I am not a frequent (or, always, a good) diarist, but now that the fervor of the election has died down and a new year is underway, I thought I’d post something that had been on my mind since late last summer.
I’m 25 years old, and mid-December, my divorce became final. The marriage clocked in, nominally, at just a smidge under 17 months. (And to any happily married readers who may come upon this diary, I apologize: people like me are far more of a threat than the many committed GLBT couples who want to make a formal acknowledgment and covenant of their relationship.)
Seeing a promising family disintegrate so quickly, counseling notwithstanding, was certainly a disillusioning experience. But this is a brief story about how the Kossack family really helped sustain me. So if you want to hear the latest theory about Blago or Rick Warren or how Reid is dropping the ball or how the second half of the bailout should stay put, you won’t find it here this morning.
Now, as divorces go, mine was fairly smooth. After a great deal of counseling and tough talks with our families, my wife and I realized that our marriage, sadly, was not "too big to fail," and a fresh start was really what the doctor ordered. She’s moved away, but we remain on friendly terms, and I still count her family as her family. Her dad was a bit intimidating at first—a real, regular, salt-of-the-earth guy, very practical and computer-oriented. I don’t think like a scientist or logically, but we bonded over football—and progressivism.
Last Christmas (’07), he kept telling me what he was reading on DailyKos. At that point, I had heard of DailyKos, but wasn’t a regular reader of any blogs, let alone one that seemed so ingrown and culturally contained. (I guess "culturally contained" would describe it, since you really are entering into a realm with etiquettes separate from the rest of teh internets.) I remember having seen Markos clean Harold Ford Jr.’s clock on MTP during the summer of 2007, and I was impressed. He didn’t sound like that Christmas-hating, crackpipe smoking, steals-toys-from-tots, bestialist "whacko from the daley coze" that Bill-O talked about.
That was a tough Christmas, maritally: three long weeks with three family units brought out the kids in us, as what was cute stopped seeming so cute for awhile.
My father-in-law and I, however, watched the final week of the NFL and the opening round of the playoffs, as his team then seemed to have a chance. And while I would spend early January in California with my in-laws, my heart—and his—was back home, where I live (and vote) now; Iowa.
He was an Edwards guy through-and-through, and didn’t believe that a hyped candidate like Obama would have the ground game in Iowa. Still, I watched him look impressed as—from across the country—I received four or five exasperated calls from different Obama volunteers at different levels of the grassroots, one even asking me if there was any way I could get back by the caucus. We went to a small Mexican restaurant caucus night and, like it was a precious playoff game, came home to MSNBC.
Things got worse once we returned home, and those things have a way of being precipitous. Around February, the ordinary, daily fights had reached a crescendo. Luckily, so had the Democratic primary.
I wouldn’t give my wife such a hard time over staying out late, though, if I could just stare at MSNBC and let off a pithy comment about a Rachel smackdown on Pat. I began to descend into blogland. I posted a couple ill-advised diaries around March, taking a cheap-shot at Edwards and not realizing the depth of his support on the site. I learned!
(I lost all my accumulated mojo in a similar event after the second or third presidential debate. With a bottle of whiskey, while studying, I had done an informal "drinking game" for one, mostly harmless, until I stole a tip jar on a silly, stupid little diary about how much better of a candidate/debater Kucinich would have been. I did a no-no and got beat down! But hey, how else is a dumb kid like me going to learn?!)
We separated. Nonetheless, her parents came to visit in May, and we watched in our living room, one happy progressive family, as Tweety eviscerated Kevin James. He saw me commenting on DK and I could tell he was really happy—at last, our wives seemed to be relieved, someone else could hear about Michelle Bachmann or Blackwater or this or that.
This summer, I lived on couches here and there, helping out with the flood when I could, participating in fitful reconciliation attempts and worsening, increasingly desperate arguments. As a consequence, I spent the vast majority of my time in coffeeshops, libraries, and computer labs, following down every meme, clicking refresh, refresh, refresh until maybe, just maybe, I could have the first pithy one-liner of a new thread. I knocked on a couple doors, did my part virally for the cause, but mostly I was just staying afloat. And I still remember a day, mid-to-late June, when a "hidden comment" button appeared on my homepage. I thought it was a new widget, but once I realized what had happened, I felt like I was finally belonging somewhere. Okay, it wasn’t quite so dramatic, but I remember my gratefulness that liberal people, while frequently grumpy, are also supportive, family-values loving, affirmative folk.
My wife (then destined to be my ex) didn’t know what to get her father for his birthday this fall. I had just read through Markos’s book so fast that it appeared untouched, so I offered it as a sly re-gift. She told me he opened it while he was on the phone with her, before promptly bowing himself out of the conversation to read it.
Addendum: after our divorce became final last month, her family came into town for her graduation. I had some final things to move out as she left the apartment we had originally shared for good, but I spent the time with her family. It was destined to be a bit odd and awkward and sad, and maybe it was all of those things. But oh, all the things we knew about Blago. Boy, all the things we knew about Blago! And there was nothing else anyone needed to talk about.