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Letter #4 - SMLB

Letter #4 - SMLB

Letter # 4

Dear Aireos,

Aireos, I'm sorry for the long three-month delay between letters, but guess where I am.

Jamaica? No.

I'm in the "Natural State" - Arkansas.

Yes, I went to Swifton Arkansas instead of Montego Bay, Jamaica. I won't bore you with the details of my auto trip down Highway 5 from the San Francisco Bay Area to Barstow, where I picked up Highway 40, or the trip across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma to Arkansas, or the trip from Little Rock up Highway 67 to Swifton, in the Northeastern section of the state. The only thing I'll say is it took three days and two motel stops. I had clear sailing all the way. It did not rain or snow on me and I got here is one piece; well the car did, as for myself, that's yet to be determined.

My original plan was to patronize my cousin, Ginny, with a short visit. Stay long enough to say hi to my childhood friends and my numerous cousins, sell my car and then buy a one-way ticket to Montego Bay, Jamaica. I figured I would come for a two or a three-week vacation and then be "red sails in the sunset". Right? Wrong.

I arrived June 1st and have been here now for over three months, three months Aireos. It's September 7, 2002, four days away from the one-year anniversary of that horrific event that changed the way Americans live, forever - 9/11.

When I agreed to pack up and move out, I decided to give to Goodwill what I couldn't pack in a suitcase. My suitcase packing logic was - if I could not fly with it to Jamaica in a suitcase, I didn't need it for the rest of my life - like my library.

I gave away a library I cherished. But while traveling across country, I thought about it. Once you read a book why keep it? Once you have read it you'll never pick it up and read it again, so why not put it back into circulation? Why not give it to a friend to read, enjoy and pass on?

I approached my clothes keeping with the same kind of logic. If I didn't wear it last year, I probably would not wear it this year. But as I continued to sort my clothes, my keeper pile of clothes got too big. So I adjusted my logic and slipped down to "if I hadn't worn it in six months."

Aireos, I gave away a lot. I gave away almost everything. Frankly, by the time I got to filling only three suitcases - my logic got whittled down to - if I hadn't worn it in the A.M., I probably would not wear it in the P.M. (joke).

Well, how do you like that? Here I am three months later and I can finally joke a little.

Even though I packed my bags as if I were going to go to Jamaica, my cousin Ginny was very persuasive and convincing when she said, "Jinx, why go to Jamaica where no one knows you? Why not stay in Swifton? There is a sign on the edge of town that says 'Swifton, population 871 - 171 of those people are your cousins. Stay here where people know you and love you and can help you get over your difficulties."

She was soooo right, Aireos. But I'll tell you when I first got here there wasn't that many "jokes" or "laughs" in me. I mean I didn't come with a long face or a pout. I tried to carry on "with a stiff upper lip" and all. But I'm telling you a black cloud could swoop in over me in a moment's notice, steal my composure and be gone in the next heart beat, leaving behind a smoldering, broken and crippled mass.

Often I could handle the dark moment by distracting myself. I would take any square object, like a book, TV screen, picture on the wall, and trace around its edges with my eyes until the cloud passed. This distraction method worked most of the time. But sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes I would have to get up from the dinner table or the living room and hurry into the bathroom.

I would get into the bathroom and grit my teeth and curse myself for being such a big baby. After a few moments the cloud would pass. I would wash my face and go back and join the others. I would use some lame excuse about my allergies, to explain away my red eyes and puffy cheeks.

Now, three months later, if I make mention of my dark moments and those black clouds, my cousins say they could see them coming and I was fooling no one. But they were kind and caring enough to give me the moment and not intrude.

One time in particular I remember. We were at church. Ginny's family is "Assembly of God" and goes to church at 9:45 for Sunday school, stays for Sunday service from 11 until 12, then goes back to church at 6pm for Sunday evening services. We also go on Wednesday night at 7pm for an hour of bible study.

Well, one Sunday morning, soon after I had arrived, they were singing a hymn and a cloud moved over me. I tried my trick of distracting myself by tracing around the edge of the hymnbook with my eyes. I tried something bigger, and then bigger, like the back of the organ that faced the congregation. Soon tears were streaming down my face, uncontrollable. I was seated in the back pew so I could slip easily out the front door without attracting too much attention.

I stayed outside for nearly all of the service, trying to get myself back under control. I berated myself up and down the parking lot. I kicked myself in the bottom's a hundred times for being such an uncontrollable big baby. I barely got myself under control before the church services ended and people started pouring out into the parking lot. I smiled, dabbed at my puffy eyes and complained about my allergies. The people coming out bought it, I guess, or they were kind enough not to press the issue.

Well, here I am three months later and I'm surviving. I almost feel bad to say the secret to surviving a divorce is to move to Arkansas, join an extended family and immerse yourself in their extracurricular activities to the point where you're so busy you forget about your problems or pain.

Remember, I said remember the word "immersion"? Well, that's the operative word "immersion" - "keeping busy" and I did.

Thanks to Ginny and her large family I immersed myself in their extracurricular activities. I was part of their family barbecues, their fish fries and their campfire weenie and marshmallow roasts. Ginny's teenage son was playing baseball in the summer league and had a baseball game every week, sometimes two three-inning games in the same week. One of the younger girl cousins was involved with girl's summer softball. And one of the littler cousins was involved with T-ball. So as you can see I was either eating BBQ chicken or in route "to" or "from" some kind of summer baseball game. I also got involved with social dances held at the Swifton community center plus I signed up for ballroom dancing lessons in Jonesboro, a urban center of 55,000 people only 30 minutes away.

But wait! Frankly, Aireos, since other "soul mates left behind" may be reading this and may not have an extended family where they can "immerse" themselves and "keep busy", I have a suggestion: Take something you are interested in like bowling or stamp collecting or hang-gliding and find a club for it. Join it and "immerse" yourself there.

Once you've joined - volunteer for everything. Go early to help them set up for a monthly meeting. Stay late to help them clean up and put away chairs and tables. If they need flyers printed, volunteer. If they need them addressed and stamped or passed out by hand, volunteer. Join a "bunch" of clubs and do the same thing for each. Get involved in church, volunteer to work at a church soup kitchen and feed the hungry or join a service club like the Elks, Moose or Masons or get involved in civic activities like the local Chamber of Commerce or Friends of the Library. Get some exercise join a sports league or join a gym. Become a foster parent or go back to school and get more education.

You say, "Oh, I can't. I have a job. I have to work."

Great! Keep your job and "immerse" yourself there too.

Your job, the clubs, the extracurricular activities are just that "activities". Something to keep your hands and mind busy so you don't wallow in your own self-pity. The number one thing you don't want to do is come home, after working all day, and sit down in front of the TV. Sitting in front of the TV, zoned out, is when you leave the front door open for that black cloud to come in and do its meanest. That dead time between leaving work and finally falling into bed is just that, "dead time". Those hours can be murderous. Those are the hours when "killer memories of happier days" start to seep in. And as they do they can effortlessly start to pull down that house of cards you euphemistically refer to as your "new life".

You want to avoid that cataclysm like the plague. Every "happy day" you can successfully rack up is another brick laid toward building your "new life". But you have to seriously work "every way and anyway" you can to collect happy, action packed, activity packed days.

They will keep you on course to "that" new beginning. That "new beginning" all the self-help books crow about and profess is just around the corner, if you just hang on. And it really is if you just hang on and give it time. But the key is that you have to work at it. I have and I can honestly say I feel better - and here it is only three months since my train wreck.

Soooo, if you can't move to Arkansas and you can't hide in an extended family, then "immerse" yourself in your job, in clubs and organized activities as best you can. By keeping busy and immersing yourself - your problems take a back seat and you are forced to focus on the here and now - not the past, not the way things used to be before some crazed chain saw toting lawyer cut down the family tree and made fire wood out of it.

By keeping busy, occupied, and distracted with new activities and new friends it will help keep closed and bolted that "dark door" from a "happier past". O' and in the process do yourself another favor - go read some of those self-help books. I have and they really help.

To help get you started, in the appendix, I've summarized some of the self-help books I've read and some of the Internet Web sites I've visited that deal with helping Soul Mates Left Behind get upwards and onwards with the rest of their life. Just remember - "there really is life after divorce - so just hang in there (pardon the pun).

Aireos, here's a new expression to add to your vocabulary - "Gray Divorcees".

I don't know Aireos, maybe it's just a sign of the times but according to the 2000 U.S. Census the number of senior citizens who were separated or divorced jumped to 10 percent, up from 6 percent in 1990. Wow.

Aireos, it is getting late and I have two ballgames to go to tomorrow, so I'll write a little more later on.

October 1, 2002 Man Aireos, here it is October 1, 2002, how time flies. I have been an Arkansan for four months now and I can honestly say each day in every way I keep getting better and better.

I attended my "first" in a series of ten self-help group meetings for divorced people. The meetings are held once a week on Wednesday and sponsored by the Church Of Christ in Jonesboro (the urban center I told you about, which is thirty-minutes east of Swifton) and are held in one of the church's large multi-function rooms.

There are eight of us (two guys and six ladies) sitting around in a circle with a facilitator. I'm the oldest at sixty-two. Most of the group is in their late twenties or early thirties, with five or more years of marriage behind them.

The facilitator, a forty plus divorcee with two kids, explained that her job was just to keep the meeting on course, so that we don't wind up blowing the 1« hours together talking about baseball or what's happening on "As The World Turns or Days Of Our Lives". She went on to explain that this was not a course where she'll pass out "life's answers". There are no answers. There is just a "process - a healing process". And sitting around talking with people who are suffering the same kind of trauma - a divorce - can often help in that "process".

I guess it works something like a cancer survival group. The cancer literature explains that friends and relatives, after awhile, get tired of hearing about how you feel and about how you're surviving and what medicine works and which ones make you sicker. But as a cancer "survivor" you have a burning desire to talk.

Much the same is true with a newly divorced person, you have the same burning desire to talk. It seems you have so much anger and frustration built up inside that just "talking" seems to defuse and dilute at least some of that bile and bitterness bubbling up and churning around inside.

That Aireos, I guess, is where self-help groups come in. They allow you to do just that - talk, but they also allow you to listen, listen to others who are in the same sad boat you are in and who also have a burning desire to talk, and talk and talk and talk.

It's tough, Aireos, but I want you to know that I sit there politely listening to other people's marital "train-wrecks", biding my time, waiting patiently for my turn. It's hard sitting there politely listening to other people's story when you want so badly to talk about your own "train-wreck". The facilitator, however, explained that listening as well as talking helps in the healing process.

The course itself is free but the workbook, "A Time For Healing - Coming to Terms with Your Divorce" by Harold Ivan Smith (LifeWay Press, Nashville, Tennessee, ISBN 0-8054-9875-3, http://www.lifeway.com) cost $15.00. I bought one, went home, opened it up, read these words and felt like the workbook paid for itself: "View your divorce as a process and not as an event."

All along I had been viewing my divorce as an EVENT, something that started with an E-mail from my wife on March 15, telling me to talk to a divorce lawyer because she had. An EVENT, that six months after the Marital Separation Agreement papers are completed and filed with the State of California the divorce will become final. An EVENT with a beginning, a middle and an end, right?

Wrong!

A baseball game is an EVENT. It starts, is played, ends and people get up and go home.

But the workbook points out, that divorce is a process. Something someone else started. And something you are going to have to live with and work through, a day at a time or a week at a time or a month at a time - until you are finally over it.

For some, like me, I found myself working through it an hour at a time at first. And sometimes, when I was all-alone, a minute or second at a time.

The workbook points out that divorce is a PROCESS with a lot of movement forwards and backwards. For me, at first, it was sometimes one step forward and two steps back.

The workbook likens the divorce PROCESS to traveling a twisty, turny mountain road with an occasional "you can't get there from here" warnings sign posted here and there.

For me the analogy works. Sometimes the taillights I came up on were mine. And sometimes the headlights that nearly blinded me were my own.

I guess you can get over an EVENT, especially if your baseball team loses. But the workbook points out that the divorce PROCESS is a healing process and that the healing process needs time. It suggests that you should leave time for MOURNING. It also warns against doing anything hasty or precipitous like quickly getting remarried or killing yourself.

During a break, I was talking to a divorced lady from the circle and she said something I thought was profound. "You know it would have been easier if my spouse had only died."

Exactly! If your spouse had "only died" then you could mourn. You could look back and remember all the good things you did with each other. You could look back and remember how wonderful they were and mourn. You could moan, cry, wail, grieve and lament. You could wear black for a while and then you could get on with the rest of your life.

But my wife didn't die. She divorced me. She simply got up, walked away and left me standing there frazzled and smoking, as if I had been standing under a tree that just got hit by a bolt of lighting.

Excuse me for a moment Aireos an old familiar black cloud just arrived. I'll have to go off line for a moment.

I'm back.

Let's see where was I? Oh, yeah - self-help books. Kevin McCarthy's book "The On Purpose Person" uses "life as a river" analogy and points out that there are three kinds of people - "floaters, fighters and navigators" (See: The On Purpose Person by Kevin McCarthy - Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1992 ISBN: 0891097058, http://www.navpress.com).

Mr. Smith, the author of my workbook, takes the "floaters, fighters and navigators" concept and applies it to divorced people. After reading his definitions of each, I realize at one time or another I have been all three.

When my wife first told me she wanted a divorce "and" I realized she wasn't kidding, I became a "floater". She wanted this and that and the other. Hey, whatever! Take it. Take it all. I don't care.

Aireos, I didn't really get "backed up on my haunches" and became a "fighter" until she wanted half of my "intellectual properties" - the two books and five screenplays I had written (none of which have been published).

All the while I was busily writing them, she had over the years ignored if not pooh-poohed my tireless efforts. Now all of a sudden "that which had been a worthless waste of time" was now, thanks to her female lawyer/adviser, divisible as "intellectual properties".

Not in this lifetime, buddy. I finally realized that it's important at some point in your divorce process to "get angry". Before I turned into a "fighter", I was a wimp, walking around with my tail between my legs hoping upon hope that she would "change her mind". Not only did she not want to "laugh and hit the reset button". She wanted my "intellectual properties".

NOT!

So I finally got angry and turned into a "brawler".

Mr. Smith, in his workbook "A Time For Healing", points out that "navigators" rarely initiate the divorce proceedings but once the first domino is tipped over and the "process" begins, "navigators" fasten their seat belts, hunker down and grab the wheel for the wild ride. "Navigators" accept the reality of life, the reality of their divorce and find ways to make the best of it and survive the inevitable emotional ambushes and the financial crises as each rip tide and whorl pool presents itself.

For me, after being a wimpy "floater" for a while and then turning into a brawling "fighter", I finally turned into a sensible "navigator". I've finally accepted the reality of my situation and now I want to make the best of it I can. With the help of an excellent mediator, some common sense, and "finally a desire to get the whole thing over with and behind me", I've started to navigate my life through my divorce, through my sadness, through my sorrow and into calmer waters.

In the workbook Mr. Smith quotes a minister friend, "What matters is not so much what happens to you but rather how you choose to respond." I did not choose to be divorce but I can choose my response to it.

The pastor at my cousin's church (now my church), Brother Teal is quick to remind his congregation that you are "the sum of your decisions". I've decided to get up and get on with my new life - to do that I've chosen to respond by becoming a "navigator". I Floated. I Fought. Now I'm going to Navigate myself through the "process" called divorce toward the goal of healing.

To get on with the healing "process", the author, suggests you learn to recognize the difference between emotional "wounds" and "scars".

He defines an emotional "scar" as a healed injury that is not vulnerable to being reopened. An emotional "wound" he defines as something you pick at and won't let heal. He talks about the "If only." and "I should have." emotional wounds that you pick at.

At first I played those "If only" tapes over and over in my head. "If only" I had been a better husband. "If only" I had worked harder at my marriage. And those "I should have" tapes I played them over and over. "I should have" gone to counseling when she lost her mother, when she lost her job, when she lost her dog. "I should have" insisted we go to counseling when she told me we were getting a divorce.

The author talks about tearfully thumbing through your old wedding album to "pick at and keep old wounds open" or going to you and your spouses' favorite restaurant to eat and reminisce or to go sit in the park on that "favorite bench" and feed the ducks and cry.

"Picking at and keeping old wounds open" for me were watching two people walking along holding hands as my wife and I always (always!) did or seeing a gray haired guy with an Asian girlfriend (my wife's Japanese). To hurt myself even further, I searched out the Sunday social section of the newspaper to look at couples celebrating 40 and 50 years of marriage and thinking "that could have been me and my wife".

The author explains that scars will eventually form if we will just leave those old wounds alone to heal. And I've tried. Aireos, I've stopped torturing myself by scrutinizing the paper's social section and its anniversary announcements. I've stopped looking at couples holding hands and old guys with Asian women.

Okay. Okay. If you are a purist, you may want to call my "looking away" - another form of denial, like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand, and maybe you're right, hey, but for me it's working, it's helping me with the "process", and remember, divorce is not an event it's a process.

Mantra: divorce is not an event it's a process, divorce is not an event it's a process, divorce is not an event it's a process.

Who knows, maybe once I can successfully look at old guys with Asian chicks or watch couples walk along holding hands and not bleed - then I guess I've successfully turned a wound into a scar.

Mr. Smith in his section "Discovering Paths to Recovery" points out that at some time toward the end of the divorce preceding you'll be exhausted. He likens it to sitting at a four-way stop sign, taking a deep breath and deciding which road to take. Do I go east or west? Do I kill myself? Do I enter into a hasty marriage? Do I decide to get on with my life in a calm and orderly fashion? Or better yet do I seek revenge?

Quoting Dr. Henry Brandt, psychologist and Christian counselor, "Anger is the most detrimental emotion know to man. It confuses his thinking and inspires violent acts and harmful speech that destroys the closest of friends, particularly married partners, whose anger can turn them into enemies. The doctor says anger left unchecked in many instances can destroy the body or even bring on premature death." (See: "When You're Tired of Treating the Symptoms and You're Ready for a Cure, Give Me a Call: 18 Lessons for Making Lasting Change" by Henry Brandt, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, ISBN: 1561210668)

Maybe angrily seeking revenge is another form of suicide - just a thought.

The workbook's author adapted Alan Wolfelt's "inventory for recovery", suggesting that people who are "really recovering" from their divorce should be able to demonstrate: "a renewed sense of energy and personal well-being".

And I do Aireos. I really do. I feel better about wanting to feel better and about wanting to "get on with everything" - you know - upwards and onwards with the rest of my life. So maybe, just maybe I really am showing signs of surviving, getting well and recovering.

Continuing with Wolfelt's "inventory for recovery" - "The capacity to enjoy life experiences" was next on the inventory.

Hey, I'm really enjoying my "new" life, Aireos. Thanks to my cousins I've gone and enjoyed catfish fries, barbeques, campfire weenie and marshmallow roast. I've gone fishing with old friends, went to dances at the Swifton Community Center and joined the Jonesboro Ballroom Dancer's Association. I'm successfully reawaking the "capacity to enjoy life experiences" again.

"The capacity to become comfortable with the way things ARE rather than attempting to make things as they WERE" - was next.

For me it's more like accepting the way things are instead of thinking, "she's going call, laugh, tell me she was only kidding, for me to pack my bags and to hurry back home." I'm slowly coming to turns with the reality of when the phone rings, it's not her, nor will it ever be her. That she is finished with me and our marriage and that I should get finished with her and our marriage - yeah, get "comfortable with the way things are verses attempting to make things back to what they once were". Yeah, I can do that.

Another suggestion in Mr. Smith's workbook is to "review holiday traditions in order to create new celebrations". And I am. I'm looking forward to this coming Thanksgiving and Christmas with my cousins and all of their children.

My family, my wife and two daughters, used to have a fun time with only the four of us during holidays, but nothing like I'm going to have with sixteen children and adults. Ginny tells me they all sleep over at her house Christmas night and wake up to a big breakfast and presents. She says, "and there are presents everywhere."

Aireos, if there is fun in numbers, we'll have them, five kids, from 5 to 16 and eleven adults from 22 to 62. The 62 is me.

The workbook also warns of the challenges of "new realities" in your life and advises working hard to adjusting to them. And, Aireos, I've got some "new realities" to adjust to. Frankly, coming to Arkansas to live was as much of a cultural shock for me as it would be for any 62-year-old farm boy moving from the comfort of his farm and small town to the bright lights and busy streets of San Francisco.

Careful now. This is not a casual or flippant attempt to demean or sully the good name or people of Swifton Arkansas. I would have experienced the same "cultural shock" if I had carried out my original plan of moving to Jamaica. There, unlike here, I would have confronted starvation and poverty. Arkansans may be poor but they ain't starving. And poor is a relative term. These people are rich in family, patriotism and religion. They're drinking from their saucer because their cup runneth over.

Aireos, I'll let you go for now. I'll write more later. - Jinx

Jinx? Yes. I have reverted back to my childhood nickname, Jinx. Everybody here in Swifton knows me as Jinx not as Julian Olson.