Trainwreck divorce and getting crushed by life

Have you ever been so stressed by life that you feel crushed?  From the inside?  As if someone is squeezing your heart?  That’s what I feel like now.

I have been waking up in the middle of the night, consumed by anxiety.   Worries about my future, worries about my children.  Worries about making a living.

People who meet me think I am chill.  That I never worry about anything.  Being good at hiding it is nothing like just not feeling it.  A life of being trans has taught me very well how to hide everything, especially feelings.

The lead cause of my anxiety is my divorce.  My not-soon-enough-to-be ex would be delighted.  I am not sure that I can do anything about it.  What drives the feeling is that I have no control over the process.  That what will happen, will happen.

My children have wanted me to fight her, to not give in.  Bless them.  But as I look back over the past two years of legal bills and toxic fights, what I see is a transfer of wealth from us to our lawyers…with no appreciable progress on any front.

The only thing we have succeeded in doing is to spend gobs of money on lawyers.

What I have learned from my children is that as far as she is concerned, this was the point.  In her words, “I don’t care about the money, I just want to destroy your father.”

Knowing that should help me to combat it, and perhaps it does, but as far as the British legal system goes, none of that matters.  Her behaviour, her intent, none of it seems to matter.  That she broke into my home and took what she felt like doesn’t matter.  That she sold a house which we ostensibly both owned under UK divorce law and pocketed the money doesn’t matter.

What I am told matters is that both of us should have enough left to have succesfull and viable lives.  And that this is a 50:50 case.  At which point, you wonder, what is the point of going to court.  Well, that is what is going to happen.

And at this point in time I am not sure how I am going to pay for it.  This is a bit strange since she has plead poverty from the outset but seems to have no problems dealing with her legal fees.

Should I end up in court without legal representation, I wonder how bad it will be.  At least I won’t have the legal costs associated.  I may lose to her quite badly, but at least that much more money stays in the family.  I have nothing positive to say about the legal system or profession you might say.

In the meantime, the forms of self-care that I might take have been falling by the wayside: exercise, conscious diet (paying attention to what I eat and when), not drinking (instead of getting toasted)…you know the score.  Any number of dysfunctional behaviours.

Do I have some level of confidence that I will auto-regulate my behaviour?  Yes.  Am I also upset that this person is affecting my psyche and energy field when she should be gone?  Most definitely.  And what else do I not like?  The uncertainty, the futility, and the sense that the ball is rolling without me.

I wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece about wanting to buy a piece of Moldavite crystal and the woman wouldn’t sell it to me as it was too powerful, that I wasn’t ready for it.  Well, I did.  Just a sliver.

Moldavite has a reputation for dragging us kicking and screaming to our new destiny.  My bad thoughts, in whatever form they come, seem a toxic absurdity.  What I really want to do is to run away.  To disappear to some tropical island and unplug, never to return.

The fantasy is real.

It is the existence of my children which holds me most firmly from suicide.  I don’t say that lightly, because barely a day passes that the thought doesn’t cross my mind.  But I’ve made it this far, and in many ways 2024 was the best year of my life.  The undoing of everything I did and built is only relevant for the life I knew, for the society we live in.

I like the comfort of my life.

One of my parents said to me over dinner last night, “everything you have you created.  You earned it all.  You have crashed and burned before.  You may again.  But you have always risen like a Phoenix.”

“I  hope you’re right.”   But now, I will depend on the charity of others, on the help of others, and will have to learn to receive.  And I hate that.  Being dependent.  

And why?

Because being dependent seems to give others the right to have an opinion about what I do, how I do, how I live.  And that is definitely not welcome.

The hardest part of all of this is how much this process interferes with my writing time, the will to express myself creatively.

This has been a giant whinge.  How gross.  It is a proper diary entry.  No sympathy, just marking a toxic psychological state.

And what else?  I don’t care so much if people get my new name rate…it is okay being deadnamed…but I hate it when I am misgendered.  And I shouldn’t care.  I “connected” with a trans woman who is a they/them who is happy with any pronouns.  She looks more femme than I do but is “hung”.  That isn’t my thing, but I am drawn to her.  Is it that only a trans person will understand?  Do I want a trans man?  I met one once who I was crushingly attracted to.

What do I see ahead in my life?  A mixture of the profane and the ridiculous.  Making absurd and sacrilegious porn films whilst doing shamanic healing work.

What about you?