MMTL – …All my darkest hours talking like this…

Which describes how you’re feeling all the time

Federal Rule of Evidence 803(3) Then-Existing Mental, Emotional, or Physical Condition. A statement of the declarant’s then-existing state of mind (such as motive, intent, or plan) or emotional, sensory, or physical condition (such as mental feeling, pain, or bodily health), but not including a statement of memory or belief to prove the fact remembered or believed unless it relates to the validity or terms of the declarant’s will.

So guess what?

I re-negotiated my divorce so that I wasn’t restricted by geography, quit my job as a corporate lawyer and moved back to my hometown, a much despised city in New York (undeservedly so).

I’m broke and I can’t practice law in the state until I pass the bar exam. I am procrastinating studying evidence right now because the exam is in about 9 days.

I’ve jumped out of my purgatory-like rut of post-divorce uncertainty into the thrilling terror of embarking on a mission of financial obliteration.

And yet… and yet… I feel different. I often feel scared. I often feel sad or lonely. Or all the rest of the bad feelings that I felt in Houston. But I don’t always feel like I am in a loop. And that’s different.

Is different better?

We’ll see. If I pass bar. Excuse me, WHEN I pass the bar, I would like to start a law firm: Collaborative divorces, maybe school law (helping parents get IEPs for their kids), maybe helping charitiable organizations that build up the community, taking assignments (indigent criminal defense), personal injury, civil rights, equity actions…

we’ll see.

Angels and Demon Days

My daughter came home Friday from camp, and just like that she’s gone again for two weeks after I put her on the plane to visit her Grandparents. I’m not sure what would have made Saturday a perfect day but it was a pretty good day punctuated by my ex-wife leaving everything to the last minute and giving me the general impression that she’s unreliable. That said, by the end, she did come through because she is actually very competent when she focuses and shows some care, like for her daughter (which matters to her) as opposed to my peace of mind (which she couldn’t care less about).

A few weeks ago, I taught Sunday School. Everyone in the class is supposed to teach part of the curriculum, and my topic was about Angels and Demons. A difficult topic for Presbyterians, who tend to feel comfortable with the idea of bearing the cross and of being a disciple because these are physical. All things non-corporeal and beyond human comprehension of a physical reality tend to make them totally freak out. Personally, I see a lot of parallel between the earthly mission of Christians; imperfect though it may be in execution, and the spirtual mission of the heavenly hosts. “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” Heb. 1:14

Anyhow, it was easier for me to talk about Demons, and the suffering inflicted by the confusion and line-blurring they do. My favorite passage in the Bible is the ultimate confrontation between good and evil in this vein is Lk 4:1-14

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.'”

And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”

And Jesus answered him, “It is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.'”

And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’

and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.'”

And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'” And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

This is my favorite passage of the Bible first of all, because it shows that Jesus felt the same temptations that I felt and the same way that I feel them. Satan tempts Jesus with what he wants. Jesus is physically hungry. He yearns to lead mankind, which has forsaken him. And his deepest fear is the painful death that he understands awaits him. And Satan tries to trick him with technical arguments and rhetoric. But Jesus is all substance. Substance means you man up and take it, for the good of those you love, even at the cost of your own discomfort.

Still, I wonder. I wonder because, I’m a fool. I don’t know if I’m doing harm or good sometimes. And I just can’t man up like Jesus (no one can).

What am I supposed to do with the empty nest?
Is this loneliness teaching me something or telling me to find someone or is it just tempting me to go do bad or does it mean nothing at all?
My ex broke her vows, but at the height of my sorrow, I forgave her. What does that mean?
I think its okay to have a gay ex-wife, and for everyone to move on during their life. But what happens in then end? The answer seems to be, not what we expect because we know nothing. Observe Matt. 22: 23-33

The same day Sadducees came to him,who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses said,’If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no children left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”

But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

Christ wants me to move on and do his work. But I don’t know what that is yet. So I have to be patient. In the mean time, I can suffer temptation, lonliness and sorrow. I can drown myself in work, or delight in my care of my children, or I can go sing. But the questions don’t go away. Nor the doubts that I’m not doing the right thing. That’s the difference between Angels and man. Angels know exactly what their mission is, and they go ahead and do it. Man’s perception is incomplete and made more difficult with distractions both of pure evil and of its own making.

So what are the answers? I have none. I guess that means it is… time for lyrics. This is from “The Gorillaz”

In These Demon Days It So Cold Inside
So Hard For A Good Soul To Survive
You Can’t Even Trust The Air You Breathe, Cuz

Mother Earth Wants Us All To Leave
When Lies Become Reality
You Numb Yourself with drugs and TV

Pick Yourself Up Its A Brand New Day
Don’t Turn Yourself Round, Don’t Burn Yourself
Turn Yourself, Turn Yourself Around Into The Sun

Did “the gay thing” sort of make the divorce easier?

One of the big developments of the 20th century in family law was the no fault divorce. It represents a major shift in the thinking of the courts about the promise of marriage. That shift is this: if one person wants a divorce, then the courts will grant a divorce without any need for a further reason.

This can be counter-intuitive because the popular notion about divorce is that someone is to blame. Normally the adulterer. What about a gay adulterer? Is it an easier betrayal to realize that the reason your wife was unfaithful is that she didn’t like your gender? I don’t know. Nobody can know because intensity of feeling is subjective. Anyhow, neither TGT nor the adulterty factored into the legal proceedings because it was a no-fault divorce done under the collaborative divorce rules. Our divorce happened mostly through preparing for a series of conference-table discussions. Although I was heartbroken and angry, none of this was reflected in the proceeding, the papers, or the outcome. Basically my feelings were my problem, not the courts. If you just said to yourself “as it should be” then you’ve been swept away in the contemporary jurisprudence on family law. Your corresponding self from 30, 50, and 100 years ago might not have agreed. Your corresponding self might have said something about getting justice against the party who broke the sacred marriage vows. And if you said something more like the 2nd thing, then it shows that the sweep of history is incremental.

Anyhow, this isn’t about legal theory. This is about whether TGT somehow made my divorce easier. Was it a comfort to know that there wasn’t some scuzzy guy she liked better? I don’t know. Is some scuzzy gal that she met on the internet really an improvement? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I was shocked and heartbroken. I was never surprised.

I will say this, however. When my ex-wife moved out, she was rejecting everything about the perfect life that she had built for herself with the adoring, faithful, white-collar husband; the shiny new house in the suburb; and the two cherubic kids. Her reasons on the last are unclear and a bit inconsistent, like the woman herself. But the fact is, I am glad to have custody of my kids, I am a loving and devoted father, she remains involved in the kids lives, and we have transitioned from spouses to amicable co-partents at arms length in a manner which has been a whole lot better than my own parents or many other divorced parents that I knew.

There are various groups set up for straight spouses, the most prominent being the Straight Spouse Network and there is even a celebrity pop-psychologist champion with three names (Amity Pierce Buxton) and a rival (has a new book out, but can’t remember the name). And I joined them for a while but quickly lost interest. The reason why is because these groups all deal with the strangeness of discovering that your ex is gay. At some level, its because the most straight ex-spouses think that its strange it be gay. Its an uncommon reason to get divorced, statisically speaking. But it’s not a strange reason. Take TGT out of the equation and my divorce is simply a case of a wife waking up one day to realize that she’d made a terrible mistake in her life about what she thought she wanted once the things she thought she wanted started to happen. So first she got passive aggressive about undoing her own project, then she just bolted. That’s a familiar enough story.

The (so far) good outcome is a little more strange. In part I attribute this to doing a collaborative divorce. In part, I attribute this to being a liberal and therefore morally superior to you conservative haters (suck it! … this is a joke, why don’t you relax?). But in part, I think its about TGT. She wanted a different life. Were she not gay, I’d wonder “why cant we both change together?” and I’d also be critical of her desires. And, in fact, outside of TGT, she’s made other life choices since living on her own, that I am critical of. I’ve noticed though, that because she’s not my spouse and its not my problem, these choices piss me off a whole lot less.

ok, now some relevant tmbg lyrics:

URNX
URNX, NI, IMNX
ICTV
ICTV
ICTV, NICU
ICU, ICU, NUROK