2009 - the year that was.

Time for my annual New Year's post. Well, my very first annual New Year's post, but every tradition starts some time, right?

The year 2009 began, for me, with great personal turmoil and pessimism. I had concluded a year with not enough real work to be done, and thus too much free time to study the world of politics, economics, and energy. I think most people agree that 2008 was grim - the Wall Street meltdown, the energy crisis abated only by economic malaise, and the conclusion of eight years of awful Bush presidency.

In addition, my personal job, at IBM, was tenuous at best, because IBM was shedding US workers as fast as it could. And then, on top of all that, my Father-in-law, the patriarch of my wife's family, the one nice guy that held her contentious family together, had succumbed to Lewy Body Dementia, and he was dying.

In early January 2009 my father-in-law died. In late January 2009 I was informed of my layoff from IBM. My old life was decomposing before my eyes.

Financially I was okay, really, but personally I had zero resources. My parents were sickly and crabby, and in addition to my alcoholic brother, who they had taken in years before, and who was still drinking, they were forced to take in my sister, who suffers badly from depression. Thus my parents were already caring for two of their three adult children.

My children, at least the eldest three, were engrossed in their own struggles with high school and college. My wife turned against me. Completely against me. I am not sure how that came about, but I suspect it had something to do with her insecurities and losing her Father, and then having me let her down by losing my job, so despite years of my wife appreciating my independent nature, she now saw it as ingratitude towards her deceased Father, claiming that I had NEVER appreciated anything her family had given me. I tried to explain that I greatly appreciated what her Father had given me, but I was uncomfortable with large gifts because I did not want to be dependent on him. I tried to explain that I identified with him, because he was a giver and so was I and yet while he was alive he pretty much suffered stoically and not until his death did he get the appreciation that he deserved. I tried to explain that I saw the same fate for myself, and unlike her father, I did not want that for myself. I attempted to stand up for myself and ask for some recognition, and this was seen as jealousy and this was seen as a terrible thing, a betrayal of sorts, a criticism of my wife's family.

My wife abandoned me and returned to the security of her family's fortune. My independence was now seen as ingratitude, my intelligence was now seen as arrogance, and my 30+ years of steady, prosperous work was now seen as a failure because it did not extend for another fifteen years like it was supposed to.

At that time the only person who treated me with the smallest amount of giving, and not taking, was my twelve year old daughter, who seemed to like having her Dad around.

I would visit my parents and they would chastise me because they did not like me when I was unhappy. They missed the happy Tripp. My wife soon hated seeing me idle at any time, and she wanted me out of the house, away from her, but earning money to give to her. My eldest children did not want to get involved.

All this, I suppose, comes partly from my own doing. I had built a relationship structure around the idea that I was a rock, a giver, someone everyone could depend on, and so nobody in my personal group was ready to support me when I needed it most. I had tried to emulate my wife's father, but without the security of inherited wealth and the banks that went with it I was not the master of my own fate. My employer cast me out. I was also not of the Catholic faith, so I was not willing to suffer in silence as my father-in-law had done, doing everything that is humanly possible to attempt to somehow satisfy his never-happy wife, his wife who had inherited *her* wealth and who had never worked a day in her life and who was still not happy.

My wife wanted me to take a pill, or talk to a counselor, but to ask nothing of her, and to instead straighten myself out so I could give more to her, to continue, as her father did with his wife, to try to satisfy her and to try to make her happy.

I did see a counselor, a marriage counselor, and he advised me to open communications with my wife, to ask my wife for what I needed, to try to create a mutually helpful relationship between us, but when my wife came to counseling we never got around to that subject. We spent the entire time listening to all the ways that I had failed my wife, and all the problems that she had had with me, and how awful it was for my wife to see me idle, loafing around, while she had to work her sixteen-hour-a-week job.

I continued on with counseling, alone, for as long as it took for me to see that my wife would never change. Whether it was due to genetics or learned behavior, my wife expected me to treat her the very same way her father had treated her mother, even though I had none of the resources her father had, and even though she had none of the resources her mother had.

Once I clearly saw that I began dismantling as much of my life as I could, and I stopped trying to make my wife happy. I started thinking about what I wanted, and I started planning for how I could get it. My wife served me with divorce papers on 12/23, but I had seen that coming. I think my wife was trying to force me back to work, to force me to continue supplying her with money. The funny thing is that I actually DO want to get back to work, and finally, after a very bad year of hundreds of job applications, I have gotten a firm job contract on the same day my wife said "Ha! I beat you to it!!" and told me to expect divorce papers.

Now I am trying to build my life over, and this time I am looking for people that might give as well as take. Someday my kids will come around. They need to grow up more first, and when they become more secure they will be grateful for what they have gotten.

I have gotten very sensitive to what I call 'toxic' people now. I can smell them a mile away, and I run like the wind when I get a whiff. I am talking about sour, bitter, critical and judgmental people. People like my soon to be ex-wife.

Life is hard enough without having to listen to judgmentalism and judgments and criticism. Carping about someone else is one of the easiest things to do, and it is toxic, especially when the someone else is already feeling down. At times like that a kind word, a caring heart, a bit of encouragement and recognition matter a great deal.

My goal, in 2010, is to seek out more of the giving people, more of the gentle people, more of the caring people, and to join them, and contribute what I can, because heaven knows my soul is weary and in need of great restoration.

Peace to all.