Birkenstocks and the rest of my life

I know it's hard to understand. Shit, I don't completely understand it. Why am I so upset? I left five years ago. I left because my marriage had effectively ended years before when the kids and I lived one life and he lived another. Side by side and yet totally separate. Mine consumed by work and childcare and all that goes with being an adult with kids, play dates, practices, appointments, cooking, cleaning, all of the things. His became consumed by a singular hobby that took him out of the house for hours and hours at a time. Alone and away from us. 

It was a slow unraveling of a life that I thought we were in together. My mom recently reminded me that I asked for a divorce in March of 2020. He wouldn't entertain the idea or consider moving out. I had learned long before that I would never convince him of anything he didn't want to do and so I gave that up for now and looked for another way to live life. A mere four months later, in a last ditch attempt to save "us," we moved across the country to a place we both loved, that was full of adventure we BOTH appreciated and tried to start again. We, together for the first time in SO LONG, had a mutual path forward. A same goal. And it worked for a while. We traveled together, just us, a thing we had never done outside of traveling to his races where he ran alone for hours on end and I met him for 5 minutes and carried his shit, to Colorado to house hunt. 

We looked at a few houses, fell in love with two, easily decided together on the one. We saw a bear near the house one afternoon. It felt like a sign. I love bears. We went out to diner and had beers. TALKED about our life and our future. We spent weeks preparing our house for sale, hours working on projects, getting rid of stuff. It was during COVID and other than his daughter and her fiancé, it was just us. And we had that mutual goal. 

At the end of June, we loaded up the last of our stuff in the moving truck, packed kids and dogs into the cars, and along with Kailey and Michael, we caravanned to Colorado. The newness sustained me for a while. But the minute the Kailey and Michael left to fly back home, the loneliness took back over. Sure I met people, parents of the kids’ friends, coworkers, a few like-minded ladies I met through Facebook groups about sustainability... But for all intents and purposes, I was on my own. And now I was really, really alone. No Kailey, no family, no friends I had known most of my life. No coworkers I loved, no sisters nearby. And I think that level of alone laid bare what I couldn't quite stand my ground on back in March. It was over. 

I broke the news that I was done in October. I drove home in a car packed with kids and dogs and a whole lot of sadness on New Years Eve 2020. I opened a tiny bottle of champagne with my mom just after midnight in our new rental, sight previously unseen. It was a new beginning. I was ready to heal. 

He came to see the kids in January. He texted the night before to ask if he could stay at my house. My new beginning, my new boundaries, my new life were already being taken back from me, eroded by his needs and preferences. The next time he visited, I offered that he could stay at the house. It felt like taking the control back. I told myself it was good for the kids. It was practical. There was no way he could afford a hotel when he wanted to see them in Wisconsin. It became clear that they wouldn't visit him without me, which meant staying at the Colorado house. It made sense. Over time people praised us for doing what was best for the kids, for still providing them with some sense of family, for putting our differences aside to make it work. And it did until he took a left turn so unexpected and without warning or respectful discussion that it doesn't work anymore.

In November, I started to see strange Amazon searches and purchases, things that were uncharacteristic of the person who had been unrelentingly the same, unwilling to change, for years. I thought perhaps there was a girl, but I couldn't confirm and didn't feel it was my place to ask. Then in May, after he'd been sending the kids pictures from all over the west of the country, I started to look again. You've read that story, I don't need to rehash it here, but the end is, he moved on. Without a word to anyone.

I'd say good for him and mean it, but in addition to that he handled it so poorly and without remorse for all the hurt and distrust it caused, he basically installed someone else into my life. And it fucking hurts. It hurts to know and it hurts much more to watch. They give podcast interviews from rooms in my house that are no longer mine (despite that legally, they are absolutely still mine). They post pictures from my deck, views that I recognize and loved fiercely. (That's, by the way, how I confirmed she'd moved in. Fun, right?) They go to the same restaurants we went to, celebrates the same stupid shit that she's interested that I'm interested and in some warped reality he thought that meant we might be friends because "we have a lot in common." You gave her my life that WE built together after making that life so unhappy that I left it. Not a chance.

And that dull ache that lived in me for the years and years and years I stayed hoping to be seen again? That went quiet for a long time when I lived my life with the kids and he stepped in and out of it for visits where we tolerated each other and did our best. Now every time I hear her talk about how his financial stability benefits her, despite that he's not supporting his kids as he should, every time I see her IN MY HOUSE, every time I see him give her the love and affection he so long ago began to withhold from me, I want to claw my insides out. 

Today he bought a pair of Birkenstocks for her. Presumably for her upcoming birthday. Like he bought me Birkenstocks three years ago for some birthday or Mother's Day, something.  He used our still joint-for-convenience-and-cost Amazon account with exactly no consideration for the way that might make any of us feel. Me or his daughter, who is watching him fawn over this woman...ALL of the attention and videos of them kissing at finish lines and arms around each other during interviews...while texting his daughter once or twice a week. 

And what it really comes down to, the reason I'm so angry and hurt even though I don't want the life that I left back then is that he's basically given her Birkenstocks and the rest of my life. Everything I was promised and what was withheld from me until I was so broken that I left. When I drove East out of Denver that New Years Eve, I mourned the loss of that life, of the mountains, and what I thought was mine but wasn't. I haven't yet accepted that he gets to give it to someone else. I don't think I ever will.