Single Parenthood & I: It became final on Thursday

For the first time in a couple of months shy of a decade, I became a single man again this week. So let's get on with some open-air therapy, shall we?

You and me together, Tammy, you and me together.

I am, of course, struck by the irony that my divorce was finalised on Halloween, though I do take a somewhat more nuanced view of it all than, “Ding dong, the witch is dead!” I never felt that at all. Incompatibility is real, and it’s enough.

The feeling of the end of a relationship, especially one in which the two of you are far from the only people having their lives irrevocably affected by it, has been at times like something of an evil spirit, even if I warded off the worst of those particular demons some years ago.

Some things in life are simply not meant to be, and that was apparent within months of that ceremony. The upshot of all this is that even my oldest, now nine years old and already starting to turn into a proto-teenager, can’t remember us as anything like a normal, functioning couple.

We co-habited for years because we really had no option. I slept on a sofa for three of them. And when she finally moved out, two years ago, it was almost with a sense of relief that finally I could bring what I’d spent the previous few years learning fully into play, in a house in which the living room was a living room rather than a bedroom.

The only real concern that I have with myself as of the right now is the hope that I’m not giving off any ‘divorced energy’ at the moment. Because that has in recent years, and in particular in the cases of men roughly my age, become a highly pejorative phrase to throw around.

There’s a one per cent part of me that feels as though I should grow a Wellercut, start telling all and sundry that “she’s turned the we’ans against me”, and drinking things containing electrolytes. I don’t want to be like those guys, and neither do I carry forward their resentment or fundamental sadness.

But just having come out of a divorce is not something that I can opinionise away. It is a fact, starkly written in black and white on a document that I can view but haven’t bothered to yet. So I guess the question is, how did I process it at the time, and has it worked out?

Primarily, I’ve had to understand a fundamental contradiction, that it is entirely possible that the most beautiful people I’ve ever known have been the result of probably the worst single decision of my life, and that both of these facts can live alongside each other harmoniously.

Would I do things differently if I had my time again? I don’t know. It depends on whether you could guarantee these people in my life again, in any way. But ultimately, it feels essentially as though it’s an irrelevance. We all are where we all are, and we just have to play with the hand with which we’re dealt. Aces and threes can be held in the same hand. It is, to coin a cliche, what it is.

There was a point at which I was at the lowest of my life, and all this while having to maintain the necessary rictus grin for these two babies to have enjoyable upbringings. But I also had to process my way through and forward out of this feeling of grief and failure. In a sense, I’ve slowly withdrawn over the years and focused on getting my house in order, focusing increasingly on that which I can change, from my external world to my internal world.

We have a little house on a fairly busy road, a short walk from the south coast of England, in a town that has never quite felt like home to me because, well, it isn’t. But it’s the only home that the other two know, so I’ve suppressed the thought of leaving for years. But it’s starting to feel like a possibility again now, though the next time has to be the last because of those other two. It has to be the best decision for all of us.

So I’ve focussed on the parenting, this last couple of years on my own with these two, trying to do my best when there simply haven’t been enough hours in the day. As I’ve said on here before, my day starts punishingly early, and it’s only been recently that I’ve started convincing myself that I need to get to bed earlier if I’m not to just keel over at an appallingly early age. I might anyway. Hence these changes. Gotta be worth a throw, hasn’t it? There are, after all, people depending upon me, and people who love me.

I have to deal with two schools and consequently a school run that amounts to a big circle, twice a day, from Monday morning to Friday afternoon. I have a house to try and keep under some degree of control from a basic cleanliness point of view (and yes, I know all about “letting it go”, but it really is a job best tackled a little but often). I have mountains of clothes washing to do. I am full-time employed on a freelance basis and have work that I need to do if we’re to keep a roof over our heads. One weekend a month I stay with my dad, whose health has been declining of late. It’s a lot.

And perhaps that’s the point. In comparison with all of that, getting a chit through from the Courts telling me that I am now legally divorced, when I have already been emotionally so for getting on for eight years and have moved so far on from it all that it sometimes feels as though it all happened to someone else, simply feels like an irrelevance to my ordinary daily life. We had no financial settlement to reach because we have no money. Childcare arrangements were obvious, if for no other reason than that my house is halfway between their two schools.

The kids are happy and healthy, and I know fully well that they love the absolute hell out of their dad, just as he does them. I have good and beautiful people in my life, who make me feel loved and as though I have a place. I feel reasonably emotionally stable, and without the use of tablets to prop me up.

I'm finding myself again, after what's felt at times like a decade off. Things could be worse, and if anything I should perhaps use this moment to start giving a little more consideration to that future, a future which is still just starting to form into a shape that I really, really like. There is beauty in my life. The evil spirits have left the room. Now, about that Wellerc- IAN, NO.