Some dates, no matter how hard you try, will haunt you for the rest of your life.
For me, October 14th is one of those days.
Had I stayed with my ex-husband, today would have been our 22nd wedding anniversary.
And for those of you with firing synapses, it is also two days after Meredyth's birthday.
Which meant I spent my first wedding anniversary (the one with my ex-husband, not Stephen) in the hospital recovering from the birth from hell, trying not to cough because I was scared the stitches from my c-section would pop, and trying to poop because until you do they won't let you out of the hospital.
In fact, if memory serves, this was also the day the nurses cooked up, literally, a concoction of milk and molasses, put it in a rubber bag and used it as an enema to encourage the disposal of matter resting in my bowels.
To this day, I cannot eat molasses cookies with milk unless I want to risk an acid-like flashback that renders me comatose for at least 15 minutes, leaving me vulnerable to any unfortunate incident, like dogs peeing on me, or evil cats coloring all over my face in yellow highlighter.
I can never say I completely regretted my first marriage.
I regret things that happened while I was married the first time, but that's different.
In my mind, if I truly regretted my first marriage, then I would also regret having children.
And 99.9999999 (x infinity) I don't regret having kids.
In many ways, the kids saved me from myself.
A lot of work for three small children.
And a story for another time.
In retrospect (what a great phrase. . .it implies that one has grown and learned from their experiences) it was probably not wise to marry someone you had only known for 8 months.
And, getting married to get out of your backwoods, small, rural community where the highlight of teenage life was hanging around the elementary school with the "bad" kids, was probably not the brightest thing you could do either.
My marriage the first time a round hurt a lot of people.
My parents and brother, who could have told me not to but it wouldn't have made any difference because I didn't listen to anyone because at 21 I. Knew. It. All.
(Oh my gawd. . .Meredyth is me. I need a drink!)
My ex-mother-in-law, to whom I am still very, very close because we eloped and didn't tell her until afterwards.
On the upside, my ex-husband is now with his fourth wife, so she didn't miss out on anything afterall.
The young man I was engaged to before I met my ex-husband, I suspect, was very hurt.
He reads this blog. So consider this my official apology. I am very sorry I hurt you.
But he and I managed to maintain a connection that will last a lifetime.
Her name is Emily.
And that is definitely a story for another time!
I was young, niave, thought I knew it all and ready to change the world.
(Really, the similarity with Mer and Em is becoming uncomfortably clear.)
How marrying at 21 was supposed to do that is completely beyond me but it made sense at the time.
So, I married, left university one term away from graduation, quit my job and moved to Southern Ontario.
Whatever lust-filled karma brought the two of us together lasted long enough to produce two children, Meredyth and Keith.
In fact, if truth be told, I knew the day I got married that I was making a mistake.
However, as an eternal optimist, I try to see the bright side of things, and assumed that I was just being nervous.
I now pay a lot of attention to my nerves.
In spite of being a very long 5 years of my life, that required several years of therapy to work through, there were many positives.
Positive #1
I am part of an absolutely wonderful family. My ex-husband aside, his family is phenomenal. I have a very good relationship with my former mother-in-law. I see her at least once a year, we talk and email frequently, and she has been very good to me throughout the last 22 years.
She even forgave me for making her a grandmother at 39.
This past summer, Stephen, Mer, Em and I enjoyed a lovely afternoon visiting with Great-Grandma, Suzy, Linda and Suzy's kids.
Now having an ex-husband's family continue to love and embrace you, and your current-and-forever-because-he-is-the-most-wonderful-man-in-the-world husband. . . .
That's definitely a positive.
Leaving me with a current mother-in-law and a former mother-in-law who have broken bread together.
How can having all those people love and care for you be anything but wonderful!
Positive #2
I was forced to grow up.
Really, I was not, at the time I married, the world-wise, smart, savvy person you know and love now.
I was naive.
Insecure.
Delusional.
But there is something about having two kids by the age of 23, in a marriage you finally realized was a mistake, and finally making the decision to leave that makes you grow up faster.
Add in an unexpected pregnancy, moving back home, and attending university to complete your undergraduate degree and you have all the reasons you need, plus a couple more, to get your ass in gear and grow up.
So, I did.
That doesn't mean I didn't make lots of mistakes along the way.
It would seem, post-marriage, that my relationship choices were not much better than my pre-marriage ones.
Or not necessarilty the best for me.
They weren't bad people, just not very good for me.
And raising three kids on your own is nothing if not an opportunity to make lots and lots of mistakes.
An opportunity I took full advantage of.
In fact, if I was so good at making mistakes with the kids, I could probably write a book about what NOT to do.
It would be a bestseller.
Positive #3
I was pushed to do things I would have never done, and learn things about myself I would have never known.
Had it not been for the fact that I was a single mother of three children, living with my brother and then in a run down apartment, with no money, therefore subsisting on income assistance, who realised that an "almost" degree wouldn't even get me a part time job in a bookstore, I probably wouldn't have ever gone on to graduate school.
I hope I would have had the common sense to finish my undergraduate degree, but that would have been the end of it.
But there is something about returning to university after living through some pretty tough stuff that provides you with a real world education that only facilitates your university education.
When I decided to complete my degree in sociology, because if I took one. more. English. course. the registrar would personally punish me, it was like someone turned a light on for me.
All of a sudden the world made sense; my experiences and frustrations made sense to me; I understood how I had gotten to where I was, and what I needed to do to get out of the mess I had gotten myself into.
I know there are other ways of understanding experiences, and in fact, the more perspectives you take into account, the better your understanding of something will be.
But sociology was it for me.
Still is.
And I don't think it'll change any time soon.
In fact, when I had Emily, just two weeks after returning to classes after the Christmas break, there are some who believe I named her after French sociologist Emile Durkheim.
I didn't.
I actually never planned on having another girl.
I was convinced she was a boy.
After Meredyth, I could have been more convinced she was a puppy than a girl.
So I just picked a name I really liked.
Even so, Mer and Keith called her "it" for at least three months.
Sometimes, they still do.
In conclusion. . . .
Not getting married at 21 would have put my life on a whole other track, and while it is interesting to comtemplate where I would have ended up, I am very happy with my life and I don't want it to change.
I'm 43, my kids are either almost adults or theoretically adults.
And I have lots of fun with the kids. They're cool. I not only love them, but I really like them.
A brother who would, I believe, do anything for me. And I him.
Parents who love me even while they try to make me crazier than I already am.
Good friends. Very important.
I have a career that excites me. . .most of the time I look forward to going to work in the morning.
A husband who adores me and I adore him.
A large extended family I love.
Dogs who worship the ground I walk on, even when they're peeing on it.
So, all in all, I think, in spite of some rough patches, things have turned out nicely.
Let's just hope it stays that way!
Title Lyric: Mistake by Straylight Run
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