T-Minus

My AA sponsor has an interesting way of putting it.  He, like me, never hit "true" bottom (living under a bridge, unemployed, broke, in prison, etc...).  Instead, we both kind of hit "middle bottom."  We had both become functioning alcoholics, able to get by day to day and miserable in doing so.

My SM was similar.  I never hung myself from the rafters because I couldn't take it anymore.  Yes, I was just running the clock out on my life.  I was close to saying "screw it" to most of the things I loved.  Fortunately, I hit my "middle bottom" without the need to completely wreck everything around me first.  I was satisfied to wallow in the shit for a little while and did not feel the need to know how it tasted as well.

But if you can fix yourself while in the shit?  You'll be much better able to tackle the post-SM world once out of it.

Truth ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

T-Plus 116: Divorce Finalized

My daughter turned 17 on Saturday. 17 years ago, she was this little 7 pound 11 ounce helpless thing that needed my love, care, and protection. Now she is a self-absorbed, phone-wielding high school student. Like most teens she thinks she knows everything, and questions just about everything I do. It doesn't help that her mom spent her entire life portraying me as a bumbling fool of a TV sitcom dad. Undoubtedly, she still does, and she has them for the majority of the time. I have to work double-time to dispel that myth.  But she is a teen, and this kind of behavior is kind of par for the course...divorce or not.

On Friday, I took her out shopping because she wanted a new outfit for when we went out to dinner on Saturday night. We went to the nearby outlet mall and she found something nice and reasonably priced. We picked up a cookie cake I'd ordered for the next evening. Finally, we drove to the barn. She does FFA at school and is raising a pig. We are in suburbia, so the barn is a bit out of place, but this is her third year raising an animal (past two years were goats), and going to the barn is nothing new.

What was new this evening was that on Friday night, her pig was suffering from rectal prolapse. Well, for those of you who are un-initiated to this condition, it basically means that the pig was trying to poop so hard its rectum was literally pushed 2 inches OUTSIDE of its ass. So after a call to the vet, we are given the instructions to try to "just push it back in and see if it will stay". So here I am. A 45 year old man fisting a juvenile pig. I won't go into details (and, oh boy are there details). But my intervention was unsuccessful. I had to call my ex and have her drive us the hour to the vet. Now, my request was to borrow her car (she drives an SUV and I have a Camry), but I get it. Daughter wanted to ride with the pig. I get that too.  So we took two cars.  They headed back to Houston while I settled the bill. It turns out mom didn't pay last week at the vet so I get to pay for both visits. Now, I'll true this up, but I don't think for an instant that it was an accident I was taking care of the bill and she "forgot" to mention she hadn't paid the previous week.

That evening, we went to the Cheesecake Factory (party of 9) for dinner. Daughter wanted both mom and I there. I'm cool with that. It's her birthday and she can invite whomever she wants. But ex drives 5 of them and I drive 4 of us. As we are waiting for a table (had to split it for the party size) I take my daughter to the side and explain to her she should figure out who is sitting at which table (without weighing in myself). Instead of thinking about it, she loudly says that she will want her boyfriend at her table and can't decide from there. Ex wife helpfully suggests we split table based on what car they came in. Convenient that it was her who drove my daughter. I gotta say...the woman is good at this shit. Daughter says "sure" and that's how we are sitting. I paid for dinner at my table, and the ex paid for dinner at hers (if she wants more people at her table, I'm sure as hell not paying for them).

My niece was there as well.  She also spent the night.  It was a good barometer of how I'm being portrayed in her family. Apparently, they barely let her spend the night at my place (only at begging from my ex...uh yeah). I got an almost constant "you are an asshole" stare from my niece. 9 months ago, I was the "fun" uncle who was the only one spending any time with the kids on vacation (everyone else was busy getting trashed). But I guess that's to be expected.   My ex can't exactly tell the truth as to why I left her. So she has to spin something about how I left her destitude (exempting the 300k in cash / retirement and another 100k in child support paid over the next 5 years).

So I guess the takeaway here is this: Even though I bought an outfit, organized the party, had her friends overnight, and even fisted a pig for my daughter, the ex is still better at manipulation than I am. Maybe it would be different if we had 50/50 custody, but we don't, so the message my kids get will always be slanted towards mom and against dad. And she's SO good at manipulating the message while making herself look the victim. That ain't going to change. I can only pray for the serenity to accept it. 

But at least now I have the freedom and opportunity to put my own mark on the kids. It is fighting against the tide sometimes, but at least I have the opportunity to show them who their dad really is.

On a side note, my daughter suffers from severe migraines. Her doctor recommended several things, but among them is to go to a therapist. I'm thinking I need to proactively look into this myself since it could either be a way for my daughter to appreciate her pig-fisting father or a way to condemn the man who left her mother.  Any thoughts on this, team?

shamwow I know your daughter had to have taken a video of you anally fisting the pig. You have to post that and not deprive us if that laugh.

I grew up in a rural area and when we went to a petting zoo my kid scared a little girl by calling the chicks chicken nuggets.

shamwow if your kids were taught to think for themselves, they will see the good you bring to their lives. I'll admit when my parents got divorced just after I went away to college, I blamed my father and felt sorry for my mother. Looking back, yes my father was a jerk most of the time but my mother wasn't blameless in the breakdown of the marriage. They couldn't even bring themselves to smile for our wedding pictures being in the same room as one another.

The thing that stands out the most to me now though, is the fact that my father has never once said a negative word about her in my presence. My mother doesn't show this restraint and regularly brings up his faults and wrongs from decades ago. Your Ex's negativity will come back to bite her some day. You keep being you and they will see it. It may not be right away but eventually they will see it.

Pigfister yes, pigfucker no.