I've heard and read about the proper protocol when it comes to informing family members of a decision to divorce. The spouse should know before the kids. It makes perfect sense.
Then yesterday happened.
Todd is home all the time now. We used to get a breather from his moods, but ever since he came home from the hospital following his accident, he is home. all. the. time.
It was one of those moods you could slice with a knife yesterday. The kids hadn't been keeping up with the cleaning like they should, and Todd had had enough. He started on one of his clean-like-a-madman and make-as-much-noise-as-you-possibly-can-so-no-one-misses-out-on-the-fact-that-you're-doing-something-you-shouldn't-have-to-do rampages.
My son came in and politely and calmly asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"No. It's too late!" Todd bellowed, continuing to flail about with a broom, crashing it into the walls carelessly as he swept, and scaring the gentle boy out of the room.
Then, instead of just sweeping under my great-grandparents' antique settee like we always do, he hurled the fragile piece of family history away from the wall, causing it's rickety old wheels to squeak, creak, and groan as they slid without spinning.
I've been disconnecting myself from things for some time now. Even more so since Todd came home with his mood swings magnified, and the glass stove was mysteriously cracked from corner to corner (just about the same time I heard him crashing around pots and pans in the kitchen.) I can't care about things and keep my sanity with a near-sighted bull raging about in the china.
My daughter was home, however. And she cared. "That is not acceptable," she said calmly, but emphatically. He didn't listen, so she repeated it. He played ignorant, like he didn't know what she could possibly be talking about. She explained about how that particular piece of furniture had endured many generations, and it had done so by NOT being treating like that.
He muttered something like, "Well, what am I supposed to do?"
I ignored the biting sarcasm of his tone of voice, and suggested that he might have accepted his son's offer to help... then he wouldn't have to be doing this.
"Oh, is that so?" He flung the words at me like manure being flung onto a pile of more of the same.
"Yes," I replied, "it is so. If you had allowed him to help you'd have half the work and you'd be building positive memories instead of the sort you're building now."
"Well, it's too late," he muttered.
"It's not too late if you're still cleaning." I should have known better than to challenge his thinking in any way.
And so began yet another one of our typical altercations. I resolved myself to not let him get to me, but that resolve waivered.
He mocked me with his tone of bitter sarcasm for being bothered by his tone of sarcasm, as if he were some sort of a misunderstood saint. "Well, I guess I can't do anything right," he retorted.
Oh boy. I know what those words mean. They indicate the fact that we are speaking from two entirely different realities. No need to continue: Your words will only be twisted.
I retreated to the other room, to find my daughter sitting there. She had heard the whole thing. "It's okay, Mom," she said.
But I could feel the tightening in my chest. I could feel my health being depleted. I knew it wasn't okay. "I can't take this anymore," I let the words escape.
"I know," she replied.
"I know I shouldn't say this to you... not to you first, that is... not before I say it to him," the words just poured out... but I didn't have to say any more.
"I know, Mom," she said. "You don't think I know? You don't think we all know? It's obvious to everyone." And she went on to bring it up. The words I couldn't quite say, she extracted and gave voice to...
SEPARATION
. . . and she wasn't devastated.
. . . and when I said it could be the best thing for everyone -- even Daddy, SHE AGREED.
So, I admitted that I had been rehearsing the words to say to her daddy, just the night before -- the words to tell him it was over, but that he would be okay.
"Your brothers each went though divorces, and they were okay," I had said as I drove alone in my car the previous night. "Your mother, too. And life went on..."
My daughter and I sat there conversing in hushed tones as the storm continued to rage in the very next room.
I had let the cat out of the bag.
She understood.
Just like a good friend had nearly predicted when he said, "You've got to have a little faith that your friends and family will understand."
It feels like the wheels have been set in motion.
That's a scary feeling. But it feels good, too.
I can't stop the momentum. That would be heartless. It would be slipping back into apathy, which is the opposite of love.
The most loving thing I can do for myself, for my children, and for Todd, is to stop standing idly by and enabling him to be whatever sort of jackass he feels like being without any consequences.
I'm prepared for him to argue. I'm prepared for him to make promises to change. I'm prepared for him to play the persecuted victim.
And I'm also prepared to answer:
"It's too late."
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