Advice sought

        I just finished a novel called “the Zahir” by Paulo Coehlo.  It affected me deeply and when combined with the wind breaking my gates--which I had put up partly to try to hide the marginality of my existence from my neighbors (and make them less anxious to sue me or drive me off in another way)--and with my divorce hearing that was just cancelled, and my domestic violence appeal hearing that  also just got cancelled, has left me at a total loss and hoping for some sort of guidance from someone or something or somewhere.

        I don’t want to burden you or take you places you don’t want to go or get you involved in things you would prefer to avoid, but I am thinking that it may be helpful for me to address this to you, regardless of whether you are moved to respond or to just read it and put it down, or to just delete it unread.

        My current situation with my soon-to-be-ex-wife, Gail, has forced me to revisit my first divorce, and as a result I know that I can be better off for having gone through this painful passage, as I was better off despite the suffering surrounding that earlier one.  Yet I can now also see, from the distance of 21 years, that hooking up with Gail, while it made my situation much better then and for the intervening time period, at the same time it made that divorce (and custody) process much worse than it needed to be with regards to the fruits of that marriage, and any continuing relationship with that ex-wife.  Worse, it allowed me to avoid facing some personal issues that have now resurfaced in full force, for some of Gail’s stated complaints and problems about me seem very similar to those of the mother of my children, though Gail actively belittled those things in my first ex.  Gail’s insistence on seeing things only in black and white, and her apparent need to win at whatever cost, is (without some sort of intervention) clearly destined to make this passage even more damaging than the first (for all of us, including her). 

        Betsy, my first wife, gave me two beautiful children and then took them from me.  Though it wasn’t the head on my shoulders that was doing the thinking at that point, I was not so totally distracted as to be ignorant of the fact that Gail was attracted to me as much by my children as by my less than diamond in the rough persona.  Yet it has taken the years and this new split to help me to fully understand that Gail’s standard unflinching unreason in fighting for my children (indeed in any fight she takes on, which seems a constant), and my allowing her to control the tenor of that years long custody struggle, made that situation much worse than it needed to be or could have been.   Yet, ultimately, I have maintained a strong connection with the children of that marriage, something that doesn’t look possible with regard to the fruits of this relationship.  For her part, Gail has been striving to continue a relationship with my female child (though this has slacked off lately), while discounting and discarding my male child along with me.  Apparently she finds no contradictions or conundrums in that path, which is at least in line with her acknowledged overall dislike of men in general.

Together (though she would prefer to deny the primary importance of my involvement), Gail and I have birthed a rental property, a beautiful large solar house, and the building project lot where I am left living in the aging motorhome I bought to be my construction office.  (We also created a 501c3 corporation together, but that is something somewhat separate from the divorce, and is not a subject of this rant).  I was also a major participant in helping her grow her arts and crafts business, but that matter will take care of itself.  Long ago at her request, I signed papers giving up all rights therein, purportedly to prevent my ex-wife from getting any value from it in terms of child support, so there isn’t much to discuss there.  I know that she cannot continue her business as it was without my participation, and perhaps in paying someone else to try to do some of what I did for her, or learning how to do her own books, as she claims to be doing, she may belatedly come to some understanding of my discarded value.  Or not.  That is the crux of the matter as I see it, and I am writing this in hopes of gaining a larger perspective than what I can already see.  The custody of our “children” is currently all consuming, and heavily burdened by her bogus domestic violence charges.

        Gail, as you may know, continues to be in total denial about the condition of her failing mother.  In absolute contradiction of her siblings, father, medical authorities, and the insurance company which provides full time live-in care, Gail refuses to believe that her mother has dementia.  Rather, she claims that her mother withdrew in the face of her father’s overbearing demands.  This is related to the current discussion due to two facts 1) a neurologist (her brother) has told Gail that she will invariably follow her mother down that same path, and 2) her father was the first of many men who physically battered her.  Perhaps Gail is not going down that path, but as the person who was closer to her than anyone, I was very concerned about some of her behaviors which seemed to indicate that possibility was growing.  When my research informed me that in addition to her brother’s prediction of a genetic probability, Gail had many of the other known precursors of dementia, including brain damage, chronic pain, and a history of smoking and inhalant abuse, I became even more concerned.

        There is more, about her, and more problematically for me to see clearly, about me, but let me take this thread to its end rather than confusing it by adding anything else here.  Gail remains in denial about her mother, so while she was willing to promote her brain damage for the purpose of trying to win her lawsuit over her auto accident, that she absolutely refuses to credit the possibility that there is something lasting and increasingly wrong with her own mental functioning is an absolute requisite for her ongoing denial of both her mother’s and her own conditions.  Moreover, just like to her, her mother’s condition is her father’s fault, it follows that as long as she can prevent me from making her “withdraw” like her father did to her mother, she can avoid following her mother’s path.  So it follows that the only way she can save herself, to prove the truth of her denial, is to blame anything and everything related to that possibility on me.  And so it goes.

        I could be wrong in that assessment, but I don’t think so.  If you have any insights to pass me, please do so.  Post here or email to kenkast@yahoo.com.

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