RIP uncle W.

My uncle died yesterday, but not from the disease. He was sober for 30+ years. Here's one of my favorite stories about him.

We were all gathered around my aunt's dinner table. I must have been around eight because I was walking around the table asking each relative to tell me what their favorite color was. Things like that are only important to eight-year-old girls. The answers I got went something like this: "blue," "blue," "green," "teal," until I came to my uncle. He looked at me and said his favorite color was "clear." Then he laughed.

My uncle was into mind expansion and this blew mine. My tiny thoughts went something like this: Wrong, uncle, clear isn't even a color. Or is it? Maybe what he's saying is all colors are equally beautiful and it was wrong for me to ask a person to choose one over another? 


Honestly, I didn't even have a favorite color and here was a grown up telling me I didn't have to.

I'll miss your wacky sense of humor, Uncle W.

Let's Ben Franklin-fy divorce

Now that I seem to be going down the other side of the mountain of pain that is divorce, I've been thinking about whether it's worth it or not. What price divorce?

Pros
Walk away from the problem that is your ex
Not having to spend the rest of your life with an extremely depressed, sullen person
Have the whole bed to yourself
Two child-free weekends a month
Popcorn for dinner

Cons
Have to give half of everything to the man who's divorcing you: house, 401K, savings, children
Children have the stigma of coming from a broken home
Must go back to work in the worst economy EVER
Chosen career is full of people young enough to have come from your womb
Must dye hair and get Botox to fit in
Dating
One year of active pain and bursting into tears at inappropriate times
Another year of chronic, low-level pain
Temporary loss of sense of humor
Feeling like a victim
Feeling guilty
Feeling unlovable

Ben Franklin would say divorce is not a good decision. Am I that much happier all things and losses considered. Not really. Ex will have to speak for himself. However, I was forced to use his bathroom when I went to pick up Mario at his apartment the other day. (Mario said his toilet was not working.) On the counter, unavoidable and glaring, was a bottle of antidepressants, those same pills ex refused to take even against his doctor's wishes. This muddies things; if he's happier divorced from me, it's a chemical thing.

Life with ex, summed up by Aristotle.

“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” -Aristotle

Nowadays, we call this kind of behavior "not being present," which is just a weenier, kinder/softer way of saying "stop being a weenie." I like Aristotle's take on the subject.

I've moved into a clearer space, not of blaming myself or blaming him, but seeing what wasn't my part. This is a difficult thing to do when the person you're living with doesn't ever actually DO anything.