Salt, Meet Wound
I wrote a post entitled Seething. Simmering. Coming to a Full Boil. in August 2006, detailing how my ex’s decision to keep the baby and then run away to Canada pulled the rug out of any realistic plans I had to pursue a career as a musician, which I’d been steadily sacrificing and working toward for 20 years. My friend Ramon wrote me today to tell me that the bass strings I’d suggested to him (La Bella Super Nils) were great and had been handy on the road with the very band I said no to in August, inspiring the linked post. Ramon didn’t mean to, but he poured salt right into a wound that isn’t anywhere near healing.
I love my son, but everytime I have to talk to his Mom, I always throw up a little in my mouth as I smile my plastic smile and laugh my empty laugh and pretend that everything’s OK when really, nothing’s OK and nothing’s going to be OK.
Last summer, a professor friend of mine was royally fucked by the administration at her employing University. Using as many contrived excuses as possible, the U pretty much dicked her out of tenure for another year or so, putting the kibosh on homeownership plans, vacation plans, income estimates, etc. She was furious. Probably still is.
Without downplaying what happened to my friend, what my ex did to me is far far worse. She didn’t set me back a year: she set me back 18 years. She didn’t just stall my career, she utterly destroyed it. She didn’t just mess up my income estimates: she singlehandedly made sure I’m going to be struggling for the rest of my life, as the share of my income that goes north grows from 25% to 33% to 50% as my son gets older and has more and more needs to cover. And the fact that I have to be civil to her is such a cognitive dissonance, it is slowly but surely robbing me of my sanity. It’s already robbed me of my usual good-nature. I know a lot of you know me as “that perpetually angry, bitter, cynical, depressed bastard” but ask readers like Tim, Kate (not your sister), Larry, or Ray if that was always the case and they’ll tell you a lot of stuff used to just roll off my back.
Just a reminder for any readers who wonder why I’m so bitter: my ex and her family went out of their way to destroy my life, and now they think I should be grateful to them for the “privilege” of seeing my own son.
It sucks holding a grudge, and it sucks hating and being angry all the time. Unfortunately, there’s just no way to let this kind of thing go: between missing my son and missing my life, I hurt all the time, mentally, emotionally, and physically.
So I guess it sucks to be me.
One Response to “Salt, Meet Wound”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:55 am
hey brendan, why is the percentage of your income going to sam going to have to go up like that? i haven’t seen it working like that anywhere (not that i’m an expert.) you really need to get a legal agreement in writing. btw, every woman i know who had kid out of wedlock has never been able to get the full amount of support she would be entitled to were she married to the father. and in the states that have a set formula, i’ve never seen that big of a percentage of income for one kid before (unless it’s net not gross income).
it’s not like we’re talking about a guy with a big income. she has maybe greater earnings potential than you do too.
and you either do or don’t have custody or visitation priveleges…stop being held hostage!