live authentically

Previous Session 2009 11 13
Next Session – not scheduled

It’s been three years, almost, since I decided to get professional help for why I was so unhappy in my life.

My counselor helped me realize that I had to face up to the facts of my situation. I was “living a life on hold” in Illinois and pretending to be in the next phase of my life in DC. I would not be happy until I resolved my issues here and moved on.

She told me today that her only regret is that I didn’t get to the bottom of what went wrong in my previous marriage.

As of today, I think I’m done with this goal. I will be living an authentic life: working at a new job, meeting people, making friends, available to date as my divorce progresses to its natural conclusion, and happy.

My sons are happy and safe, their mother is not homeless or penniless, I will live and work in DC, I get to use my special certificate, and drive the restored red car to and from work. I’m fitter than I have been in a decade, my blood pressure and cholesterol are under control, skin cancers have been removed and my colon is clear of bad stuff. I’ve run a 5K, taken an assessment of my kissing skills, and decided, with the help of YouTube that I am not just liked, but well liked.

I choose not the death of a salesman, on the road, but a life as an I/T Architect, working on an important project, close to my new home.

Friday the 13th.
last session 10/28/2009
next session 11/23/2009

I met my counselor today and reviewed the events of the last two weeks, including some considerable disappointment in my personal life and some considerable excitement in my business life.

I told her I was probably going to accept a job working and living in the DC area, for more money than I make now, and that mrs bill had seen a lawyer too, so the divorce was going to proceed along.

The job is now only pending a reply from the company president. I asked for a higher salary. Hey, it’s free to ask for more than the offer, and I will have $3000 expense to move out of my apartment… just to cancel the lease. SO, I’ll know soon if they offer that. I’ll take the job as it was offered.

My kids were amazed that I could get a job like that… “Dad, you do that?”

I reviewed with the doc my first session with her back in January 2007 … “I’m so unhappy in my life and marriage, starting to fix the thing that are broken, seeing a doc to get blood pressure and cholesterol meds, exercising, cutting down on the wine (ooops … hasn’t happened yet) and absolutely convinced the marriage is irretrievably broken, but want to stay until the boys go off to college… “

I thanked her for helping me sort through all the things I was feeling and coming to accept that I had to do what I had to do. I think I’m “cured” if that is the way to say it.

I’ll see the Doc one more time before I come back there to DC.

I think she helped me a lot.

So did you, my 43Things friends … so did you.

about a person who does not love me and is honest enough not to lead me on.

What could have been… what almost was … was beautiful.

Last session: 10/16/2009
Next session: 11/13/2009 when I return from two visits to DC and the SF trip.

I told my counselor that I had filed for divorce. “Congratulations” is what she said. I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress. I told about the things I wrote about elsewhere here on 43T, so I won’t go over it twice.

“This means you were ready to end it, even without any cushion to land on.” Me: “yep.”

And so I begin the authentic life. “Hi, I’m Bill, and my divorce is not yet final, but it’s in the courts, so I’m not single, and not exactly married.”

(Photo at “Ben’s Chili Bowl”)

and I can honestly say, I have no regrets.

I’ll be “filed for divorce.”

I think it goes this way:
we don’t have a marriage,
so we shouldn’t be married.

He will call me tonight to let me know the next steps.

It is a milestone.

the funeral was this week. Paul was a widower for five years with three young children when he met my mother’s single friend Evelyn. They fell in love and married. It was 1964, my sister Nancy reminded me. In the spring. The spring before I moved to California to live with my dad and step mother for the next five years. But this is about Paul, not me.

They married. It was the first wedding I ever attended. I was twelve, that spring of 1964.

I remember their wedding through foggy spectacles. There was a photo on the lawn. They were a happy couple. He was older. Chubby Checker had a new song, “the Twist” which was played at the reception, and I learned my first dance.

He had three children. Donna, Joyce and Mark. I remember a beach house on the Jersey shore where we visited. The stories include: he only had a garage, but after one particularly bad storm, he lassoed a house in the bay that had been blown away and he had it moved to his lot. Then, he had a house.

Paul had a garage, and he saved things. He had a box of “axe handles,” and a box of “broken axe handles.” He had a box of “string” and a box of “string too short to save.”

His children never accepted Evelyn. He was happily married for 45+ years. I feel sorry for his children, as I know ‘Ev’ was a good woman. Good in her core, and good to her husband and good to the children.

Paul was 92 when he died this autumn. Eve is probably 70-75 now. I know she was lucky to have those years with Paul

R.I.P. Paul Hladchuk, and bless you, Evelyn for saving his life … the second half of his life. Perhaps I’ll be as lucky as you.

The “Society of Friends” is familiar to me, in that I attended a “Friends School” as a child from kindergarten to sixth grade.

“Quakers” are know for being pacifists.

A new convert might say, “I’m not ready to put down my sword.”

A congregant might say, “That is okay. Keep your sword as long as you think you need to.”

Literally: I’ve put two of my rifles up for sale, and one has sold.

Figuratively: I’ve stopped writing about mrsbill … AND … I’ve deleted photos from my hard disk that I would not be happy to show my mother. May she rest in peace.

I arrived in DC yesterday, and for the first time in a very long time, I came here not to “get away from someone.”

I have my own apartment in IL now, and can live there in peace and quiet, the kind I used to find by getting away from the motherofmychildren.

Now, I’m in DC for my own reasons.

I’m happier about that.

last session two weeks ago on 9/11/2009;
next session 10/16/2009

I explained about telling everyone that I’m moving to the apartment, about moving, filling it with things from CraigsList, the two housewarming gift boxes, about spending more time with the boys in events in their school, etc.

I also explained how it is that this separation and pending divorce is all about mrsbill and me, not some expectation of a specific happy future, just a general concept that the future will be happier for me, and perhaps for mrsbill. That has become clearer to me as I go through this.

Still, the apartment feels like I’m finally taking the right steps for the right reasons.

A job in DC may be available in the near future if the small firm bidding as a subcontractor to the large systems integrator comes through. In any case, two years from now, I’ll be living and working there and the boys will be off to college.

We discussed the idea of mediation rather than a court battle for separation. We talked about the idea of family counseling or individual counseling.

I reviewed my brother-in-law’s admonition to be “fair and civil” and my question back to him about what is “fair.”

I reviewed the open house / housewarming scheduled for Sunday after the hockey game, and how I’d like to get to the point where the boys have one dinner a week at least at my place, and stay over when they are ready to do that.