Divorce

I recently asked my friends to suggest blog topics for me. Not that I need help finding topics bouncing around in my head so much as sometimes it's fun to force myself to write about a topic NOT bouncing around in my head.

This subject isn't a "fun" one to write about, but I think it is one that I have a different perspective on - a perspective that isn't written about often.

My parents are not divorced...from each other at least. My dad was married before though and has two sons from that marriage. Growing up, I never thought much about it other than knowing that I had these two brothers who had a different mother than my own. The implications of being a child of the second wife didn't hit me until well into my adult years.

Looking back, I remember my mother commenting that none of my aunts liked her. I remember going to one uncle's house to swim in his pool and my mom staying outside with us kids the whole time while my aunt stayed in the house. Because this happened every time we went there, I just thought it was normal. Again, looking back, I now see the oddness of that.

The point being, even though my own parents never divorced, I still experienced the repercussions of a divorce - not invited to family gatherings, never having close relationships with cousins, not feeling like a "real" member of the family. We were the second set of children, never truly fitting in with the rest of the family.

Children of divorced parents face so much that I cannot imagine. Two sets of parents. Feeling like you're betraying one parent if you enjoy time with the other. Multiple "sets" of siblings - those you share a mother with, those you share a father with, and those you share both parents with. Multiple extended families. I'm sure those children, like myself as a child, have a hard time figuring out where they fit in.

I was married once before and technically got divorced, but I really can't say I know what it feels like for a marriage to end. My first "husband" (I have a hard time even calling him that) and I never lived together. We were both in the Army - he stationed in California, me in Germany - and by the time I came home from Germany I was in love with my current husband and wanting a divorce from the first one. I tell people that he was really just a boyfriend that required paperwork to break up with.

So I don't claim to know what it feels like to get divorced. Just the thought of it makes my chest hurt though. I look at my husband and imagine him telling me he doesn't love me anymore and that he's leaving, or worse...that he loves someone else now...and it makes me feel physically ill. I can't imagine how I would react to that, yet men and women have that happen to them every day and have no choice but to continue on with their lives.

While it isn't the same, I can relate to the idea of having to continue on. When my son died - something I never wanted to happen for sure, but also something I had no control over - I couldn't imagine how I could continue to live without him. But, six years later, I'm still here. Broken in many ways; stronger in many as well.

So I think if there is anything I can say to people experiencing divorce, and possibly questioning how they're going to get through it, the only thing I can say with any certainty is "you just do." In the beginning, I'm sure it is nothing more than going through the motions of life, doing the things you know you have to do, but over time I would assume that you gradually start finding things to be happy about again.

As it was with us dealing with the death of a child, a big part of it will be allowing yourself to be happy again. It's very easy to wallow in misery. Sometimes being happy is a choice and you have to make that choice...as in, consciously tell yourself it's ok to be happy...before it can happen.

In my heart, I wish people would just work harder at their relationships. If you're unhappy, talk about it. Work together to find ways to be happy again. Never forget why you got together in the first place. Flirt. Go on dates. Say "I love you" every day.

In many cases - such as my first marriage - make sure you're getting married for the right reasons, and when you do - commit to it. Don't think of your marriage as something you can walk away from if it doesn't work...and it is work making a marriage successful. Just because you're crazy happy in the beginning does not mean you always will be. You have to work at it. If you're not willing to do that, you should stay single.

Easier said than done, though, right?

Filterless - read only if you don't mind being offended.

I really hate having to use sick leave for being sick. I'd far rather use it for a much-needed mental health/shopping day. I only get sick about once every five years though, and apparently it is time for my quinquennial illness. 

So, as I sit here on the sofa with my tissues, hand sanitizer and coffee (because seriously, coffee NEVER tastes bad) and look at my News Feed on Facebook, I find that my normal barely-there filter has gone completely AWOL in the face of my snotty-nosed misery. So while I'm feeling lousy and just don't care, let me share a few thoughts on topics recently trending on my wall.

Marriage. Specifically, youngsters getting married. How do I define "youngster"? I don't consider anyone under the age of 25 to completely be an adult. Sorry. You're just not. Are you old enough to fall in love? Sure. Be hormonal and think that is love? Absolutely. Play house like real adults? Yep. Choose the person you are meant to spend the rest of your life with? 

Hell no.

I know there are those of you who married your high school sweetheart and beg to differ, but you know what? Every statistical observation has outliers. I accept that. 

Then there are you young people who are just so in LOVE. 

I can hear you all now. 

But Shannon, you just don't understand. I KNOW this is right. 

All I can say is - WHATEVER!

You don't even know who you are yet - because you haven't even become the person you're meant to be yet. I firmly believe you have to go through a few of life's trials on your own - as an adult - before you know yourself well enough to make an informed decision on whether or not another adult is the right person for you. Did your parents marry young? Are they still married? Are they happy?

That last one is the killer question in my mind. I know a few people who have been married for decades, but are not happy. They just reached the point where their marriage was a hard habit to break, so they continued to share space, but not feeling.

I married someone when I was 24 (not yet an "adult" by my definition) and it was a huge mistake. I met Mike while I was married to that other person. I won't say that meeting Mike was what made me realize my first marriage was a mistake though; I knew that within 24 hours of walking out of that tacky little wedding chapel in Lake Tahoe. But I knew when I met Mike that he was the one I was supposed to be with (see "How I Met Your Father, Part 1").

Here's the thing - there were a few other times before that where I knew the current guy was "the one."  It wasn't until I did meet the right one and could compare that feeling to all the other times I thought I had met the right one that I was able to see that those first few were nothing more than infatuation. I was in love with the idea of being in love. 

Sorry, but you are too.

I had a young lady - a friend of a friend, if you will - add me as a friend on Facebook a few years ago. She was a senior in high school. Her boyfriend had just graduated and left for the Marines. She wanted to be friends with me because we were both "military wives." 

::snort::

She and all her little friends who were the girlfriends of young military men (not full adults yet) were amusing, but just like I knew would happen, those relationships ended. Little girls playing at being women. 

So, excuse me for not "liking" all of your posts about how happy you are, because me thinks you are trying too hard to convince me. The bottom line is that whether your relationship works or not really doesn't matter to me. So, instead of wasting my wall space trying to convince the world that getting married young is so great, just live your life. Time will be your evidence of either being right or wrong.

Whew...that topic went on longer than I expected. Next up in the flow of filterless ravings from a sick woman is parenting.

I will try to keep this one a little less verbose. Please do not perceive that as me being less opinionated on the subject. I just need a nap.

I am not a bible thumper, therefore I don't subscribe to the "judge not" idea that no one else subscribes to either, but swears that they do because of their religion. I judge you. Sometimes harshly. Especially if your children are wee beasties that show no signs of ever having been given boundaries or consequences.

In an effort to keep this short and reach my nap faster, here are the actions that I see all around me that make me turn to my daughter and say, "If you ever let your children act that way, I will steal them from you and raise them myself."

1. Throwing fits in stores. 

My kids knew when we were in the grocery store that they had to have one hand on the cart at all times and that the answer to every request to buy something was "no." If they didn't, the cart would be left in the store - full if necessary - and we'd be taking a trip to the car where some form of discipline would take place.

To answer your question - yes, it happened. In grocery stores, malls...you name it. We followed through. So consistently, in fact, that Keeghan once said to me upon seeing another child misbehaving in public, "Mama, we'd get in so much trouble if we acted that way." 

Start young. Set limits. Establish consequences. Follow through. It's not that hard. Which brings me to my next observation:

2. You are never too tired to parent.

From the moment that first child is born, you don't get to stop being a parent. You don't get to hand that duty off to someone else. Sure, if you're lucky, you and your spouse give each other breaks occasionally, but you can't count on those. If you wake up tired, oh well! When you start letting your child get away with being a brat because you're just "too tired" to deal with it, you have become a bad parent in my book. 

Because here's the thing...when you start phoning it in as a parent, other people stop wanting to be around you. A bratty child is the biggest social life killer of all, because no one wants to spend their down time watching you let your kids get away with bad behavior. When my children were small, I would have been horribly offended if I knew that someone else wanted to discipline my child for me because I wasn't doing my job well as a parent. Consequently, I was probably more strict than most, but it paid off. I was never embarrassed to have my children around other adults. Are you?

Lastly, here is my current parenting pet peeve.

3. Stop letting video games, television and iPads raise your children. 

I see it everywhere. Toddlers with expensive iPads in their hands while riding in the grocery cart at the commissary and God help everyone in the building if the battery dies! Child is bored? Heaven forbid you interact with the child to entertain them. No! Just hand them your smart phone and let them play Angry Birds for two hours.

Don't get me wrong - my kids watched TV, too. From 2000 to 2001, while Mike was in Korea for a year and Keeghan only went to preschool three mornings a week, Nick Jr. was my favorite babysitter in the mornings so I could get homework done. But I was always right there in the same room with him, and if he wanted to talk to me about something that was happening on Dora the Explorer or Blue's Clues, I stopped and interacted with him. 

My kids watched movies. We played video games, but always with me in the room with them. Oftentimes, I was the one playing the game with them watching (I can't count the hours spent playing Spyro the Dragon with Mackenzie and Keeghan yelling out to tell me where all the gems were that I needed to collect). Both children learned to use the mouse on the computer by sitting on my lap and playing JumpStart Toddler. 

The point being - we interacted.

That interaction is what I see missing. Parents are phoning it in far too often. They're giving their children everything they want and nothing that they need. It frightens me to imagine what the world will be like when these children hit the adult world and find that everything isn't easy and free and that they'll actually have to earn people's affection and abide by the rules of society.

Meh...they'll probably just get married young so they can get it from their buddy/spouse.

Goodbye to a Lousy Year

2014 is almost over.

It's about damn time!

This has not been a friendly year. I can't pinpoint one thing that made it bad; it was just an overall feeling of the year being...off. 

Regrets about choices made. 

Lousy bosses. 

Living in a place that gives new meaning to depressing. 

Goodbyes. 

Uncertainty. 

So many words to describe this year bounce through my mind; none of them positive. I know there were good times, friends made, laughs. But the negative seems to have ruled 2014.

As we face the last few days of this year, I am hopeful that 2015 is going to be our year. Better jobs, better place to live, new friends, new freedom...my hopes for the new year are high and they are wide open, not locked down to a specific place or a specific job. Whatever feels right and fits us is what I'm hoping for.

All things are possible. 

Life is Short

Life is short….

That’s what I hear at least. I had a conversation with my husband this morning about just that. In recent weeks, we have been faced with people our age dying – some suddenly, others battling horrible diseases. It’s so strange to think that we have made it to an age where our peers dying isn't all that strange a thing. Granted, dying in your late-40s is still far too young, but in a country where obesity and laziness are two of the top traits that identify us as Americans (Merica!), it’s not really all that shocking.

But with 50 just around the corner for us, we discussed what it is that keeps us feeling young, because I have to say I do not feel anywhere near 50. Holy cow, 50 is old, right? I don’t feel old. Sure, the body has more aches than it used to, but I don’t feel any different in my head than the person who met and fell in love with a Canadian boy on a hill in Germany 23 years ago.

I think that last statement is part of what keeps us young. Seriously, who can say something like that?

“I’m American and I met my Canadian husband on a hill in Germany.”

I grew up in a town where many of my peers (and family members for that matter) graduated high school and never left. Some went off to college, yet still came back to that same small town (for the record, just the thought makes me physically ill!). For them, I guess the consistency of being in that same place is comforting. To my mind, that is the definition of stagnation. Adventure keeps me alive!

“Who cares where it takes us? Let’s get on and see where it goes.”

In 2013, my husband and I went to Shanghai, China, for our 20^th wedding anniversary. We were living in Japan at the time, so it isn't like it was a long trip, but still…CHINA! When we walked off of the plane, having no real idea yet of what life in China was like, we were freaking out a little, but at the same time it was so damn exhilarating! 

Excitement, fear, anticipation, curiosity…my heart raced with it all!

We soon found out that China (or Shanghai, at least) is nothing like we feared “Red China” would be. It was an amazingly vibrant city with friendly people, beautiful architecture and art, shopping, restaurants…it had everything. One day, as we were walking along The Bund, we came to a window selling ferry tickets. Because we could not read Chinese, we had no idea where the ferry was going. Mike suggested we buy tickets and get on. My initial reaction was, “What the hell is wrong with you? What if it carries us 20 miles down the river and dumps us off in some unknown place?” As his response above so obviously demonstrates, he didn't care.

We got on the ferry that day. Turns out it did nothing more than take us across the river to Pudong, but that one leap into the unknown has become my motto in life. Don’t fear where the path will take you; instead, trust in yourself to be able to deal with whatever adventure lies at the end of the path.

I think this mentality is what keeps us young. Yes, we are almost 50. Mike just retired after 24 years in the military. He has a master’s degree in health services administration. While he waits out the slow hiring process for the executive level positions he is applying for, he’s decided to go to culinary school. He’s always loved cooking and works some serious magic in a kitchen, so why not? It’s never too late to chase a dream. 

In that same vein, I am considering getting a master’s degree. I finished two bachelor’s degrees in 2001 and then decided it was more important to be home with my children, so now I have two pieces of paper that do nothing for me because I don’t have experience in those fields. So maybe a master’s degree is a good idea. Or maybe I just want to get certified to teach English as a second language so that we can go to another country for a while.

OH! And I want to get braces. I've always hated my teeth. I despise pictures of myself because of my teeth. So I want to get braces. Who cares that I’m almost 50…right?

Nothing protects us from dying. Absolutely nothing. You can be in your late 70s, having lived a healthy lifestyle forever and get cancer. Or, you can be in your late 70s, having smoked for over 50 years, be overweight, and still golf three times a week. You can drop dead of a stroke or a heart attack at 48. You just don’t know when your time will come. But I think keeping yourself alive…having an adventure every day, even if it is just to walk down a street you've never explored, or go to a city with no plan on where you’re going to go, but just to walk and see what you find – is what keeps you young. Mind, body and soul need an adventure.

Get on the ferry. I dare you.

August again.

It's August. I hate August. Fortunately, we've been so busy this year that it has taken a while for it to really hit me.

Small blessings.

This past week I got some items back that have been in storage for more than three years. Before leaving for Japan in 2011 I put these things . . . special things . . . in storage so that they could not possible be lost or damaged in the move. Among those things were my children's baby books. My wedding album. Old photos. Bankers boxes full of all the art work created in the past 20 years by my kids.

The programs I created for the Celebration of Life we had five days after Keeghan died. A scrapbook made by a dear woman from Special Love chronicling Keeghan's week at camp, just two weeks before he died. The clothes he was wearing when he died.

Died.

One of the items I've had for a few years and have moved all around the world with me is a brown paper bag full of film canisters. Undeveloped film mostly. Back when Mike and I were young parents, we took tons of pictures of our kids. We weren't always able to afford to have all the film we took developed. Over time, I forgot about the bag, but every time we move - which is about every 1-2 years - I find it again.

Then Keeghan died. After that, every time I found that bag, I died a little inside myself because I knew that there were probably pictures of him on that undeveloped film. Pictures of my happy, smiling, seemingly healthy, precious little boy. Pictures not yet seen by anyone. Pictures that would be such a gift, and such torture at the same time.

One of the first things I noticed when we moved into our apartment here in San Diego was that there is a camera store just two blocks away. Besides selling cameras and accessories, they also develop film. It seemed like a sign. Over the past six years since Keeghan died, I've found that brown paper bag four times. Each time I have told myself that I couldn't get the film developed because I didn't know of a place to take it. Here, I couldn't use that excuse.

So I dropped the bag of film off today. It may all be for naught because, after all these years, the film may not even develop. I'll find out tomorrow I guess.

If it does develop though, August seems like the right time to see pictures of Mackenzie and Keeghan that I've never seen before. Maybe there will be new pictures of Mike and I as well. New photos of my three greatest treasures.

None of it will change anything though. In fourteen days, we will still mark the six year anniversary of Keeghan's death. Six years . . . and it still doesn't feel real. I found stories today that he wrote . . . he loved to write just like I do. One of them, a story he wrote about his dad, started with, "My dad's name is Michael. His nickname is Dork." Instant laughter, followed by helpless tears.

I miss him. So much.

I hate August.

Baby steps . . .

I took a step toward something today that was more difficult than I thought it would be, and I'm still completely terrified about it.

A few weeks ago I had an appointment at the VA Hospital here to get set up with a new Primary Care Manager. In discussing my medical history, Keeghan's death came up. The doctor asked me if I needed a referral to a counselor to talk about it. As I was saying my normal, "No, I'm fine" my husband was sitting behind the doctor nodding "yes" at me. I'm not sure why, but that reaction from him immediately had me in tears. So of course, the doctor immediately put in a referral to psychiatry for me.

I received a call a few days later from a Social Work Supervisor who was very kind, starting the conversation by extending his condolences. He then talked to me for a few minutes about possibly referring me to a support group for grief management, stating he thought that might be more helpful than individual counseling.

For the past few years, I have "used" my friends in the cancer community as my support group, but I now know that really wasn't helping. Instead, it was having the exact opposite effect, making me feel even more isolated because so many of them are not where I am. They still kiss their children goodnight. Their children have unique post-treatment issues of their own, something I will never understand, but damn it . . . they can still hug their child, tell him they love him, fight for him. They have no understanding of how helpless I feel not being able to do any of those things.

So maybe this group therapy thing will be good. I've not had good luck with individual therapists because I've never had one who actually gets it. They have education and fancy titles, but they haven't experienced it. They just don't know.  But I'm so scared. Getting into a room with others who do get it, opening up and sharing ... I don't know if I can do it. It's easy like this, behind my computer screen, no one to see how often I have to walk away and sob to get through typing a few paragraphs. In a room of strangers ... I just don't know.

But I'm going to give it a try. I called the social worker today and discussed finding groups that are cancer specific, preferably childhood cancer specific. I'm going to call a couple myself and he is going to put out feelers to see what he can find.

Baby steps. That's what it has been since Keeghan left. A little bit at a time.

Wish me luck.

Broken thinking.

life begins . . .

grow, play, listen, learn

life’s early challenges

plan, prepare, study, apply

youth’s dedication

choose, try, work, earn

high expectations

fall, plan, love, hope

a shared journey

conceive, deliver, routine, normal

life in motion

tragedy, fear, nightmare, death

wait, what?

wish, pray, beg, cower

how can this be?

struggle, hurt, question, continue

what choice is there?

different, misfit, pariah, lonely

not my fault

want, need, chance, opportunity

is it too late to start anew?

doubt, frustration, anxiety, impatience

just let me prove myself!

life so far . . .