Years ago my friend, Miss Carrie said to me, "Elle, if I didn't actually *see* all the crazy sh*t that happens in your life - I would think you were making stuff up."
Indeed...... today was no small exception to that rule.
Yesterday I received a comment on the blog that I did not approve because it had a fair bit of personal information about El Capitan that I had not yet talked about on the Blog - or anywhere public for that matter. It seemed familiar and yet, unknown to me at the same time, so I wrote the person back asking who they were and I got back a lovely long email, here is a snippet:
"I, like all your readers, am drawn to the way you tell your story. You crack me up and make me cry. I am so sorry for all the pain you and your babies have been put through. I think about how awesome it will be when you do start to "have coffee" with people. I think about how you have so many more cool milestones to go through with your kids. I think about you meeting that incredible MAN out there that cant wait to be with you and your kids, because you are seriously "THE SHIT". No really, I do think about all this....Am I crazy? I think my husband is starting to think so!!! I feel like we would be fast friends with LOTS in common. Wait....that might be weird for you?, anyway, its how I feel! Who knows what you have been told about me...it wouldn't matter anyway, like I said, that was a life time ago!"
I knew instantly that, one - we will most likely be fast friends and two.... this email was from El Capitan's ex-girlfriend - we're going to call her Miss Veronica.*
When El Capitan and I met he told me that he had only had one 'long term' girlfriend before me - Miss Veronica - and that they had broken up several months before I met him. (Turns out, 6 or 7 weeks actually means 'several months' in El Capitan's world). They had been living together before she decided to move back to Arizona.
I remember thinking about her - back then.... being jealous of her. You know - how *all* new girlfriends are kinda jealous of the girl(s) who came before them with their man (unless you're Yoga Girl and in which case sloppy seconds is something you think you are entitled to) - and Miss Veronica was no exception. She had cats (three at the time), she loved Dave Mathews and lived gluten free. He never said anything negative about her - just that it didn't work out. That first year I wondered about her often - what she like, why it ended,etc. I think most girls do that... right? (please say yes... lolol)
Miss Veronica however.... while she didn't really have anything negative to say about her time with El Capitan she said that when she reads the blog it's like a movie playing in her head - she can see his expressions and hear his voice in her own head saying the words I write.
That was *hugely* important to me. This has been such a strange and odd road to travel - untrained and unwittingly honest, I try to paint a picture that is as *true* to El Capitan and I as I can.
The Bubbie always say's that people will always repeat the story of an event how *they* want you to see/hear it - or them. They either want to be the biggest of the villains or the strongest of hero's... and mostly - we usually just want to be seen as innocent of any crimes or wrong doing.
I don't want to be that way. I don't want to betray the trust of the people who read this blog by painting a picture of him or I that is totally untrue.....
The fact is: I'm loud and mouthy, I can and will talk like a sailor whenever I effing feel like it... and yes, you would be correct to assume that where *most* people think an fbomb cannot be dropped, I'm a bit like a social terrorist leaving verbal carnage in my wake. Especially if you've pissed me off.
However... if I'm wrong: I'll own it. I'll apologize and make amends as best I can. I recognize this to be a bit of a flaw in my character and as such - when it comes to raising The Boy and The Girl - they do not use foul language. I raise them to understand that many people will judge you by the words you choose to use. If they use naughty words at school - they won't have friends because people will assume they aren't nice children.
I think that, if we're all being honest - the first thing that appealed about my story was the sign and the humor- and then... slowly people realized that in spite of my saucy sense of humor and obsessive use of the work f*ck in all settings... I'm a *good* person. I *try* to do the right thing. I think that in this society and in the situation of living through a spouses betrayal - many people do not continue to use any kind of moral compass to guide their new path. They let their broken heart blaze a trail of revenge and 'justice' - but I knew that first night, crying myself to sleep on the couch holding two confused and sleeping children that there will never be 'justice' for any of us. Period. Trying to get it would be a waste of my time.
So, I HAVE to *try* to do the right thing - but I certainly don't have to f*cking like it. lololol.
Of course my friends think the blog is a pretty good representation of him and I - but they *are* going to say that - right? That's why they are *my* friends... hahaha - but that's not enough. There are many things about El Capitan or certain situations that come up that I do not blog about.... there are many unpleasant things left unwritten here.
Mostly El Capitan gets mad at me - like throwing things mad - when he'll say something like: "I'm not happy - nothing is going right - everything is sh*t!!!!!"
And, when I say, "Well, it's the life you've made for us all - sorry it's not working out."
He'll go nuts and scream and yell about how I need to 'move on' and stuff like that.... people in his life don't understand what we're "fighting" about - they just think I'm a raging b*tch. Which, to some degree I am. I think I'm entitled to at a least a little bit of that - between him and I as ex-lovers.
My choice to the *right* things as we have dragged and crawled our way along this barbed road is only because I am my children's mother first - before I am an angry and devastated ex-wife.
So, on that note... writing the blog is a balance of both. The angry, the bitter, the pain, the joy... I think it all kind of spills out of me - and goes SPLAT of the page. A blob of me, of us - of him.
When Miss Veronica said that she could *see* El Capitan in her mind saying the words I write - I feel oddly comforted by that because it means that I'm doing a fairly good job of writing about El Capitan in a way that people who know him - recognize him. I'm not portraying some foreign version of him that people in his life have never seen.
We talked for ours.... I can see why El Capitan was with her - she's hilarious and bold and funny.... sound familiar? I thought so too... hahaha. - oh - and she's got dark hair, pale skin and blue eyes... needless to say, El Capitan has a 'type' for sure.
She said that she had seen my sign and had kind of followed the story - and then she saw the picture that the Enquirer ran and realized that the blacked out face next to mine was her own ex-boyfriend. That picture was taken for our second Christmas card by one of my assistants at the time and she had seen the full version years ago.
How totally trippy would that be? You're following this crazy fat lady out of Oregon who writes a funny blog you like and suddenly... you're reading about your own ex? No doubt - she had to first be thinking, "Wow - glad I dodged that bullet!". hahaha
The hardest part of this entire journey is trying to reconcile - in my own mind - how the hell I got *here*. No one is ever totally innocent - that much I know.... but how much am I to blame? How much of the burden of my failed family am I to bear? bare...? no - it's bear. (That's a homophone bitches... I'm learning stuff.)
Was it my weight? Was it a lack of sex? Did I 'mother' him too much? Did I nag him too much? Did I not give him enough time to play his video games? Did I not *do* enough to save my marriage and the family I adored.....? Because, I would have done anything. ANY.THING. I often feel like I hold in my hands the two halves of my children's broken hearts - with their jagged and torn edges - and that in itself is a great burden for any mother, I can assure you.
Even now.... I don't see the man I loved when he stands in front of me. I don't even see the shadow of that man cast on the ground at our feet... he's just: gone.
Listening to Miss Veronica talk about details of his life and his character - things I have not talked about on the blog - truly helped me to see that (as I had long suspected) a lot of our issue's where his and his alone. They were the *same ones* he had with her. The SAME ones.
Listen up parents: a lifetime of put-downs and playing favorites and punishment and being told that you'll never amount to *anything* - will eventually lead down a path of self-destruction.
I believe, to a large degree, that is how I ended up here... but that's just my humble opinion.
Oh, and to a smaller degree - it's Miss Veronica's, too.
It's oddly comforting to hear issue's and concerns I had about our relationship (that I have not shared here) were rooted in their situation as well.... it - frees me a little bit.
I need that. I need that freedom.
Not freedom from any kind of blame... and be assured - my children will *know* how I am. Anyone who knows me already knows that I suck as pretense and lying and being fake. Sure, sure - I have the 'telephone voice' we can all have and I can be business polite when I need to be. But it could be argued and proven that I use my business polite voice a crap ton less than other people. Which... might make getting a real job a challenge. Damn......
But, to speak to someone I never met before who possessed such an understanding of *me* in this situation on a level where they were connected to me by observing similar behaviors from their own experience with El Capitan... it makes me believe what a lot of our friends and family have been telling me for months: I didn't "drive" him here, but rather, I *kept* us from getting here for as long as I could... but we were always destined to be *here* in some fashion.
I will write more about what Miss Veronica had to say... but mostly, I just wanted to say thank you to her. She could have stayed quiet, watching and laughing from afar grateful that it was me here in these shoes and not her... but instead, she reached out and in doing so has provided me with a bit of a comfort and peace that I didn't know I even needed.... nor did I think I would have it.
And now... for the first time in months, I will actually, truly sleep a little better. My laughter was a little lighter this afternoon and my heart... my heart is not so heavy. My burden has been lifted a little by someone else's shared experience and understanding and.... acknowledgement of some behaviors that set a path for destruction long before I stopped on a cracked side-walk and fell in love.
Tonight- just as with Mr. XXXXX, Miss Veronica has brought home the lesson that the only way to heal The Boy and The Girl and erase the cheaters DNA they seem so prone to inheriting - is not in any life lesson I can teach them, or vengeful thing I could say about their father - but is in *loving* them. In giving them whole hearts patched together not with "I'm better than your Father because...." or some of the usual things the divorce books warn against.... but instead, with self-confidence and love and pride and self-esteem - THESE are the things that are going to TRULY mend my children.
I can *love* them better... and they *will* be better.... and secretly, even though the shadow of the man I once loved and adored is long gone... I find myself a teeny, tiny bit sad that I couldn't love El Capitan 'better'. That our love wasn't enough 'better' the lifetime of wounds that came before me.
One day... when I maybesortakinda am ready to "go for coffee" - that's going to be the first thing I look for in a partner: can they love themselves better all on their own so that any love I have for them is just a bonus?
Indeed...... today was no small exception to that rule.
Yesterday I received a comment on the blog that I did not approve because it had a fair bit of personal information about El Capitan that I had not yet talked about on the Blog - or anywhere public for that matter. It seemed familiar and yet, unknown to me at the same time, so I wrote the person back asking who they were and I got back a lovely long email, here is a snippet:
"I, like all your readers, am drawn to the way you tell your story. You crack me up and make me cry. I am so sorry for all the pain you and your babies have been put through. I think about how awesome it will be when you do start to "have coffee" with people. I think about how you have so many more cool milestones to go through with your kids. I think about you meeting that incredible MAN out there that cant wait to be with you and your kids, because you are seriously "THE SHIT". No really, I do think about all this....Am I crazy? I think my husband is starting to think so!!! I feel like we would be fast friends with LOTS in common. Wait....that might be weird for you?, anyway, its how I feel! Who knows what you have been told about me...it wouldn't matter anyway, like I said, that was a life time ago!"
I knew instantly that, one - we will most likely be fast friends and two.... this email was from El Capitan's ex-girlfriend - we're going to call her Miss Veronica.*
When El Capitan and I met he told me that he had only had one 'long term' girlfriend before me - Miss Veronica - and that they had broken up several months before I met him. (Turns out, 6 or 7 weeks actually means 'several months' in El Capitan's world). They had been living together before she decided to move back to Arizona.
I remember thinking about her - back then.... being jealous of her. You know - how *all* new girlfriends are kinda jealous of the girl(s) who came before them with their man (unless you're Yoga Girl and in which case sloppy seconds is something you think you are entitled to) - and Miss Veronica was no exception. She had cats (three at the time), she loved Dave Mathews and lived gluten free. He never said anything negative about her - just that it didn't work out. That first year I wondered about her often - what she like, why it ended,etc. I think most girls do that... right? (please say yes... lolol)
Miss Veronica however.... while she didn't really have anything negative to say about her time with El Capitan she said that when she reads the blog it's like a movie playing in her head - she can see his expressions and hear his voice in her own head saying the words I write.
That was *hugely* important to me. This has been such a strange and odd road to travel - untrained and unwittingly honest, I try to paint a picture that is as *true* to El Capitan and I as I can.
The Bubbie always say's that people will always repeat the story of an event how *they* want you to see/hear it - or them. They either want to be the biggest of the villains or the strongest of hero's... and mostly - we usually just want to be seen as innocent of any crimes or wrong doing.
I don't want to be that way. I don't want to betray the trust of the people who read this blog by painting a picture of him or I that is totally untrue.....
The fact is: I'm loud and mouthy, I can and will talk like a sailor whenever I effing feel like it... and yes, you would be correct to assume that where *most* people think an fbomb cannot be dropped, I'm a bit like a social terrorist leaving verbal carnage in my wake. Especially if you've pissed me off.
However... if I'm wrong: I'll own it. I'll apologize and make amends as best I can. I recognize this to be a bit of a flaw in my character and as such - when it comes to raising The Boy and The Girl - they do not use foul language. I raise them to understand that many people will judge you by the words you choose to use. If they use naughty words at school - they won't have friends because people will assume they aren't nice children.
I think that, if we're all being honest - the first thing that appealed about my story was the sign and the humor- and then... slowly people realized that in spite of my saucy sense of humor and obsessive use of the work f*ck in all settings... I'm a *good* person. I *try* to do the right thing. I think that in this society and in the situation of living through a spouses betrayal - many people do not continue to use any kind of moral compass to guide their new path. They let their broken heart blaze a trail of revenge and 'justice' - but I knew that first night, crying myself to sleep on the couch holding two confused and sleeping children that there will never be 'justice' for any of us. Period. Trying to get it would be a waste of my time.
So, I HAVE to *try* to do the right thing - but I certainly don't have to f*cking like it. lololol.
Of course my friends think the blog is a pretty good representation of him and I - but they *are* going to say that - right? That's why they are *my* friends... hahaha - but that's not enough. There are many things about El Capitan or certain situations that come up that I do not blog about.... there are many unpleasant things left unwritten here.
Mostly El Capitan gets mad at me - like throwing things mad - when he'll say something like: "I'm not happy - nothing is going right - everything is sh*t!!!!!"
And, when I say, "Well, it's the life you've made for us all - sorry it's not working out."
He'll go nuts and scream and yell about how I need to 'move on' and stuff like that.... people in his life don't understand what we're "fighting" about - they just think I'm a raging b*tch. Which, to some degree I am. I think I'm entitled to at a least a little bit of that - between him and I as ex-lovers.
My choice to the *right* things as we have dragged and crawled our way along this barbed road is only because I am my children's mother first - before I am an angry and devastated ex-wife.
So, on that note... writing the blog is a balance of both. The angry, the bitter, the pain, the joy... I think it all kind of spills out of me - and goes SPLAT of the page. A blob of me, of us - of him.
When Miss Veronica said that she could *see* El Capitan in her mind saying the words I write - I feel oddly comforted by that because it means that I'm doing a fairly good job of writing about El Capitan in a way that people who know him - recognize him. I'm not portraying some foreign version of him that people in his life have never seen.
We talked for ours.... I can see why El Capitan was with her - she's hilarious and bold and funny.... sound familiar? I thought so too... hahaha. - oh - and she's got dark hair, pale skin and blue eyes... needless to say, El Capitan has a 'type' for sure.
She said that she had seen my sign and had kind of followed the story - and then she saw the picture that the Enquirer ran and realized that the blacked out face next to mine was her own ex-boyfriend. That picture was taken for our second Christmas card by one of my assistants at the time and she had seen the full version years ago.
How totally trippy would that be? You're following this crazy fat lady out of Oregon who writes a funny blog you like and suddenly... you're reading about your own ex? No doubt - she had to first be thinking, "Wow - glad I dodged that bullet!". hahaha
The hardest part of this entire journey is trying to reconcile - in my own mind - how the hell I got *here*. No one is ever totally innocent - that much I know.... but how much am I to blame? How much of the burden of my failed family am I to bear? bare...? no - it's bear. (That's a homophone bitches... I'm learning stuff.)
Was it my weight? Was it a lack of sex? Did I 'mother' him too much? Did I nag him too much? Did I not give him enough time to play his video games? Did I not *do* enough to save my marriage and the family I adored.....? Because, I would have done anything. ANY.THING. I often feel like I hold in my hands the two halves of my children's broken hearts - with their jagged and torn edges - and that in itself is a great burden for any mother, I can assure you.
Even now.... I don't see the man I loved when he stands in front of me. I don't even see the shadow of that man cast on the ground at our feet... he's just: gone.
Listening to Miss Veronica talk about details of his life and his character - things I have not talked about on the blog - truly helped me to see that (as I had long suspected) a lot of our issue's where his and his alone. They were the *same ones* he had with her. The SAME ones.
Listen up parents: a lifetime of put-downs and playing favorites and punishment and being told that you'll never amount to *anything* - will eventually lead down a path of self-destruction.
I believe, to a large degree, that is how I ended up here... but that's just my humble opinion.
Oh, and to a smaller degree - it's Miss Veronica's, too.
It's oddly comforting to hear issue's and concerns I had about our relationship (that I have not shared here) were rooted in their situation as well.... it - frees me a little bit.
I need that. I need that freedom.
Not freedom from any kind of blame... and be assured - my children will *know* how I am. Anyone who knows me already knows that I suck as pretense and lying and being fake. Sure, sure - I have the 'telephone voice' we can all have and I can be business polite when I need to be. But it could be argued and proven that I use my business polite voice a crap ton less than other people. Which... might make getting a real job a challenge. Damn......
But, to speak to someone I never met before who possessed such an understanding of *me* in this situation on a level where they were connected to me by observing similar behaviors from their own experience with El Capitan... it makes me believe what a lot of our friends and family have been telling me for months: I didn't "drive" him here, but rather, I *kept* us from getting here for as long as I could... but we were always destined to be *here* in some fashion.
I will write more about what Miss Veronica had to say... but mostly, I just wanted to say thank you to her. She could have stayed quiet, watching and laughing from afar grateful that it was me here in these shoes and not her... but instead, she reached out and in doing so has provided me with a bit of a comfort and peace that I didn't know I even needed.... nor did I think I would have it.
And now... for the first time in months, I will actually, truly sleep a little better. My laughter was a little lighter this afternoon and my heart... my heart is not so heavy. My burden has been lifted a little by someone else's shared experience and understanding and.... acknowledgement of some behaviors that set a path for destruction long before I stopped on a cracked side-walk and fell in love.
Tonight- just as with Mr. XXXXX, Miss Veronica has brought home the lesson that the only way to heal The Boy and The Girl and erase the cheaters DNA they seem so prone to inheriting - is not in any life lesson I can teach them, or vengeful thing I could say about their father - but is in *loving* them. In giving them whole hearts patched together not with "I'm better than your Father because...." or some of the usual things the divorce books warn against.... but instead, with self-confidence and love and pride and self-esteem - THESE are the things that are going to TRULY mend my children.
I can *love* them better... and they *will* be better.... and secretly, even though the shadow of the man I once loved and adored is long gone... I find myself a teeny, tiny bit sad that I couldn't love El Capitan 'better'. That our love wasn't enough 'better' the lifetime of wounds that came before me.
One day... when I maybesortakinda am ready to "go for coffee" - that's going to be the first thing I look for in a partner: can they love themselves better all on their own so that any love I have for them is just a bonus?
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