through a couple of legitimate sites.  I wish I could channel Julie’s old neighbor in the Fan, who was always doing things with Chakras and clicking her fingers together.  Her favorite saying?  “The universe will provide, my friends.  The universe will provide.”

Hey, Universe?  Pay up. I need you now, buddy. 

I’ve always heard “Bad things happen in threes.”  If this is the case, I’m home free, baby, because I have paid my dues.  If it’s not the case, please don’t enlighten me.  Positive thinking breeds positive results. 

Thanks for all of you who commented, emailed, DM’d me through Twitter and generally reached out after my last posting.  I know I’m a great big sobbing embarrassment to parts of my family and sharing it with “the world” (as if everyone in the universe reads here - if so, I’d be making so much from ad revenue I could retire) was hard for them to swallow.  I appreciate their restraint in not lecturing me about it.  Some of the most poignant comments were sent in notes, privately.  People came out of the woodwork to either share their own stories and their own experiences with behavioral health issues (i.e. going crazy!) or family members or the old-fashioned version, the “nervous breakdown”.  When I started to read the comments and emails, I knew I had made the right decision to share it.  And I’m probably not done sharing it.  So much happened there in 4+ days - it will take a while for it to come out.  Someone laughingly asked if it was like Girl, Interrupted.  Unfortunately, no one as hot as Angelina Jolie was roaming the hallways and there were no straightjackets or shock treatments.  I did occasionally long for a lobotomy.  I’ll admit I longed for one again today, albeit briefly. 

Life on the outside has returned to normal - mostly.  I worked this morning, did laundry, cleaned the downstairs, worked out.  I started returning the 42,000 emails and calls I got.  I’m hoping that my friends are patient with me because I am easily overwhelmed and I get tired of talking about my crap all of the time.  I’d much rather hear other people’s sad stories than my own right now. 

We start marriage counseling very soon and I’m seriously considering just giving up the whole separation and living together while we try to work through our issues.  It’s super hard on both Mike and I and frankly at this point, I’m willing to try just about anything.  Being away from the kids at night and in the mornings has made me feel even more detached and I don’t like it.  Friends of Mike’s reached out to him and told them about their marital issues last year; counseling helped them immensely and they still attend every once in a while to keep the lines of communication open.  Somewhere along the way we really stopped talking to each other, and we let life get in the way.  Distracted by work, children, obligations, financial worries, business problems, insurance, housework, a yard that never stops growing . . . it is easy to just push all the ugly things back into a dark corner and forget about them.  Over the years those ugly things were watered with Miracle-Gro and got bigger and bigger until one day they sprouted 18,203 legs and crashed through the door.  By the time they did, I felt it was too late.

I’m not sure it is too late.  I’m keeping an open mind.  I’m dealing.  I’ve had some incredibly self-esteem-destroying moments over the last few months.  I’ve lost a ton; I’ve gained a lot more.  It constantly amazes me that blogging opens so many doors.  @Snarketta - I’m looking at you.  People will help you in the strangest ways when you are weak enough - or strong enough, depending on how you look at it - to ask for help. 

I hurt a friend’s feelings on Twitter the other day.  I’ve apologized, but I’m doing it here as well.  Sometimes when I’m tired and beaten down I say things without thinking.  That was one of those times.  I could argue my point and say all the reasons I had every right to say what I said, but I never meant to hurt their feelings and I don’t like being mean.  Getting out of the hospital, I was confronted with more stress I wasn’t expecting and I just reacted.  This particular friend has tried to be there for me, even though I’m really a very difficult person to be around these days.  It’s another friendship that has gone down in the collateral damage of my personal bombing campaign.  Eventually I will stop hurting people on a daily basis when I figure out how to balance my needs against the needs of others.  I feel like an accident victim learning to walk again.  I fall a lot. 

On a happier note, I was able to repair another friendship yesterday. It’s one that is very important to me and I’m glad we were able to talk things out and make some progress.  I’m still not batting 100% on anything, including being a mom, but I’m making headway.  Maybe soon I’ll have an uplifting light-hearted rainbow and unicorns post to share with you.  In the meantime, I’ll point you to the review page where you can win some saucy stuff.