While others wished it away, the cloud cover and threat of showers at the baseball game was a welcome sight to me. I guess I feel sometimes more aligned with it than bright sunshine right now. Its as if the cloudy or rainy weather lets my 'drag' seem less in contrast to the rest of the world's 'drive'. Everyone slows down and quiets down on rainy days.
I shunned my unquiet mind at the game and ignored the constantly streaming story it tells. Checked out of my mind and into the moment. I enjoyed some laughs and conversation with a few of the other moms. I worry about being judged by people a lot - not being good enough - and getting divorced has launched that sensitivity to all new heights.
One of the moms who only recently learned of my divorce was talking with me about it at the field. She is in the group of moms that are the moms of my son Astyn's friends. It made me feel nervous that it came up, but then it also made me feel good in a way, too. It's like this "thing" that is always hovering around ..that people don't know what to do with. I figure it must be a lot like what happens when someone has cancer or has just lost a loved one, and people get so stuck in their own uncertainty that they do not know what to say or do about it. The discomfort is almost palpable. And what they don't know is it makes it worse when they say nothing. So when Kelly started to talk to me and ask questions, and I felt her genuine compassion, I felt a moment of belonging.
Belonging to me has always meant "being like". I have always thought I could be liked if I was alike. Yes, alike. I had to be alike in order to be liked. Imagine, being in my 30s and 40s and thinking that way. I know where so much of that comes from, but that is another blog post. Or, it may actually be an entirely different blog altogether. So Kelly's questions and interest and the ease and comfort I showed of hearing and answering the questions, brought another mom into the conversation too. Another mom who I see all the time who hasn't ever spoken a (divorce) word to me. She too was so supportive and kind. There were a few of the dreaded coined phrases "you did what was best for your family" and " you had to do what you had to do for your kids" that were popped up like red flags for when the conversation or information must have been too much for them. like crying "uncle" for a minute. As in, I am so uncomfortable right now, I am not sure what else to say. I get it. It makes sense. I learned a little about the other side of the conversation today. A little about how their silence may not be that they don't accept me but that they just don't know what to say.
If they only knew how much their conversation means to me and how isolating it can be to be newly divorced and in a really small town that evidently is profoundly divergent from the 50%-of-all-couples-divorce standards that are claimed to exist outside of our bubble here. I feel like one of very few.
On that note and in a parting word,..I took Astyn out for pizza tonight one-on-one while his two older siblings Madelyn and Tristyn were off doing something else for a while. While sitting across the table just having finished a game of straw-paper-wadded-up-to-be-a-hockey-puck table hockey, I asked him how the weekly gathering at school was going on Fridays - a gathering he astutely named "Divorce Class" eventhough it goes by the name of "Banana Splitz" for children of divorce in the elementary school. They get together once a week for 45 minutes and do games and activities with the school psychologist. Astyn told me about an activity they did this week where they had to color a page of paper and that they had a chart for what feeling each color stood for. He explained to me that red was angry and that using lots of red meant you were very angry. I said "oh yes, red, does seem like a hot color and that hot and burning does seem like it could be like angry" and asked him if he used red in his drawing. He said "no". He said "I used blue". I said "what does blue mean? Is blue good?" and he said "yes blue is good". And I said "what color did you use the most in your picture?" and he said "Hope". I said "Hope? Hope is not a color?" and he said "yes it is, orange was the color of hope and I colored almost my whole paper orange because I hope that daddy can live with us again".
And that,...is another blog post.
Peace for Here and Now,
Ella Reese
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