ex’s

It's Friday night. My youngest son is now asleep upstairs. It's quiet. Unusually so for my house. Teenage son is still away and probably at a tattoo parlour somewhere in the world and my daughter has gone to a party. I am trying to find a space in my life to think and work some stuff out and make some decisions, but it's virtually impossible. Nothing feels right at the moment. I am living in a war zone and can't find any peace. It shouldn't be like this. Lots of concerned friends have been advising me and trying to help sort out my "plight". The advise couldn't be more varied but I can't seem to find a way to pull together the bits that are going to work for us all so that we can just get on with living. I've had very little sleep this week owing to too much wondering and worrying. Perhaps because my blog voice has gone temporarily quiet and timid I've been writing notes through the night when awake. The sort of notes that at the time you think are EXTRAORDINARY. Little golden nuggets of thought. This morning, however, was a different matter. I had written: "Big muffs are it, like habitat". WTF was I talking about? Complete and utter rubbish. Anyway, here are the top 10 things I've been advised to do this week:- 1. Fictionalise the blog. 2. Name and shame everybody concerned. Myself included. 3. Stand firm and do not lose faith in myself and belief in what I am doing. 4. Don't lose your nerve, you are bigger than this. 5. You are doing others as well as yourself a service. 6. Split up with Builder Bloke (again). 7. Delete the blog. 8. Sell up and move away from everybody involved except my children. 9. Leave the country. 10.Get drunk. So apart from Number 10, I don't know what to do. I really don't. Number 2, the name and shame option was given to me by a lawyer, but I think that's silly advise. Extreme and unnecessary and not at all why I am bothering to write a blog in the first place. I wish my father was still here. He'd tell me what to do. I mistakenly asked my brother for advise in lieu of my father. He replied "to be honest, I really don't know what you should do, but you're right, your blog is really very dull at the moment - sorry". FUCK. HELP. DROWNING. It's not just about the blog. It's about my situation. The adults are all fighting. Which is SO bad for all the children. It's not healthy. We should all be able to find peace in our lives without this constant four way drama. To my mind, at the moment it mostly seems to come down to money. Does everything ultimately come down to money? "If someone says, it's not the money, it's the principle, it's the money" said Kin Hubbard. Is that true? Is money the root of all evil? Or is "the lack of money the root of all evil" as Mark Twain said (didn't he say a lot of clever things?). MAINTENANCE. It is this that appears to be causing the main problem at the moment. I can see both sides. I feel sorry for my ex husband because not only does he have to pay me maintenance for our children but he has to support his new wife and her three children. I also feel sorry for Builder Bloke because he doesn't have any work. He can't pay to support his children which is not a good thing. He doesn't like the fact that his children are supported by my ex husband, but he can't even pay to keep his phone regularly on at the moment, so there's not much he can do about it. The extremes in our situation are causing gaskets to blow, left, right and centre. Maintenance is being used as a power tool and it's a shame. Are there any solutions I wonder? Any suggestions gratefully received. And my thought for the day taken from my Buddhist Offerings book is entirely relevant to all involved:- "We really don't want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. There are times when only gentleness and a sense of humour can give us the strength to settle down".