Stuff about me

I was at work one day late in December in 2007.  I took a call from Liz regarding an idea she had for a Christmas present for me.  From memory a few of her relatives were going to pitch in towards a present and she wanted to know if I would be OK with the idea of putting one of the cheques another relative had sent for the kid’s Christmas presents toward my present.  She hinted that the extra money would get a better version of the original gift she was planning on buying.

I gave it a quick thought and justified to myself that the kids already had a ton of presents and weren’t really at an age to appreciate the sheer volume they were already getting.  I felt a little guilty and selfish at the idea but agreed that the cheque could go toward my present.  For some reason I had it in my head that it would be an iPod.  Turns out later it was going to be a BBQ, which would also have been awesome.

I kept working throughout the day and later in the afternoon Liz called me again and said we needed to have a talk about something.  I tried to get more information out of her but don’t recall succeeding.  She picked me up from work that day rather then me catching the train home and we went about our afternoon/evening activities.  Cooking dinner, feeding and bathing kids, that sort of thing.

By this stage we’d already had a serious talk during which Liz said she was thinking about a trial separation unless I could stop drinking.  Going from the amount I was drinking to drinking nothing was mindblowing but the prospect of losing Liz and the kids was enough for me to agree to give up drinking.  Starting right then I decided I wasn’t going to drink anymore.  I decided to go cold turkey and stopped drinking.

I think I made a fair effort at it.  I also think that I too easily talked myself into excuses for having a drink.  One of the reasons Liz was against the amount that I was drinking was because I was little, or probably more accurately no, help with the kids when it came time to feeding, bathing and getting up to them during the night.  First excuse I made came within days of agreeing to stop drinking.  I justified that if one of the reasons for not drinking was that I was no help with the kids it should be ok for me to have a drink when they were away for the weekend or off visiting relatives in Melbourne.  Coincidently they were off for the weekend attending a friends wedding and I couldn’t make it due to work commitments.  So I made the most of it and drank while they were away.

Over the thirty days between the discussion about me stopping drinking I had drinks on the way home twice.  On the days that I came home sober I was in a fairly sullen mood.  I would wear my iPod and make myself busy in the garden.  I was digging new plots, planting new plants and giving the whole thing a good watering.  I found that listening to podcasts kept my mind, at least mostly, off drinking and was a useful tool in my ongoing battle.

When it came to dinner time, if I actually ate with the rest of the family, I was short tempered and snapped at silly little things like trying to teach a three year old daughter not to talk while she was eating.  That in itself was an uphill battle because it seems that when Liz was growing up that was less of a strict rule at their house then it was at mine so the poor kid was getting mixed signals.  Although I don’t specifically recall it apparently I was also less tolerant of the youngest son and his crying.  This was something I logically understood to be normal behavior for a baby but it grated on my nerves all the same and I made excuses to go back outside and continue gardening.

On the couple of days that I did have drinks on the way home I was my ‘normal’ happy self.  I’d play with the kids, mostly ignore the whole ‘eating with your mouthful’ and not be overly fussed if the young lad was crying a lot.  I think when the decision ultimately was announced one of the reasons behind it was, other than the kids watching me drink myself to death, the radical mood swings between when I was and wasn’t sober.

Continuing with the justification one of the great ideas I had was that rather then completely give up drinking I’d drink moderately on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas, Australia day, etc.  I think this was part of Liz’s reasoning that I wasn’t as serious at giving up as I said I was.  I can see that that is how it looked.  In my defense I’d gone from drinking a 4LT cask of wine every two or three days plus two or three alcopops on the way home when my budget permitted to attempting to drink nothing at all.

Getting back to the original topic Liz and I had the discussion that she talked about that afternoon once we had the kids settled in bed.  Sometime between the phone call about spending the extra money on my Christmas present and later in the day she had come to the conclusion that she wanted a trial separation for 30 days and if I was still sober then we could see whether the marriage could continue.  I was in stunned silence for several minutes while I digested that news.

She offered to move her and the kids into a friends house if I wanted to continue living in our house.  I opted for moving out instead.  I packed some essentials and went looking for public transport late at night to make my way into the CBD to find a hotel room for the night.  My almost 30 days of sobriety ended that night.  It was around 9:30 - 10pm at night and it took visits to a number of establishments to find a room that allowed smoking.

The room was more then my budget could sustain so I found a cheaper room for the next several nights and stayed there.  I remember calling my Father and telling him “I’ve done it again” and went on to explain that Liz and I had separated.  The next morning I called in and told them I’d just split up with Liz and wouldn’t be in that day.  The next day I went to work and tried to get back on with my usual work.  To some extent it was good to bury myself in my work but ti wasn’t long before I utterly over estimated my ability to do my job well with what had just happened.  I talked it over with my Manager and he said I could take off whatever time I needed to get myself together again.  I was also especially grateful for a donation of a significant amount of money from a benefactor that helped allow me to extend my hotel stays, pay a bond, eat, etc until I found a unit to rent.

Within a night or two of being kicked out, and even though I know I was offered the house I still considered it being kicked out, Liz and I decided that she’d fly to Melbourne with the kids and live with her mother for a month to give me a chance to find an apartment to rent.  This would be a considerable saving for me in hotel charges.

We decided to do Christmas presents on Christmas eve that year as it would give the two older and two younger kids a chance to see each other for what may be the last time for a while.  Prior to that they saw each other every second weekend.  I maintained my composure throughout most of the day but by later in the afternoon all I wanted to do was go back to the hotel and start drinking again.  In what I considered a kind gesture Liz agreed to look after the older two kids until their mother arrived to pick them up.  By this time I’d already had a discussion with Mary and the older two kids that Liz and I had split up and Liz had, as best as is possible, Liz explained to the youngest daughter that Mom and Dad had some problems they couldn’t work out right now and were not going to be living with each other for a while to see if they could sort them out.

At the time I hated the idea of being near Liz.  As far as I was concerned she had given up on me and while we didn’t do the whole ‘in sickness and in health’ vows at the wedding it seemed like she could have put more effort into tolerating what I was going through.  I know I can’t speak from her perspective and I gather I must have been especially painful to live with at the time but it was my understanding that these were part of the challenges of marriage that you work through together.  That said, I couldn’t hope for a better mother for the younger two kids.

Early the next day, Christmas day, Liz and the kids picked me up from the hotel I was staying at and we went back to our house.  They finished packing and I took them to the airport for their flight to Melbourne.  I’ve not been overly sentimental about Christmas since I was a young kid but that was very definitely a shitty day.

I managed to find an apartment on the day before Australia day.  Over the next week or two I took most of the belongings I planned to take with me into the apartment.  This all happened just a couple of days before Liz and the kids were due back from Melbourne.  It was awesome seeing the kids again but by this time I’d made my decision.  There wasn’t going to be a trial separation.  As far as I was concerned there was no coming back from the trial and the marriage was effectively over.  Thinking about it it was a complete about face on my earlier opinion that these things should be worked through but that was my state of mind at the time.

Thinking back and comparing the end of the two marriages I don’t think I was near as bitter the second time but the two situations were so very different it probably wasn’t a good base for me to form part of my decision to end the marriage.  During a later discussion I told Liz that I still hadn’t felt the same depression I did the first time round, while trying to be sensitive about comparing the two wives with each other, she suggested that I probably hadn’t been sober long enough to give it proper thought.  I think she was probably correct.

To this day I think there is still a small part of me that would like things to have worked out differently.  The idea of happy family, seeing the the kids all the time and the companionship are very appealing but I can’t get past the idea that Liz gave up on me.

My Mother and I don’t keep close contact.  There was the occasional call I’d make when I was drunk and that was about it.  At least as far as I memory goes.  Though recently, I think Sunday 8th February 2009, the day after Black Saturday, she sent me an SMS to ask if I was OK.

When I decided to move to Melbourne my contact arrangements with the kids was full of good intentions.  I’d fly back from time to time to see them, I’d email them and when it came to Laura, I’d snailmail her.  At the time she had just started at school for a couple of days per week and had lots of artwork to show off so I gave Liz a stack of prepaid envelopes so that Laura could send me things she had recently done at school.  I also planned to call the kids periodically so that we could chat.  At Ethan’s age that wasn’t going to work, he was around 12 months old at the time, and Jack’s not big on talking and in my experience even less so on the phone.

I called Laura fairly regularly after I moved here to Melbourne. It didn’t seem long after I’d settled into my apartment that Liz, Laura and Ethan had moved to Melbourne too so that Liz could be closer to her Mother, Sister, etc.  Shortly thereafter I started regular Saturday visits with Laura and Ethan.

I haven’t managed to keep the same contact up with Jack and Nicole.  I went over there at Christmas time and saw them but we didn’t get much in the way of quality time together.  I spent Christmas Eve with Mary’s family, which was a little odd at first but I settled in nicely and it was almost like old times (the good part of the old times at least). I caught up with the kids again a couple of days later to exchange Nicole’s present.  I bought her a camera and it seems someone had bought her a camera just recently for her birthday.  I got a refund earlier in the day and met up with Mary and the kids a little later to go shopping for Nicole’s Christmas present.  Once that was done we had lunch together and that was the last I’ve seen them since.

I’ve called a couple of times and managed to speak with Nicole.  Nicole uses Facebook so we’ve exchanged cutesy Facebook application fluff and I’ve sent her a Facemail once (same concept as email but wholly contained within the bounds of Facebook so I don’t call it email).  Both Jack and Nicole have Flickr accounts but they don’t seem to use them much.  Nicole also has a Twitter account but she doesn’t seem to use it.  She made one post back in November, has one follower, me and follows one person, me too.

During one of our phone calls I told her that the posts I make on Twitter are automatically added to my Status on Facebook.  I told her that I wasn’t always appropriate on Twitter and that she’d need to be a little mature about some of the comments she saw on my Facebook status.  By inappropriate I don’t mean illegal or immoral but there is often cases of me swearing, most commonly when Connex or Optus fail me again.  ”Fuck you Connex” and “Fuck you Optus” are not uncommon.  By this stage Nicole was 13 so I assumed, and continue to do so, that she has the maturity to not pay too much attention to such comments.

I’ve never had a problem calling my Father, usually only when I was either drunk or had just started drinking and ended up drunk.  It wasn’t that I need to be drunk to talk to Dad it was just what I did.  I rarely call people in general.  I tend to live most of my life online and keep in touch most with those that also do.  Unfortunately three out of my four kids haven’t embraced online life so it’s limited communication at best.

There’s something about making a phone call to the kids that I baulk at.  It’s not that I don’t want to talk to them, far from it, I’m not sure what it is but I really struggle to pick up the phone and make the call.  I don’t think the issue is the use of the phone either.  The field I’m in often has me on the phone to customers and in special cases they are customers who are displeased about some aspect of a service and the call has been escalated to me.

Even through the last seven weeks I haven’t called Laura, something I found easy to do at least weekly during the period when I was living here and she was living in Perth.  I’ve seen Laura and Ethan once in the last seven weeks and while I wanted to see them I think it was also because it was convenient for Liz because it gave her a chance to give her apartment a cleanup before a rent inspection.

I’m not blaming Liz for me not seeing the kids, I should be making more effort.  I understand her concern for me being alone with them in my current state of mind but I think there are stark differences between her opinion of my current state of mind and mine.  That said I can only really speak for me.  Obviously I can’t comment accurately on what Liz thinks, except for what she tells me.

I’m sitting here now, I’ve got a Easter gift for Laura and Ethan and I’m hoping that typing this out will be cathartic in some way.  By the time I finish this post I want to be able to call both sets of kids, organise time to see Laura and Ethan again and discuss when Mary is bringing the Jack and Nicole over.

Mary and the kids were planning to come over just after Christmas.  Stay here for a night or few then make their way up to Sydney to see and stay with my Nanna for a little while.  Things don’t always pan out the way we expected and they couldn’t make the journey.  Last time we talked about it Mary was going to try and come over again during the school holidays in May.

I’d like to be able to blame my Mother for my lack of ability to keep regular contact with the kids, especially Jack and Nicole, but ultimately it’s my choice whether or not to pick up the phone. On the occasions she’s called she often ends the call with “I love you” with a tone that sounds to me like I’m supposed to say it back.  I don’t.  I tend to say something like OK.  I don’t do it to hurt her but saying “I love you” is something I’ve typically reserved for my wife/wives.  When I do speak with Nicole I try and end the phone call with an “I love you” but try hard not to make it seem like she’s expected to say it back just because I said it first.

Even with Laura and Ethan I don’t tell them I love them enough.  I have no problem telling Laura that I love her when she says it to me first but I don’t recall ever initiating the exchange.  Ethan is barely speaking so I’m not even sure if I’ve ever told him.