John's contract was supposed to end August 20th. Shortly after that, he was supposed to be coming home. He extended his contract another six months. It's just until the director finds a replacement, he tells me. He's having a harder time right now due to the pandemic. And while I don't doubt that in the least, I also know that the director is not going to be motivated to find someone any sooner than he has to. Why when he has someone locked down already for six months?
John signed the first contract literally either the day of or the day after he was served divorce papers for the second time. So when we sat down with Isabelle to tell her, he gave her a double whammy. Daddy was going to Korea and also was no longer going to be married to Mommy. He left for Chicago in a rental on August 27, 2018 and has not been back since. The plan was that the girls spend some time over in Korea with him. But he was going to have to foot the expenses for everything. Somehow the girls were going to have to get over there as neither of them were over 18. It never happened. Finances and me not being able to take the time off needed to do it got in the way last summer and this year, it's been COVID-19. So for close to two years now I have been a single parent, parenting these two girls with no help because their dad is more than 6000 miles away.
Don't get me wrong, my girls are both troopers and have helped out a lot in the past two years and both have really taken on responsibilities and I can't complain too much on that end. But when one of them is still in elementary school, still prone to catching those illnesses, one thing that happens is that she gets sick and I have to stay home from work. There's no one to help with that, no one to shoulder that responsibility. There are times the emotions get over-powering as they tend to do in pre-teen and teenage girls. And that too has been mine to deal with alone. There's no one else to take on some of that for me. So there have been times when the responsibilities get a little overwhelming, when the day to day gets to be a little too much and there's no one else there to take any of that on. Because 6000 miles is pretty damn far away.
I was diagnosed with diabetes back in February. There's a family history of it so the doctors have been watching me for over 20 years, since my older brother was diagnosed at 25 (he gets it from both his parents while I just get it from our mom). I was 9 when my mother was diagnosed. Ten months after her diagnosis, she was hospitalized for the first time with pancreatitis. That worried me because who will take the girls if I get sick? And then COVID-19 hit the US and everything shut down and we all stayed home, away from everyone and it all got so much harder.
June is hard enough for me and this year was no exception. So I was vulnerable and needing a distraction and that distraction came in the most unexpected way. I wasn't looking for a relationship, was not even pursuing one because I felt I wasn't ready. Still so much I needed to figure out. And while I was lonely, I had my freedom. And having been in a relationship for almost my entire adult life at this point, and having fought so hard and paid so much for that freedom, I wasn't looking to give that up so quickly.
But I had forgotten how good it felt to be wanted, to be desired, to be touched by as simple a touch as a hand on my leg and I got swept up in that. And it was a distraction from the usual pain the end of June brings.
I knew it wasn't love, wasn't even a relationship, was very careful to keep that in my mind, very careful in how and who I told about it. Because at any moment it could pop like a bubble. And it did. And all it really did was leave me feeling empty and even more alone...
With school starting up again in the middle of a pandemic, there was so much to consider, so much to figure out, so much to decide and again, I was alone in dealing with all of it. I had to make that decision alone. I had to decide what to do knowing that there were problems and risks with either option because while there was a third option, currently working 45 hours a week was not going to allow homeschooling to be much of an option not when school was starting soon. But that was what John was pushing. That was what he wanted me to do because public schools teach kids things they shouldn't be learning, they are making this whole pandemic thing political and not allowing things to be normal like they were in 2019 and as long as things were not normal, they shouldn't be in school. And again because he doesn't seem to get it: I HAVE TO MAKE THIS CHOICE KNOWING I AM THE ONLY ONE HERE RIGHT NOW TO DO THIS! And this doesn't seem to sink in with him.
And so I have done what has become necessary to do because one, he is not here and two he has no intention of coming back before March and I have made this entirely too easy for him to do this because I have not kept him from contacting the girls. I have not kept him from being a part of their lives. Technology makes that easy but he's still 6000 miles away and not here to help me but he will definitely try to dictate, try to tell me what I'm doing wrong, how I should be taking care of his children because obviously, I don't do things the way he would because I'm not following his beliefs. And all I can say if it's that much of an issue, he needs to come back. So I blocked him on Facebook. Because he only uses messenger though he does text Natalie and he is able to send me emails. I don't need it anymore. I don't need the judgments, the constant questions, the condemnation of everything I do. I was done. I am done. But I sure don't feel any less alone.
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