Marking a Milestone

Half a decade ago, I walked away from my marriage with my children in tow. Half a decade ago, God led us out of our Egypt. I can’t believe it’s been 5 years. It all seems like it happened yesterday. The road has been very rocky. It has not been easy but nonetheless, I am thankful that unlike Lot’s wife in the bible, I did not look back and  become transfixed. Baby steps has gotten  me this far. I will continue to take those baby steps. I don’t always feel like I am making progress but my relatives, friends and people around me tell me that I am.

Not that I make a conscious effort to remember this date but today i woke up and I was not sure how to feel. What I knew for sure was that it was now time to fully take off the “proverbial” mourning clothes, stop asking why, and fully march forward. So I decided instead of feeling sad on this day, i would celebrate our freedom from oppression and abuse. I also decided that from this point on, I will view that date or anniversary as Independence Day! While I don’t know what the future holds, I am going to keep hope alive and believe that the future will be good, in spite of the many hopes and dreams unfulfilled.

Of course, my wish is for another loving long term partner someday. If it happens great, if it doesn’t i am still okay and I will still be me. I was whole and complete before a man walked into my life and I am still whole and complete now. So for now, I will remain happily single, loving my singleness, getting to Know me again, enjoying my children and time with family and friends and just carrying on living….i ask everyone who reads this to please raise a glass in a toast along with me and for me, while I say cheers 🥂Half a decade and like the bird in the picture above, it’s time for lift off…

Financial Sanity for the Single Mother

 

This single parenting/single woman life has been tough to say the least. It has not been easy at all. The loneliness, doing it all yourself and the financial struggle is too much to bear on some days. But through it all I hold on tight to God and I lean on family and friends for moral support when I need to.. I am very thankful for my children who are absolutely understanding and considerate of our situation. They don’t make unnecessary demands of me and do all within their power to not put added pressure on me.

I have learned to clip coupons, to stretch my dollars to be creative in my cooking. But getting that ever growing grocery cost under control is a continuous struggle. Not because I am wasteful but due to the rising cost of Inflation. My bills are paid first, then everything else after that is dealt with on an as needed basis, one day at a time and one need at a time. The yard stick for measuring our needs became is this a need or a want? I buy clothes for myself and my children only when absolutely necessary, on sale or with discount coupons that are mailed to me. Every day, every need, every financial transaction is a juggling act.

I have learned to use store cards to collect points. Sometimes those points come in handy, it just might mean I am strategic in my shopping for that week. For instance i applied for a grocery store credit card and I collect points that I can use for groceries.  Every now and then I accumulate enough for a loaf of bread, milk and egg and maybe some fruit for that week. The biggest thing for me has been not having that other partner to feel like you can lean on, even if they were not much of an income earner. Just that sense of security that there is someone there who may pick up the slack if need be (if they are willing to because having a spouse does not necessarily mean they are willing to pull their weight financially or otherwise).

I understand that I am just rambling on but finding that financial stability has been one of the biggest huddles I have had to face since being on my own with 2 kids. It is a good thing that we are not shown all that is ahead of us as we take steps or make decisions in life. If that were the case,  a lot of people would not take the steps to do what is necessary. I totally understand now why some women do not leave abusive situations or a marriage that is not working because they fear they will not be able to stand on their own.

Signs That I Am Healing

Where do i begin? I am starting to notice many signs that point to the fact that I am healing. While I realize that I may never get to the point where I can say “i am completely healed”, I must say I am feeling quite pleased with my progress. Progress, not perfection is my goal.

1. I am learning that I can trust myself and I am starting to trust and believe in myself again
2. I am learning that I can trust my decisions again
3. I can listen to love songs again, just because, and enjoy listening and not feel sad
4. I can be in the presence of friends we used to have in common and still have fun (previously, I was sad to be with mutual friends)
5. I can talk about “the ex” without feeling any anger, sadness or animosity (well for the most part) and certainly not as deeply asi used to feel
6. I am noticing that there are other men who walk on the surface of this earth 😀
7. I am starting to find other men attractive
8. Some friendships that had broken down are being rebuilt (emphasis is on the word “some”)
9. While I doubted for a long time that I could maintain a home with children on my own, I now realize that I am actually doing it-I have been doing it all along
10. Lastly, I realize that i am really not doing it all on my own. I am healing and moving forward with the help of God and being surrounded by my children, family and good friends. I will continue to heal.

10 Lessons I have Learned

Looking back, i realize that divorce is not an escape, not an easy way out. But necessary in certain circumstances. While i have no regrets there are many lessons that i have learned that i am taking forward with me. Here are 10 of them for now.

1. Divorce is a death. A death of your dreams, you life as you know it, what was, what could have been and what never will be.
2. You do have to treat it as a death and give yourself the time that you need to grieve it. To leave it behind, you must grieve it.
3. There is no set time to “complete” your grief. Stick to your own timeline. Do not let anyone tell you how to grieve or that you have done enough grieving.
4. On the other hand, while it is good to grieve, you must recognize when you have done enough of it and need to get up again and start moving forward.
5. Some friendships and relationships will die a natural death with your marriage. Let it be. Let people go.
6. Healing is a long process but you will heal. Even though it might take time and baby steps, but you will get there. Give yourself the time and grace you need.
7. It is imperative that you have a spiritual practice to help you stay grounded. You can call on God, pray, meditate, have a morning ritual of reading devotionals, have a spiritual mentor. Whatever will help you get through this very difficult phase.
8. Do not hesitate to do whatever helps keep your mental and emotional health stable. As long as it is not illegal or criminal.
9. I know this sounds cliché but surround yourself with family and friends who support you. Who build you up. Do not hesitate to cut toxic people out of your life.
10. Be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself and forgive the other party too for your own peace of mind.

The biggest lessson of all is that dreams do die. But when one dream dies, you can dream up another one. You’re allowed!

Happily Ever or Never After?

Kal and I pretty much carried on with our separate lives from that point on.  He was working out of town and would come to town every few months for a short period of time. He would see the children at that time. He continued to put pressure on the children and ask them to “talk to their mother. Tell her to come back so our family can be together again. Everyone has spoken to her and she is not listening. Your mother is the one destroying this family”. He would also say disrespectful things about my parents to their grandchildren. But through it all, the children knew better and could see through him. I spoke with my lawyer to see what could be done to stop him from saying things to the kids, involving them in our issues and to stop him from being emotionally abusive towards them. My lawyer advised that I might just have to grin and bear it when he is around as there are no laws protecting against that.

Kal made half-hearted attempts to contact me, to speak with me by phone. Each time, he would end up threatening me or we would end up arguing. I would work away from our hour long conversations feeling very small and unsure of my decisions. Eventually, I limited our contacts to email and texts only and our conversations to just anything involving the children. It was hard to go “no-contact” but completely limiting contact was one of the best things I could have done. It was only then that I began to detach emotionally, move forward and began to heal.

Fast forward to the present time, 3 ½ years later, I got the news from a cousin of his that he had re-married. No prior warning given to the children. By the time we heard, One week later he still had not told the children. Thus began another journey. Finally accepting that this man is a narcissist, incapable of showing compassion to others, lacking remorse and definitely not considerate of how his actions can impact others – such as his children. Of course, I was pained. I had to grieve what was and what could have been, but I was not grieving him – no, not at all.

With his new marriage, I have some closure. Especially seeing that she was “one of them”. She belongs to the religion he practices and dresses like them. It seemed like the whole thing was a set up.  He wanted me gone so he would marry a subservient wife. He did not want to do the dirty work himself but decided that he would be mean to me and when I got tired I would leave and then he replaced me with the type of wife he wanted. I can now put that aspect of my life to rest. I can put him to rest in my mind. With that I will no longer write about the divorce but will be moving on to lessons I have learnt through all of this. And how through it all God continues to be faithful. I will also write about the synchronous events that happened along the way and continue to share about this new journey; the new chapter just beginning in my life.

If you want to know about the psychology involved in a relationship like mine, check out “It’s all about Power and Control” by Norman Quantz.

The Fall Out

As soon as Kal received the final divorce letter, all hell broke loose. I had purchased beds for our children. They had the beds we purchased as toddlers which they had long overgrown. I asked Kal to help pay for half, he told me to send him a copy of all the receipts. I did, he then turned around and said since he had not agreed to it and I had not informed him before making the purchases he will not assist and will not pay his half of that expense.

He also said hence forth any purchases for the children must first be vetted by him and if he is not in support of it, I am on my own if I chose to go ahead and purchase it. He also demanded receipts for any purchases I make for the children, whether he decides to help or not. Also as soon as the divorce became final, Kal informed me that he will only comply with the court ordered payments – basic child maintenance amount, health and sports fee.  Kal was awarded minimal payments based on the two years before the divorce when he did not do much for work and had a low income. One day he sent me the child support payment and copied our oldest child in the email, showing the breakdown of what he was sending. I emailed him back copying both of our sons and his best friend and confidant, the one who had been advocating for him. (Not my finest moment -I admit. I probably should not have responded or copied our children or the friend but several attempts to let Kal see the reason why he should not involve our children in our issues had fallen on deaf ears). The friend was shocked that Kal would do that and promised to phone him. His friend did not believe me at first until he saw the email. In my response to him, I had told him to stop involving the children in adult matters and that that was manipulative and abusive. I knew he was not going to be amenable going forward so I went ahead and registered with the child maintenance enforcement program so that all financial exchanges would go through them and I would not have to deal with him on a monthly basis. To this day, I have only been able to collect the basic maintenance as the child maintenance program said the court order was not specific enough and they cannot collect payment on anything else.

Prior to the divorce being final, Kal did not give anything towards the support of the children for 7 months until I went ahead and had a lawyer draw up a Legal Separation agreement, which Kal refused to sign and which prompted me to file for divorce. When he eventually started paying child support, it was a nightmare. He would ask me to send him a break down one week before the end of the month, I would and then I would not hear from him.  Sometimes he decided to pay on the first of the month, sometimes not. No explanation, no acknowledgement or anything. That left me anxious every month. Registering with the child maintenance enforcement program meant I got less child support but it gave me peace of mind….

Wheels Set in Motion

While the divorce was in process, life carried on as normal. I certainly felt persecuted in other ways as things kept going wrong in other areas of my life. For instance things were constantly breaking down. I know this seemed like normal everyday occurrences that would not mean much to others However to me it was a big deal. It started with me getting into a car accident. Driving in a residential area at a low speed, I hit black ice and my car did a 180 degree turn. Thankfully there were no cars coming on the other side of the road (I was going to drop of one of my children at his friend’s house on my way to work). My car was stopped by the curb and I became stuck in the snow. The repair costs were high and adding up fast. Next my microwave broke down, within a week, my fridge broke down, within two weeks my kitchen cabinet fell off the wall, then my sink sprung a leak, then my fridge broke down again. 

These all seemed odd considering the fact that the apartment and all of its components and appliances were brand new.  Then there was the fire alarm in my building which went off on average, once a month at the most inopportune times; anytime between 11:00pm and 4:30am. Sometimes it went off due to a false alarm, sometimes the danger was real.  There were several days where I woke up and said I can’t do this anymore. Several days where I wanted to quit. But I kept at it. It was one thing after the other. At the time, I had my two jobs. At one of the jobs, we took turns being the on-call worker for the week. Which also meant you got random calls at any and all hours of the night. At the second job, I would occasionally take an overnight shift on the weekend. I was under a tremendous amount of stress. With God’s help and a lot of support from my family and a few good friends, I kept putting one foot in front of the other as I was reminded several times.

The divorce took about 5 months to be finalized by the courts. But like everything else since the separation things just seemed to line up. Things fell into place as they should. For instance, Kal for some unexplainable reason did not get notification of the divorce being final until the appeal period had passed. He had 30 days to appeal the divorce but the notification had been mailed to a wrong address, before finally finding its way back to the proper address. The same thing happened when I initially filed for divorce. A notice was mailed to him and he had 30 or 60 days to contest the divorce filling, to put a halt to it. By the time he received it, it was too late. It might seem to some that I had a hand in it or the courts had delayed this on purpose. This was not so at all. Throughout the divorce process I was expecting that by some miracle the process would be stopped, God would send me a sign, he would say, hold on. But every time I checked, in my spirit I felt and hear, “keep moving forward” and so I did. The finalization of the divorce came with its own repercussions.

 

 

The Next Step

Kal’s excuse for not signing was that I had not told him that it was a “legal document” and he had not agreed to sign a legal document. He wondered why we could not just sit and draw up an agreement between us and just follow that. What I failed to tell him was that I did not believe a single word out of his mouth. He became more and more inconsistent and unreliable. He was defiant that he would not sign the legal separation agreement and I should go ahead with whatever the next step is- which would be filing for divorce. I spelt it out to him clearly that the only other way to achieve what I had requested for on the legal separation document was to file for divorce. I gave him some time to think about it. My great uncle intervened. Asked me to give him one more month. He still refused to sign it. The day before the one month was up I called him to remind me, to plead with him for a change a heart. He stuck to his guns. I asked him one last question.

I said “please tell me what your truth is. If I come back can I eat or bring pork or related products into the house? Can I have a glass of wine if I chose to, can i serve wine to visitors (all of these things we used to do before his sudden change). He said “you know you have always said it is good for one to be true to themselves. So my truth is that Pork or alcohol will never be allowed in my house anymore”.  He said you don’t really eat pork and you are not much of a drinker anyway so I don’t see what the problem is. I told him the issue was way bigger that pork and wine. The issue was not whether I was a pork eater or a wine drinker. The issue was that I felt that my fundamental rights to choose was being threatened and taken away from me. The freedom to choose to do or not do whatever I wanted to do as long as I was not harming anyone. I wondered what would be next, if I agreed with him that it was okay for him to choose for me and dictate to me what I can eat or can’t eat. What was next? Would he control what I wore? Who I saw? Where I went? I remember not long after I had left him he had said to me “when we get back to together, there will be rules laid out that has to be followed”. I had shuddered when I heard him say that and that has always stayed with me. I don’t even want to imagine what he meant or what could have happened, if we had gotten back together.

I thanked him for sharing his truth with me. I had my answer! I knew I was to proceed with divorce proceedings. I also knew I was not hearing otherwise from God. I knew God was telling me all along to keep moving forward. As soon as we ended the conversation, I called my lawyer and asked him to proceed with filling divorce papers. It was an agonizing decision but his answer released me to move forward. The wheels had been set in motion and now there was no looking back…

Like a Game of Chess

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With the house sold, Kal asked if he could move in with me and we can try to work on our relationship while living together. I told him that was not a good idea. That would be going back to square one. It had been 7 months since our separation. Nothing had changed. He had vehemently opposed attending counselling or consider anything I had proposed. How likely would it be for him to take those steps when we are back living together? I wondered.

Like a game of chess, I had to be strategic in separating from him; physically, emotionally and financially. I could not take my name off his accounts. The banks advised that as long as my name is on a loan it is considered marital property and we are both responsible. Kal and I could not agree on what to do about the proceeds from the sale of the house and the debts we had incurred due to his various business dealings and investments. I wanted them paid off, he did not. I consulted a lawyer who advised that the only way to ensure I am not on the hook for further debts once the debts are paid off was to get a legal separation agreement. He had also not given any financial support towards supporting the children in 7 months. The separation agreement would address that too or at least subsequent support payments. From this point on, I waited to hear from God before I made the next move. And I made each move trusting that I had heard from him.

Somehow, Kal had insisted that I pick up the cheque for the sale of the house from the lawyer’s office alone and he had given instructions that the lawyer release it to me. I went straight to the bank and paid off the loans. There was not very much left after all was paid off. Kal asked me to hold on to what was left. My lawyer also advised that since he had not paid child support, that money would probably be equal to or almost equal to what he would have been required to pay. It would at least cover 5 months payment. I had to be strategic in disentangling as Kal became very uncooperative and difficult. The lawyer needed Kal’s tax information to draw up the agreement. While contemplating on what to do as I know Kal would not voluntarily give it to me, the tax information that was mailed to him somehow got re-directed to my address. To me, that was the hand of God.

I should mention that Kal had agreed to me going to draw up a separation document. I had requested to have my name taken off certain things and he had not followed through. I told him I would have to draw up a separation agreement. He said go ahead, I will sign it. I had also now requested that he assist financially with the kids and he said when he has the money he’ll start assisting. Judging by his past behavior, I was convinced that I could not take his word for it or trust anything he says at all. And of course when the legal separation document was ready for Kal’s signature, he refused to sign it. His excuse was that I did not tell him that it would be drawn up by a lawyer and he was not ready to pay a dime to a lawyer. He was required to have a lawyer review the document and then sign it in the presence of a lawyer if it was satisfactory to him or challenge it, if it was unsatisfactory. His refusal to sign made me ask, what next…..

The Untangling begins

After I stopped allowing Kal to come over to my house, he arrange to meet with me for coffee.  After several pleas to give him an audience, and saying he was sorry and he wanted to work on the marriage, I agreed to meet with him as needed but only in a public place. I met with him a few more times before I stopped meeting with him completely. Each time the meeting did not go as planned. He would start out being nice and asking me what he needs to do to get back together. Minutes into the “meeting” he would become angry. At out last meeting. He asked what he needed to do for us to get back together. I told him he already knew what needed to be done, I referred to the list I had given him months ago requesting that he attend counselling alone first, and then we can attend counselling together as a family. His response to me was “I have told you several times that I don’t believe in counselling, it’s not for me. You are starting to sound like a broken record.  I am not giving you any rules, why are you giving me rules to follow. I am no longer working of off that list. What are you going to do about it?” After him telling me for the umpteenth time that he was no longer interested in working on the list, I brought out my copy of the list and said, “This is the last time I am ever going to bother you about the list. I tore up the list and walked over to the garbage and threw it out. I went back to my seat to carry on with the conversation.

Kal asked, “What is the way forward now”. I told him there was no way forward, I told him that he not willing to consider counselling is a deal breaker for me. He became visibly angry and said “I will never ever let you raise my kids. You know I just don’t say things for the fun of it. This won’t end well”. I told him I would record his utterances as that is again a threat. He again said “why do you consider everything to be a threat. Your thinking is off”.  I walked over to the man sitting a few feet away from us.  I told him what Kal said and asked him if that was a threat or not. The man shook his head, and replied, saying; “that’s a very serious threat”. I returned to my seat and told him that since he had again resorted to threatening, this meeting was over. I got up and left. I had told him prior to that if there are any more threats when I meet with him, I would leave and I would no longer meet with him.

We had tried to rent out our house, after I moved out. There was not a lot of interest. After several months, we had put it up for sale and only had one person show interest. Within an hour of me ripping up the list at our last meeting and leaving, Kal called and asked me to meet him at the house as we have a potential buyer for our house and the potential buyer wanted to sign the sale papers that night. It was like a nudge from God, that I was on the right path by taking the list off the negotiation table. The house that we had put up for rent for months, and tried to sell for an additional number of months, suddenly had a serious buyer that night. We signed the papers for the sale of the house that same night and within a couple of weeks the deal was completely sealed. The closing process was effortless. Then began the untangling of our lives…