Who is Mark?

I published this blog entry just a few days ago, which explains who Mark is kind of, but I think it was too old so it didn't send to anyone's RSS feeds or anything like that, so I invite everyone to go read that, as a brief explanation of who he is.

Having a year more of experience, I would say that our relationship is akin to a foster mom and son. As I was reading The Lost Boy, and he found the love of a mother for the first time in his foster mom, I felt like I knew exactly what he was talking about.

Mark is 15 now. He is dating a girl named Kim. He plays cricket, and is great at Sonic, with his favorite Sonic game being Sonic 3. He loves to play games and is very competitive. He wants to change the world. I love him so very much, and think he is the most amazing beautiful person. I feel honored that he calls me mom.

The Magic of a Rainbow Quilt

I am not a person who values material possessions. Most things to me are replaceable. Things may be expensive, but pretty much anything I have, I feel like I could replace or lose, and that'd be fine. I lost a lot of my journals a few years ago, and that was probably the worst thing, and it sucked and kinda gave me weird guilt and grief, but still not really that much.

There is one thing in my possession now that I consider my most prized possession. And it is my rainbow quilt. If you are reading this from my blog, you can see it in all its glory all about these words.

I've written about this rainbow quilt before, and while it was special to me then, it is nothing to how special it is to me now. When Mark came into my life, I wanted so desperately to give him physical manifestations of love in the real world. So last Christmas, I sent him a small quilt, patterned after this larger one, the symbolism of mother and child ever apparent in the manifestation. It was also something I could get done quickly. I wanted him to have something he could wrap up in, but I didn't have time to get it done for Christmas.

And so I sent it off to him, and he loved it. I would hold my rainbow blanket, and he would hold his, and it would connect us for that moment, and he could feel some small measure of love in his world that ached for it so much.

For his birthday, I finished up my other rainbow quilt, and I sent it off to him. Before I sent it off, I spent a week or two holding it each day, so that it would come with super mommy love all over it. I also put the two quilts together, so they would be bonded too. And then I packed that quilt in a box, and shipped it off to Australia.

And so now the magic of the rainbow blankies is that they connect mother and son across an ocean. I will hold my quilt, and Mark will wrap up in his, and it is a moment of beauty, to step out of the world, and take a moment to spend with my son, and to just see him. He amazes me. He is truly beautiful and amazing to me. And whenever I take a moment to stop, slow down, and appreciate that, I am filled with wonder.

That, to me, is the magical wonder of my most prized possession, my rainbow quilt.

Hmm....

I am in a silly mood. And I am not quite sure how direct to be about it. So yay vagueries!

Oh I am making myself laugh with all the things I am thinking about writing that I am not!

Oh what. WHAT! Yes!!! I just found another butternut squash. I thought I had eaten the last of them, but I still have one! This is exciting news. I am so excited for the summer to can and preserve a whole bunch of food. I've been working on my plan for what to do. I love to eat and eat well. And then other times, I don't eat at all and it is annoying.

I started this 101 goals in 1001 days. One of my goals was to brush my teeth every day. I missed yesterday, so now's the time to figure out how I'm gonna deal with that. Obviously I want to keep the goal up. So I don't know, do a brush twice to make it average out? I've already brushed more than once a day a few days though, so meh.

Once I receive my dough whisk, and buy an oven thermometer, I will have my first goal off my list completed. I also tried some Mahi Mahi as part of my trying seafood 8 times goal. One of my goals is to hug everyone as they come into my house. I was really good about it like, 2-3 weeks ago, then not many people have come over, and then I like, forget again. I will be vigilant though! I think I am like, trying to put good rituals into my life. There really is not much ritual to my life.

I've almost been at Vision a year. That is weird. Part of me feels like I've been there forever. It's weird to think that before a year ago, I wasn't there.

Also it seems to me that a fundamental question of parenthood is how much sleep is worth sacrificing for whatever. Like everything is a trade-off, and so much of it ends up revolving around sleep. I mean, there are lots of other ones too, like money too.

There are some things I like reading, but a lot of times with reading, it is not the reading, but having read something that I more enjoy. This being more true with non-fiction. Fiction generally is enjoying the process...otherwise I don't read it. I wonder if I would be more prone to reading more if I had never been forced to in school, or if I would be prone to reading even less because I have not had that experience as much. Because I think like, yeah it'd be nice to be forced to read something. It like, makes it easier to read things that are less compelling. It is a good motivation.

Also I am like, really not thinking. I feel like lately my blog is all thoughtful and whatever, but tonight I just feel stream of consciousness, kinda bouncing around.

I like to write. It is like, beautiful to me, to create or capture meaning.

I think people can be salespeople without having to be shady. I think there can be honesty in sales. I think sales reps discount themselves the most when they think that they have to be shady in order to get things. I don't really see why honesty isn't a core principle value at Vision. But anyway.

I am tired, and hopefully my water is ready so I can take a bath, then go to bed. I need to fix my bed at some point, but then I'm planning on selling it, so not really much point in getting the tubes filled right. I'm excited to move rooms. I should just get a bed and do it. But that'll require time...which I am pretty busy lately. I haven't even cleaned my kitchen really.

K, I'm done.

Why Filing for Divorce is much more Exciting than getting a Driver's License

1. I get my name back! Yay Weinheimer

2. It means I can start dating again!

3. It makes what has felt true for so long finally official

4. Life is moving on

Ok, it's not a long list, but really, I am excited about filing. Like sure running all around town and getting all my copies sorted out, and waiting in line is never fun. Bureaucracy in action. But at the end of it all, I'm just glad that I have just 90 days to wait, and then I'll be freed from the remaining burdens of this relationship.

I feel kinda weird saying that. I feel like I should be more sad or upset or something. But then again I don't feel bad, because if I still thought my relationship had a chance, I would be waiting for him to tell me it was over. Well, he already did tell me it was over, and that is why I filed. If I wasn't ready for it, I wouldn't have done it, and would have been content to keep waiting for him to do it. But I want to move on with my life. I want the world of possibilities to be open to me, in all aspects of my life.

There's a 90-day wait period, so April 27th I can go back to get the final motion put in. And in those 90 days, I'll hopefully sort out the rest of the things still deterring moving on...like all his belongings being strewn throughout the house. Sounds like he may be coming in a couple weeks to get them. I am looking forward to doing lots of re-arranging, and some re-decorating.

I feel this like, nagging in the back of my mind, in everything I say, that because I am happy and moving on that I feel like I need to somehow justify this by stating that this divorce is not what I wanted. Am I happy to have my divorce papers filed? Absolutely. I feel almost downright giddy. I think I worry about people judging me, because I would have been my harshest critic. I would have thought that I should be sad, and mourning, and my life on hold, and depressed.

Well, I'm not going to do that. I am not putting my life on hold, just because I am having a divorce. I guess the impression I don't want to give is that because I have changed my views on my marriage, and feel like it was not always the best thing, and feel like it could have been a lot better that I think those are reasons for giving up. I pretty much would have never given up on that relationship.

But being forced to give it up, yes I can see where it had a lot of failings, I can see the things that led to this point. I can see the things that I want to avoid like the plague in future relationships. I also see how I lost myself to the relationship, which may or may not have been Janardan's fault, and certainly was a ton of my fault. I can see how much it pulled me down emotionally.

But I think most of the joy and completeness I feel is the atonement filling in and healing me where I need to, and making it so it is irrelevant to my happiness whether Janardan made this tragic mistake or not. It is the atonement that brings me joy. It is the prospect of a bright future where the atonement can continue to heal and bring new life to me.

I am happy to be alive today. :) Life is beautiful and wonderful. And I love it.

I talked with Janardan today, and I felt this inclination (though I did not act on it) to talk to him about friendly things, instead of just finances and business. Feeling that, instead of bitterness or disappointment, -that- is nice. Filing for divorce was the last thing I asked him to do, and by doing it myself, I took my life back into my own hands. I am not depending on him anymore, and so he will not disappoint me anymore.

So maybe we can be friends. Maybe. We'll see.

Is this really what is happening?

I am experiencing a strange feeling right now. Like I've been sad and happy, and a whole mix of emotions, but this one is just like, getting to this moment of pure bewilderment. Like, I am looking at the finances, trying to sort out in my mind how everything should go, taking into account how things are changing, and then I am just like - we are really getting a divorce, how...weird.

This is not the path I thought my life would take, but it is where it is going anyway, and it is okay, just not what I expected. Like I am used to the sad face that people get when they find out newly, and that look of concern. I appreciate it, but for the most part do not need it when I am actually in the company of others. It is when I am alone that I feel more need of it. And then just like, I am getting used to things.

But it is still weird. This is what is happening? Really? I just kinda catch my breath and feel like, this is just weird. This is not how love is supposed to go. But not really in a sad way, just in a like, weird way. I mean, yes it's sad, but that's just not what I feel about it right now.

I guess I shrug and move on to the next step, and accept that it's weird, but it's happening. But life can be quite strange sometimes. I generally think that is a good thing. I think good things will come from this, just because of the atonement I think good things can come from everything, but I do not really think it is a good thing. So strange and bad.

Odd.

Healing

Sometimes life, and especially things going on now, really kicks me down. I felt so bad on Saturday. I just felt angry and bitter and jaded, and defeated, and like, just why why why was this happening.

I feel like the Lord has given me so much as I've been going through all this. There have been so many people who have reached out to me, or been there for me when I needed them.

On Sunday, I went to church and took the sacrament, and in that moment, I felt the ultimate healing of the sacrifice of the greatest person to ever live on this earth. He died for -me-, he suffered for -this-, that I might be healed from it. And I have felt that healing. I feel like a new person. And I don't think that means that my heart is done breaking, but rather that it is done breaking over those things. It has been healed from those things, and it will continue to break, but I know that through the Savior, I can also continue to be healed.

And the difference to how I feel today is night and day. I have so much hope and promise for the future. I was reading this book called "The Lost Boy" by Dave Pelzer (I highly recommend, everyone should read it!). It is about a boy who goes through the foster system, and well, a lot of stuff. The stuff that stuck out to me particularly poignantly was the bits about how he found the love that he could never get from his own mother from his foster moms, and other women he came into contact with through his experience.

I felt so moved by it because I have had an experience that is similar, with a boy named Mark, who has been so transformed by finding the love of a mother from me. It also inspires me, as it gave me an inside view of the future that I have desired, to foster children, and perhaps adopt them. It is this palpable feeling, because I know how it can change lives, and I want that so much for children who so desperately need it.

And all of this joy I feel right now, it comes from the love of the Savior, the love that he has for these children, that I have felt influence and guide me, and his love for me, in healing me, in strengthening me to withstand the storms of life, to stand tall, and to do good.

I was walking in our hotel tonight with my niece. We have two separate hotel rooms for all of us, and they are on different floors. Every time we leave one of the rooms, she will run the opposite direction of where we need to go, and I'll have to call her back and tell her to go the other way. I also made it very clear to her that she cannot leave the room without an adult being with her.

I had scenes flash in my head of her running around the hotel, and getting scared and being lost and confused, wondering where she was going, and why it all seemed to look exactly the same, but that she could not find the right doors, and I thought of her there crying, alone, and scared.

And it made me think of how my own life is like this huge confusing hotel, where I can't read the room numbers or make sense of it, or know what direction is the right way to go, that if I were left on my own, I would be completely lost. I think of when I listen to the Lord telling me "Go this way" or that way, and how much better my life is on course.

Prairie probably does not see the problems or bad things that could happen if she did not listen to me and went off into the hotel by herself, but she trusted me, and so she listened. And now she is sleeping safely and soundly in bed.

I think I could try trusting the Lord a bit more, and asking more for direction in my life. Because when I listen, it leads me to paths that I never would have taken on my own. And they are invariably better.

The magic in the mundane

I love being alive. I love the potential of every day to be magical. There is no doubt that life sucks sometimes, and things get me down, and make me want to rage, and make me cry, and make me feel beaten down. But then I always wake up to a brand new day, which can be beautiful, and where the possibilities are endless.

I woke up from a nap on Monday and decided on the spur of the moment that I wanted to hike the Y. So I did. It was gorgeous. I wrote something while I was up there that I'm gonna post on here, as soon as I decide to actually type it up.

There are things of beauty all around us all the time. I feel so blessed to live in this world, to have this body. I discovered new muscles yesterday because they were sore from the hike, and it was wonderful to just feel them, to experience these new things.

To me, even the crappiest day can be magical, and it is my aim to find the magic in every day.

Exhiliration

I love melancholy, I love it because of the potential it has. I went to church, and came home, feeling just so...excited about life. Knowing that there is a purpose in it all, that it will all lead to something beautiful, and just being reminded of those things.

I listened to this song again, and it made me smile and want to cry, and all sorts of things. It all just wants to explode out of me. I love living in my body.

Melancholy

I wrote a year ago about how I really enjoy the feeling of melancholy. Then the song that I was listening to was Apologize. Now the song I have on repeat is Behind Blue Eyes. For both of them, it has little to do with the words at all, and all about just the music, this combination of sounds that inspires this bittersweet feeling.

There is a magic about it. It is painful. My heart feels broken and full at the same time. I close my eyes and breathe, and just let it wash over me. It feels nothing like being depressed, because that is just an overall crappy feeling that I avoid like the plague. It is like I can feel my heart breaking, but feel it enlarging in the process, my capacity for joy being increased, and that new room, that new growth, it is palpable and exciting, even though it doesn't take away the pain of things breaking.

It is the beautiful mix and combination, this rich complex experience, that is not merely happy or sad. It is somehow both, but I don't feel like crying, and I don't feel like smiling. I take hold of the middle, close my eyes, and enjoy the experience, this magical place where I can feel both at once, where I don't have to choose one over the other.

This is why I love melancholy.

Mixed Metaphors on my Marriage

Orson Scott Card sets forth a hierarchy of foreignness in the Ender's Game series. There are the Utlanning, who are strangers from our own species and own world, Framling, who are strangers of our own species, but from a different world, Ramen, strangers from another species who are capable of living peaceably with us, and Varelse, who are strangers of another species who are not capable of communicating with us. Of course, his use for the setting was science fiction, with people living on all sorts of worlds, and running into different species, but I was thinking over it today, and I think I will tweak it a bit, but use it to describe my perspective on my impending divorce.

The thing that made me think of it was I was thinking again today about how Janardan has said repeatedly that he views me as his enemy. I have understood what he means to a degree in very narrow contexts. Push would come to shove, I would feel overly frustrated by his lack of appreciation or apparent love, and so I would just try anything, which ultimately could be described as emotional jabs to see if this person actually experiences any pain, and thus whether this person can actually be hurt or cares about me. And the first time or two, he did. He got hurt, and so it showed to me that at some level, at least, he did care. And those couple instances gave me view that this man was not varelse, but that there was a possibility for us to come together, and live peaceably and lovingly. (I would still call him Ramen, just because he is so different as to not actually live in the same world the rest of us live in).

I think he views me as varelse, though. He has his own way of seeing the world, his own way of working and living within it, and it is different not only from mine, but pretty much in essentials different from anyone I have ever known. He does not act according to any common expectations, he does not judge people that way, he does not appreciate people that way. He is disappointed by the best of people, and does not really care about the worst. And really, my interpretation of him could be completely wrong too – these are my guesses. He feels like I do not want to understand him enough, that I am not willing to do what it takes, or maybe that I am just not capable of being ramen, that I will never understand him, and that I do not even really try.

It is easy when I talk to people for them to side with me, to see him as this pretty crappy husband who never really did anything for me. And I get that, it is an easy view to take, and if you look at the surface, it is a pretty accurate description. But it misses so much that is below the surface. While we look at him, and see all the ways that he has failed me, he looks at me and sees all the ways that I failed him. And they are not things that I understand really, nor do I know how to combat, especially when he gave up on me, and did not want to give me any assistance in trying to figure out common ground.

A phrase I used to think of a lot while we were going through lots of drama was this line from Ever After. “A bird may love a fish, but where would they live?” To which he answers, “Then I shall have to make you wings.” We are all the birds, flying all around, wondering what he is doing down there, why he refuses to come up and fly, wondering why he will not come out of the water. Do I think he is quite as restricted as a fish? Not really. I think most of the barriers that existed, he created in his own mind in the first place, but that doesn't mean that they are any easier to overcome.

Do I think he tried very hard, or very much at all in our marriage? Not really. But the turnaround there is that I think he would view me the same way. We value different things, and action is not something he finds much value in. Do I think he should? Yes! But he also thinks that I should find more value in just thinking about things, or probably lots of other things that I never even came close to understanding.

I think there is a current among some people, and some people have said it to me, that I am in some ways lucky that he is leaving me, because it sounds like he was not all that great of a husband to me. And to a degree I think that is true, but I don't think it is because he is just lazy and didn't want to. He was a fish and tried to marry a bird. There were always going to be problems. It was a dream that we could find some place to meet in the middle. Do I really blame him for giving up on the dream? Not really, but I also don't agree that it couldn't have been done. And it would have been worth it all.

I sit alone in a dark room, not even the company of a body downstairs. I sit, and I am alone. It is not so much sad as it is weird. I have not been constantly alone like this in a long time. At times I love it. I love waking up in the morning, and singing and talking to myself, and not having to worry about waking anyone up or disturbing someone's sleep. I love the freedom to be my weird self, without looking to see if someone appreciates it or not.

But there are the moments like now. I came home, and it was light, so I didn't turn my light on. It's gotten dark, and there are no lights on in my house, and I haven't gotten up yet to turn the light on, and so I sit alone in the dark. It is not an experience I want to avoid (of course, what experience do I ever want to avoid) by staying out of my house all day long, or making sure there are people always around me. I am comfortably uncomfortable in my solitude. This is not what I wanted for my life, but this is part of not getting that, and so I take this experience with the rest.

I think I will put on my new fancy dress and dance around. Tonight is as good a night as any to rejoice in myself. I am not so much chasing this present mood away, as transforming it. I feel acutely alone, but not so much lonely, so I will bask in my aloneness. (Yes I realize the irony of that as I write something that will go off to be read by lots of people.)

I love being me. It is a shame to me, that he could not love me for all that I am. But at least I love me. That is what matters most, and makes me smile at myself when I look in the mirror. I think I'm pretty dang awesome.

Gospel Principles

I am SOOO EXCITED about Relief Society this year. Like, I always love relief society, it is great. But like, when I got my manual today, I was just so excited looking through the manual. The pictures are beautiful (ok some aren't <_<),>

The gospel is simple. It is plain. You learn the truth, you seek after it, you seek to do it, and your life will be blessed. You follow the commandments, and your life will be led to beautiful things, because the gospel is beautiful, and because it really is that simple. It really is that glorious and beautiful.

I glory in plainness! I glory in truth! I glory in my Jesus,for He hath redeemed my soul from hell. - 2 Nephi 33:6

Heavenly Father does live and love every one of us, and I bear my witness of that in the name of his Holy son, even Jesus Christ, Amen.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

This is certainly not the path I would have chosen for my life. Probably if there was one thing that I never wanted to happen in my life, it was that I did not want to get divorced. And so I feel that sentiment that Frodo expresses. Though I do not really regret getting married. And if Janardan wouldn't have decided as he did, I think we could have figured out how to make it work, and could have had something amazing. But I also think that there are other possibilities for my life, and it'll turn out okay.

And so for me, the important decisions are how I deal with it. I want things to be amicable with us. But I also don't want to ignore the pain that comes. So I'll work through it as it comes, and try to sort everything out. I was talking with Stefanie about this, and she asked me if she had to like him, and I told her yes.

Like, I think Janardan is making a horrible mistake, but that does not mean I think he is a horrible person. I am reminded of my experience getting kicked out of our apartment with two week's notice at Christmas during finals, by some people who were very nice good people. Good people are not excused from doing bad things on occasion, and good people can hurt you just as much as bad people. I mean, yeah, if Janardan were maliciously trying to screw my life over and cause me lots of pain and loneliness, it might be a lot harder to forgive him (though I'd still try). I may not understand exactly why he's chosen this, but I can easily recognize what it is not. It makes him a bad husband, but not a bad person. And I still love him a ton, and I always will.

I watched my parents stay good friends when they got divorced, and they set a good example to me of what it should be like. I mean, I probably won't interact with him that much, as we don't have children to bring us into contact as much.

And then I think of the second part of this quote, that this is the time that has been given to me. And I want to do something good with it. I've signed up to start volunteering as a Child Advocate, so I hope that will work out, and I can start doing that. Then I also want to look into volunteering at a suicide hotline, but I'm not sure they have any trainings coming up, so I may have to wait for the fall to start that. And I want to take some classes in the fall.

A week or so ago, I started writing the story of our relationship, as a kind of therapy, and to record it. So I'll work on that, and get through it, and hopefully I will soon feel ready to start a new chapter in my life. But whatever else, I want to make the best of the time I have been given.

The end draweth nigh

Janardan went back to Texas on Christmas day, and now it seems he is not coming back, except perhaps to gather some of his things. Above all, yes I want to talk about it, to anyone and everyone who is interested and curious. Call me, email me, chat with me, stop by and visit me. If you are curious about anything, feel free to ask me directly, because I do want to talk about it.

I'll answer the two most likely questions here though:

Are we getting a divorce? Yes.

Was this partially my decision? No.

But yes, above all, yes I want to talk about it. So contact me in some way if you want to talk or have questions, and I would love to talk to you, whether I know you or not.