Write Something Good
Tonight, a conversation occurred that I knew would come but hoped would not. Will was angry after reading the past few days’ blog entries. He feels that he is doing everything he can to provide for me, and yet I continue to drag his name through the mud.
He says that he believes that I believe what I write is the truth, but says I do not tell the whole story. He insists that I have never mentioned throwing keys at him, or to saying mean things to him. He says that he has done nothing I haven’t done, that we are both equally wrong.
He says that I am slandering him. Dictionary.com defines slander as “a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report (i.e. a slander against his good name).” So I am lying, he says.
He told me that I had better write something good about him. He has an appointment with his attorney on Wednesday and they are going to initiate the financial consent order. If I want him to be reasonable, then I’d better write something good. When I asked if he was threatening me, he said he was “promising” me.
The really sad thing about his promise is that in the past 24 hours I have spoken to two family members about the things I truly love about Will. But I hadn’t had time to blog (weird, isn’t it, for a woman who “isn’t doing shit” to not have time to blog).
Last night, I told my mother that he protected me from other men (who, after the date rape, were the enemy). That he was once intrigued by the ways we differed. I was an artist, a free spirit, and although he didn’t understand me, I offered something to him that he must have needed. He loved me. He wanted to provide a home, a family, and financial security to me and our children, and he has done those things admirably.
Never once have I worried that my family would have no income, or that he would refuse to have or keep a job. In fact, there were times he carried the burden of two jobs on his shoulders while I remained at home, safe and sound, with our young boys.
Will re-entered the military in small part because there was no real future in the company he worked for due to buy outs and the resulting seniority issues, but also because he believed that the military could offer more family time. It may sound silly to assume the military would offer more family time, but at that time, he was working second shift with no change in sight and NEVER got to spend much time with his boys. The military offered a 9-5 job, home on the weekends; he couldn’t have anticipated the number of times he’s been ordered to deploy or the length of time he would be gone.
This morning, I spoke to my grandmother. I told her that Will was now the father I know he always wanted to be. Since his return from deployment in December, his children are his priority…not work, not his “schedule”, not his other commitments to friends/acquaintances. He is enjoying time with his boys – real and memorable time.
They work together, they joke together. I know his relationship with them is different from my relationship with them, but I sense a closeness between them that wasn’t there before. Marc and Eddie were excited to see their dad on Sunday night; I was happy for it, happy for them – all three of them.
But yet, this post, the one that most likely would have come naturally from me, is bittersweet. I so wish I hadn’t talked to him tonight; if I hadn’t spoken to him then this post would have been better. It would have been “good”. It wouldn’t have included the introductory part about his “promise” to me.
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