Uncontested.

Big news. Tyler and I came to an agreement on custody and visitation. Without any lawyers, or mediators, or judges, or hitmen.

::hallelujah chorus::

That was the only issue we had to resolve in order to have an uncontested divorce. For awhile there it was looking like we were going to have to have a long, drawn-out, expensive trial... but thankfully we were able to come to a compromise and now it's all down in writing to be filed at the courthouse before our final hearing. Which should be sometime next month.

Getting divorced is really such a pain in the ass. I don't know who thought of this system, but whoever did is not very bright. So, these two people can't get along well enough to live under the same roof? Let's have them jointly fill out a mountain of paperwork that's about three miles high, and have them arrange to spend some quality evenings at court-ordered parenting classes together! That should go well! Bring it in, you two! Group hug!

But, I guess that's just how it is when it doesn't work out. It takes a lot of paperwork to dissolve a marriage, and even after the final signature, if you have kids, you're tied together in some way for the rest of your lives. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, baby... you, me, and our divorce decree. Romantic, isn't it?

So, here's what we came up with. Joint legal custody. Primary residence with me. Tyler gets visitation every other weekend, and 1-2 weeknights per week for a total of up to 5 nights per 14 days. Alternating holidays. He gets two blocks of two weeks each in the summer. And I have to pay for one plane ticket to North Dakota per year.

He is most likely moving to Denver in the spring or summer, so the paperwork will have to be modified after that. I'm pretty happy with our agreement overall. There are some things I don't love, of course, but in the big picture I would rather give a little more than I would like so that I can maintain a good relationship with him for Caroline's sake. Things between us are civil, even almost friendly, and I hope we can keep it that way because it will be better for her in the end.

Life is good these days. I feel calm and happy and hopeful. And really, all the legal stuff has gone as well as we could have hoped for so far. You really can't ask for much more than that!

"I don't think she smiles like that"

Caroline is in North Dakota with Tyler for Christmas. She will be there for about 2.5 weeks total.

Sucks. A lot.

I'm trying not to be depressed about it and to take advantage of the time to study for the next part of the boards, which are coming up in January, and to sleep in and spend time with friends. Spending the holidays without your child, though... well, I don't even really like to think about it, much less write about it, so I won't.

I miss her. I don't want a whole lot of things in life, other than to be a good dentist and to be a good mom. When half of that is missing, I feel... at a loss. Empty. Purposeless. I keep the door to her room shut. I don't turn on the Christmas tree. The holidays aren't happy for me this year.

I can't wait until she comes home.

But anyway. That is not the purpose of this post. This is:

I have a close friend who also recently got divorced. I was spending the night at her place a few days ago (when I had no heat and then a gas leak in my apartment, which is a whole nother story) and we were laying around chatting and looking at pictures from a Christmas party last week. She said, "hey, can I tell you something? This is going to sound so lame. But when I've looked at pictures of you from a long time ago, you have this really big, big smile and it almost doesn't even look like you. I thought, I don't think she smiles like that. But when I look at these pics from Friday, you have that same smile again."

And she is right. I do.

I have to remember that. That even though it's sad, this first divorced Christmas without my baby, I am me again. I am happy again, in the big picture. I can drag myself up out of this unhappy marriage and all the things we did to each other and all the pain and sadness can be lifted.

I can be me again. I can smile like that again.

In fact, I guess I already do.

Stop googling that.

I always enjoy tracking the google searches that lead to my blog. Usually it's a whole lot of searches along the lines of "unexpectedly expecting blog" or "unexpectedly expecting julia" and whatnot. Sometimes there are a few extremely creative spellings of "unexpectedly" (get it together, people).

But aside from those, the most common search terms to lead to this page are "paper cut on eye" (thank you, breastfeeding) and "how to make a woman cry" (thank you, pumping).

(Okay, there also was once a search for "grown woman in diper" [sic] but we just won't even go there. No, we won't go there. Because I don't even want to know.)

Seriously? Who are these men (I assume they are men) searching for how to make a woman cry? WTF? Stop googling that. We are doing enough crying all on our own, probably already because of you, thanks very much. We don't need you looking for instructions on how to make us do that.

And now that I've made a whole post about it, I've probably just perpetuated the problem. That's okay. At least now when they search for it, they'll get here and be scolded. You're welcome.

And for those of you googling "paper cut on eye", well, I'm sorry for you, because that just sounds like it really sucks. Good luck with that.

Fried

So, my short Thanksgiving break was pretty awesome. I got to hang out at home with Caroline and just relax and spend time with her. Our days are hectic, so it was nice to "catch up". But I don't think the break was quite long enough, because my brain appears to be totally fried. Luckily, Christmas vacation is just two weeks away...

I keep losing my school ID, which I need to get to my desk and into the labs. I also keep putting things down around the clinic and then realizing they are missing a couple minutes later, and then running all over trying to find them. Basically I am just leaving pieces of myself all over the place and being really scatterbrained. I never used to be like this! I guess I am just a little overwhelmed and need a vacation. But the worst happened yesterday...

I was in the lab working over the weekend because I am pretty much drowning in dentures, which is actually a disgusting mental image and I am truly sorry for inflicting it on you. I had a bunch of projects going on at once, trying to be efficient because I had to pick Caro up from Tyler's place (an hour away) at 3:45. The last thing I had to do was make a shell for a temporary bridge, around 1:30. I put a sheet of plastic in this plastic-melting machine that gets extremely hot, and went to gather up my stuff to leave while it was heating. I'm sure that any of you stretched-too-thin mothers can guess what happened then. I picked up my stuff and walked out of the lab, completely forgetting that I had turned on that machine.

All was well until about 10pm, when I sat bolt upright on the couch and remembered. That machine gets HOT. It totally would be capable of burning down the building. I frantically texted everyone I knew who might be at school. No one. I called public safety and told a cop there what I had done and asked him to go make sure someone had shut off the machine, because I couldn't drag my sleeping baby a half hour to school to do it myself. Ohmylord he was so annoyed with me. Understandably. I guess.

I didn't know the room number to the lab and I am the worst direction-giver ever, so these cops were wandering all over the hospital (which is huge) trying to find the lab. I didn't know the technical name for the machine. (We just call it a "suck-down machine", to which the cop said "is this a prank call?") I didn't know anything, really, except that I would probably be in a little bit of trouble if I burned down the entire health center. They found it eventually and of course it was already shut off. The cop was going on and on about it so finally I said "look, do you want me to stop in at public safety tomorrow morning to help you fill out this report? Or maybe pick up some kind of scarlet letter to wear on my chest?" and he was all "well you don't have to be rude" and I was all "well I'm sorry but neither do you sir" and I'm pretty sure public safety is going to key my car tomorrow.

Then of course I was wishing the damn place had burned while I suffered through a terrible morning in clinic, but that's neither here nor there.

So. Long story short (way too late for that), I could use a week of vacation or two!

Thankful. 2010 version.

This Thanksgiving was so different from last year. I am sure I don't need to explain why.

Thanksgiving is usually one of my favorite holidays. It's like the only American holiday that isn't completely over-commercialized. And it's all about delicious food. I don't think I need to spell out how awesome that is. But it's also all about family time, and holidays like that are tough, being separated and still in the middle of all the divorce stuff. I woke up this morning feeling pretty bummed. I moped around the house for awhile before getting ready to leave with Caroline for our Thanksgiving plans. I fully planned on being that newly divorced girl and drinking too much wine and making things awesomely awkward by talking loudly about my divorce.

But once I got moving and spent some time with family and friends, I started thinking more about how much I really do have to be thankful for... and there are so many things...

I'm thankful for my daughter, who amazes me and entertains me and melts my heart every single day. I'm thankful for my family, and for my close friends who are family to me, even if we aren't related by blood. I'm thankful that I did go back to school to finish my degree, and thankful that I'm finally graduating this May.

And now I've typed "thankful" so many times that the word is starting to look really weird and I keep questioning whether or not I'm spelling it right. But, anyway...

I'm thankful for my freedom from a relationship that was no good for me, and that I don't have to pretend anymore that I am happy. I'm thankful for this chance to have a new life and a fresh start. I'm thankful to have hope for the future.

Life is good, really. It gets better every day. And I'm really, truly so thankful for that.

Dear Caroline,

When you are old enough to understand, these are the things I want you to know. First of all, I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love anyone or anything. I hope you know that already, even without me ever having to say so.

I worry that you will hate me someday for making the decision to split up our family. For compromising your relationship with your father. I hope that you will be able to see past the sad parts and appreciate the reasons why I did what I did. Your father and I were not going to be able to live happy lives together. We weren't going to be able to give you a happy, stable life, and that was so clear to me that I knew I had to part ways with him... and I had to do it while you were still young enough to not remember the awful process of it all.

I hope you don't think that I did it out of selfishness, out of flightiness, like so many people seem to think that I did. Continuing to pretend would have only hurt us all more in the end, and the last thing I want is to hurt you...

My hope is to give you more stability than you could have had, more love than you could have felt, surround you with more happiness than I could have done if I had stayed with a man I did not love. I am certainly not perfect, and maybe I'm doing it all wrong. I don't know. But all I can do is the best I can, and what I feel is right for us. I hope that someday, if you are ever in a similar situation, the decision that I'm making now can give you the courage to realize that you are never stuck, you are never trapped. If you've tried to make things work and are truly unhappy where you are, there is a way out, you can be happy again, and you shouldn't be afraid to say that you want to take a different road than society tells you to take.

I love you. I only want the best life for you. Maybe I can't offer that "perfect" life, living together with your father and a sibling and a dog and a white picket fence out front. But I can offer you all my love and hopefully, two parents who are happier apart than they ever could have been together. I hope that, even if your life is different from your friends' lives, you believe in the end that your two happy homes are better than a single unhappy one.

I love you.

Mommy

Exhausted.

That's what I am. That's all I am. The high that I was on from the thrill of changing my life for the better has worn off. Now I'm just being pulled under by the endlessness of the legalities and the stress and the seemingly bottomless anger and bitterness we have towards each other, that seems to be growing every day.

Does divorce always have to be like this? I feel like there must be couples out there who decide to end things and carry it out in a civil manner. Maybe it has to be more of a mutual decision in order for that to happen...

All I know is that I'm completely wiped out. We can't even hold a semi-normal conversation without our counselor present. It's like he's finally realized that it's truly over and has stopped asking me to reconsider, to give us a chance... and now the gloves are off. And boy, it really sucks when the gloves come off with someone who knows you this well. They know just how to really piss you off and screw you over.

It's so exhausting to not only deal with the pressures of my final year of school, taking care of my daughter alone, and the financial stress of raising her without an income other than my student loans... but also emotionally to try to find some way of handling the death of this relationship that was supposed to be forever. Most of the time, I try not to stop and think about any of it, because if I do, I start to fall apart... but I can't do that forever. At some point I am going to have to turn around and face the fact that my life has pretty much exploded in my face. I have my own therapist (separate from our couples counselor) to help me through it, but it's so hard to make it work with my schedule when I have patients until 5pm and then I have to get to daycare.

On the days I can push it to the side and focus on what matters and the light at the end of the tunnel, I am happy. Other days, like today, I am huddled in the corner of the library with my headphones on, trying not to cry. I don't know what I've done/ Or if I like what I've begun/ But something told me to run/ And honey you know me it's all or none...

So much pressure from all directions, I feel like I am going to crack... why can't we just both agree that we weren't right for each other and walk away from this, relatively unscathed? I wonder if it ever works out that way. I kind of doubt that it does. I am starting to think that getting divorced is the only way to truly get to know the person that you married.