Recently Michael and I had some soul-searching talks wherein we discussed how we saw our relationship and each other, and what roles we wanted to play. I was shocked and appalled to hear him say that he’s been considering this idea of mine of getting back into property management, probably commanding a pretty sum for my services even after 11.3 years of inactivity, and the mere thought of him being the House Dad and doing all that I’ve been doing for those past 11.3 years gives him the willies and, and as he put it, would kill him.
Well.
(and what’s it done to me?)
Which leads me to wonder if, indeed, I could land such a position. Would anyone want to employ me after 11 years of mommyhood?
For all my education, coming entirely I might add from reading books, several truckloads of them, I have no actual college degree. (I have three degrees of Reiki, but that doesn’t count, at least not that way. And I’m sure I have six or fewer degrees of separation with most if not all of you, but that again is something else.) Nope, I left my pursuit of a Theater Arts degree knowing that there was a lot of competition out there, a lot of talent, and it wasn’t simply talent that was going to get me anywhere. The odds were stacked, I felt, and running scared, I ran away with my student loan mid-semester (yes, they did catch up with me eventually, in case you are considering this) to begin a rewarding career in Telephone Sales, a natural choice.
My last husband, who has pretty much soured me on the idea of marriage entirely despite my usually idealistic outlook, observed once that it appeared to him that I never had finished anything in my life.
That may help explain a conversation which led straight to the current state of things, i.e. an extremely bitter and messy divorce, wherein he told me it was his opinion that a wife who didn’t work during the course of the marriage, choosing instead, as he put it, to sit around eating bon-bons, deserved markedly less of the hard-working husband’s hard-earned income from the time during said marriage than did said overworked and underacknowledged husband.
Which is interesting to ponder as I find myself in a position whereupon a judge who has never met me and doesn’t know a thing about me, will decide indeed what I am worth. This process, euphemistically called “Equitable Distribution”, means that the worth of the marriage will be split somehow between us, most likely by some predetermined calculation (which admittedly puts a non-working spouse such as myself to a slight advantage), but one skewed as much as possible by my husband’ likely exhortations of what is His and what was Ours. In other words, it will be decided in court What I Am Worth.
Another measure of a person’s worth, at least where we deal in the sophistication of money and power rather than in cows and cowrie-shell necklaces, which sounds much more civilized to me, is one’s job (and inherently, the money and power that rides along with it). I have none. That makes me a ….. what? I write a blog, so therefore am I A Writer? Must it be for money to earn a label? I would love to write for money, but so would at least 700,000 other people. I channel, I do Reiki, but are these worthwhile pursuits in our society?
I don’t care how many granola bars and pots of soup a person makes for her family, those things do not hold up to the general populace as Worthwhile and Worthy, unless they are mass-produced and mass-marketed and consumed en masse.
Internet, what are YOU worth, and how do you justify your worth to yourself and to others?
(Crawling back now to my Dark Hole of Depression.)
technorati tags: work, divorce, personal worth, prozac, anyone?
October 4th, 2006 at 7:40 am
You’re asking tough questions and I don’t have any easy answers, it sure must have been hard to have someone telling you that bringing in an income was the only thing that meant anything. That’s rotten but unfortunately a common view. I agree with your choice to be with your children, no one can do for them what you can. I guess that mean you’re in a very specialized field