Tags
addiction, anger, dating, love, online dating, pain, parenting, pickle, regret, relationships, therapy
Sadness and disappointment are difficult emotions, so what do we feel? Angry! Angry!
As I type this the clock shows 3:07am. I cannot fall back asleep because I am very angry with Pickle and I need to talk about it. I really probably need to cry about it, but I’m not there yet. I don’t have time for depressed lethargy. I’ll give into that later after I’ve rage-cleaned my house.
Things had been going really well between us. We have been talking about building a homestead together, and Finding My Happy became finding Our Happy. He loves my dream of a sweet little farm where people come to play and laugh and seek happily ever after. We want cute little themed cottages that feel like something out of a fairytale, and chickens, goats, and a miniature donkey. We went so far as to open high yield savings accounts and figure out how much money we could get for our houses. Unfortunately he doesn’t own his home, and the arrangement he had with his father for rent-to-own seems to have had different meanings between the two of them, but still. I am determined to have my farm someday. It is a good idea, and I want to see it through.
So why am I angry?
Because the man I pinned these hopes and dreams on has turned out to be a stoner manchild who does not discipline his children, but expects me to discipline mine.
I realize how unfair it is for me to be upset that he’s a stoner. I knew from the beginning that he liked to smoke pot and that he deals with chronic lower back pain and anxiety. The issue here is that I believed him when he gave me those reasons, and was under the impression that he would be willing to treat them in other ways. He said he was. But since then I’ve come to realize he says a lot of things he doesn’t mean. What he really likes is to get high. And not just recreationally on the weekends. Every day. He will get high at 10am and then take his kids to the park, nearly rear-ending someone on the way. He will get high and drunk at New Years and not call the cops or insurance company when someone backs into him, completely destroying the right side of his car. His mouth will smell and taste of dogshit for two days after smoking one particular type of weed, but he will continue to smoke that one anyway. And when he finds a THC gummy that cures his back pain, he will complain that it does not get him high, so what’s the point?
This is a problem. Pickle says he thinks of it as a better alternative to being a drunk like so many other members of his family. I say I wouldn’t date anyone who got drunk at 10am either.
It didn’t bother me much at first because it wasn’t constant. He said being with me made him so happy that he didn’t even need to get high. That sure didn’t last long. After the car wreck it seemed like he was high ALL the time. I tried to be “cool” and do it with him, but it’s awful. And since the night he gave me a gummy that nearly killed me, I’m out. That was the absolute worst experience of my entire life. I have never been so terrified. I thought for certain my children were going to lose me. I could not remember how to walk, how to breathe. I vomited all over my house, and cried, and moved in slow motion against my will. Just thinking about it makes me want to weep.
I know there are deeper issues at play here. Pickle’s family is rife with a history of addiction. He comes from a place where it’s normal to fist fight your brother in the living room or call the cops on your sister. He was also molested by an uncle as a child (along with his little brother) and then made to attend family functions with the man, despite his parents’ knowledge of what happened. And his dating history is as pitiful as mine. The man needs help.
Part of me wants to wait for him to get that help. But the rest of me knows he is full of empty promises. I don’t trust him. I know he means what he says when he says it, but he doesn’t follow through. His own father knows he can’t be trusted to see to his best interests. His dad gets a check for $1,000 each month and pays all Pickle’s bills for him, putting any extra aside because he doesn’t trust him not to blow it on pot and video games. Not exactly the best indicator that my man would be a good business partner.
All these things aside, the thing that really kills me is our different parenting choices. I am not what you’d call an authoritarian. I love my kids, but I also like them. I give them as much freedom as possible and encourage them to use it wisely. This has backfired many times and landed me with a couple of spoiled little girls (who are far too poor for affluenza), but I am okay with that.
Pickle is exactly the same way, but possibly worse. He also swears in front of his kids all the time, and thought it was no big deal when his youngest taught my youngest the F-word. (Yes, I do swear a lot, but not with the kids!) While we were on vacation my kindergartner was carrying something with her middle finger, and his first grader told on her. I told her my girl doesn’t even know what that means, so it was no big deal. She decided to cure her of that ignorance.
I was upset that his response was just laughter. I had a whole conversation with his kid about how she should not tell her about it and teach her bad words that could get her in trouble. She did it anyway. I get that swear words are no big deal in their house, but how about blatant disregard for rules and respect?
His oldest, who I believe is in third grade, whines to get what she wants. The sound makes me want to leave and never return. I broke my youngest of that by refusing to answer when she was speaking to me in that tone of voice. I told her I cannot hear whines, and walked away. Honestly it hadn’t really occurred to me until just now that it eventually worked. She stopped whining. Her brand new thing is throwing things when she doesn’t get her way. We have implemented a time-out chair for that one.
Anyway, the drama between us began at Easter. (It was Easter both times I left my husband too. Apparently it is a good time to stir shit up and start afresh.) Pickle and I were outside hiding eggs, and I told him how much it bothered me that he did nothing about the swearing incident. He told me it bothered him that my eldest had told his kid about Happy Treehouse or something like that (animations of animals murdering each other) and “enticed her” to look it up and watch a scary video. (I later found out she hadn’t watched it – she just saw a thumbnail – and this came about from her overhearing a conversation between two teens who said not to watch it because it’s messed up.) He was also angry that my kinder had kicked his first grader and I only made her apologize. It devolved into a whole big fight in which we each defended our children and yelled a lot. There were eventual tears and apologies, and we forgave, but I did not forget.
This weekend my girls and I stayed at their house Saturday night so we could all go to a farm together on Sunday. While Pickle was in the shower that morning, one of his daughters kicked the other off a beanbag chair because she didn’t want to share it. I told him she was on the floor crying and asked what he wanted me to do. He said he would be out of the shower in a second. Know what he did? Nothing. He told the eldest not to do that, said she needed to share the room, and left. I was LIVID.
I asked him what I was supposed to have done differently back in Ohiopyle if he didn’t even so much as require an apology in this situation. He said it was different because he didn’t see it happen, and my kid had done worse because she kicked her in the head (my kid says she pushed, not kicked, to make her move). Then he brought up the fact that my eldest had told the younger kids to leave the room she was in last night because she needed alone space, and kicked his girls out of part of their own house. I said, “Well it won’t be a problem anymore, because you’ll never see her again.”
My relationship with my teenager is complicated. She gets depressed and pulls away for weeks at a time. I hardly see her. Half the time she says she hates me. She completely lost her shit on me after I started dating Pickle because she didn’t want to be around him and his kids all the time. The fact that she chose to go over there at ALL was a huge deal for me. I feel like I lost her years ago when her ex-step-father broke her heart, and I’ve been doing everything I can to get her back. It took two children at her school committing suicide for her to finally stop having suicidal ideations. She was deeply impacted by the sadness and loss they left behind.
Do you know how terrifying it is to have a suicidal teen? I hid all the pills in the house that she could hurt herself with. The day she had a meltdown and said she had thoughts of hurting her little sister was one of the scariest days of my life. How do you love someone so much, but also feel just a little afraid of them? It’s like she isn’t herself in those moments. She’s some other manic being trapped inside her body. We are still on a waiting list for a therapist, but at least she is being seen for med management. I wish she hadn’t been saddled with all this mental and emotional baggage. It isn’t fair. At least she lets me hug her sometimes now.
Here’s the real shocker. Last night I told my teen that I had broken things off with Pickle. Her response? “What?! Why?! Can’t you try to work things out instead of jumping straight to breaking up with him?!” I told her to be patient with me because I would be sad for the next few months, and she said she would be sad too.
Y’all, you could have knocked me over with a feather.
It was not that long ago that she was screaming she hates me because she never has any space to herself, and cannot walk downstairs without fear of finding a man in her house. Now she says he is the only guy I’ve ever dated who she actually likes, because he gets her. She just doesn’t like his kids. Because they’re kids. She hates kids.
Later I asked my kinder if she would be sad if she didn’t see Pickle anymore. She said no, but she would miss his daughters. If she had her choice, she would rather I still dated The Therapist.
Sigh…
I don’t know what to do. I desperately want my teenager to feel happy and whole, so I will go to couples counseling. Maybe we all just need individual therapy. We definitely need individual therapy.
Fuck.
Love to you all. And love to me. Hang it there, silly girl. You’ll get it right eventually.
The Silly Girl
whatasillygirl 