Things to be grateful to the EX for - Part 1

I am having a very hard time these days feeling anything but anger and animosity towards my ex-husband. He continues to be verbally abusive to me whenever I speak to him on the phone so I have decided now to cut all contact.

I think I feel so angry because of his lack of love or devotion to the children. I don’t care if he loves me or wants to be with me but why can’t he love his children? And maybe he does, in his own way. But to me, his own way simply isn’t good enough.

Now that he is staying with his family, he is being poisoned by them and inspired by them to take harmful action against me. It is unpleasant but I am happy he is warm, cared for and with people who want to help him. At least they do for now. But I can't allow their help for him cause pain to me so I have to remove myself from contact with him.

I don’t want to be mired down by these thoughts and feelings. I want to be free from him, free from anger and free from the burden he places on me emotionally.

So today I am going to try an exercise in feeling gratitude towards him instead of anger.

I cannot show him much gratitude at this point but I will start where I can truly feel grateful towards him, and that of course is for the blessings of my children.

The children are a given though. I need to dig deeper and find another aspect of something from our relationship I can feel real and positive gratitude for.

Before we had children, we did have some great times together. And some of those great times involved a total of EIGHT epic road trips by car across Canada, in the short space of seven years. That’s a lot of miles! But it was the chance to experience as much of Canada as possible, fully immersing myself in this land of my birth. And it also made me realize that although there are many things about Canada I appreciate, admire and love, it still does not truly feel like “home”. It just is not where I wish to take root in this glorious world. I will reside here for long periods for many reasons, but I don’t think it is where I will ever feel settled in my heart. If my “dream lover” is a hardcore Canadian though, I am sure we can make some happy arrangement!

So I will pay homage to those eight glorious road trips and send out my feelings of gratitude towards my ex for those great road trips, and that is the best I can do. For now.

1.Spring 1998:
Toronto-Moncton-B.C.:
Shortly after we met in Toronto, I convinced him to leave the city and return with me to B.C. We got a small car, loaded it with our possessions and a pregnant pit bull we were fostering, and first drove down to the east coast to see my friends and family, and then turned around and made our way all the way west to B.C. My best memory of that trip? Seeing the Toronto boy discover the wildlife in the Rockies when he got up close and personal with an elk in Jasper!

2. November 1998:
B.C. to Parry Sound, Ontario:
After being married in Toronto that Sept, job opportunities took us to a spot I randomly picked off the map that looked cool…Parry Sound. So back across Canada to Ontario we go! This time we had found a small old Datsun pick up truck with a canopy on the back for the dogs. I read novels to my ex all the way across and it was exciting heading to the unknown and all the possibilities it held. The thing that stands out most to me was applying a bungy cord on the gear shift whenever I was told it was time to “shift”!! Oh and no heat…brrrr.

3. January 1999:
Ontario to B.C.:
Not a good time to drive across Canada!! The jobs did not work out in Parry Sound so we stayed with my in-laws in Kitchener and Toronto for a bit…which ended badly! My eyes were being opened to the type of people his family are. We struggled to make a go of it…I even landed a high paying job with now defunct Canadian Airlines, but it was not to be. We loaded the little pick up and headed west to BC again. It was very cold (still no heat!), the bungy was still in use and the snowy roads frightened the hell out of me. We broke down a few times but the best break down happened in the heart of the Rockies, somewhere on a snowy, empty stretch of road between Jasper and Tete Jaune Cache. I got out of the truck and all around me were mountains and snow and a complete silence. I will never forget the awe and wonder I felt in that snowy silence surrounded by giants.
That drive culminated with a crash into a snow bank at a gas station 100km before we reached home, sending the rolled up carpet on the roof down the windshield to become deeply embedded in the snow! Woo!

4. May 1999:
B.C. to Halifax:
in a 1970-something Datsun 510. This began the start of a few years of my ex collecting old Datsun 510s. The car was rough but the biggest challenge on that drive was hoping our pregnant dog didn’t go into labour before we reached Halifax!! We made her a special place every night in whatever motel we were in but she held out until we reached Halifax. More novels were read on that drive. And it was unbelievably cheap on gas! I think only $300 total to cross the country in that 510!

5. Summer 2000:
B.C. to Port Hope, Ontario:
We had flown back to B.C. from Halifax in late 1999 and this time I had faced some pretty serious family problems in B.C. and wanted to get away as fast as possible. We chose Port Hope because I had a friend there. We now had 3 dogs in tow and drove a little Ford Escort which held out nicely all the way there. We knew the route so well now, we actually had favourite motel stops and knew the cheapest ones! Hanging out in Banff with my half-brother was a fun highlight.

6. November 2000:
Port Hope to B.C.:
Once again, things did not go as I would have liked. The friend who I once had been very close with, completely let me down and started showing me her true colours, which made it hard to stay. I also had conflict at my work and my husband just could not find decent work. He also was heavily into drugs there from the people he met. So I wanted out. We originally bought an old truck but the engine blew just before we were to leave. Luckily we still had the little Ford Escort and amazingly, it made it all the way back to B.C. That drive was scary with some bad road conditions and evil snow and ice. I hung in there until we got to Alberta and in Edmonton we hit some ice and almost hit someone else, so I decided to bus it back and let my ex drive the rest of the way on his own with the dogs. When it comes to cars and bad weather/roads, I am a total coward.

7 & 8. Summer 2003:
B.C. to P.E.I. to B.C.:
Our final road trip across Canada. Also to be known as, “there and back again”.
I was pregnant with our first child and I had a vision of living in a quaint spot near family and friends. I did not want to return to Moncton, my hometown, so instead I decided upon P.E.I. I have fond memories of that island and so we decided to go for it. This time crossing Canada would not involve the same old route, oh no. I wanted to see even more because I knew it would be the last. I would never take a small child, strapped in a car seat, on a drive like that, in any of our less than decent vehicles. On this trip we drove a small station wagon, and had my niece with us until Alberta. We saw Drumheller with her (perhaps seeing all the dinosaurs while pregnant with my son is what sparked him to become a dinosaur fanatic!) and then left her with her family and we continued onwards, and the route plan was to use as many back roads in Canada as possible. I chose secondary roads that interconnected all over every province. We went far north into Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, seeing places we never had been before. We crossed Manitoulin Island in Ontario and made a crisscross route all over Ontario, arriving into Quebec at a northern entry point and looped high over the northern roads of remote Quebec. It was amazing to me, but highly annoying to me ex. It took twice as long but I loved every moment.
Things did not work out in P.E.I. despite a very good effort and we returned to B.C., again taking as many back roads and long detours around all the provinces as possible. I feel it was a great finale to our years of crossing Canada.

I feel only warmth and happiness towards my ex whenever I think about those trips. We may have had many bad moments, and things did not always go as planned, but the memories I hold onto are good ones.

I send him gratitude for those travels and I hope one day he remembers them as fondly as I do.