Skirting the Issue

I try very hard to not blog about certain things in my life. My family, which could be an entire blog by itself, is pretty much off limits. And I try very hard to not blog about negative things where The Ex is concerned. After all, one day The Boy might read the contents of this blog. And I wouldn't want him to ever hear me say anything negative about his Mom. And god forbid The Ex herself were to ever discover this blog. There isn't enough money in therapy to fix what would happen if that were to happen. So I found myself all weekend long trying to come up with things to blog about that didn't include either of those subjects. Some of the things I came up with was the ever-favorite filler post about the new fall TV shows that are coming up. Or the ever-boring and repetitive post about how much morning/all day sickness sucks. But really I don't want to write about either of those things. I struggle between allowing this blog to truly be my outlet, or whether it is a future diary for my children to read. And I haven't really decided what the answer is.



But I do know one thing. When I started reading blogs (when I was home on maternity leave with The Boy) I was touched by how personal the stories/posts were. In those early days of motherhood, I really needed to hear those personal stories. And then as I sought out other blogs of things that I had experienced (infertility as one example), I felt such comfort in reading a post that paralleled my life in some way or another. But what I never found, and what I still don't see a lot of is blogs that deal with the break up of lesbian relationships. Especially after kids. Either it is a very unheard of occurance, or else people just don't talk about it. Now I am sure there are many single mother after divorce blogs out there, and to be honest, I haven't really looked for any. I like to stay right here in my own little community of lesbian parents and their blogs. As I have mentioned before, I don't have any other lesbian parents in my group of friends. So I use these blogs, and the women listed in my blogroll to the right, as my peer group. I read their posts and stories much like I am sitting in a bar having a beer with these women. And it makes me feel better. It makes me feel like I am part of a community where my son is NOT the only child of a gay couple that I know. But I never hear about any issues with the relationship themselves. Is it that it is too taboo to post about such things? Are we somehow afraid that if we admit that our relationships have shitty points as well then we are somehow devaluing further the validity of our partnerships? Or is it a sense of respect for our partners? Is it because as lesbians, we generally (HUGE stereotype coming here) end up friends with our exes, and therefore don't want to say negative things in the big, open world of the internet? Is it because sometimes one partner is much more private than the other, and frankly the other partner wishes we wouldn't post the stuff we do out there, much less anything personal? Why is it? I wonder this often. And when I started my blog, I wanted to be one of the first to tread the terrain of living life as a single mother after my lesbian relationship went kaput. I wanted to talk about this stuff. Because I know that as I read, I sometimes feel very alone. I feel like I am the only asshole lesbian who had a child with someone else and couldn't make it work. I look at all the other people I read and I wish that I had their seemingly perfect partners and relationships. And sometimes I feel like a failure. Now any relationship ending breeds feelings of failure. This isn't specific to the lesbians in general. And I know that no relationship is made up of "perfect partners and relationships." So I don't mean to generalize and I don't mean to insinuate that the women who's blogs I read have perfect relationships without their pitfalls. It's just that I don't get to read about them very often. So I don't get that lovely feeling of knowing that I am not the only one.



Yet here I am perpetuating exactly what I wanted to avoid. I haven't posted about what's going on with The Ex. I have posted about The Boy and the pregnancy and avoided the stress that is currently going down with The Ex. For what? To protect her? To protect myself in some crazy, future lawsuit where my words could be used against me? For whatever reason, this is hard stuff to post about. In fact I have written this long just avoiding talking about it. But for me, I am going to try and talk. I will try and keep things simple and non-judgemental, but I want to talk about my truths.



And right now my truths include ending up back in couples therapy to deal with the fact that The Ex is "very upset, and hurt, and angry" at the fact that I made the decision to have another baby without talking to her about it first. And in that regard, even though I worked my ASS off to create the financial stability to raise this child on my own, The Ex then gets to come to me and tell me she simply can't afford to keep giving me the amount of money a month that we agreed on. So basically all the planning I did and hard work I did to create enough money to just make it, has to be "fixed" yet again. And I am very angry about this. And yet, somehow my pregnancy and my future child have become all about her. Again. And truthfully? Right now I don't have the energy to deal with all of this.



It is taking all I have to not go back and delete these words that I have just written. It turns out it is damn hard to talk about this stuff on the internet for the whole world to see. So maybe I understand why I don't read so much of it. But damnit, I am going to try and start the trend. Maybe then one day people will be able to talk freely about this and we can receive comfort in this area in the same way that blogs bring us comfort in so many other ways. Here's to trying.