come back to things. Plus, I was sensitive to his sarcastic British ‘humour’ and took many of the things he said in jest very personally.
We worked on building empathy for one another: we identified our ‘trigger points’, the things that could launch us into a bout of misunderstanding, annoyance, and arguments. One of the big triggers being weekends, and what to do with them.
Anyone who’s had children will know that, with young kids, not having a plan to get them out of the house – and keep them busy, moving, and entertained – can result in bouts of cabin fever accompanied by frayed tempers, tantrums, and emotional meltdowns (and that’s just for the parents!).
I was a planner; Andy was a pantser. We made an effort to plan our weekends so we could avoid the arguments. It didn’t have to be much – a trip to the beach or the park. Playdates or barbeques and picnics with friends – something, anything, to give us a sense of direction and focus rather than blindly approaching that vast 48-hour chasm that weekends can present for the ill-prepared.
In many ways, it was the best of times. We were both consciously present. The fact that we were having weekly visits to a therapist definitely helped. She held us accountable. She gave us permission to call each other’s bullshit, and rather than allowing it to escalate into arguments, we would take the time to pause, breathe, consider the other’s position, and respond with consideration and kindness. I came to understand that because he spent all week out of the house, his ideal weekend included some time at home just to chill out. I, on the other hand, had been home with a toddler, and needed to get out and about in order to create some balance in my life. It sounds so simple when I tap it out on the page in front of me….
Our conscientious work and effort to understand each other more deeply and compassionately paid off. We were happy (well… happier).
Throughout this first separation, Leo seemed untouched by our turbulence and unrest. We were able to shelter him from it, and, from what I can recall, it never made much of a negative impact. It was like we caught the milk a day out of date, but it was at least still palatable. Neither of us picked up on the fact that it was, in fact, past its best…
Not so, the next time around.
Out of the Mouths of Babes
2011 – The Dark Ages…
Jump forward four years: Leo was eight and cognizant of all that was going on in his world, and it wasn’t pretty. For the first two years since our reconciliation, we had kept up the work. But that’s the word here – work. Not the sort of work that people expect to put into relationships (whatever that is), this was back (and spirit) breaking work. A harshly forced discipline of compromising so much of our authentic selves, just to ‘stick it out’. It felt to me like I was putting on an act, us constantly needing to check in with each other, to see if our ‘performance’ was up to par.
It was exhausting.
The last two years in particular were a daily grind. We were worn down to the bone. We were miserable and it showed. On our faces, in our voices, in the palpable energy between us. It was heavy, toxic, filled with dread – like the dementors from Harry Potter had entered our home and were sucking the joy out of our very souls. Disagreements, arguments, and seething resentment hid behind every door and would pounce at a minute’s notice.
Leo would plead with us to stop fighting. And as much as we tried to shield him from the war between us towards the end, too, we became less and less guarded in protecting him from the shrapnel that exploded from our battles. He ended up on the frontline, directly in the line of fire.
At times, he would try to intervene, telling us to stop fighting. “Please, Mummy and Daddy!” his little voice would entreat us. “Please stop fighting!”
With us in full flight, he would inevitably be snapped at, told to go to his room. I die a little death thinking of his little face in such distress, pleading with us. Parental guilt seems to have no statutes of limitation when it comes to the times that we served up shit on the parenting plate – especially when I know we could have, should have, done better.
On one such afternoon, he had gone to his room, but clearly could still hear us.
Money and what to do with it was at the core of many of our arguments, and this one was no different. We’d not long before sold our souls to get into the Sydney property market and had purchased a flat. It was tiny, but it was a start. Now, Andy was putting his case forward for a trip to New York to purchase some camera equipment.
I was like, “What the fuck??!!”
Neither of us would budge an inch. Me accusing him of being irresponsible and selfish, and him accusing me of forcing us to financially extend ourselves beyond our means.
It went on for over half an hour, escalating from terse disagreement and debate to full-scale screaming, our faces twisted in rage and spitting vitriol at each other.
“New York? New Fucking York?! To buy a camera? Are you kidding? Haven’t you heard of Ebay?!”
“Well, I’d rather be putting my money there than chasing around on your friends’ coattails, trying to buy shitty Sydney property we can’t afford!”
We might as well have been speaking completely different languages for all the understanding of each other’s viewpoints that wasn’t going on.
It was all I could do to not slam doors, throw things, and smash things. I left the lounge room, stifling sobs, and walked down the hallway towards our bedroom. Crying was the only outlet that was safe and acceptable, the only way I could express my emotion. As I passed Leo’s room, he came out from behind his door and followed me down the hall, whispering:
“Divorce, Mumma, get divorce.”
Not “get divorced,” or “get a divorce, Mumma,” but simply “get divorce”. Here was my eight-year-old, not old enough to use the word correctly, and yet in his distress at seeing me so bereft, once again, he was offering me counsel in the only way he knew how. At his tender age, he knew the way out.
I hushed him back into his room and gave him a cuddle. As I knelt on the floor and hugged him close to me, he whispered the words again as his little face pressed into my neck.
“Divorce, Mumma, get divorce.”
I’ve had a few lightbulb moments in my life, where the darkness I’ve been stumbling around in suddenly lifts and I can see clearly. This was one of those moments. A massive flash of ‘wake the fuck up, Nathy!’ Whatever Andy and I were doing to each other was nothing compared to the damage we were doing to this little person. It was wrong, and something had to change.
“I promise I’ll make it better, baby,” I told him.
I retreated to the bathroom to gather my thoughts. Sliding my back down the wall, I leaned against the bathtub. The cool of the tiles sharp against the heat of my body. The crumpled, red-faced mess of me against the bright white of the bathroom, reminiscent of a movie where the heroine is wrongly locked up in a loony bin. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror opposite me. Bedraggled and beaten. What a cliché. Not an ounce of fight left for myself. At 46 years of age and after fifteen years of marriage, I was spent. The loony bin had won.
What had I become? I kept staring and staring, trying to find Nathy. But a Nathy who wasn’t actually me. A Nathy who was stronger than
