For those of you not paying attention, Mr. Kat 2.0 and I have been separated for about 8 months, on our way to what was to be a fairly amicable divorce, as amicable as these things can be. I will still stand by my original plan of not trash talking him as best I can, but I’m pretty dismayed this evening.
Minime and I were out of town for the week of Christmas. Mr. Kat 2.0 called several million times that week, quite upset, all “I miss you” blah blah blah, “let’s talk” yadda yadda yadda. And I was all like “we can talk when I get back in town.” But when I was getting back to town was the day he was to be leaving town on his own little vacation, so a few weeks pass.
And in this few weeks time, I’m thinking thinking thinking, losing sleep. I’m trying to put myself in his shoes, understand where his sadness is coming from, trying to get a grip on what it would take for us to potentially reconcile. Hard things to think about, really tough matters of the heart. I considered what I would expect from him and wondered what he would expect from me in return.
When I finally do get to speak to him in private, no Minime ears listening, all he wants to know is how soon he can divorce me. He’s apparently zipped right past all that missing me he was doing, do not pass go, do not collect $200, when can he divorce me. I was FURIOUS! I’m still pretty pissed, just thinking about it. Jerk me around with a sad story, have me pondering getting back together, only to turn around and want to get in the express line for divorce.
I told him he had to wait out the full year to be divorced and he was not pleased. He actually asked me to fake the date of our separation so he could just “get this over with.” Needless to say, that conversation didn’t go well.
In Mr. Kat 2.0’s favor, I will say he and Minime get along very well as long as they aren’t living in the same house. They usually do something a couple Saturdays a month, and that’s great. I’m pleased they get along so well now that they have some space between them, and I won’t stand in the way of their fun.
Today was one of their days for fun, and when Mr. Kat 2.0 brought Minime home at the end of their outing, he of course has to blurt out something rude and snarky to me. And I fell for it, hook, line and sinker and rattled off a string of nasty remarks like machine gun fire. And he left.
I felt bad immediately. No matter what he said to me, there was no need for me to stoop to that level, no need for me to let loose with all that negativity, very uncool of me. So after a bit, I called him up to apologize for being so nasty and to let him know that I was still pretty peeved about the Christmas-boohoo-I-miss-you-so-much to the complete opposite Happy-New-Year-divorce-me-now emotional roller coaster he had me on. Told him I was mad and hurt and my defenses were up and all that.
And because he apparently likes nothing better than hurting my feelings, he said he didn’t really mean all that he said at Christmas. He really meant that he missed my house since it was bigger and roomier than where he’s living now and he missed the big television and things like that, that he never meant that he actually missed me or being a family. Now, at this point, my stomach is absolutely sour, I think I’m going to throw up because this was not the conversation I’d called to have, but Mr. Kat 2.0 isn’t done yet! Oh no, he has more! In fact, he wants me to know that he wishes we’d separated sooner because our marriage was really just a waste of his time–more specifically, I, Kat, was a waste of his time and that he can’t believe he’s wasted this much of his life on me. I thanked him for clearing everything up, and hung up on him.
And so here I am, blogging right along because I can’t think of anything else to do with my restless hurt heart. Our separation hasn’t been all unicorns and rainbows and fuzziness, but it really has not been ugly. It has been full of wishing each other the best as we go in different directions, up until now. Telling me that our relationship, our dreams and plans, were all just a waste of time is very possibly the meanest thing anyone has said to me in recent years, because it cut so very close to the soul. He essentially said he’d have been better off without knowing me, and I don’t believe that to be true.
My perspective is that it is hard and sad to end this marriage, and that I was willing to go through counseling to see if we could pull it together. Mr. Kat 2.0 disappointed me in some tremendous ways that I don’t care to go into, but I never saw our marriage as a waste of my time, even at this moment. I learned many things from him and we shared some really neat times, and even as the whole thing imploded, I never thought of it as a waste. Every experience is a gift if we look at what we’ve learned, what we’ve gained from it.
But according to Mr. Kat 2.0, I am a waste of his time. And that stings.
i don’t think you’re a waste of time.
(a waste of a perfectly good beer, maybe…)
hope all gets better. you deserve it.
jg
Men are like living on the bus line. Give it time and another one will come rolling along.