- NTOO-NOT THE ONLY ONE!
- POST # 27 “
- THE GLUE”
- Hey family!, is it OK, if I refer to you guys that way? As we journey on together and I get a little feedback from you guys from time to time, I feel a little more inclined to see some of you in that way. If you are dropping in for the first time or are returning for another healthy dose of NTOO, yes you are in the right place and it does state that at the top of the page. We know glue as something that holds things together and whether your preference is Elmer’s, Gorilla, or one of the other thousands of products charged with holding it together, they all have the same common task of keeping or holding stuff together. They all use some kind of active adhesive or other chemical compound to draw their strength . There is an ancient Japanese art form known as “Kintsugi”, I hope that I am spelling that correctly, and it is basically about putting broken pieces of pottery back together and highlighting the cracks with gold. The tenants here is embracing the flaws making it stronger than it was and tells an incredible story. I recently flew to Florida to visit my daughter and her family. I will openly confess that I had a level of apprehension about the trip which was uncanny for me. I wasn’t even sure that I was going to make the trip, and I drug my feet until the last possible moment about making flight arrangements, and as a rule, I don’t recommend anyone doing that unless absolutely necessary, such as for a funeral or something along those lines. Some of you may be wondering if my daughter and I had a falling out or if I wasn’t to crazy about my son in law, but you would be wrong on both accounts. So, what would be your next best guess about me visiting my one and only daughter? If you guess ex-wife, then you would definitely be hearing a ding, ding, ding. A few post ago or so, I wrote about a guy that I ran across with some pretty severe negativity issues and with the ex, it’s all about dysfunction. I want to tell you that I don’t know how we got here or how it became so severe , and to some degree that is absolutely true. We have been divorced for over a dozen years now and have probably shared about that many words between us, with the exception of a hospital visit that our son had. I forgave her along time ago for her part in our debacle, even though she doesn’t believe that she played a part or had anything to be forgiven for. When it came to the reciprocation part, that has been a not so much! There are people in this country who do a great job at keeping dissension and division a front page story. And in like fashion and form , my ex has kept drama between us alive and well. I really can’t even really call it drama, but she has made everyone aware of her perceived, self inflicted suffering. I guess at best, you would call the situation awkward. Prior to this trip, the last time we even came close to being in the same room together, was about three years ago, at the grandkids birthday party, and she slipped out the back door as I came in the front door. She had spouted off about there being emotional abuse in our marriage, which really made me question if she had been married to someone other than myself. I was recently explaining to a friend of mine about the differences between the sexes ,when it comes to our brains. We deal with pain and trauma differently. Women for the most part live on a continuum ,while men have a tendency to leap over messy things and just push them way, way, way down and compartmentalize them . I’m not saying that is healthy, by any stretch of the imagination, but that is just the way thinks usually work for us. Women, for the most part live on that continuum and things have to make sense for them to move on. If things just don’t add up, they have to come up with something to fill the holes in the story, for it to make sense and for them to be able to move forward in life. That being said, my ex wife had to make me a villain, so that she could play the roll of the victim. It sounds as if I’m talking about characters in a movie plot, well it’s very similar and everyone has a part to play. Sometimes you may go to the movies or watch one in the privacy of your own home, but the point is you are sitting down for a little entertainment. Sometimes Hollywood will do a piece on a real life, event such as pearl Harbor, or some other well known actual historic event. Sometimes do to time constraints, budget, or my personal favorite, to deliberately lead people a stray, they take certain liberties that distort the truth of the production. So, here is my ex wife, who can’t own any of her crap to save her life. She has to make things up, that distort the truth of what actually happened and went wrong, so that she can move on in life. I for the most part have tried to own my junk and will often tell people to take another path, other than one I have traveled. So lets double back to the emotional abuse thing, another self imposed genius, told me that if you try to hold someone accountable for things that they don’t want to be held accountable for, then that could be interpreted as emotional abuse, and if that is the case, then I guess I’m guilty on all accounts. No!, I’m not going into further details at this point, but stay tuned, because she did get twenty years of my life, and probably deserves a post all to herself. Oh! ,where was? I, oh yeah glue. When I was married, we were the ideal family of four, now days if you get one of each, you normally call it quits, even though I always saw myself as a dad to four kids. My wife was four years younger than myself and a three year spread between my daughter and son. When stuff hit the proverbial fan, the kids were roughly 19 and 16. I confess and admit to being a complete and utter idiot, because I didn’t think things were that bad between us. I more or less thought that it was just a rough patch and that we would get through it. There is that old saying that by the time the man smells the smoke, for the woman it’s a three alarm fire, and as the firemen would say fully engaged. I , in early post talked about or shared my thoughts on divorce and the aftermath of destruction it ensues. Divorce is like a nuclear war, there are no winners, everyone looses, and at best, it can be difficult to recover. So out of this family of four the one with the least amount of scars and carnage is my daughter. I’m not real sure how she made it through and kept her sanity. I know that she did have her struggles as well. It proved true to me with some of her dating choices that made absolutely no sense to me at the time, but sense then has made the most sense of all. She dated a couple of mama’s boys, where she had complete control over the situation. This one little guy was like a puppy who followed her around, and jumped when she said jump, not exactly what you would call marriage material. My son, took it hard on the chin, in that the ex lead him to believe that he was the reason that we were having problems in our marriage, and nothing could be further from the truth. He is mostly doing the guy thing and compartmentalizing the pain, and choosing to live his life as an antisocialite. As for myself, my dysfunction has been put on full display for you guys through this bog, and if you have missed that, you may want to seek council yourself . I called this one “the glue” because that has become my daughter’s primary job or focus when it comes to the family. I’ve met other divorced people, but they seem to be civil on some level, even if you can tell there has been hurt, pain and that they really don’t like each other very much, and again in some circumstances you wonder how the two of them ever got together in the first place. I will acknowledge two strange dynamics here, and the first is that my daughter always thought that her mother and I would get back together, and while I think that is a common wish amongst some kids for their parents, I think in this case there would be a better chance of them serving ice water in hell. The other is the amount of venom that my ex posses, I’ve heard from countless individuals, that is because she still loves me, and to that I would just simply say I’ve seen no signs of that. Dr. Phil would say that she has some unresolved emotional issues going on, and I that one ,I can surely see. On some level, it’s all most as if she can’t have peace about it until it’s resolved, and I’m hoping that is not really the case. Just imagine if all of our broken relationships could only be healed by some sort of direct interaction with the person who harmed us in the first place. Wow! Just think of the implications of so many people who were hurt by parents that are no longer around. When I look at it, I see it as a self inflicted wound that she refuses to let heal, and she seems pretty determined to take it to the grave with her. Again, my daughter is the one who has kept an optimistic attitude and approach to things. She is the one who rose from the ashes, and has chose to move forward with a healthy relationship and marriage. She is the one who decided to reproduce and make us grandparents . She is the master of or manager of the chaos, which is her mother. She goes out of her way to find harmony and balance. And I will give her credit she is always communicating with us all, even I think left to ourselves ,we would just disband as a family. I know on the surface that sounds ridiculous, because you don’t stop being a family simply because of divorce, and while I say that, I know that is not true for everyone. Ultimately God holds all things together and in His hands, but he has encouraged and empowered my daughter to be” the glue “. There are no perfect people in the world and I’m not going to on any level take credit for the wonderful person she has turned out to be. In some circumstances, I think that she turned out in spite of her mother’s and I dysfunction. She is, and has always been a little bit of a rule follower, and likes things in a neat and orderly fashion. I’m not telling you that she always achieves that, nor is she a perfectionist, but she strides towards doing the right things in the right way. Yes, I’m a proud dad , and I’m grateful that God allows her to be the glue. I could definitely say much more here, but I think you get the point.
- so until next time ✌️.
- Sandy The Southerner
26
