Are you my friend?

You might have heard me reference my friends in my posts...considering most of my readers are my friends, you are an amazing bunch of people. You've helped me during the worst crisis of my life, you continue to help, whether its providing an ear, an online chat session, rushing over for a coffee, or dragging me out of the house kicking and screaming. I cannot believe the amount of love and warmth you continue to share with me.

There have been some friends during this whole messy business who have been caught in the middle, they don't know what to do and I feel for them. We've had "couple friends" and they're kinda stuck in no mans land fearing to breathe for all the landmines of messy gooey emotion around them. Whenever asked, I've told them to please feel free being both our friends, and most have and for the most part, its business as usual. Although the women parts of these couples have been very generous in loaning out their guys for all the icky, gross or strong jobs I simply cannot do.

I'm taking this opportunity to brag, I've become fairly efficient at killing bugs and not freaking out. I actually came EYE to EYE with a moth at the gas station while pumping gas. I figured it would be in my best interest not to freak out and potentially blowing everyone in a 2km radius to kingdom come. That is an achievement!

Bug killing Joy is so great diatribe over, back to those friends. They have wandered through a really sticky mess and have come out the other end still committed to be friends to both of us in different ways and I feel blessed because of them. They didn't have the luxury of a cut and dried situation, they felt the shock and sadness and grief and they've had to deal with all of that on top of all the crap their own lives have thrown at them. They've had to do a tightrope line of support to both parties, it's pretty intense, I don't envy them, but they've shown their character and grace in spades.

All that said, I have lost some friends in the process. Some have just chosen to continue on the friendship with the other half, as they might have been closer to him. Some have been a bit two faced in running back and forth letting each of us know what the other had to say. Some have run off the deep end in gossip.

I can understand the decision to choose, sometimes the cards just have to lie where they fall and I don't bear anyone ill will because of it. I've had to amend my thinking and some practical issues because of it, but I guess there's bound to be casualties in all areas of life surrounding the break up of a marriage. It's just something I've come to accept. I'm actually a bit surprised about how easily I came to accept this, go fig.

The latter two categories of friends are former friends. Their actions can smart sometimes, but I'm generally more pissed about it, and not a defensive type anger stemming from hurt, but just a plain old "you're an asshole" type anger. Some have been reading this blog and have been turning it into gossip fodder, which of course works like a broken telephone, so if I say "the kids are great" it comes out the other end as "purplemonkeydishwasher". My advice...get a new hobby...purplemonkeydishwasher!

I think gossips of this sort, well they might be short term inflicting some wounds on the parties involved, but in the end, I think it will only hurt themselves. A friend once said something to the effect of "its a lot easier to heal from a hurt inflicted on you, than one you've inflicted on others" I'm paraphrasing, she's a lot more eloquent, but it's stuck with me, which is something because most days I barely remember my kids names. But they're wise words and if I'm firing on all cylinders, I try to remember it before acting.

Anyhow, enough negativity, I had to get those musings off my chest and to quote Forest Gump "that's all I have to say about that." Back to my good friends.

A lot of people when they've finally finalized a divorce and feel in a spot where they've turned the corner, they have a divorce party. I don't like that idea, I mean, it's the end of a marriage where presumably once two people loved each other. I don't like celebrating the end of love. So my perspective is, that once I've turned that same corner, I'm throwing a different kind of party. It's a friend appreciation party, because as one love ended, so many people have stepped up their love to fill in some of the gap. While it's impossible to fully do so, I feel that my friends have made my cup half full, so they better be prepared for one hell of a fiesta when I've conquered this hellish mountain of doom, which is uphill both ways and snowing on both sides, with volcanic eruptions, rabid rampaging moose and I'm butchering a pair of Jimmy Choos and my feet climbing it (just to put into perspective of what a challenge I face) but more importantly how much my friends have stepped in to make it easier.

Shared history

It's funny how you mourn the loss of that. I'm grieving the loss of the relationship for many things, but this week it seems like shared history, or just intimate knowledge is the topic.

A couple of nights ago, I hit a dog. He was lying on the highway seriously injured, there was no way I could have dodged him without killing me, my passenger and possibly others. I saw his tail wagging right before I killed him. I couldn't believe it for a moment, I had to ask my passenger what was it, and she confirmed it was a dog, to which I promptly wigged out. She was an awesome friend and likely in fear of her life in talking me down and to a place where I could pull over and I really started bawling. It was the type of cry that just comes out of your chest and leaves it sore for a while. My friend rocks, she hugged me, reassured me that there was nothing I could do, and logically I know she's right. I managed to get her and myself home safely, downed a couple of shots of tequila and cried myself to sleep.

Where the shared history comes in is, that I love dogs....I mean I really love them. I still mark the anniversary of my late dog Banzai's death. I used to show dogs, I used to work for the Canadian Kennel Club, I used to live, breathe, sleep dogs, no one knows this more than my ex who was dragged through living, breathing, sleeping dogs...mind you, when we split, we only squabbled over the custody of one item, and that was Banzai's urn. I won. Anyhow, ex did come over knowing how broken up I'd be about this to chat and console me. It was good, because we have been trying to get along, and nice gestures go a long way.

So as I finished this last paragraph it dawned on me that I needed to do the same (I'm quick like that). As most Canadians who pay attention to the news knows, NDP leader Jack Layton is stepping down (temporarily, because we all know Jack will kick cancer's ass!) due to the illness. What you don't know is that Jack has been a good friend of ex's for the past 20 years. He was one of the ex's professors back in university and they hit it off. Since, they've worked on oodles of projects together and Jack would check in twice a year trying to get ex to move to Ottawa. So I knew that this news was going to hit ex hard. Now believe me, there is still a whole mess of hurt feelings, sadness and even crustiness that I'm feeling, but sometimes that has to be put aside and I have to remember that I'm hurt because I do genuinely care about the guy and he's hurting, so I have to suck it up and give him a call, see how he's doing. He remarked...now remember this is mid post, that only I would know exactly how this would impact him. Kinda creepy huh?

Looks like we both had our "shared history" type moment. It's hard because even with the most awesome-est friends in the world (and I have them) you cannot replace that person with whom you've spent the past 17 years of your life. And in a way, we're even lucky that we're still talking to each other and can share a few words of support. I think ultimately our kids are big winners in that department, in that mommy and daddy aren't trying to kill each other. However it's pretty different now. It's not that we cannot support each other, but the scope with what we do is pretty diminished. That said, I guess the challenge in going forward is creating new histories with friends, family (including ex) and my new husband Alexander Skarsgaard (he just doesn't know it yet) and filling that gap.

And on a very important and serious note, I'd like to offer my thoughts and positive prayers to Jack Layton in getting better. You are an amazing and inspiring man. Your energy, tenacity and optimism has seen you motivate millions of Canadians to build a party to speak for the people and values taking care of each other which I also hold dear. I pray that those qualities in you, will see you through this and you'll be back leading the way in no time.