Dawn Is Me

I haven’t been in here in a long time.

It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say. It’s just that I’m having trouble making up my mind how much of what I have to say can be said in public.

A lot of things have changed.

As of this writing, Baker is in jail. It came out that he had abused our children — badly enough that it landed him in jail, indicted on 22 charges of varying sorts of endangering a minor and facing a 15-year jail sentence that his attorney bargained him down to.

He’s gone. I have petitioned for and obtained sole custody of my minor children and I have orders of protection where they are needed. I will keep them safe.

We moved out of his house. I now have a home, something I haven’t had for a good three or four years now.

It’s getting better.

I got a part time job at Walmart (something which I am curiously embarrassed about) and I’m still a full-time student. I’m taking 20 credits this semester, which is the maximum allowable and I’m seeing why that is. But, between the job and the school and the kids and the whole single mom thing, I don’t have much time to sit around thinking about how scared and lonely I am.

By the time I get around to really noticing, I might not be scared and lonely anymore. Who knows?

This is where I get to start all over … again. From here, it’s mostly uphill.

Another installation of Konversations with Kimmie, augmented by Revealing Responses by Ricky:

Kimmie (staring across the room): Ricky’s got a lot of definition in his shoulders. (pause) Hey, Ricky, I can see your nipple.

Mom: What does that have to do with the definition in his shoulder?

Ricky: Oh, yeah? Hey, Kimmie! (whips aside his muscle shirt to fully expose the nipple in question)

Mom: Eeeeeee!

Kimmie: Lawl!

Ricky: Wow, Mom!

Kimmie: Take it off, take it all off. (pause) But don’t really.

(It’s not all angst in the life of Dawn Is Me.)

I’m probably not in the best place to be writing about healing between the genders.

That was my first thought when I started out to ponder this month’s Women on the Verge theme.

I’m just about six months out from finalizing my divorce. At this point, I’m sad and lonely and scared. I’m not sure that I have anything to say about healing; I’m not sure I remember what it feels like. In my current circumstances, it would probably be fairly easy to refuse to say anything positive about him, in particular, or about men, in general.

But if I stop to really think about it, I find myself wondering … what’s to heal?

As odd as it sounds, I was with a guy who wanted to stay married to me without being required to have an actual relationship with me. But I’m not angry with him about that, I guess because I haven’t taken it on. Once I understood that was the lay of the land, I realized almost immediately that was his issue and not my fault.

Even now, my sorrow and fear have nothing to do with him. Instead, I’m realizing how long I’ve been alone, even in this marriage. And I’m wondering if I’m going to be alone all my life.

That’s what mating is supposed to help us deal with, isn’t it? The fact is that we are alone when we are born and we are alone when we die. It’s the being alone part that makes both those experiences so terrifying, and that terror is a big part of what drives us to avoid solitude in between.

I don’t want to be alone, I readily admit it. This what I have in common with every single man, every widower, every divorced man in the world, up to and including my own ex-husband. We are all human, are we not? And we all crave that very special intimacy-tinged-with-sex that is the recipe for mating.

(Here I hesitate. I call it ‘mating’ for want of a better single-word [I don't want to use 'marriage'], even as I realize it makes me sound like I’m writing a script for one of those Nature movies. “And the male warily approaches the female to see if she is open to mating … .”)

And then, too, when I reach into my heart in search of less painful gender-related stuff, I encounter another kind of intimacy. That is because I have sons.

These are the only two men in the world who have drunk from my breasts. I bore them both of my body and I share with them the kind of physical intimacy that can only come from being among that rare set of individuals whose diapers I once changed and who were once allowed to throw up on me without fear of reprisal.

And the funny thing is that it is in the nature of the relationship between a mother and her children that healing will one day be necessary there, too.

I don’t know yet what I’ve done but I’m sure I’ve done something for which I will be called upon to apologize to one or both of my young men. I’m not perfect and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get both these guys to adulthood without having screwed up somewhere. And that’s okay. Experience tells me that, as long as I am willing to apologize and own my faults, that healing will be possible.

That is what my own mom taught me, you know. It’s difficult to forgive somebody when they greet your injury with blame and derision instead of validation and comfort … and a genuine apology.

And maybe, if I step back from the personal to look at the big picture, that is what I can contribute to this conversation. The knowledge that real healing of any kind begins with a non-vengeful statement of injury, on the one hand, and a non-manipulative admission of responsibility, on the other.

“You did that. It hurt me.”

“I did? I’m so sorry! I won’t do that again.”

It’s nowhere near as easy to do as it sounds. Hell, it’s not even especially easy to write.

But this writing is good for me. I cry. When I cry, I am free.

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I AM A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

Healing Between The Genders is our theme for June. Please join in the conversation by joining WomenontheVerge.net, on Twitter @WomenontheVerge, on Facebook or by listening and chatting on our monthly radio show where I am a panelist. Join us for a fun and intriguing conversation on our monthly theme on June 15th from noon-1pm ET on BlogTalkRadio.com/womenontheverge.