Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

It's a beautiful spring evening, in the quiet of the day before dusk calms the currents of life. I sit outside on the front porch and listen to the birds calling, kids yelling, my dog barking incessantly, and the Band, Neil Young and Johnny Cash performing. It's a pastoral scene filled with blooming azaleas and dogwoods, unfurled greenery, and understated coolness that hints of the warmth to come and the cold we are bidding goodbye to, that is until next year.

But, for me, it is a curtain that can be pulled back at any moment to reveal the skeletal structure that holds it all together, because my life is lived beyond that curtain of green niceties and flowering smiles in a world filled with worry, dread, and uncertainty. It is the second of the month and already I praise and curse credit cards, for there is no other way there would be milk and cereal and noodle soup and gas on the fifteenth of the month, let alone the thirtieth. And, thankfully, but uncomfortably, my parents because I am well past being a beginning grown-up, I am, supposedly, deeply entrenched in being responsible. And that situation is not because I don't work or because I am a profligate spender, it is because the "man" I am divorced from has opted out of being an upstanding citizen. He has opted out of paying bills which he is required to pay, he has opted out of paying for food for his daughters, he has even opted out of getting a trim for his dog.

50%. He is required by court--because a divorce decree is a court order--to pay 50% for household bills and expenses,(that is until we move out of this home in its pastoral setting and then I should get child support, as yet undecided because he is fighting this). But every day he manages to button his shirt and knot his tie, slip on his jacket and tie his shoes before driving to work, but think about his daughters and their needs, well, that is beyond him. The votes have it that he is doing this because he is "simply" vindictive and is getting back at me for divorcing him. Maybe so, and that reinforces, as so many other things do, my decision to divorce him, but really, there is no excuse or explanation for a man to not care for his children, to not ensure that their basic needs are met.

I don't know, even animals in the wild care for their young. Or is that just the mothers? Maybe he is still living in some retrograde level of evolution where looking out for yourself is enough, is considered a way to show one's power. But we are in the 21st century, and that is how a beast behaves. But he wasn't raised like that, I saw his father and how he cared for his family, and how it was, for him, the most important thing in the world. Caring for his family meant meeting their needs--making sure that they had food, and clothing, and an education. His son is an aberration, on his own he has developed a "philosophy" that focuses on himself, that centers around taking revenge for one person out on other people-on his own cubs.

A friend and I used to jokingly call him CroMagnon man, but I bet even CroMan cared for his family. But from different friends I have heard other stories of men leaving the home, of leaving their families, of leaving their children. And I can be nothing be devastated anew. And so when people tell me that I should just leave--leave the home and leave the kids to save myself from the insanity of this sitution--I think that that would be destroying who I am. This is not about enjoying suffering for my children (feeling important somehow in being needed, I guess), this is about being responsible for one's own, for one's children.

I have not sunk to his level to scream the filth at him that he hurls at me. I have not used my children to turn them against him. I have not deprived my daughters of a glass of milk and a warm bed to sleep in. Why has he? It shames me to think that I once loved him. It brings tears to my eyes if I think about it too much, the mistake I made.

Dusk has finally descended. I am going inside, to read, I need a break from these thoughts. Maybe I'll have a side of chocolate with that.