Life is Weird

Life is weird. The way events unfold sometimes just makes my jaw drop. Mark is not refusing to cooperate with me. Instead, the reason I hadn’t heard from him for several days is because, the day before I contacted him about the divorce, a very serious tragedy befell his family. And only two weeks before that, something else tragic and serious happened with another family member. Needless to say, he’s got a lot going on right now. And without going into details, I’ll say that both of these difficult events have to do with addiction and mental illness and so many of Mark’s core family of origin issues. History is repeating itself in a particularly bizarre and insidious way.

With all this going on, I’ve decided to do what I can with the paperwork right now and delay the portions that require his input for a few weeks until he’s had a chance to get through the initial shock and grief of his family stuff. I wanted this divorce to happen as quickly as possible, but I feel that, given the circumstances, I’m going to have to allow a little extra time for Mark’s emotional needs.

I wouldn’t have been able to do that before. I either would have stuck relentlessly to my plan out of fear that I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself if I considered someone else’s needs, or I would have allowed for an indefinite amount of time because I was only considering someone else’s needs. I think that as I’ve become more comfortable with setting and understanding boundaries, however, I’m becoming increasingly aware that they’re more like a membrane than like a wall. With boundaries, I can maintain a soft heart while being flexible yet firm. With walls, everything— inside and outside—is rock hard out of fear of not being able to know what to let in and what to keep out.

Besides this situation showing me how I seem to becoming more adept at integrating boundaries into my life, I’m also feeling a lot of sadness over the fact that all this tragedy is happening to people who used to be a big part of my life, but, because Mark and I are divorcing, I can’t grieve alongside these folks that I care deeply about. I’m also sad that I can’t grieve with Mark. I know more than practically anyone else in his life why these events would cause him deep, searing pain, but it’s no longer healthy or appropriate for me to reach out to him in an emotionally intimate way. It’s allowing me to feel the reality of the divorce on yet another level.