Post-script to Origin Story #0

[genderjumper]

Not everyone will have seen the 5,500 words I dropped yesterday recounting my complex history with my complex family, but today I got a wild text from my mom that makes a perfect epilogue...

After telling me the answer to tonight's Final Jeopardy!:

"This was my wedding night 54 years ago. I usually look at [first husband]'s FB page, but there have been no posts on it for several years. Today I found [first husband's second wife, who has the same name but spelled differently]'s page and learned they were married 50 years in March. I'm glad he found someone who could tolerate him and make him happy since it wasn't me."

So my mom, whose anniversary with my step-dad (her second husband) I kept track of because neither of them could ever remember through 20 years, still keeps tabs on the first husband she married at 18 and who left her only a couple years later? My mom, who became estranged from her parents for eight years after that wedding and still doesn't really know how to have a direct conversation with me, still drops random bombshells like this out of nowhere. My mom, who silently looks down on my decades of nonmonogamy but still waxes nostalgic for a relationship with a guy she hasn't seen since before I was born.

I think she cheated on him and he stomped off petulantly, but I have no idea what went down. Maybe she'll tell me next year. After Final Jeopardy!

Comments

[otter]

Seems she has a sad life. At least partially self-imposed. Not that I don't look up exes now and then, and it's generally a bad idea.

Moms and Exes

[genderjumper]

I'm going to elaborate elsewhere, but my mom is the second loneliest person I've ever met.

I used to be the person who kept up with EVERYONE; even without social media, I would have kept the phone numbers and addresses of folks going back to middle school, if not for the healing reset I took on after my time as a dementia caregiver. I found during that time that I was holding space for a lot of people who would never show up, and the only way to stop was to only invite people into the present era who had demonstrated they would show up.

Fast forward nearly a decade and people still disappear or pull away at strange intervals, but my discipline of NOT checking on exes and old friends is stronger than ever.

I should add (and this could also be another story) that the first time I ever forced myself to not keep tabs on an ex, I later found out one of my partners (who had been metamours with that person, i.e. they were dating me at the same time) had kept tabs. She came to me with big life updates that she thought would break my heart, but I just said I wished her well and moved on the conversation. And I got the sense that partner was embarrassed to realize she'd held a grudge far longer than I, but we never talked about it. We weren't talking by then.

[flamingsword]

Your mom forgot to phrase that answer in the form of a question, and is now $3k in debt to a game show.

TOO FUNNY!

[genderjumper]

HOWLING!!!!