Mr. Thermostat Update
June 16, 2008
The house has not sold, Only one couple came to see the house this weekend. But I did clean and it looks as good as it can with its circa 1977 tile work and kitchen and bathrooms. I even got up on a ladder and cleared out the plants that seemed to think that the gutter over the garage is a planter.
Mr. Thermostat is still at it. The outside temperature gauge reads 66 degrees at 7 this morning. Rather than open a window and save (the power company will be raising rates 18% starting next month, but that is not a concern of his since he pays no bills but tells my daughters that I pay nothing and that he pays everything), Mr. Thermostat has moved the thermostat down to 62, and, of course, when I move it back up, he charges downstairs and puts it down again. I think that he is getting ready to call the police on me—he keeps walking around with his cell phone in hand. I am so waiting for this; it’s actually one of the few things that I look forward to with a big (sly) smile on my face.
Oh, and since I am sitting on the deck since it is truly a beautiful morning, all comfy in my flannel pajamas (I still need them to deal with the cold inside—both literal and figurative), he now keeps closing the door to the deck, which I leave open to let fresh air into the house. But since I have absolutely no trust in him, I took the key out of the front door, just in case he decides to lock me out. That would be a shock.
I need to get out of here. We should not be living in the same house. If one of my reasons for getting divorced was so that my daughters would know that it is wrong for a man to treat a woman the way he treats me, I’m not quite sure that the message has gotten out, or that it has become clouded over during the three years we have lived separated and divorced in this house. The three years during which we have battled over the thermostat. And what is the thermostat? What has it come to signify? That we don’t care about each other? That we are unable to talk? That we cannot work through the strings that are fraying all over the PSA? That when love dies bitterness so bitter that spite and hatred take over to fill its place? That if you concede the thermostat to him in the hopes that if his body is comfortable (even if yours isn’t) then maybe he will be nice to you, caring of you, when you’re married, then you’re surely done for in a divorce.
And what of my daughters? What lessons about relationships are they taking from this? Oh, to feel like I have failed as a parent in spite of how hard I tried is harder than anything else. When I go upstairs and I see their doors closed my heart sinks. We are all alone, isolated in our rooms. And it’s not just their ages, what have I given them? A woman who tries to stand up to that man but fails? A woman who pretends to be strong but cries in the quiet of her car? A woman who talks of compassion but shows none to their father, her former husband?
That in spite of the meanness of that man and her difficult relationship with him (pre- and post-divorce) she fought to attain higher levels of self-respect than his behavior enabled, and to develop her relationships with the world, and to tend to them with love and concern consistently, regardless of how they tend to her.
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