Divorce is a strange critter

I have been divorced twice and left a committed relationship once, and I can tell you that divorce is a strange critter. My first husband became drug dealer and addict and quit coming home. Mississippi has no-fault divorce, and in 30 days or 90 days or something like that, we were free to go. That was after I told him to come and get all his stuff. He didn't come when he was supposed to; so I put all his clothes and other belongings in paper bags outside the door of my (formerly our) apartment. Eventually, he showed up, after the apartment manager contacted his boss, in his semi and stuffed all the sacks into the side compartment. Later he claimed that the side compartment came open, and his stuff left a popcorn trail along the highway somewhere in Oklahoma. At least, he thought that was what happened.

My second husband and I went through some rigorous pre-marital counseling sessions wherein he agreed that someday we would make the decision about whether or not my mother would live with us, and we examined the likelihood that I would continue to gain weight. After six months he threatened to leave me. I asked him where he was going - no good answer; so he stayed. This happened on a regular basis: he would decide to leave, I'd ask where he was going, he'd decide to stay. In between we had lots of fun together and went lots of places that neither of us would have gone alone. Finally, he stated firmly that he was leaving. I told him he couldn't leave without me (we were living with my mother and that was not good). So, we took off together to find a place where we could get jobs. We settled in North Carolina, and things went well for six months.

Mother was seriously ill, and I'm an only child with a severe guilt complex. So, I galloped down to Mississippi to stay with her. She didn't get better, and the decision about her living with us was a reality. He said okay. I found a house. We all moved in. I had part-time work; he was a teacher in high school. Then, I wrecked the car; he bought a clunker. He began spending late afternoons and Saturdays doing school things. He fell in love with the teacher across the hall. Finally, he said he wanted a divorce. I cried on his shoulder; I had no one else. Shortly, thereafter, I was fixing a problem with his computer and found his love letters to this teacher. We divorced. He paid no alimony, none of his tiny pension fund, but we divided the debts evenly. And, I paid for the lawyer in the settlement. I refused to pay for the divorce, and he finally filed a year or so later. So, we were divorced.

Then, he told me that he had married me because he thought he couldn't find anything better. That's a real confidence builder! No wonder his family hated me.

Okay, so far, everyone relationship I've had ended with the person leaving me. I've never left anyone. Over the years of relationships, I've lost two cars, many friends, a lot of money, and been left hanging out to dry. So, then I'm in a relationship with a wonderful woman. I love her, but living together becomes more and more hazardous to our health. Feelings of aloneness and desperation at not being able to enjoy similar things make us feel as if we are walking on eggs all the time. Something precious was underfoot - those wonderful blown eggs that have been decorated in intricate designs - that's what we walking on - and they're being destroyed. We have counseling for two years. Improvement - regression. Both of us got tired.

Someone came along who loved me long ago and who claimed to still love me. I seized the feeling to give me impetus to leave. Here was the love, the caring, the white knight who would save me. And, I felt swept up in the feelings of long ago mixed with the need to love and be loved in the now. So, I called it quits, packed up and left. The haggling over property began, and, with each step I took in the new relationship, the haggling became worse. I hastened the process. I came with nothing to the old relationship, and I took away a small sum of money, in relative terms to possessions held jointly. I had been supported and indulged for 11 years.

Being the one to leave was not easy. Love dies a hard death, even when new love is springing forth. My desire for a natural death (one of the legal papers to change) wavered towards self-destruction several times. A sense of meaninglessness overwhelmed me. Separating and packing took much longer than I had thought possible - how intertwined and interdependent we had become. I left a lot of "stuff"; I tried to leave the  house without much obvious change except my presence and my empty studio. My energy failed and someone was hired to haul my stuff to storage.

Holidays came. My best friend and my former partner were now big buddies and spent Thanksgiving together. My best friend no longer answers my phone calls or emails. Online buddies "defriended" me as they heard how awful I had been and misconstrued some comments. Why I even took my partner's old Christmas stockings! NOT. What on earth would I do with them?

I have come to the conclusion that being left by a partner and leaving a partner bring the same pain, grieving and loss. I'm looking forward to some sunshine, and I pray, if this relationship ends, that I die first.

Chronological age and diplomacy

Diplomacy is about relationships. A few young people are true diplomats. Condoleeza Rice was one of those. Although I disagreed with many of her pronouncements and decisions, she knew how to navigate around people who were different from her. Hillary Clinton is another. Indira Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Janet Reno. They each had much to dislike, but they made friends among the leaders of the world.

Age can be a great assist in that process of making friends. Think about Hillary Clinton for a moment. She went to law school at Yale during a time when that must have been difficult. She learned about underhanded dealings (common in the South at the time it happened) and how that could affect one's life. But, she negotiated her way out of that for herself and Bill. Having known one of the people involved, I have no doubt that Hillary knew the Whitewater escapade was edgy at best and borderline illegal.

Then, she survived the eight years as First Lady, failing in her attempt to promote and pass a health care reform bill. Was she disillusioned? At first she retreated into silence and good works - forging more and more powerful and not-so-powerful relationships throughout the country.

She was probably a leader is saving Bill's job during the intern affair. Again, not much doubt about Bill's involvement, but I believe she was the negotiator who maneuvered them out of that entanglement.

She ran for Senator from New York and won. Spotlight knowledge of the campaign trail and all the potholes one encounters along the way. She moved into the Senate with aplomb and worked her relationships with other senators and congressional leaders to help pass some good legislation.

Then the bid for President. She ran a good race. She might have won if she'd been prettier or could have smiled more. Barak Obama was younger, good looking, pushy, smiled a lot, seemed to have the ideal family. I believe she lost primarily because of those factors. (Don't get me wrong here; I support Obama and his goals and his energy. I don't think Hillary could have done what he has done so far.) She learned the limits of what a woman can do in the public light.

Now, as Secretary of State, Hillary is moving around the world, making contact with leaders in countries where we need support. She doesn't make the news as often as some of her predecessors, but I believe that she is building strong relationships in places where we need them. She certainly has the skills for saying the right things at the right times to keep processes open and working. She could talk her way out of a garbage dumpster with it on the way up to the dump truck. The nation needs someone with fluent language talents right now. Hillary is quietly making the contacts and gaining the tacit agreement of strong allies. Barak Obama will need those contacts and her abilities soon.

And, she is keeping very silent on the subject of health care. She is not reminding the public that she was involved in that same process some seven or eight years ago. Of course, the conservatives are scared to death of anything that bespeaks more government. I grant you that the US government doesn't have the greatest track record of handling money or entitlement programs - too many steps along the way. Hillary is continuing to show her knowledge about how politics work by staying out the way on topics that might produce adverse reactions.

She has learned a lot along the way. And, so have most of us who have reached that 60 plus age. Young teachers barge into classrooms full of energy and knowledge and encounter discipline and inner-school political problems. They balk at submitting to a negotiating style. They just want to teach, but relationships are throughout the world. I'm unsure what teachers do when they get disgusted or exhausted and leave the classroom, but I am sure they meet similar political challenges in whatever they do.

Young clergy are the same way. They throw themselves into their first church and are frequently reined in by older pastors who know that you can't make too many waves too quickly or you'll swamp the boat. Learning patience and tact is hard; learning assertiveness is also difficult. But, by the time pastors reach their mid-sixties, they choose their soapboxes carefully. One can hope they are less concerned with the trappings of church (though those decisions must be made) than they are with the care of the souls in their congregations. Developing relationships with God are as difficult as developing relationships with countries that have reason to hate us.

Age helps. Experience helps.

Being Lesbian in a Straight World

In the July/August 2009 issue of Yale Alumni Magazine, Mitchell Reich said, "My epiphany (coming out as gay) was always supposed to expand my world, never to limit it, and I'm disappointed in the contraction of my social panorama." (p47) His coming out was about 4 years ago, not nearly long enough to have accustomed himself to living gay in a very diverse world - not just straight (heterosexual) but also one that includes people who want to kill you for who you are. Terrorists want to kill us because we are American. Some Muslims want to kills us because we are sinners. Mothers and fathers fear us because we are not what they want their children to become...or for other reasons. Churches ban us because they interpret scripture differently than we do.

So we do cocoon (to use Mitch's word). We tend to gather in groups of people who are very like us, people who look askance at heterosexuals in their midst. At least that's what we do in the beginning of our "coming out". Some of us never make it past that acclimatization. I retreated into heterosexual marriage after those first four years. Of course, the world was very different then. Police could arrest you for being in a gay bar - the dreaded vice squad. Landlords could refuse to rent to you, and employers could fire you.

However, after living in a world that included lots of straights and gays for many years while I was married, I can return to being openly lesbian without the cocooning. In fact, I would miss my hetero/married friends and their children. I cannot let being lesbian dominate my life - how boring! Nor can I deny my marital status - civil unioned in a far-off state, holy unioned in a conservative town, but openly partnered with a woman.

We are part of a group that is striving for acceptance within a church - a small piece of giving back for the comfort that we feel and the financial ability to say, "I'm not sure what you think of me matters very much." Our parents are dead; her son lives a rather bohemian lifestyle in a large city. We don't have consider the consequences for our families.

But most people around here really like us: the older ladies where we go to church, the men who work on our home and our yard, the people we meet where I work, church people that we come to know, twelve-step people, and other groups who might be more traditionally unwelcoming. We've met very little bias, anger, fear or repression. We are truly blessed.

Our parties include some gays but many others - singles, heterosexual marrieds, partners of various kinds, children. I would miss the richness of this blend of people. We even have conversations - some in person, some on the internet - with those who think that our sexuality choice is an abomination. One of my dearest "children" from a time when I worked at a college has very different opinions about what the Bible says about our lifestyle - and some other things also. We occasionally talk about that, but mostly I want to hear about her children, her move, her running accomplishments, what kind of French meal she is preparing for celebration of the Tour de France. I follow her notes closely on Facebook.

Yes, Mitch, I understand your cocooning during the first four years after coming out, but now you have to come out again. In order to expand, you need friends from all sorts of lives and all ages. If you continue to cocoon, you will not be "becoming more fundamentally honest, learning to share myself more deeply with other people." You will become what you were called when you first ventured away from the cocoon: a faggot. You must not let being gay become constitutive of your identity to the exclusion of other parts of you.

I offer you my blessings and my prayers for the man you wish to be. May others find that same diversity within themselves.

Too little blogging that's real

I don't consider memes, jokes, surveys and such as real blogging, but I guess they are. They all reflect a piece of me.

Recently I did a 3 day retreat on Spirituality, personality and change. Today I was putting away the books and materials that I used for that retreat, and I was reading some of the material about my own personality and spiritual type. I'm an ENTJ with a bit of ENFJ hiding in there somewhere. So, I'm a "fieldmarshal" with a bit of "teacher" wrapped in. The great organizer. ha From an early age they can be observed taking command of groups. ha, ha

Now this part seems true: "Fieldmarshals more than any other type desire (and generally have the ability) to visualize where the organization is going, and they seem able to communicate that vision to others." and "They are ever intent on reducing bureaucractic red tape, task redundancy, and aimless confusion... Although Fieldmarshals are tolerant of established procedures, they can and will abandon any procedure when it can be shown to be ineffective in accomplishing the goal."

I follow in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, Carl Sagan, George Bernard Shaw, Golda Meir, and (ummmm) Napoleon.

I don't know how this relates but my Mom used to say I had several favorite expressions and they usually followed one another if you just waited long enough.

"I'll tell you what......"

"On the other hand......"

Seems like that fits with a Fieldmarshal and a Teacher.

We're getting used to our renovated home. The living room is a delight - no changes in layout there. But, the kitchen is totally new. And, the layout is different. Someone asked me the other day if I had trouble finding things. No, they are where they should be. The other kitchen was wrong; all we did was make it right.

On the other hand, I've had to rethink some of my planning because it's just not working out effectively. For instance, my partner wants the coffee pot, mugs and flatware to the left of the sink. Not where I'd planned for it to be, but I can adapt - right? So, we put the flatware where I thought the kitchen utensils ought to go. Something just didn't feel right about that. Then, I figured it out, and I've changed it while she's out of town. I turned the divided tray around so that the handles are closest to you when you're standing in front of the coffee pot. Of course, I'm right handed and she's left handed, and that could make a difference in how the handles are turned. I'm wondering if she'll notice it before she reads this.

And, I've been having other fun in her absence - about four days of lazy solitude. I've unpacked boxes and decided to get rid of more books - religous stuff that I will never use again. I still have about 10 boxes of books to unpack yet, but I suspect that many of them will depart in peace to be loved in the service of the Lord.

I wonder that my personality type has not changed more. I'm certainly enjoying the creative aspects of me lately - writing, painting, making jewelry, knitting, roasting cats. No, just joking on the latter. I have two part-Siamese, and one of them is yowling at me that it's time for his medicine and treats. Here he comes, white paws a gleaming in the door to stare at me when the yowling didn't work.

So, I guess I'll cut short this personal musing and "pill the cat". It is that time.