Play Pretend

LB has long been into imaginary play, but since we moved to two homes, she has amped up several games.

When we first moved, she would repetitively play a game where she was Elsa hiding in her ice palace.  I was Anna and had to go find her and knock on the door and say: "Elsa, come out of the castle, we need you in Arandale.  We miss you Elsa." Elsa would run out of her castle and down the hallway and collapse on the floor.  I would chase after her and hug her on the floor to "unfreeze" her.  The "I miss you, I love you, come home" themes seemed important to LB as she got used to living in two places.

Lately, it's been Mama Cat/Baby Cat.  Baby Cat (played by LB) doesn't have a home and wanders around lost and crying.  Mama Cat finds Baby Cat and says "Baby Cat, are you lost, don't you have a mama?  You can come live with me in my house and I'll be your Mama Cat." The Mama helps Baby build a cozy nest.

Lesbians and Non-Binary Queer Folks Getting Divorced

This morning finds me not waking up to a small child smiling and reaching to pat my shoulder, not waking to a small child yelling angrily "Mama, I want cereal." Instead I'm drinking my coffee black because I forgot to buy milk, chopping parsley for tabouli, checking OKC.  What did we do before the internet? I'm part of a group for divorced lesbian moms, and on the whole it is a good thing.  People who have been there, people to give advice and support, but in some cases these women are doing to their partners the very thing that was done to me.  That's hard.  Sometimes the group makes me feel incredibly lucky to have a good, mature co-parenting relationship, sometimes it just makes feel bummed out about our inevitable failures as human beings.

I don't know why I feel compelled to compile posts about lesbians divorcing, but here they are:

Susan, "Two Moms, Two Boys, Two Homes."

Casey has a few relevant posts, but I'm going to link to, "I won't tell you I miss you."  I actually do say "I miss you when you aren't here," to LB, but in the context of "I miss you when you aren't here, but I always know I'll see you soon."  My feeling is that LB will feel sadness/wistfullness/loss, so I want to model those emotions and how to manage those emotions.  That said, I really appreciate how Casey talks about being a positive parent when you aren't feeling positive inside.

Cheryl, "When Marriage Equality Activists Break Up."   This post really gets at the special guilt that comes with being gay-married and then gay-divorced.

J has been blogging her long journey surviving infidelity, divorce, and now building a new blended family.  Many of her more recent posts are password protected, but you can read back about her divorce and healing.  This post, "Loyalty," is representative of the journey.

And an article about lesbian divorce from 1992, in case you've forgotten that the only thing worse that getting divorced is not being able to get divorced.

#queermutiny (a blogging for LGBTQ Families Day post)

There's a new kid in LB's class.  Sometimes Estelle seems happy, sometimes she seems sad.  Last week her mom carried her into school crying, and said to me "when do they adjust, because I can't take this!" Over the weekend I reminded LB to ask Estelle to play.  "I ask her, but sometimes she just cries." "Well, ask her again. It makes people happy when they have friends to play with. You used to cry at school, but now you have friends and you play all the time."

When I picked LB up today I got a report from her teacher that "LB was a very kind friend today and played with Estelle." I am so proud of that Sweetapuss!

A year ago, almost to the day, I was at home trying to balance mom-ing and working while my wife was away on business and, unbeknownst to me, turning her emotional affair into a full-on affair.  Today at work I got served with divorce papers.  I knew it was coming, but that didn't make standing in the rain signing off on paperwork with a kindly older gentleman who said, with feeling, "I'm wishing you all the best," any easier.

Since I found out I've run a lot of miles. I've done a lot of pushups. I spend some months trying to save my marriage.  I found a new place to live. I've made new friends. I've reconnected with old friends. I've gone to therapy. I've bonded with my daughter. I've been given so much materially, emotionally, and socially.

If you've read this blog before, you know I don't have much time for queer respectability-the idea that gays and friends are "just like everybody else" or even have a responsibility to strive to be "just like everybody else."  I spent a couple months this past year waking up every morning and telling myself "the only thing you have to do today is be a decent person."

This year has stripped away many of my trappings of respectability and forced me to think about what matters to me as a divorcee, a queer mom, a daughter, a friend-to love and be loved, to engage with the world, to live by my own values.  That's not necessarily a gay thing, but it is because some twenty or twenty five years ago I felt like being gay freed me from the trap of respectability and here I am again.

Many thanks to Mombian for hosting the 10th Annual Blogging for LGBTQ Families Day! I hope you'll click over here all the posts!

How Hard It Is

I've been rocking it as an over-compensating, abandoned, soon-to-be-divorced, lesbian mom.  My introverted self has been constantly busy, and when I'm busy I'm happy.  This week brought a sinus infection and terrible allergies with a tightness in my chest, and it was time to slow down.  I wasn't worried about mother's day, because it's never been a huge deal to me.  But today with no fun plans (but rather, run, work, paint if energy remains), I feel a deep sadness for what I've lost.

There's a go-getum-girl school of divorce that says the way to get over your lost relationship is to get out into the world, and I do think it's good for me to be busy, but I think that school of thought conflates the period of time after mourning with the action people take at that time.  So right now, I can take all the actions of a person not in mourning, but I'll still feel the sadness.  And it sucks.  But it's an appropriate kind of sadness that leads to emotional health. Kind of like the way exercise hurts and leads to physical health.

I've also become the Cassandra of struggling and just-okay marriages.  I just want to scream: "if you want to remain married, you aren't trying hard enough! Your marriage is struggling and you can't find two hours to spend alone with your spouse, you've got to be kidding me!" Nobody hears that person, I didn't listen to that person, until it's too late.

But despite all that there is my wonderful little girl, who got me a pink toothbrush for mother's day, who said: "If you miss me and feel sad, just look at the flowers grandmom and I got you." I'm sad, but lucky.

New Apartment

I just signed a lease on a new apartment for March 1.  A nice, plain two bedroom in a sunny 2nd floor unit.  It's $50 a month cheaper than the kind of weird attic space with the laundry and parking issues.  It has a very sensible layout, with a bedroom on the north side for LB (nice and dark) and a bedroom on the south side for me.  The kitchen is south facing, which was a major selling point for me.  It's a smallish eat in kitchen, with standard low-budget white stove and wood laminate counters (wish they'd kept the old cabinets).  Most of the rooms have nicely redone wood floors, and the whole building seems clean and well-maintained (unlike the death trap attic space).

The neighborhood is close to where we are now, and very close to daycare.  Ten years ago it used to be pretty rough around there, but I've been in the area a lot and there doesn't seem to be anything sketchy going on now.  There's a pretty big park across the street and a corner store on the other corner.

Feels good.

And then there's the bad:
https://lbbreadandroses.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/crazytown/

The Gay Divorcee

The first state-sanctioned gay marriages in the US began in 2004. Guess who is now divorced? Hillary and Julie Goodridge, the lead plaintiffs in the Massachusetts court case that brought gay marriage to that state.  So I'm in good company?

B and I went down to get our marriage license on the first day they were offered in D.C.  It was a lot of fun with people giving out cupcakes and flowers and a long line of diverse couples.  We were couple 80-something.  And I've wondered if we are the first couple from that day to get divorced.  Probably not, probably at least one of those couples freaked out within the first year and decided to split.

And on that day we were minor gay marriage poster children.  We were on the tv news.  Funny story: so apparently it's actually quite difficult to stand outside a courthouse and figure out which people walking out the building are part of a soon-to-be gay-married couple and who are just random work friends going to lunch.  So the news crew wasn't approaching anyone until they saw us walk out, me carrying the flower that I was given in line.

The charming Jim Darling took our picture.  If you need a portrait or some wedding photography, you should look him up here.

If you've been reading here, you know I am no fan of marriage as a system of distributing rights and privilege.  Remaining married isn't an issue of moral obligation to me.  But I do think that if a couple chooses to get married by the state and make that public commitment it comes with an ethical obligation to try and stay married.  And within that framework, four years of marriage seems pretty pathetic.

B says she feels no particular shame as a gay divorcee, but I'll admit to a twinge.  I think that twinge comes from the hubris of thinking that it would never be us who would split, that somehow we were different than all the divorced straight couples we know, that we would cope every so gracefully with the pressures that face all couples.  Pride comes before fall.

Blizzard

The snow started slow this afternoon, but now it's really starting to blow out there.  And it's my first blizzard alone in ten years-mostly alone, I do have my Ladybug tucked into bed upstairs.  B and I share a love of extreme weather, and we've been through blizzards, hurricanes, and on derecho together.  Two years ago I hitched a ride from BWI with a complete stranger after my flight got cancelled, because I couldn't imagine sitting alone in Baltimore while B and LB were in the blizzard zone.  My first bloodwork when we were trying for LB involved careening through the unplowed streets of Baltimore to get to our early morning appointment.  Overall, I feel like I'm doing well. I've been really honest with my friends about the state of things, and they all seem to think I'm doing pretty well.  But this hurts.

I've also started looking at apartments.  So far I've looked at a super cheap, super rundown "loft." It would be great for 3 youths, but I was worried about filling all that space, and the heating bill, and the 2nd egress which was a trap door in the front room.  Apt 2 has more potential.  It's more than I wanted to spend, but includes all utilities, which is a big savings in New England and I'd never have to worry about getting a huge heating bill.  It's a weird attic space with lots of little rooms, but it has potential for a lot of retro cuteness, and plenty of room for me and LB and visitors.  There some weird laundry situation I didn't understand about having to pay out the first floor tenant for use of the washer, and uncertainty about the parking (for visitors because you can't park overnight on the street in Providence without a permit). We would be close to daycare, library, bus, shops (although not a grocery store), and parks.  It's a nice, safe area, which I guess should be a big sell, but I was actually hoping to move into an adjacent neighborhood that would be a little more income and race diverse.

And then I started looking on craigslist and saw that there are actually a decent number of places in my price range-like also because this is a weird time of year to rent a place-so that's good.  But I'm trying decide whether I should take a place for March 1 now (and basically pay an extra month) or wait and rent something for April 1 and scramble to get out of our current place.  Option 1 would probably be much better for LB's transition, but I also don't want to throw away a month of rent (a month in which B and I could be renting 4! places).  Decisions, decisions.

Stay warm and shovel safe!

Want a Valentine's Card? And Miscellany

After the success of project Christmas paper chain, and upon realizing the excessive amount of art supplies building in our closet, and in pursuit of cheerfulness, LB and I are going to be making a bunch of Valentine's card.  If you'd like one and you haven't recently sent me your mailing address to chronicladybug at gmail.com.  

Today I told myself that I'd run if the temperature went over 20, and of course when I looked at my phone it was 21.  That kind of sucked.

On my run I stopped by our local fancy kitchen shop and ordered the present I'm giving myself for my move into a new place for LB and me-that should happen in a couple/few months.

PW protected rants likely incoming, but for now I'll just share that there was someone VAPING on the bus.  Who does that?  It was bad enough that a woman who was actually smoking sat down next to me in bus shelter-but it is Rhode Island and so I expect that kind of thing.  And she did look like she need that smoke more than I need to breathe.  But really, vaping on the bus?