The "Move".

I was prepared for this to get worse, before it gets better.
At least as prepared as you can try to be.

I had my annual performance review on Wednesday, for work. My direct supervisor, Beth, and I have an uncanny amount of things in common. We operate well on a professional level, but occasionally when we're alone in the office we've had long talks about life, relationships, children, etc. She's the one I referred to in my previous post, who broke down to me one day after having the unresolved fight with her husband. To make matters even more eerie, she has 2 children from her first marriage, a relationship very much like the one that MM and I had, and which ended very much like this one is now.
Beth and I had decided to go out to lunch that day to get some food and conduct my performance review. On the way to the restaurant, she asked about MM and I lost it.
I'd previously considered giving her a heads-up to the situation, simply in case transportation to work became an issue; but what came out was an eruption of most everything that's happened, my struggle with the overwhelming guilt for all the destruction I'm causing, and alot of tears. Needless to say, once that faucet was turned on it was hard to turn off. It's nice having someone to talk to that can relate, but at the same time fighting to keep my composure in a professional atmosphere. We made it through the review which was glowing with praise (except for my internet usage) & resulted in me getting a raise, becoming a salaried employee, but still not being added to the "management team". I'm not going to waste time describing that dynamic; but ultimately being on the team is something I really wanted & with emotions already out of control, managed to cry during most of our conversation. My confidence in all things is shaken, and that felt like the rejection-cherry on top of my shit-sundae.

Yesterday was Friday. I had a "Payroll Law 2013" seminar to attend here in town, for work; and MM doesn't have class on Fridays, so he was going to be moving all of his stuff into the studio, which is a fairly large room at the back of the house, with it's own entrance, that prior to this was already packed to the gills with musical equipment.

This decision happened on Tuesday or Wednesday night. I can't remember. The days seem to be melting together into one huge blob of terrible, lately.

Ultimately, with him going to school full-time, and working part-time for RTVS; he doesn't have the money to move into somewhere new right now. Additionally, there are still ALOT of financial ties we have to work out such as cell phones being on a family plan, shared car insurance, me still not having a car for my own transportation to and from work, our lease, etc...

I feel like I'm in a delicate balancing act of trying to make this as smooth of transition as possible, trying to work with him emotionally & financially until he can get on his feet, & falling back into my old habits of being an enabler and codling him.

I know in the scheme of things, it's better off we were never married. Much less cost, pain, and legal bullshit to deal with. If I wasn't already turned off by the idea of marriage before, I think I certainly am now.

What conversations we've had over the last few days have been whispered sentences & words choked on by tears.

I wish I could find the words to describe MM as the man I know. Most people see his strong, hard exterior, but miss alot of the complexities & tenderness I've worked so hard to burrow into for the last decade. Witnessing his unraveling and knowing it's at my own doing is a heavy guilt to carry.

I still haven't talked about this to any of our friends, but I wish he would. He needs to reach out to the people who love him and can offer him support, but I'm conflicted as to whether it's my job, yet, to alert them to the fact. He has very "surface" type relationships with alot of people & even most of his family, and it worries me that he will continue to shut them out during this time when he needs them most, whether he knows it or not.

By the time he had to pick me up from the seminar, yesterday, he'd moved the majority of his stuff into the studio. Here's a hint to anyone not having experienced a break-up-move-out like this; steer clear of the house, until they're done. Most of my life has been documented through photography, so it only seemed fitting to document this moment, where vacancies now existed & ghosts of belongings seem to linger...

What was the first thing I found to busy myself, while he collected and organized what's left of his life? I stained and varnished wood.

Thinking back about that moment, I realize I have strange coping mechanisms.

To explain, (the wood, not my mechanisms) some previous tenant of this house had a dog that they would shut into rooms of the house. In an effort to get out, the dog dug at the carpet at the bottom of the door, shredding those areas of the two upstairs bedroom's carpet. Our original landlord, being the piece of shit that she was, put over-sized pieces of raw wood over the frayed carpet, that act as huge thresholds; instead of just replacing the carpet. We rented the house sight-unseen when we moved from CA, so it was just one of the quirks we dealt with. The problem was that because the wood was unfinished, years of foot traffic over those pieces of wood had left them disgustingly dingy & a previous tenant's kid had drawn on them w/ sharpie in a few places. It's always been alittle nagging "to-do" in the back of my brain, and apparently, yesterday, when I was unsure what to do with myself and the state of disarray in the house; that was one thing I could control & fix when all else seemed broken. So, I went to work sanding, staining, and varnishing the monster thresholds.


With that item checked off my list I dusted, vacuumed, and got to work organizing & re-arranging things in an effort to fill the voids.

At one point, once I heard the rustling downstairs drawing to a close, I wandered down to check on him. I'm unclear if my presence & efforts to make this a functional roommate situation are doing more harm than good.

At one point, he sat on his end table and cried.

He said he didn't know whether to mad or sad. That he didn't know what he was going to do. That all he wanted to do was "fix this" (us). That all he had in the world was crammed into this room. That he found a futon mattress on CL that he was going to look at in an hour. That he had 5 assignments due on Monday that he couldn't even focus on starting. And that he didn't even have a place to hang his clothes.

These things were all expressed over the span of long pauses, many cigarettes, and alot of tears.

Should I have fought my natural instinct to hug him and tell him everything would be ok? I didn't. I couldn't.

I told him to go look at the futon; and while he did that, I cleaned out the coat closet under the stairs, did some much needed spackling to a truly ghetto drywall fix (another preexisting flaw from when we moved in) at the back of the closet, and vacuumed.  I closed the night by throwing together vat of chicken and noodles that we could both eat on. It has been a week of restless sleep & little appetites for both of us; and after the physical exhaustion of the in-house migration of belongings, I figured we could both use a hearty meal. I ate mine upstairs, alone & dozed off soon afterward.

Yesterday was so long and exhausting, I actually woke up today and thought it was Sunday, because it felt like I'd crammed a weekend of work into one day.

I still have the craft room and the bar area to clean/organize, but most things are in order upstairs.

Along the same lines as my above-mentioned mechanisms, is my intense focus on getting the tangible things in order first, knowing my emotional/mental closet is ready to dump on my head the moment I open the door. I recognize this is my way of dealing with things. Compartmentalize & break things down into tasks that can be accomplished by means of working toward the bigger goal.

One of the big ticket items is still finding & purchasing a vehicle. I am/was of the mindset that this may very well be a vehicle that I'll be paying on for years to come, so I've focused my energies on pricing out a crew cab truck. I mechanic-minded friend of mine is advising me to go with a Toyota Tacoma-type due to their reliability and longevity. Decent gas mileage, ability to haul shit, and safe space to hopefully one day put a child's car seat; are factoring into my search criteria.


I just took a break from writing to check out the Habitat ReStore for a desk (I agreed to give MM the desk & desktop PC, which he moved into the studio, last night) and on my way back, stopped at the bank to inquire about my chances/options for a car loan. Being very frank about my frightful credit history & my need to address past debts, they admitted that my chances for getting an outright loan were non-existent, and chances of getting what they call a secured loan (pulling funds from my life insurance policy to put into a savings account, to borrow against in an effort to better my credit) were slim-to-none.

It's looking like my only option now is to pull directly from the life insurance policy, the money I need for a vehicle; and start contacting my creditors (also deeply buried in that closet of denial) to start making payment arrangements to get things in order and paid off...(sigh)

MM & I still need to sit down and break down finances, figuring out who's going to pay what to whom, monthly. I'm dreading this, but know it needs to happen in order for me to visually be able to make and visualize MY finances.

I desperately want to start painting the walls. Literally. Something about a fresh coat of paint signifies a fresh start, a new outlook, and an good makeover for the current scuffed, nicked, matte/glossy mixture of beige that have lived on these walls since we moved in.

For now, I see the stacks of totes and other clutter looming at me from the craft room. This is where I deposited most of the shit from the closet last night, which only added to the mess that was already there.

For now, this is something I can fix & feel a sense of accomplishment when I'm done.

For now, I need to give MM his space downstairs to get himself in order.

For now, I will remind myself it will get worse before it gets better; and to be strong.

Things will be ok.