Millimetres of Separation

I haven't blogged in a while and those of you who are in contact with me will know that that is primarily due to some major arguments arising during the course of my spouse and I separating. Much has happened; none of it needs to be repeated here.

We have always had this pattern in our relationship: argue, fight, reconcile. Whenever we fight, I always wonder if we're doing more damage to our relationship than any reconciliation could ever do. Perhaps the smart thing to do is simply to shut up and put up. I know for a fact that had both of us, or even just one of us had simply shut up about some things, we'd continue on as a couple probably till death do us part. However, being married together isn't the real goal.

The goal is to be happy in a loving relationship.

And truth be told, we haven't had that in a long long time. Every time we fight, a little love dies until we have reached this point when separation and divorce is inevitable. But every time we reconcile, we learn a little more about the other, gain a tiny glimmer of understanding about where the other is coming from. We drift further apart every fight but we see a little more of the truth. I view it as akin to slowly pulling out from a picture that's mere millimetres from our noses; as we move away from the picture, we start to see more of the whole at the cost of slowly losing the fine detail such as the grain of the canvas.

We have lost a lot of love and respect for the other and that is irrecoverable. Our saving grace is that love is a renewable resource. We *are* separating - there is no stopping that as we have irreconcilable differences resulting from the treatment for my Condition. Everything else is negotiable and *that* gives us hope.

I mentioned in a previous posting that my relationship is very complicated and that is true because now we are trying to parlay that hard-earned understanding into another form of love and affection, one that is stronger and more durable than the marital bonds we had.

What we are trying to do is really, truly becoming a loving, caring family. Easy to say, hard to do. Wish us luck, please?

Mutant Shark Boy

One of my sons lost his first baby tooth while playing. It was a clean break, no harm done. One interesting thing we found from the trip to the dentist was that he had another tooth already poking through the gumline - apparently, my son has three pairs of teeth in that location: a baby tooth, an intermediate tooth and the adult tooth. I called him my "mutant" and my spouse called him "shark boy". So he happily ran off and started referring to himself as "Mutant Shark Boy". Later on, he tried to chomp on his brother. *sigh*

As I watched them play, I was struck by how innocently happy they were. There is a possibility that they will be living in a two separate households in the near future if the separation doesn't work and turns into a divorce. But for today, they're chuckling and giggling loudly, playing without a care in the world. Both my spouse and I didn't have very pleasant childhoods; at their age, I lived in constant fear of being beaten and spent most of my time hiding underneath the dining room table. Perhaps in this aspect, my spouse and I have done well in our parenting. At least better than the childhood we had, anyway.

Everyone tells me that kids are resilient, that they can survive separations, divorces, what-have-you. Having said that, I feel I have already failed them, that we, my spouse and I have already failed them. Regardless of where we go from here, they will not have a typical childhood where a happily married Mommy and Daddy are around to take care of them. My spouse and I are united in our resolve to try to stay together as a family under the same roof according to the terms of our yet-to-be-negotiated separation. It's not going to be your typical family...but the children will be loved by both their parents in a warm, safe home. I'm hoping and praying that that is what really counts. After all, my parents stayed married until my dad passed away. That didn't stop me from having a childhood where I was repeatedly beaten daily for no good reason.

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I intend to win any hostile divorce action should it go that way (I hope it doesn't). Using the kids as pawns in a divorce is an ugly thing and from what I understand, a sadly common occurence as well. I (re-)realized today that I can be quite dense at times: after seeing, *really* seeing what is at stake, I'm not so sure that victory-at-any-cost approach is really a viable one for me anymore, at least not if I still intend to be able to look myself in the mirror. Maybe winning that battle carries the price of losing my children and my soul.

I read them "Andrew's Loose Tooth" by Robert Munsch for their bedtime story tonight, substituting our names for the characters in the story. We had a blast - the kids were giggling madly at the end as we sent them off to bed. After my Mutant Shark Boy was asleep tonight, I snuck into his room, reached under his pillow and swapped his tooth for a nice shiny Toonie coin. He snorted softly in his sleep and mumbled something suspiciously like "Cheese!" to me.

Not for all the money in the world would I have missed a moment like that.

Playing with people

I joined a local Dungeons and Dragons group and had my first game today. I was fortunate enough to join the start of a campaign so everyone's at my level. We had a hoot - I play a lawful neutral paranoid elven mage. I did rather well too - around 5 unassisted kills or so (Wand of Magic Missile was definitely a good buy!). Not bad for a caster who's just starting off. :)

I haven't played D&D since I was still in school. That would have been a minimum of 15+ years ago. I feel old now. :( I used to play a lot of tabletop/pen-and-paper social gaming when I was a student. Some of my happiest memories are of Magic:the Gathering games with my friends in MacEwan Hall. As my career progressed, that all stopped and I moved to solitary gaming on computers. Oh, I did the MMORPG thing for a while and it was fun but it never did quite have the sparkle when friends come together to spend face-to-face time with one another. I place social gaming between face-to-face chats and movies; it doesn't have the awkward silences that regular face-to-face chats end up having after a while because you run out of things to talk about nor does it have the non-interactivity that going to see a movie in a darkened room imposes. In social face-to-face gaming, you interact with one another; fun happens naturally.

Yes, I know I'm way older than the standard demographic when it comes to social gaming. However, I am in the process of rebuilding my life from scratch and yes, I also know you all are really sick of hearing that. ;) I had been going through my past history and reviewing it, trying to avoid the same mistakes I made in the past. And that happy period in my life when I was playing M:tG jumped out at me. I'm a game-player and I always will be. So, I'm parlaying that into something I can use to rebuild. D&D satisfies my desire to play games and it also gives me an opportunity to meet large numbers of people out of which I can rebuild my social life. Granted, I'm choosing a segment of society that is quite peculiar and I don't seriously expect that I'll meet my insanely rich future husband there ;)

But I'm starting a new paragraph in my life. One that I hope will bring me the same fond memories in the decades to come as I view those precious M:tG games long ago.

BTW, if your first impressions of the title for this post didn't match what I've written, just bear in mind I'm all Sweetness and Light now. :)

Moving forward

The question of why I'm adding even more to my weekly workload has come up. It basically goes like this. "If you're going through a separation, the Condition, a new role at work, etc, why on earth are you thinking of doing volunteer work now? Won't that just make life even more stressful?"

The short answer is Yes. It will make my life very stressful. Doubly so when I resume my courses come late summer.

I didn't arrive at this decision lightly. I am, in more ways than one, rebuilding my life from scratch. I need to move forward, to see beyond the smoking ruins. Volunteering is a positive step; some people turn to drink or drugs in my position. In fact, I know of at least 20+ people in my support groups for my Condition who have done exactly that. Those of you who know me well may think I'm not the type to do those abusive things and you would be right. However, things have gotten bad enough in the past that the idea of blotting out my sorrows in chemical white-out has crossed my mind. I rejected it instantly but it did cross my mind. A terrifying place to be, this despair.

I want my new life to be positive, to be more than what I was. I need to have a vision of the future, of what it can be instead of all the mistakes that I have committed that have led me to this place. I shall have to deal with the current mess I'm in soon enough - I'm not running away from it. However, I am not willing to wait until the last vestiges of my old life have been erased from existence before getting on with my new life.

Giving back

The recent turbulent changes in my life have paradoxically caused me to have both less and more time. It's hard to explain - call it a radical shift in priorities when it comes to time management. I've decided to fill that tiny sliver of an hour or two per week that's freed up with reading.

Over the past few years, I've been lax in my technical reading. Other than what was required for coursework, I've mostly read fiction and usually not good fiction at that. When I was in my teens, I was a voracious reader of both technical pieces and classic literary works. I've decided to bias more towards the former in my current reading goals. I need to feed my mind healthier facts, not the junk food of fiction.

One of the things that's popped up repeatedly over the last few weeks in my readings have been the rapid erosion of science by our political climate. I am fortunate and proud to be a Canadian living in Canada; the interference has been nowhere near as bad as in another country.

I consider myself a scientist. A computer scientist by education, an astrophysicist by aspiration and an amateur astronomer by interest. Science is under siege again as history repeats itself. Way back when, Galileo was forced by the church on pain of torture and death to adhere to a geocentric model of the solar system; these days, the findings of global climate change are being suppressed, ignored or just plain twisted to suit political gains. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Let me state one thing very clear here: insofar as I see it, science and religion do not have to be at war with each other. Many scientists believe in God; many religious scholars practice science. I personally believe in God (or gods) but that does not exclude my belief in evolution, the Big Bang or any other scientific theory. Faith is a personal thing; to me, it should never be used as a club to change other people's beliefs. Scientific fact, however, can and should be used to align other people's beliefs with reality because it is provable and repeatable. Case in point: if you don't believe the overwhelming evidence that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease and you are a carrier, you will put everyone you share your bed with at extreme medical risk. Faith, however, is personal because the very idea of faith is to have a belief in something in the absence of facts. I believe there is a God. I have no way to prove that to anyone, so it is an unproven, personal belief. As long as I don't let the unproven beliefs tamper with the facts of life, I'm fine.

I can sit and complain, or I can do something about it. I don't have a lot of time. I work. I have my Condition to deal with. I have my separation to manage, my kids and my sis to love, nurture and cherish. That's just the top few items on a list longer than my arm. Furthermore, I am only one woman. If large well-funded, respectable organizations are losing the war on science, the sad bitter fact is that I won't make much of a difference at the national or international level. Regardless, I've joined the Union of Concerned Scientists and I hope there will be an opportunity for me to contribute further in a non-monetary way (money is scarce these days).

However, I *can* make a difference on the local level. To that end, I am volunteering my services to the Calgary Science Network to serve in whatever capacity that is needed (hopefully the "Scientist-in-the-classroom" - that looks fun). The only caveat is that my kids and my sis come first; family is still the top priority and will never change.

Educating the younger generation is something I can do right now...and if I can encourage even just one young person to think critically and spark an interest in solving the mysteries of our physical world, then it will all have been worth it. I am not crusading for science. I am not an activist. I am merely acting as my conscience dictates. In the end, all I am is simply a parent wanting her kids to live in a world illuminated by the light of knowledge, not cowering in fear in the darkness of ignorance. Remember, the last time science was successfully suppressed (in Europe), they called it the Dark Ages.