Expat American in England Continued Part 2 (From Hereford Times)

Expat American in England Continued Part 2

9:56am Thursday 9th November 2006

• Print
• Email

I had separated from my husband (we will call him ‘the ex’) (remember we are protecting the innocent and not so innocent here) of 25 years in the autumn of 1997. It’s funny (or not so funny depending on how it turns out) how your perspective changes as you grow and mature.

The older I got, the less intelligent the ex seemed to me and the more racist, bigoted, small-minded and opinionated. Or maybe it was as it often is in marriages, one of the partners grows and matures and the other doesn’t. I won’t bore you with the details of the break up of the relationship because that’s not what this blog is about. It takes two to destroy a marriage. Were you to hear his side of the story, you would hear a totally different version so for the sake of brevity, I will tell neither version. I will simply say that we lived together for 25 of the 27 years we were married and not all of them were happy.

After years of feeling like I was a 2nd class citizen, no, make that 5th class citizen (is there a 5th class? If there is, that’s what I was). Nothing I had ever done was good enough and that had taken its toll. Particularly since I had grown up with a mother who did her best to make me feel the same way as a child and continued that behaviour right into my 30s when I finally wised up and walked out of her life. Seemed I was never pretty enough, smart enough, popular enough, thin enough (she told me as an adult I should take up smoking to lose weight as well as informed me that I was too fat to hold on to a husband. (This from a woman married four times, duh!) If only I had done the same with my ex, I surely wouldn’t have wasted all those precious years. In the end, I can’t blame my mother or my ex for my worthless self-image. People can only make you feel bad about yourself if you let them (and I was damn good at letting them.) I’ve since reconciled with my mother as old age teaches you tolerance.

The only truly good things that came from that marriage were two wonderful daughters and to follow later, two grandchildren. Though in all honesty, we grow and learn from every experience and I certainly had lots of time to grow. I had literally NO self-image and no confidence. Frankly, I don’t know how I ever made it through those first few months alone in my apartment, but I am proud to say I did and mostly on my own too.

I rented an apartment, the only one I could afford, in an extremely low rent area of Orlando, FL. It was not uncommon to come home and find the sheriff’s department outside my door questioning one of my neighbours or to hear the couple next door having an extremely loud argument accompanied by slamming doors and much shouting and inevitably ended with “I’m gonna’ throw your sorry a** out if you don’t change your ways”. I fully expected at some point to come home and find the coroner next door with his little estate car (station wagon) waiting to tote off the most recent victim of an overdose of drugs or domestic assault. The neighbourhood was so bad that the complex I lived in actually gave the sheriff’s department space to have a substation there on the grounds. During my short stint there, my car was keyed, I was afraid to walk over to the laundry room after dark so I did my wash often at 6:00 in the morning and when I wasn’t working a 2nd job, I often locked myself in for the evening before it got dark and didn’t venture out at all. I had an alarm installed in my apartment just so as I could sleep at night. As a girl I went from my father’s home to my husband’s so this living on my own was a whole new experience. My first night alone I cried myself to sleep. The slightest sound was making me a nervous wreck. I got a cat, just so that if I heard a sound in the night, I could tell myself it was just the cat.

To make ends meet those first few months, I worked 2 jobs, leaving the house at 7:30 in the morning and returning between 9:00 and 11:00 at night. I changed jobs in the spring of 1998 so I could be a normal person, working just one-day job instead of night AND day. (Okay how does one define normal? Lots of folks work two jobs. So I guess I wanted to just be a 9 to 5 girl with a social life.) To change jobs I had to quit the one I had to allow me the time off to interview and this meant a month of being unemployed. I got no maintenance (alimony) from the ex. In fact I walked away from the marriage with nothing but a few bits of furniture and a car with a huge payment book. My motto for that time of my life? “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” It’s the truth.

Thank goodness my youngest daughter, Tricia was watching out for me. She was working at one of the local tourist attractions and frequently got decent tips that she more often then not handed over to me. If not for her, I wouldn’t have had the rent money let alone gas to go and job hunt. We were buddies too, both being single. We would go out to dinner from time to time or to a movie. After drinking too much,we went on the virtual 3-D ride. Let me give you some advice. Never, ever go on a three-dimensional ride when drunk! Those things that fly at your face and you are sober are easy to discount as just a 3-D effect but when you’ve had too much to drink, it’s a bit too real! I found myself ducking to get out of the way and according to Tricia I was talking too loud and we were going to get tossed out of there. Does alcohol affect your hearing? It does seem that people who’ve had too much of it tend to get really loud. After Tricia had had as much fun as she could handle with her mother she took my car keys away from me (smart girl) and drove home. Unfortunately, since I had picked her up, she took my car home with me and I was literally grounded the next day with no car since she had to be up early to go in to work. It was 10:00 the next night before I saw my car again. Was I being punished for drinking too much? Not that this has anything to do with the story but I suppose I included it to show you that my youngest and I had formed a friendship of sorts that remains to this day. I’ve told her things normally only best friends share and if not for her companionship, friendship, and occasional monetary support those first few months on my own, I am not sure how I would have survived. There were times no doubt that she wished her mother would just GROW UP and let her live her life but for some strange reason she stuck with me and helped me through a really tough time in my life. I neglect to mention that my oldest daughter, Betsy, lived 2 ½ hours away and while she was a tremendous emotional support (our phone bills proved that), her hands were full with a baby and husband so she did not have the freedom Tricia had to come to my rescue. Her long distance calls though did wonders to cheer me and battle the loneliness I often felt. And to be honest, Betsy is me, 30 years ago and it frightens me. I want so badly to tell her that life is too short to be unhappy, and uptight about everything. I want to tell her to have fun, to laugh and love and stop sweating the small stuff. I want to tell her I wasted too many years struggling to come to terms with who I was to everyone around me and in the end, I didn’t like me. But how does one share that type of thing with a daughter without hurting her. I didn’t want to be MY mother. It took a divorce and a lot of time on my own to learn to like me. I suppose I just don’t want her to have to learn it the same way. She’s already a better parent than I ever was so I bet in the end, she figures it out and it will all be all right. A mother never stops worrying. Okay, sorry about that, this is meant to be amusing not sad or educational so on to more of the story next blog.