From One Good Weekend to the Next

As soon as W gets N off to school this Friday he is leaving town for the weekend, the whole weekend, to go fishing with some friends of his. They are going two states away for this fishing extravaganza. Yay! A whole weekend, in my house, without W! Yay! I am so excited. N and I are going to have a great time, don’t know what we’ll do for sure but we won’t have to worry about W getting in the way for a change.

In other good news, N reported to me that he and W got along better this past weekend than they have in a very long time. Whew! There for a while when W was at his worst I was concerned that I was going to have to fight to get sole custody with supervised visits for W. Now it seems things have settled down, and maybe it is going to be okay for them to have some weekends together. That is such a relief.

Yes, life is moving forward in a good way. I have new friends that I enjoy. I am spending time outside of the house with other people far more often than I have in years. I am learning, slowly but getting there, that I can survive on my own if I have to do so. My counselor is helping me be more assertive in dealing with those who would try to guilt me into things. I am learning to stand up for myself and put my needs closer to the top of the priority list. I am learning to be the real me instead of the façade. For the moment the rollercoaster seems to have slowed and is on a fairly high level. I’m trying not to anticipate the next sudden drop even though I’m sure there will be something along the way. No life is a smooth ride all the time.

May I just share a snippet about Denny’s at 3:00 a.m.? I’m going to whether you wanted me to or not. Denny’s at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night/Sunday morning is an interesting place. What kind of people are up at 3:00 a.m. looking for greasy diner food? Well, let’s just say that they don’t tend to be a sedate group. Many have come from bars after closing time, and quite a few of those appear to have had just a few drinks, perhaps one would even say a couple of drinks too many. Alcohol seems to have the effect on many of causing the volume of their voice to be raised to a level so that the entire restaurant is filled with their sounds. Drunks tend to be belligerent with wait staff, and God bless anyone willing to work the graveyard shift at Denny’s on the weekend. They also tend to get belligerent with other tables of inebriated diners. It is quite the spectacle. Amazingly enough, when two tables cleared out within moments of one another the place went from a cacophony so loud you could barely hear yourself think to almost total silence. I literally felt my ears relax. I wouldn’t have missed being there for the world though. It is so nice to talk with others who are going through similar situations as we travel the path to divorce, and at Denny’s in spite of the cacophony it was still easier to carry on a conversation than it had been earlier at the dance club with the music blaring.

I love my life. I do. I wouldn’t have said that even a week ago, but this weekend proved to me once again that it is the choices I make that make the difference between a happy life and a miserable one. I can choose to hole up as a hermit and be miserable, or I can choose to seek out new friends, reestablish some connections to old friends, and get out there in the world and enjoy myself. I choose the latter option. It is by far the better of the two.