Divorcing My Stepfather

I don’t know how to start on this topic.

Just reading the title of this entry seems outright provocative and just plain surly to me…

Yet the phrase came to me and immediately connected to my body in a way so strange that it almost didn’t register as being present for the past 30 years.

And I believe it may very well be that the man my mom married after my father - who, interestingly, is completely removed from her life and estranged from all three children by our choice for 25 years himself - will not or cannot be outwardly emotionally honest or connected.

He won't allow himself to change,

or allow changes in the world around him to be internalized.

So he decided to divorce my mom.

That's all well and good.

Its not my relationship,

And all relationships are complex and uniquely personal…

But the problem is he never really said to her or anybody else what it is he needed before or after or right now that he was or wasn't getting before.

Nothing that could be done to make it right, or to change for the person he is now.

There were tears,

there were conversations,

mainly had towards him

and filled with questions and concerns, with several ultimatums and warnings…

Primarily because he took a construction superintendent job in Raleigh and never moved back.

All he really said clearly to her is something along them lines of “I just feel distant even when I'm right next to you and I don't know why, but I feel like an asshole.”

Then he moved out again, this time right down the street in downtown Stokesdale.

—-I used to have weekly phone calls with him a few years ago. Partly because he allowed it, partly because I thought it might help us keep up with each other___

that it would help us be closer in some sort of way in adulthood.

But we never really talked to each other anyway.

I learned how to do that in other ways, with other people…

But he showed me how to be funny, how to be practical,

how to survive.

I’d like to think he is very sensitive like I am, while curating an internal experience needing fierce protection to determine how to engage that sacred tenderness with the torridity of the outside world, and why he’s so rigid and inaccessible except when feeling threatened…

_____________________________

I stopped having those weekly calls with him when he said he was only having them because they seemed to be helpful to me and because I needed them, and that we only talked about work.

I went into construction because its the only way I thought we'd be able to relate to each other and in which he would respect me.

He does respect me,

and he's incredibly proud of me.

He told me that once.

He even told Mom that he feels that the only thing he did in his life that he feels proud of and has any importance was raising my twin sister Maria and I…

from what Mom told me.

He texted me one day 2 years later to get on the phone because Mom told him he needed to tell us he chose to move out again.

A year later my mom called me to let me know she’d been served divorce papers.

He seems to be fine day-to-day.

He's still in town and he sees his granddaughter, my niece Ana, every week along with my sister.

The only thing he told me when I asked why he divorced Mom is that “she deserves someone better.”

Fair enough, I guess.

I'm still not exactly sure why I didn't respond with “She doesn't want better, she wants YOU!!!”

I think its probably because he never told me anything throughout all of this.

No calls, no letters, nothing in person.

Nothing

I heard many, many things from my mom.

So I wanted to be respectful. I wanted him to have his side and respect his decisions.

Or maybe I acknowledged in some intuitive sort of way in that moment that I'm really not involved in this decision at all.

I'm not trying to change either of them after all.

But then again, how do you walk away from 30 years with that being the only spoken reason?

When I saw him in person I recommended he get in touch with his best friend, Sal.

He said he hadn't heard back when he reached out recently.

[Sal lost a son to suicide early last year, and still is taking his time with that maybe]

«I made a suicide attempt 9 years ago.

A part of me did actually die,

but another part of me was born.»

I'm not sure if my stepfather has told him he's divorced, and he will only see a therapist if my mom wants him to. He doesn't think he needs to.

I'm not sure where things go from here…

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Scott,

We’re not divorced yet,

but we're separated.

I'm not sure when you left,

but I'm here.

Change is still an option.

By change I mean being okay with parts of yourself that feel ugly,

And kids being different as adults.

But the cooling off period is almost over___

I don't believe in relationships continuing just by sheer momentum without

commitment, effort, & love.

And I haven't felt loved by you in a long time…

I hope you can find your way soon, I really do.

I hope I’ll still be around

to be wherever you end up

when you get there.

Or maybe this is where fate intervenes

With a goodbye.

I don't really know.

I don't really want to cry about it anymore.