Why?

Another late one tonight. I had such a good day and had a couple topics I wanted to cover here, much lighter in content than what I am going to end up writing about. I had made a post to Facebook during a Red Sox game that Julian and I went to. I rarely look at what other people post on Facebook. The only things I ever see is what is right on top of my newsfeed when I open it up to check my notifications. Of course when I opened it up tonight the top post told me that Jon Mermer had changed his profile picture. It was of him and the kids. The one he had before that was from when Julian was about 9 months old, so he had kept it for a little over 7 years. The new picture said to me clearly, this is my new life, without Ginger in it. Why did he feel the need to change it now? Just to show that I’m not there. He hadn’t changed it for anything else significant in 7 years. Not even Phoebe joining our family.

And so my great day turned to a much worse day after simply seeing a picture. And I realized how tied into Jon my moods still are. I thought I was beginning to get over him and the fact that he left. I guess not. Seeing that picture made me sick to my stomach. And I know someday I will see a post or find out that he has a new girlfriend, maybe even see the kids with her, and that will feel even worse. I would like to be able to see a picture of my kids with their dad and think, oh that’s nice, rather than what I actually feel. But I’m mad that he thinks he can just decide, I think I’m going to be a present dad now, but want nothing to do with me. I am convinced that if he had made an effort to be present in all of our lives then he wouldn’t have felt the need to leave. For those who don’t know he worked 70-80 hours a week at 3 different jobs, usually overnight so he was sleeping when we were awake and awake when we were asleep. I still don’t understand why he felt the need to leave so strongly. I’m not sure I ever will. He cited my “meltdowns” (explained below), and that we see the world differently. He didn’t want to give counseling a chance, or try to work on anything, he was just done.

My meltdowns: The first one happened in Grad school, where my depression started. I was not wanting to be alive anymore, not wanting to kill myself, just not seeing a way out of the horrible feelings I was experiencing and felt I couldn’t get away from. Something I said must have scared Jon and he drove the 6 hours out to see me. I freaked out when he got there and ran away from him. Like actually ran away, all around town, for a good half hour-45 minutes (I think). He said I had a look in my eyes that looked crazy and scary. The next “meltdown” occurred when we were living with Jon’s parents. It was not good at all. I expected that with 4 adults in the house, some of the child-care would be shared. Yet every Sunday morning I would be left alone until sometimes 12 or 1:00 when someone else would wander downstairs. This bothered me big time for some reason. I asked numerous times for Jon to get up with me, or for his mom to get up with the kids so I could get a little extra sleep too. One Sunday they were all still in bed as usual and the kids and I were planning on going out to the playground that was right down the road. I asked if anyone wanted to come with us. I got no answer. I snapped and yelled that I was going to go stand in the middle of the road with the kids (I wasn’t). I also yelled that I hated my mother-in-law and she hated me. Not right at her, not to be mean, just stating the facts of our living situation. Even those things didn’t get them out of bed. The third “meltdown” happened a year ago at the gym. I was pissed at an employee who had quit even though she said she’d be staying for 5 years or so. She was not a good coach so I should have been fine with it but it is incredibly hard to find coaches and that was one position that I didn’t think I was going to have to fill. She and I planned out how we were going to tell the girls that she was leaving, to try to minimize the emotions. We decided that at the beginning of practice would be best so that they could then jump right back into training and not dwell on it instead of telling them at the end of the day and sending them home upset. After warm-up she took them aside and told them. They were sad as we knew they would be. I encouraged them to start practicing again, as we had discussed. She must have changed her mind because she kept allowing them to come over to her and cry and talk, to huddle around her, to not do their practice. Meanwhile I had the rest of the campers of other ages and levels to myself. We were supposed to be splitting up to events to workout and she kept a few girls to go talk separately while I was left watching 3 events, groups and skill levels with ages ranging from 5-14. Finally she left to go run some kind of errand and we got on with the rest of the day. We had a nice lunch, cleaned out the pit, played games. Then she came back and the trouble started. I sat the girls down to try to get them to move on from losing her as their coach. She didn’t like what I said and took them into a separate room, again, and closed the door. I opened it to ask what they were talking about, and she said they just needed some time alone. I left, and began cleaning out the bottom of the pit. But it didn’t sit right with me that they were in that room being so secretive and closed-off and that she wasn’t helping them move on like we had planned. So I went back in and said that I thought I should be a part of the conversation. She yelled that they didn’t want me there. So I flipped her off. I was so mad! My actions scared some of the girls and one called her mom and her mom called the cops and then it was a much bigger mess. I was forced to take 2 months away from the gym even though I was fine. I still get so angry just thinking about it. If she had just done what we had planned none of it would have happened. But I guess that’s a bit off topic.

I wasn’t trying to make it seem like I was always the victim in those situations, though I have realized that all of them seemed to be a cry for help, when things got so bad and I didn’t know how to change it without doing something drastic. That’s not an excuse, I know the things I did were wrong.

Anyway, Jon said that he didn’t want to live his life waiting around for my next meltdown. He thinks that next time I might actually get arrested, instead of just receiving a citation. And I do understand that the reasons he left were real problems. What I don’t understand is why they were reasons to leave. Our relationship wasn’t bad, there just wasn’t much of one left at all. But we didn’t fight and still loved each other. It seems like he just gave up.

How do I get over him leaving? If our relationship was bad I think it would be easier. If we had given counseling a try and it hadn’t gone well I think it would be easier. But instead I was caught off-guard with no chance of changing his mind. If I agreed that his reasons made leaving seem like a good choice, then maybe I wouldn’t feel sick to my stomach when I’m left out of his profile picture.

My moods are very clearly still determined by how my interactions with him have been. How do I get over the loss of the relationship that I wasn’t given a chance to repair? How do I live without my views of myself tying in so closely with what he is doing or saying or feeling? How do I move on?