Like everyone, I sometimes fall into the trap of thinking, "Wow, I wish my life was more like hers" when I talk to someone who is experiencing something wonderful like romantic love.
But I'm learning, over and over again, that things are not always as they appear.
Yesterday I got my hair cut by a woman who has been part of my social circle for over a decade; I don't know her well, but we know a lot of people in common, and she actually participated on my Breast Cancer 3-Day team many years ago. I hadn't talked to her in ages (she had never done my hair before - I decided to pay for a nice haircut for once, instead of going for the bargain, and so I went to her....but that's another story!), so we were catching up.
She caught me off guard, and said, "I was SO surprised when I heard about your divorce. You were such a happy couple!"
I nearly fell out of the salon chair.
The thing is, I did my absolute utmost to make the best of my life, to make the most of my marriage, to be the kind of spouse I'd want to be married to. I didn't trash talk him (although I did confide in my absolute closest girlfriends), I worked hard at presenting a unified front. The whole time I was dying inside (possibly literally, given my breast cancer) and I felt like a total fraud, very unhappy, lonely, and confused.
But on the outside, it looked like I was a happy hausfrau.
In the past few weeks at my daughter's gymnastics class, I've been on the other side of that equation, feeling surprised at someone else's struggles.
Gymnastics Mom #1 (GM1) has been divorced for a few years. She's got a hotshot career. She's also got a hot boyfriend, and a year or so ago they bought a house together and moved in with one another and their kids. The kids are all besties, the new boyfriend is loving and attractive, and life looked really, really good from the outside. I've asked her how she got her life to this place, and she has glowed and looked happy and said things like "It'll find you when you least expect it!" (True or not, this has to be one of the most annoying phrases ever, but I digress.)
This week, GM1 approached me while our daughters vaulted and balanced and cartwheeled. "I've been wanting to call you," she said. "I need some support." She started to cry. "(Hot boyfriend) told me that it's over, and he's moving out. I didn't see it coming, and I'm devastated, and I can't do this...."
Their children don't know yet. She has to move, because she can't afford to stay in the house they purchased together using their combined income, designed to fit four children. I hugged her and said, "You survived your divorce. You will survive this..." and she said, "No, it's different, this is worse..."
Yikes. From any angle, that looks impossibly painful. :-(
Gymnastics Mom #2 (GM2) has a similar story. Divorced several years, she's in a two year relationship, and they live together with his daughter and her daughter. They go to hot, sunny, Latin American beaches with regularity; they appear to have a discretionary income a zillion times my own. She paints a picture of a perfect life. But I'm listening, and after I got over my burst of jealousy (hey, who wouldn't want what she describes?) I started to hear something more. She wants to get married, he doesn't. It's hard for them to find any time together, and whenever time opens in the schedule he's prone to booking it with something else that doesn't include her. Their lease was due to renew, and he said he only wanted to go month to month because he wasn't sure where there relationship was going. Then she told me that he has tried to break up with her two years in a row because, in her words, "He doesn't know what he wants. He wants me, he's just confused."
Her relationship has all the signs of RUNNNNNNN! I know that it's not mine to judge, but to me it sounds desperately unhappy, and the more that I learn about it the less happy it sounds. Yet, when I first met her, I was convinced that she is the one who had it figured out, and I had much to learn.
I like to stay on the move, changing my life daily for the better. I like to see what I can improve, and improve it. I have lots of goals in my life, and every day I think about how I can reach them: career, financial, romantic, health, travel, writing. It's so easy to see how far I have to go.
Today, I'm stopping and thinking about how my life might look from the outside.
Perhaps people look at me and think "Oh that poor woman! Cancer, divorce, single mom....I don't know how she does it!" and they feel sad or sorry or something.
Or maybe they look at me and feel envious, because I have a meaningful career, a great relationship with my daughter, a comfortable home, health, friends.
My life isn't perfect. I'd really like to drop the muffin top and get back into marathon shape. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to switch to this new job opportunity, in my field but so much more than my current job. I'd like to fall in love. (Interesting, hmmm? I "REALLY REALLY REALLY" want the new job, but I'd "like" to fall in love. That's a switch! But it's honest.)
Who knows what people see when they look at me. There are elements of truth in both viewpoints, of course, but neither pity nor envy feels like an appropriate response to my life. I love where I am, but the journey here has been difficult, and my path certainly isn't for everyone.
I am going to try to remember that when I look at other people's lives. I'm going to try to remember that most of us are just struggling to make the most of our lives, to do the best we can. I'm going to try to remember that things are not always as they appear, and that unless someone invites me in to their inner circle, I have no way of knowing how things really are.
Today, I'm working on letting go of envy. My life is beautiful, even with all of its imperfections, and I am grateful to be where I am. I'm working at seeing people, with their beauty and imperfections, as people "just like me" and not entirely "other."
I can't help but be astounded that I am so happy, so content, even when I am outside of a romantic relationship. The less I focus on romance, the more content I am, actually. It's not time to buy a dozen cats yet, but I do see the appeal: I am living my life on my terms, and there is joy in that.
Today, I'm sending out good wishes to GM1 and GM2. Whatever my perceptions of their lives, true or false, I hope that they find peace with their paths, that they feel joy in their choices, that they feel loved and accepted. I think that's what we all want, whether in a romantic relationship or not.
What a jolting sensation, to realize that I have put their lives on pedestals, so certain that they had what I'm seeking, only to find out that I am in the more enviable position of being content with where I am, free of heartbreak, at peace in my life. I certainly have a great deal to learn (wouldn't it be nice to feel those things AND have romantic love?), but I have wouldn't trade places with them for anything.
Lessons learned, every day.
Showing posts with label optimist's divorce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label optimist's divorce. Show all posts
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Saturday, January 10, 2015
I'd rather be a crazy cat lady.
I almost went on another date. (I've long since lost count of how many dates I've been on since my divorce, but too many.) I haven't been on a date since...hmmm, summer?... and I wasn't really looking, but a person from real life (not online) contacted me through LinkedIN. At first I thought it was just another professional connection - he's in a similar industry - but we exchanged a couple of emails and he made it clear that he was interested in me personally. He pointed out the things we have in common, asked me to meet him.
I know his ex-wife, although not well, so I hesitated. My radar was up: something seemed a bit off, so I was going to say no. But then I thought, "Okay, missy, what are you doing here? He's tall and attractive, lives close by, shares interests, is an active dad, we have some friends in common, and he's interested in you. No wonder you're alone if you won't even give him time to have coffee!" so I deleted my "no thank you" response before I sent it, and sent something warmer.
But that radar was still up, so I asked him where he was living since his separation.
His answer? With his wife. They no longer have a sexual relationship, but they are "mindful" and things are so much better now; they consider themselves separated, but still live together. (There is no ex-wife, then. There is only a wife.) Their lives are "emmeshed" but they are exploring different things, and he has started dating. And he hoped that this didn't send me running, because he and I have "so much in common" and he's "really excited" to connect with me.
I hope that my response was polite. I did tell him that I wished him, and his wife, every happiness on their new path. I also made it super clear that I wanted no part of it, and that I would not meet for coffee or anything else.
***
I know that I'm not a little girl any more, and that the Cinderella fairy tale with Prince Charming isn't going to happen. First of all, I'm not exactly sitting in the ashes of the fire wishing someone would rescue me - I've got things pretty together and I don't want a rescuer to change my whole life, I want a partner to build our lives together. I want synergy, not rescue. Secondly, though I expect my prince to come with his own history (I am not virginal, nor a blank slate, and nor do I expect him to be) I'd like to think that I could be the only woman he shares his bed with, and that at the end of the day he wouldn't have another partner at home with whom he shares his evening glass of wine. Call me crazy, but I am keeping the fantasy that I will find a partner who doesn't already have a wife, whether it's in name only or not.
Jane Eyre has long been a favorite book of mine. I love that Jane stuck to her values and left her beloved, not because of an archaic idea of marriage (Mr. Rochester needed a divorce!) but because if a man lies about his past, or keeps a wife in his attic, he is not marriage material. He is not boyfriend material. He is not relationship material. I love that Jane had the strength of character to walk away from him when he was an ass to her. I like that they worked it out in the end - it made for a good story!- but I don't think that Bronte was being that subtle when she maimed him by fire before there could be a happily ever after. Perhaps the reason that I'm not a world-famous author and part of the literary canon is that if I wrote that story, in the end, Jane wouldn't have come back. (Hmm. Maybe there are reasons that I'm alone!)
Every day, I settle more and more into my single life. I am good at being single, good at occupying myself so that loneliness is not the center of my life.
I do feel loneliness. This world is made for twos, not ones. Sometimes I feel it when something good happens, and I want to share it. Sometimes I feel it when I climb into my bed alone. Sometimes I feel it when - like today - a weekend opens before me and Katherine is with her dad. Sometimes I feel it around holidays. It's there most of the time, but I am adept at pushing it to the edges. It's like I've put myself in mosquito netting so that the insects can't bite me, but still, here I am inside netting, with buzzing in my ears, seeing the mosquitoes land only inches from me, just looking for a break in the netting where they can come in and gorge themselves upon me. It is not easy walking around the world covered in netting, attempting to blend in.
Still, I would rather be a crazy cat lady, surrounded by art and books and friends, than date someone else's husband, no matter how mindfully that husband conducts his separated marriage.
Call me conventional, but I want a conventional relationship. One where there are only the two of us romantically entangled, with nobody else sharing our hearts or beds. One where we can shape some new kind of family. One where, at the end of our days of work and kids and friends and chores, we only need one another.
But if I can't have that, I guess I should look into cat adoptions.
I know his ex-wife, although not well, so I hesitated. My radar was up: something seemed a bit off, so I was going to say no. But then I thought, "Okay, missy, what are you doing here? He's tall and attractive, lives close by, shares interests, is an active dad, we have some friends in common, and he's interested in you. No wonder you're alone if you won't even give him time to have coffee!" so I deleted my "no thank you" response before I sent it, and sent something warmer.
But that radar was still up, so I asked him where he was living since his separation.
His answer? With his wife. They no longer have a sexual relationship, but they are "mindful" and things are so much better now; they consider themselves separated, but still live together. (There is no ex-wife, then. There is only a wife.) Their lives are "emmeshed" but they are exploring different things, and he has started dating. And he hoped that this didn't send me running, because he and I have "so much in common" and he's "really excited" to connect with me.
I hope that my response was polite. I did tell him that I wished him, and his wife, every happiness on their new path. I also made it super clear that I wanted no part of it, and that I would not meet for coffee or anything else.
***
I know that I'm not a little girl any more, and that the Cinderella fairy tale with Prince Charming isn't going to happen. First of all, I'm not exactly sitting in the ashes of the fire wishing someone would rescue me - I've got things pretty together and I don't want a rescuer to change my whole life, I want a partner to build our lives together. I want synergy, not rescue. Secondly, though I expect my prince to come with his own history (I am not virginal, nor a blank slate, and nor do I expect him to be) I'd like to think that I could be the only woman he shares his bed with, and that at the end of the day he wouldn't have another partner at home with whom he shares his evening glass of wine. Call me crazy, but I am keeping the fantasy that I will find a partner who doesn't already have a wife, whether it's in name only or not.
Jane Eyre has long been a favorite book of mine. I love that Jane stuck to her values and left her beloved, not because of an archaic idea of marriage (Mr. Rochester needed a divorce!) but because if a man lies about his past, or keeps a wife in his attic, he is not marriage material. He is not boyfriend material. He is not relationship material. I love that Jane had the strength of character to walk away from him when he was an ass to her. I like that they worked it out in the end - it made for a good story!- but I don't think that Bronte was being that subtle when she maimed him by fire before there could be a happily ever after. Perhaps the reason that I'm not a world-famous author and part of the literary canon is that if I wrote that story, in the end, Jane wouldn't have come back. (Hmm. Maybe there are reasons that I'm alone!)
Every day, I settle more and more into my single life. I am good at being single, good at occupying myself so that loneliness is not the center of my life.
I do feel loneliness. This world is made for twos, not ones. Sometimes I feel it when something good happens, and I want to share it. Sometimes I feel it when I climb into my bed alone. Sometimes I feel it when - like today - a weekend opens before me and Katherine is with her dad. Sometimes I feel it around holidays. It's there most of the time, but I am adept at pushing it to the edges. It's like I've put myself in mosquito netting so that the insects can't bite me, but still, here I am inside netting, with buzzing in my ears, seeing the mosquitoes land only inches from me, just looking for a break in the netting where they can come in and gorge themselves upon me. It is not easy walking around the world covered in netting, attempting to blend in.
Still, I would rather be a crazy cat lady, surrounded by art and books and friends, than date someone else's husband, no matter how mindfully that husband conducts his separated marriage.
Call me conventional, but I want a conventional relationship. One where there are only the two of us romantically entangled, with nobody else sharing our hearts or beds. One where we can shape some new kind of family. One where, at the end of our days of work and kids and friends and chores, we only need one another.
But if I can't have that, I guess I should look into cat adoptions.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Broken
The better that my life gets - measured almost entirely by my own level of happiness plus my daughter's level of happiness - the more I see how broken I was.
The more I see how broken I am.
I was crazy to get married to Bryan. That is not because he was or is a bad person, that is because we were a terrible fit. He doesn't value physical health (he overeats and drinks too much and doesn't exercise and doesn't have good sleep patterns and basically does everything on the "don't" list from your doctor), he doesn't love adventure, he doesn't care much about his home, and he doesn't like responsibility. He doesn't volunteer, he's not a nature-guy, and he doesn't really like his job (a choice, given his education and possibilities). He enjoys a lot of down time reading or watching books, but not doing (and he wanted to read "his" books, and the best way for him to not read a book was for me to recommend it to him). He didn't want children. He likes things easy, without a lot of effort. He doesn't cook or clean. He doesn't like taking care of other people.
Does this make him a horrible person? No.
But I can not think of a worse fit for me, AND I PICKED HIM.
I changed all that: I insisted that our marriage change, and then I insisted that he work on his end, and I did a lot of work on myself, and I changed myself and got a backbone to do what I believed in, and still things didn't change on his end, and I ended it. He was hurt and angry and said that I didn't love him unconditionally, and I see now that even through it all, he had a right to be hurt. After all, maybe it was me who changed, and not him, and he would have gone on in misery with me for years without divorce, but I ultimately said, "Enough."
I was willing to accept that we didn't fit together, until the grief of it, the grief of trying to fit something that didn't fit, nearly killed me. Dramatic? Maybe. But my breast cancer and my divorce are tied together in my mind, and my unhappiness was the link between them.
Leaving him did not instantly heal all that is broken in me. I have come so far, but I have a long ways to go, and I see that part of my journey more clearly now.
I am healing my career, my body, my day to day life. I am so proud of all that I have done to repair what was broken in me, and I'm putting the pieces back together carefully, filling the cracks with gold.
But like any puzzle, it's easy to see where the missing pieces are.
I am not good at romantic relationships. I never have been. I have been broken, and brought that brokenness with me to romance.
Right now, I don't see a romantic future. When I gaze at the future, I see.....nothing. A curtain is drawn, or it's a fog, or it's all darkness....but I can't see it.
What I know is that I'm terrified of choosing badly again. I'm terrified of bringing my brokenness, and building out of that brokenness (and a house made of broken pieces would not be a very good house). I'm fearful that I will shatter what I have so carefully pieced back together. I fear finding myself once again, the frog in the boiling water, suddenly aware that I am moments from death unless I change everything.
I am good at being single. I have a good life: friends who come for my birthday, wonderful holiday celebrations, a warm and loving relationship with my daughter, manageable finances. I'm well fed, things are pretty clean, the bills are paid. This holiday, my tree is up, the porch is strung with lighted garlands, there are cards hanging on the wall. Life is good, and I am deeply happy.
And grateful. So intensely grateful to be happy. I know how blessed I am, and I count my blessings all the time. I'm alive, and here to enjoy my daughter, my good health, and my abundance. Deeply grateful.
So I hope it's not ungrateful of me to say that I see my brokenness, and that I still hope, wish and pray that it will be healed. That I can see that I struggle to let someone into my life, fearful of what that may mean, that maybe I have not been ready for love.
I'd like to be ready for love. I know that I may not be.
But I have a pot of gold, and I will keep gluing the pieces of my brokenness back together. It is painstaking work, and so important not to make a mistake: I want the bowl that is me to be smooth, and whole, and I will not go quickly and risk putting in a piece at an angle and ruining the whole. I will go slowly, cautiously, but I will keep working at it.
I will not pretend that I am whole.
I will not pretend that I know where the lost pieces are, but I will climb on my hands and knees, looking for them under the sofa, wedged under the moldings against the wall, slipped under the refrigerator. I will go into the dark corner with the dust bunnies and carefully extract these bits of me, wash them like they are a newborn infant, tend to them, and put them back in their place.
There's that famous line of the movie where the female lead says to her romantic interest, "You complete me." Make no mistake, that is not what I am looking for: no man holds the pieces of me, no man can complete me. These pieces belong to me, and life has broken them, and I have misplaced them, but they are mine and mine alone, and only I will recognize them (with, perhaps, a bit of divine intervention).
But I think it's remarkable that now I can see where they are missing, and I know to look for them, and that I can tend to them carefully.
I do not know if I will ever be ready for true love. I do not know if I will be held tenderly the way I wish to be held, and to hold. I do not know if I will ever model for my daughter what deep love like that looks like. I hold a vision of what true partnership looks like, and I begin to hope that I will not need to become perfect in order to attain that vision, and that perhaps someone can see how I have been broken and love me anyway.
I will keep working on myself, loving my life, focusing on the goodness in it, while I dream of the kind of love that everyone longs for in their lives.
The man for me will see my scars, and weep for their pain, and for their beauty. He will have his own cracks, filled with gold, and I will stroke them and wonder at them, and we will drink deeply from each other's cups.
I am not young. I am not fresh and new.
But still, I think, something good, fresh, and new awaits, and it will be all the better because of this slow work I am doing.
Let it be so. Amen.
The more I see how broken I am.
I was crazy to get married to Bryan. That is not because he was or is a bad person, that is because we were a terrible fit. He doesn't value physical health (he overeats and drinks too much and doesn't exercise and doesn't have good sleep patterns and basically does everything on the "don't" list from your doctor), he doesn't love adventure, he doesn't care much about his home, and he doesn't like responsibility. He doesn't volunteer, he's not a nature-guy, and he doesn't really like his job (a choice, given his education and possibilities). He enjoys a lot of down time reading or watching books, but not doing (and he wanted to read "his" books, and the best way for him to not read a book was for me to recommend it to him). He didn't want children. He likes things easy, without a lot of effort. He doesn't cook or clean. He doesn't like taking care of other people.
Does this make him a horrible person? No.
But I can not think of a worse fit for me, AND I PICKED HIM.
I changed all that: I insisted that our marriage change, and then I insisted that he work on his end, and I did a lot of work on myself, and I changed myself and got a backbone to do what I believed in, and still things didn't change on his end, and I ended it. He was hurt and angry and said that I didn't love him unconditionally, and I see now that even through it all, he had a right to be hurt. After all, maybe it was me who changed, and not him, and he would have gone on in misery with me for years without divorce, but I ultimately said, "Enough."
I was willing to accept that we didn't fit together, until the grief of it, the grief of trying to fit something that didn't fit, nearly killed me. Dramatic? Maybe. But my breast cancer and my divorce are tied together in my mind, and my unhappiness was the link between them.
Leaving him did not instantly heal all that is broken in me. I have come so far, but I have a long ways to go, and I see that part of my journey more clearly now.
I am healing my career, my body, my day to day life. I am so proud of all that I have done to repair what was broken in me, and I'm putting the pieces back together carefully, filling the cracks with gold.
But like any puzzle, it's easy to see where the missing pieces are.
I am not good at romantic relationships. I never have been. I have been broken, and brought that brokenness with me to romance.
Right now, I don't see a romantic future. When I gaze at the future, I see.....nothing. A curtain is drawn, or it's a fog, or it's all darkness....but I can't see it.
What I know is that I'm terrified of choosing badly again. I'm terrified of bringing my brokenness, and building out of that brokenness (and a house made of broken pieces would not be a very good house). I'm fearful that I will shatter what I have so carefully pieced back together. I fear finding myself once again, the frog in the boiling water, suddenly aware that I am moments from death unless I change everything.
I am good at being single. I have a good life: friends who come for my birthday, wonderful holiday celebrations, a warm and loving relationship with my daughter, manageable finances. I'm well fed, things are pretty clean, the bills are paid. This holiday, my tree is up, the porch is strung with lighted garlands, there are cards hanging on the wall. Life is good, and I am deeply happy.
And grateful. So intensely grateful to be happy. I know how blessed I am, and I count my blessings all the time. I'm alive, and here to enjoy my daughter, my good health, and my abundance. Deeply grateful.
So I hope it's not ungrateful of me to say that I see my brokenness, and that I still hope, wish and pray that it will be healed. That I can see that I struggle to let someone into my life, fearful of what that may mean, that maybe I have not been ready for love.
I'd like to be ready for love. I know that I may not be.
But I have a pot of gold, and I will keep gluing the pieces of my brokenness back together. It is painstaking work, and so important not to make a mistake: I want the bowl that is me to be smooth, and whole, and I will not go quickly and risk putting in a piece at an angle and ruining the whole. I will go slowly, cautiously, but I will keep working at it.
I will not pretend that I am whole.
I will not pretend that I know where the lost pieces are, but I will climb on my hands and knees, looking for them under the sofa, wedged under the moldings against the wall, slipped under the refrigerator. I will go into the dark corner with the dust bunnies and carefully extract these bits of me, wash them like they are a newborn infant, tend to them, and put them back in their place.
There's that famous line of the movie where the female lead says to her romantic interest, "You complete me." Make no mistake, that is not what I am looking for: no man holds the pieces of me, no man can complete me. These pieces belong to me, and life has broken them, and I have misplaced them, but they are mine and mine alone, and only I will recognize them (with, perhaps, a bit of divine intervention).
But I think it's remarkable that now I can see where they are missing, and I know to look for them, and that I can tend to them carefully.
I do not know if I will ever be ready for true love. I do not know if I will be held tenderly the way I wish to be held, and to hold. I do not know if I will ever model for my daughter what deep love like that looks like. I hold a vision of what true partnership looks like, and I begin to hope that I will not need to become perfect in order to attain that vision, and that perhaps someone can see how I have been broken and love me anyway.
I will keep working on myself, loving my life, focusing on the goodness in it, while I dream of the kind of love that everyone longs for in their lives.
The man for me will see my scars, and weep for their pain, and for their beauty. He will have his own cracks, filled with gold, and I will stroke them and wonder at them, and we will drink deeply from each other's cups.
I am not young. I am not fresh and new.
But still, I think, something good, fresh, and new awaits, and it will be all the better because of this slow work I am doing.
Let it be so. Amen.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Birthday Musings
Today I am 45 years old, and this is going to be my best year yet. That's what I'm hoping, wishing and praying for, anyway, and I have every reason to be optimistic that it might come true.
First of all, I got the results of my annual cancer testing back yesterday evening: Cancer FREE! The best of possible news.
Secondly, I've learned how to make my birthday fabulous.
Last night I threw myself a birthday party. I invited a dozen of my closest friends and their families, and ten of them (with families, maybe 25 people?) were able to attend. I kept it simple - it is the beginning of the school year, and a weekday, and I have no desire to torture myself with elaborate anything. On Sunday, Katherine and I baked: she made a brownie torte with chocolate ganache, and I made an old fashioned layer cake with oodles of frosting. Another friend contributed another layer cake, and her daughter made mini-cupcakes. The house was clean-ish (this is my new standard: far from perfection, but good enough!), and the cakes on stands on the dining room table, with stacks of plates and such, were the only "decorations" required. I opened a bottle of red and a bottle of white, made a giant pitcher of lemonade, and a pot of decaf coffee, and set up a beverage area in the kitchen.
And my home filled with beautiful friends and their funny, smart, energetic children. It was hot out, and so some of the party moved outside, with a group chatting on the deck, another in chairs in the back yard, and others who didn't mind the warm house sitting in the living room. The children roamed in a pack, shrieking with the sugar high of all that dessert.
Conversation was light, as befitting the occasion.
My heart was light.
Birthdays in my marriage were, for me, a sad affair. My ex not only didn't make me feel special, but he treated my desire to celebrate as a burden. Mostly, I threw my own parties then, too, but I had to manage his moods and his lack of support or understanding. It gives me a bit of shiver to think of it: it was just so LONELY. It was on my birthday each year that I felt the most unloved, the least understood. Not only did he not want to treat me as a gift in his life, he didn't support my desire to celebrate, complaining about the effort it took me to throw a party and saying it was stupid to put that on myself.
But now? Now, I surround myself with those who love me. And indeed, I am surrounded. Remembering that room full of people last night brings tears of gratitude to my eyes: they love me, as I love them. They found time between sports practice and homework and family dinner and demanding jobs to come to my house to celebrate me, and that is such a gift. One brought gorgeous roses from her garden; another brought a momento from her trip to Italy that reminded her of me. The wrote funny, sweet cards that showed just how well they know me. They baked. They filled up my wine rack. Two of them snuck into the kitchen at the end of the party and loaded the dishwasher and tidied up for me.
The children helped me to blow out my candles, all 45 of them. They went out in a singular whoosh, guaranteeing that my wish would come true.
Maybe it already has - I only want more of the same. This life of mine is good, even when it's complicated and messy. I'm learning to accept that life is always complicated and messy: there's waiting for medical test results, imperfect parents, financial strain, creaky old houses, homework, overscheduling, chores, co-parenting and the rest. But I think it's okay. It'll never be perfect, and accepting that has made me feel like it's much closer to perfection than I dreamed possible, despite the imperfections.
This morning the alarm went off at 4:30am. I dragged myself out of bed, bleary eyed, to make coffee and unload the dishwasher before putting on workout gear. My dear friend showed up at 5:15, and we took a long walk together down to the beach, filled with conversation and friendship and a bit of exercise and a dose of nature.
This morning Katherine made me a smoothie and brought me her home made card and home made gifts, friendship bracelets in my favorite colors. I wear them with pride, their bright blues and greens a contrast to my business attire. They are a far cry from what I normally wear, but they are instant favorites: my daughter labored over them, and tied them on my wrists....and they are, indeed, about friendship. Katherine and I like each other, and I am blessed by that. Deeply, deeply blessed.
Today life will be busy: I'm recovering from the blue screen of death at work last week (I got a new computer yesterday), and there's a new AmeriCorps volunteer on board to help with some upcoming projects, and tonight is a board meeting and who knows how late I'll get home for a belated birthday dinner (quite possibly, leftovers). But this morning, I'm taking this little moment to myself, with my coffee in a favorite mug and a piece of chocolate cake (hey! it's my birthday! I can do that!) for breakfast in the still house.
I'm tired, but I'm happy. This is my life, and I celebrate it. I earned every single one of those candles, and I'm so grateful for all that they represent. I am alive, and well, and filled with hope.
Happy birthday to me!
***
How do you celebrate your birthday? How do you nurture yourself? How do you find joy in an imperfect life, seeing past the imperfections to the beauty?
First of all, I got the results of my annual cancer testing back yesterday evening: Cancer FREE! The best of possible news.
Secondly, I've learned how to make my birthday fabulous.
Last night I threw myself a birthday party. I invited a dozen of my closest friends and their families, and ten of them (with families, maybe 25 people?) were able to attend. I kept it simple - it is the beginning of the school year, and a weekday, and I have no desire to torture myself with elaborate anything. On Sunday, Katherine and I baked: she made a brownie torte with chocolate ganache, and I made an old fashioned layer cake with oodles of frosting. Another friend contributed another layer cake, and her daughter made mini-cupcakes. The house was clean-ish (this is my new standard: far from perfection, but good enough!), and the cakes on stands on the dining room table, with stacks of plates and such, were the only "decorations" required. I opened a bottle of red and a bottle of white, made a giant pitcher of lemonade, and a pot of decaf coffee, and set up a beverage area in the kitchen.
And my home filled with beautiful friends and their funny, smart, energetic children. It was hot out, and so some of the party moved outside, with a group chatting on the deck, another in chairs in the back yard, and others who didn't mind the warm house sitting in the living room. The children roamed in a pack, shrieking with the sugar high of all that dessert.
Conversation was light, as befitting the occasion.
My heart was light.
Birthdays in my marriage were, for me, a sad affair. My ex not only didn't make me feel special, but he treated my desire to celebrate as a burden. Mostly, I threw my own parties then, too, but I had to manage his moods and his lack of support or understanding. It gives me a bit of shiver to think of it: it was just so LONELY. It was on my birthday each year that I felt the most unloved, the least understood. Not only did he not want to treat me as a gift in his life, he didn't support my desire to celebrate, complaining about the effort it took me to throw a party and saying it was stupid to put that on myself.
But now? Now, I surround myself with those who love me. And indeed, I am surrounded. Remembering that room full of people last night brings tears of gratitude to my eyes: they love me, as I love them. They found time between sports practice and homework and family dinner and demanding jobs to come to my house to celebrate me, and that is such a gift. One brought gorgeous roses from her garden; another brought a momento from her trip to Italy that reminded her of me. The wrote funny, sweet cards that showed just how well they know me. They baked. They filled up my wine rack. Two of them snuck into the kitchen at the end of the party and loaded the dishwasher and tidied up for me.
The children helped me to blow out my candles, all 45 of them. They went out in a singular whoosh, guaranteeing that my wish would come true.
Maybe it already has - I only want more of the same. This life of mine is good, even when it's complicated and messy. I'm learning to accept that life is always complicated and messy: there's waiting for medical test results, imperfect parents, financial strain, creaky old houses, homework, overscheduling, chores, co-parenting and the rest. But I think it's okay. It'll never be perfect, and accepting that has made me feel like it's much closer to perfection than I dreamed possible, despite the imperfections.
This morning the alarm went off at 4:30am. I dragged myself out of bed, bleary eyed, to make coffee and unload the dishwasher before putting on workout gear. My dear friend showed up at 5:15, and we took a long walk together down to the beach, filled with conversation and friendship and a bit of exercise and a dose of nature.
This morning Katherine made me a smoothie and brought me her home made card and home made gifts, friendship bracelets in my favorite colors. I wear them with pride, their bright blues and greens a contrast to my business attire. They are a far cry from what I normally wear, but they are instant favorites: my daughter labored over them, and tied them on my wrists....and they are, indeed, about friendship. Katherine and I like each other, and I am blessed by that. Deeply, deeply blessed.
Today life will be busy: I'm recovering from the blue screen of death at work last week (I got a new computer yesterday), and there's a new AmeriCorps volunteer on board to help with some upcoming projects, and tonight is a board meeting and who knows how late I'll get home for a belated birthday dinner (quite possibly, leftovers). But this morning, I'm taking this little moment to myself, with my coffee in a favorite mug and a piece of chocolate cake (hey! it's my birthday! I can do that!) for breakfast in the still house.
I'm tired, but I'm happy. This is my life, and I celebrate it. I earned every single one of those candles, and I'm so grateful for all that they represent. I am alive, and well, and filled with hope.
Happy birthday to me!
***
How do you celebrate your birthday? How do you nurture yourself? How do you find joy in an imperfect life, seeing past the imperfections to the beauty?
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Baby Steps
Readers, welcome to my self-therapy session. I'm hard at work, in a quiet way, at figuring out how I got where I ended up, where I wish to be, and how to change paths if the path I'm on is not the right one. My life is so amazing right now - many, many things are going right - and yet romantic love is an absolute mystery to me, and I'm trying to figure out how I'm contributing to that lack.
As an aside, I read all kinds of things about love, divorce, relationship, and when I read a blog or a book or whatever that says, "S/he was a horrible person and that is the reason that things ended so badly," I'm more and more inclined to think that it is very unlikely that the "victim" of that relationship is telling themselves the absolute truth. Yes, it's true that people do horrible things - my ex wasn't exactly a model husband, and I could give you a very long list of his failures in that department - but I think that healthy people don't buy into those horrible behaviors, and stop them or walk away from them. You know, that whole boundaries thing. In my case, I'm less interested in why my ex had horrible behaviors (like yelling or lying), and more interested in why I didn't stop those behaviors in their tracks or walk away years ago. Even more than looking at the past, I'd like to figure out how to stop myself from ever signing up for that type of relationship ever, ever, ever again.
I want to figure out how to put healthy boundaries in place, and keep those boundaries, while allowing myself to be vulnerable. Right now, I've reached a place with GREAT boundaries, but they resemble the thorns around Sleeping Beauty's castle where nobody could possibly get in, and there's no room for vulnerability. I want to get away from that dichotomy - neither allowing myself to be stomped on as I was in marriage, nor keeping everyone at a distance as I am now - and live in the healthy in-between place.
I'm working on it. Baby steps. Right now, I feel like I'm a toddler with a bit of a drunkenness to my walk: I am mobile, but I stagger, and sometimes in the middle of it I fall with a "plop!" onto my bottom, surprised to feel the ground in contact with me. I definitely don't feel like an expert walker, but nor do I feel like a helpless infant any more. I'm starting to figure this out. Baby steps.
***
Yesterday I was on the phone with my mother. We talk regularly, she and I, and if we go a few days without talking she leaves me a series of messages to remind me of the fact (leaving less than subtle guilt messages, mixed with faux worry "I hope nothing has happened to you - you haven't called and I'm worried!" even if it's been two days). I tend to call her on my commute to work, talking on my headset, because I know she wants my attention, and because it's the only time in my day that I can do so and because I'm a good little girl who wants to please people. (I know. I know.)
(I could rant about how she sometimes calls me at 7am when I'm trying to get Katherine ready for school, and I'm making lunches etc., but I'll let you imagine how annoying I find that. I have repeatedly told her that I can't talk on the phone while I'm getting my daughter ready to school....and she repeatedly calls. I finally told her to never ever call at that hour unless there was an emergency. She called the next day, and I answered with concern. It was not an emergency, it was to tell me about something irrelevant. Now, when she calls at that hour, I do not answer. Look at that - a boundary with my mother! We'll work on more boundaries later...!)
Mom's an at-home wife who never worked full time: she had me when she was a just a girl, pregnant at 18 and had me at 19, and moved straight from high school and her parents' home to becoming a wife and mother (in that order, but with a difference of only six months between them). She worked odd jobs to supplement family income when I was a girl, and when I say "odd jobs" the word odd certainly stands out. She was a cable television telephone solicitor, a greeter at K-mart, and she plucked chickens at a chicken processing plant. (I shudder to think about working any one of those jobs. My snobbishness shines through, I suppose, but I am incredibly grateful that my education and training and experience mean that I'm unlikely to have to work in that way ever in my life.) My father was white collar all the way - an engineer who moved into management - but mom took jobs that were convenient to her schedule and didn't require an education or training of any sort. Mostly, she was an at-home mom. She's a lousy housekeeper by any standards, but there were home made meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and she was a regular at every school event and volunteer opportunity.
My life and my mother's are very, very different, and we view the world through different lenses as a result of our experiences, needless to say. But in these near daily conversations, we strive for common ground, almost finding it, but not quite.
Yesterday's conversation was initiated by her as a result of watching her other grandchildren's screen habits: my brother's children spend a lot of time with television, video games, and the like. Katherine's not allowed screen time during the week, and she's allowed as much as she wants on the weekends.....except that on the weekends, we're often out and about doing things like hiking or meeting friends, so the "trick" of it is that though she's unlimited on weekends there are plenty of weekends where there's no TV at all, or only a bit of TV on Sunday night as we fold laundry together.
As my mom ranted about TV viewing, and I agreed with her, and we both wished that my brother would place more boundaries for his children (who struggle with school and behavior issues)...my mom kept saying, "Oh, I wanted to tell you about this thing I just heard..." and injecting non-related things into our conversation. My mom is a bit like that, and mostly I just ignore it, but this time, in exasperation, I said, "Mom, I'm not following this at all. Why are you bringing up these things now, and what on earth made you think of them?" Mom breezily replied, "Oh, I'm watching TV as I talk to you and an ad just came on that reminded me...."
Yes, that's right. My mother was launching on the ills of television and how society ought to get away from the screens and do things that really matter and how if my brother would just pay attention to his children without TV as a crutch....as she was watching television and reporting to me about the ads she saw. The ADS!
Dear reader, I am forty-four years old and still sorting out all this business of why I've had the romantic relationships that I have, and why I can't for the life of me sort out love and partnership, and it seems to me that the roots are pretty darned deep. I am absolutely used to people (both of my parents) saying one thing and doing another, holding me to a different standard than they hold themselves. (I can promise you that if I was watching TV and interrupting my mother to tell her about the ads she would be frosty in her reply and say things like, "I guess you're more interested in advertising than you are in me!" I can also promise you that I'd never do that to her, and that if I did, I'd never live it down and it would be brought up for years afterwards.) My mother didn't see any irony whatsoever in her behavior, was unabashed.
So.
Today I'm giving myself a little break for some of the choices I've made, and for the way my marriage operated. My family trained me well to be a Good Little Girl and to Do the Right Thing, and they also trained me that people who love me can do whatever they want and not be held accountable. Even as a child I responded to this, saying "But that's not fair!" or "How come you get to do it if it's the wrong thing to do and you're mad at me for doing it?" and so on, and they managed to avoid answering my questions by saying that my questions were rude and that I should pay attention to my own behavior. As a young girl I just felt confused and somehow lacking by this behavior; as I aged I often felt a quiet rage about it, and I spent most of my teens and twenties avoiding my parents. It seems like all of that avoidance didn't actually teach me how to have relationships where I didn't fall into the same patterns.
Today's baby steps are:
I'm cutting myself some slack. My parents are very different from my ex in many ways, but they taught me to put my own needs last, and I was a good student of that lesson. I was expected not to make waves, to be a good girl, and to accept whatever misbehaviors they had, holding myself to a high standard and not holding them to any standard. Unlearning it is difficult, and given how messed up it was, it's not surprising that I haven't totally figured it out yet.
I don't trust people who say one thing and do another. This is a good thing. I don't trust my parents: the TV example is small, but it's a good summary of the crazy-making that being in relationship with someone whose words and actions don't align feels like. My parents judge me (in this case, positively, because I don't allow unfettered television access to my daughter; and because I don't half listen to my mother and interrupt her repeatedly to talk about ads on television) for my behavior, but don't hold themselves to the same standards, and they expect me to do things they themselves will not do. This is not acceptable behavior, and I won't allow it in my life. I can't change my parents - I'm learning better boundaries around that - but I will not repeat the pattern with a new partner. I do not need to accommodate this behavior, I can say "That doesn't work for me" and simply walk away. The right partner will not practice this behavior, and if he makes a mistake he will own it and work hard at fixing it, identifying that it is his problem and not mine. (In other words, if I said, "Your words and actions don't align" in response to such behavior, he wouldn't say "What's the big deal?" he'd say "I'm sorry, let me align them now" and take action to do so. Unlike my parents. Unlike my ex.)
I am trustworthy. I'm far from perfect, that's true, but I'm trustworthy, and my words and actions align. I am worthy of a partner who is the same in that regard. I believe that when I practice those healthy boundaries, someone with the same boundaries will come into my life, and I will allow myself to be vulnerable. I will let him in past the thorns, because I will trust him, because his words and actions will align.
It's that simple, and it's that complicated!
Thanks for participating in this therapy session with me. :-) If any of this rings true for you in some way, with your own examples or ideas, I'd love to hear it. Sometimes it seems like I'm such a fool for not figuring this stuff out earlier, and it's always helpful to hear from someone who is struggling with the same stuff, or their own variations of it.
***
A tiny little end note, more or less unrelated to the above...
On Thursday at gymnastics, I was working hard on my laptop to get a project done. I saw a very handsome man enter and thought "ohhhhh he's attractive!" - a nice feeling, because I'm not drawn to very many men. I saw him look around the room, our eyes caught, and he smiled. What a nice surprise! He walked across the room, sat down next to me, and immediately started talking. I swear he was flirting - but could it be? He asked my opinion about something random but interesting. He told me about himself (divorced with one child, a daughter in Katherine's gymnastics class). He told me about his work - he's passionate about it. He asked me about my life. He was open and funny and quick, and his eyes twinkled, and he smiled a lot.
I got flutters.
Oh, I can't tell you how long it's been since I had flutters! I think since Luke, maybe? That was a year - and a lifetime! - ago. Flutters are delicious.
I will certainly see him again (every Thursday for the next few months in this session of gymnastics), and I have no idea if we'll chat again, or if it'll ever be more than the casual chats that parents have at these events. I'm not worried about that, or tied up in it, or anticipating anything one way or the other. I don't need anything to come of it, because I'm overly busy at work and hard at work getting Katherine launched into middle school and trying to do so many things with my life.
(The lady doth protest too much. Of course I'd like it if something came of it, I'm just not tied up in that result.)
But it was just so lovely to feel the flutter again.
As an aside, I read all kinds of things about love, divorce, relationship, and when I read a blog or a book or whatever that says, "S/he was a horrible person and that is the reason that things ended so badly," I'm more and more inclined to think that it is very unlikely that the "victim" of that relationship is telling themselves the absolute truth. Yes, it's true that people do horrible things - my ex wasn't exactly a model husband, and I could give you a very long list of his failures in that department - but I think that healthy people don't buy into those horrible behaviors, and stop them or walk away from them. You know, that whole boundaries thing. In my case, I'm less interested in why my ex had horrible behaviors (like yelling or lying), and more interested in why I didn't stop those behaviors in their tracks or walk away years ago. Even more than looking at the past, I'd like to figure out how to stop myself from ever signing up for that type of relationship ever, ever, ever again.
I want to figure out how to put healthy boundaries in place, and keep those boundaries, while allowing myself to be vulnerable. Right now, I've reached a place with GREAT boundaries, but they resemble the thorns around Sleeping Beauty's castle where nobody could possibly get in, and there's no room for vulnerability. I want to get away from that dichotomy - neither allowing myself to be stomped on as I was in marriage, nor keeping everyone at a distance as I am now - and live in the healthy in-between place.
I'm working on it. Baby steps. Right now, I feel like I'm a toddler with a bit of a drunkenness to my walk: I am mobile, but I stagger, and sometimes in the middle of it I fall with a "plop!" onto my bottom, surprised to feel the ground in contact with me. I definitely don't feel like an expert walker, but nor do I feel like a helpless infant any more. I'm starting to figure this out. Baby steps.
***
Yesterday I was on the phone with my mother. We talk regularly, she and I, and if we go a few days without talking she leaves me a series of messages to remind me of the fact (leaving less than subtle guilt messages, mixed with faux worry "I hope nothing has happened to you - you haven't called and I'm worried!" even if it's been two days). I tend to call her on my commute to work, talking on my headset, because I know she wants my attention, and because it's the only time in my day that I can do so and because I'm a good little girl who wants to please people. (I know. I know.)
(I could rant about how she sometimes calls me at 7am when I'm trying to get Katherine ready for school, and I'm making lunches etc., but I'll let you imagine how annoying I find that. I have repeatedly told her that I can't talk on the phone while I'm getting my daughter ready to school....and she repeatedly calls. I finally told her to never ever call at that hour unless there was an emergency. She called the next day, and I answered with concern. It was not an emergency, it was to tell me about something irrelevant. Now, when she calls at that hour, I do not answer. Look at that - a boundary with my mother! We'll work on more boundaries later...!)
Mom's an at-home wife who never worked full time: she had me when she was a just a girl, pregnant at 18 and had me at 19, and moved straight from high school and her parents' home to becoming a wife and mother (in that order, but with a difference of only six months between them). She worked odd jobs to supplement family income when I was a girl, and when I say "odd jobs" the word odd certainly stands out. She was a cable television telephone solicitor, a greeter at K-mart, and she plucked chickens at a chicken processing plant. (I shudder to think about working any one of those jobs. My snobbishness shines through, I suppose, but I am incredibly grateful that my education and training and experience mean that I'm unlikely to have to work in that way ever in my life.) My father was white collar all the way - an engineer who moved into management - but mom took jobs that were convenient to her schedule and didn't require an education or training of any sort. Mostly, she was an at-home mom. She's a lousy housekeeper by any standards, but there were home made meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and she was a regular at every school event and volunteer opportunity.
My life and my mother's are very, very different, and we view the world through different lenses as a result of our experiences, needless to say. But in these near daily conversations, we strive for common ground, almost finding it, but not quite.
Yesterday's conversation was initiated by her as a result of watching her other grandchildren's screen habits: my brother's children spend a lot of time with television, video games, and the like. Katherine's not allowed screen time during the week, and she's allowed as much as she wants on the weekends.....except that on the weekends, we're often out and about doing things like hiking or meeting friends, so the "trick" of it is that though she's unlimited on weekends there are plenty of weekends where there's no TV at all, or only a bit of TV on Sunday night as we fold laundry together.
As my mom ranted about TV viewing, and I agreed with her, and we both wished that my brother would place more boundaries for his children (who struggle with school and behavior issues)...my mom kept saying, "Oh, I wanted to tell you about this thing I just heard..." and injecting non-related things into our conversation. My mom is a bit like that, and mostly I just ignore it, but this time, in exasperation, I said, "Mom, I'm not following this at all. Why are you bringing up these things now, and what on earth made you think of them?" Mom breezily replied, "Oh, I'm watching TV as I talk to you and an ad just came on that reminded me...."
Yes, that's right. My mother was launching on the ills of television and how society ought to get away from the screens and do things that really matter and how if my brother would just pay attention to his children without TV as a crutch....as she was watching television and reporting to me about the ads she saw. The ADS!
Dear reader, I am forty-four years old and still sorting out all this business of why I've had the romantic relationships that I have, and why I can't for the life of me sort out love and partnership, and it seems to me that the roots are pretty darned deep. I am absolutely used to people (both of my parents) saying one thing and doing another, holding me to a different standard than they hold themselves. (I can promise you that if I was watching TV and interrupting my mother to tell her about the ads she would be frosty in her reply and say things like, "I guess you're more interested in advertising than you are in me!" I can also promise you that I'd never do that to her, and that if I did, I'd never live it down and it would be brought up for years afterwards.) My mother didn't see any irony whatsoever in her behavior, was unabashed.
So.
Today I'm giving myself a little break for some of the choices I've made, and for the way my marriage operated. My family trained me well to be a Good Little Girl and to Do the Right Thing, and they also trained me that people who love me can do whatever they want and not be held accountable. Even as a child I responded to this, saying "But that's not fair!" or "How come you get to do it if it's the wrong thing to do and you're mad at me for doing it?" and so on, and they managed to avoid answering my questions by saying that my questions were rude and that I should pay attention to my own behavior. As a young girl I just felt confused and somehow lacking by this behavior; as I aged I often felt a quiet rage about it, and I spent most of my teens and twenties avoiding my parents. It seems like all of that avoidance didn't actually teach me how to have relationships where I didn't fall into the same patterns.
Today's baby steps are:
I'm cutting myself some slack. My parents are very different from my ex in many ways, but they taught me to put my own needs last, and I was a good student of that lesson. I was expected not to make waves, to be a good girl, and to accept whatever misbehaviors they had, holding myself to a high standard and not holding them to any standard. Unlearning it is difficult, and given how messed up it was, it's not surprising that I haven't totally figured it out yet.
I don't trust people who say one thing and do another. This is a good thing. I don't trust my parents: the TV example is small, but it's a good summary of the crazy-making that being in relationship with someone whose words and actions don't align feels like. My parents judge me (in this case, positively, because I don't allow unfettered television access to my daughter; and because I don't half listen to my mother and interrupt her repeatedly to talk about ads on television) for my behavior, but don't hold themselves to the same standards, and they expect me to do things they themselves will not do. This is not acceptable behavior, and I won't allow it in my life. I can't change my parents - I'm learning better boundaries around that - but I will not repeat the pattern with a new partner. I do not need to accommodate this behavior, I can say "That doesn't work for me" and simply walk away. The right partner will not practice this behavior, and if he makes a mistake he will own it and work hard at fixing it, identifying that it is his problem and not mine. (In other words, if I said, "Your words and actions don't align" in response to such behavior, he wouldn't say "What's the big deal?" he'd say "I'm sorry, let me align them now" and take action to do so. Unlike my parents. Unlike my ex.)
I am trustworthy. I'm far from perfect, that's true, but I'm trustworthy, and my words and actions align. I am worthy of a partner who is the same in that regard. I believe that when I practice those healthy boundaries, someone with the same boundaries will come into my life, and I will allow myself to be vulnerable. I will let him in past the thorns, because I will trust him, because his words and actions will align.
It's that simple, and it's that complicated!
Thanks for participating in this therapy session with me. :-) If any of this rings true for you in some way, with your own examples or ideas, I'd love to hear it. Sometimes it seems like I'm such a fool for not figuring this stuff out earlier, and it's always helpful to hear from someone who is struggling with the same stuff, or their own variations of it.
***
A tiny little end note, more or less unrelated to the above...
On Thursday at gymnastics, I was working hard on my laptop to get a project done. I saw a very handsome man enter and thought "ohhhhh he's attractive!" - a nice feeling, because I'm not drawn to very many men. I saw him look around the room, our eyes caught, and he smiled. What a nice surprise! He walked across the room, sat down next to me, and immediately started talking. I swear he was flirting - but could it be? He asked my opinion about something random but interesting. He told me about himself (divorced with one child, a daughter in Katherine's gymnastics class). He told me about his work - he's passionate about it. He asked me about my life. He was open and funny and quick, and his eyes twinkled, and he smiled a lot.
I got flutters.
Oh, I can't tell you how long it's been since I had flutters! I think since Luke, maybe? That was a year - and a lifetime! - ago. Flutters are delicious.
I will certainly see him again (every Thursday for the next few months in this session of gymnastics), and I have no idea if we'll chat again, or if it'll ever be more than the casual chats that parents have at these events. I'm not worried about that, or tied up in it, or anticipating anything one way or the other. I don't need anything to come of it, because I'm overly busy at work and hard at work getting Katherine launched into middle school and trying to do so many things with my life.
(The lady doth protest too much. Of course I'd like it if something came of it, I'm just not tied up in that result.)
But it was just so lovely to feel the flutter again.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Restless
I am feeling restless, and I'm not sure why, and I don't know what to do about it.
Lots of things are going right. Life is pretty on track: healthy, Katherine is doing well, we just had a week of vacation in the sunshine on a boat, my career is moving forward, my home is comfortable and filled with the things we need, there's lots of friends on speed dial, I live in a beautiful part of the world where not only do I have clean drinking water and a lack of war, I'm also surrounded by sparkling seas and majestic trees and rich green. My dog loves me, my cat makes me laugh, I've got a zillion books to read, good music to hear, lots of dreams and plans.
And yet, I feel an undercurrent that makes me uncomfortable. All of that goodness in my life, and I still want more.
I want a lot more, actually, and I feel like a selfish ingrate for it. So many blessings in my life, and so many in this world would likely give up almost anything to have the things that I do. I see pictures of Gaza, Afghanistan, Syria, Missouri, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Russia, and I know how blessed I am.
I'm a white, educated, middle class woman with a great support network and equity in her house. My daughter loves me and today, because she wasn't feeling well, I worked from home part of the day to be with her. She started to feel better and decided to make cupcakes with ingredients we had on hand (I'm a firm believer that there should always be a pound of butter in the fridge for moments just like this - we bake from scratch around here.). Everyone should be so lucky.
You get the point. On planet earth, I think I'm in the 1%. I've never had to walk to get water, except when I do it on purpose to rough it while backpacking. I cook on a stove, not a campfire. If the power went out, I could use my gas grill. When I hear a loud noise in my neighborhood at night, I think "What idiot is putting off fireworks in August?" and not "Oh no, guns!"
A lucky girl. Even though my car is on the edge of dying, the house always needs work, money is tight, and I haven't been overseas in a decade and I need a haircut (it's been what, six months? more?) and I can't remember the last time I had a pedicure and I eat beans instead of meat sometimes because it's cheaper, I know how lucky I am.
And yet...struggling a bit.
This loneliness that I'm feeling is different than anything I've felt before. When I was first separated, I felt the lack of Bryan, and the hole in my life where I thought he was supposed to be before it all fell apart. But this hole isn't about Bryan at all, it is only about myself, the life I have created for myself. I don't want him, or the marriage that I now realize was never very good.
My marriage was a train wreck. I look back on it, and the girl I was, and the "rules" that I agreed to, and the way I walked on eggshells, and the lack of connection to my spouse and how I tried so hard to do the right thing, accept him as he was, compromise....and I feel lonely. Lonely that I did not get what I worked so hard to create.
I feel lonely because I have never been loved the way I want to love and be loved, and because I do not know if I will ever find that kind of love, and I do not feel like I have any control over it.
I've pretty much given up on online dating. A recent article about online dating in the NY Times ( http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/a-meet-cute-of-professional-networking-and-online-dating/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 ) was interesting, but it was this that caught my eye:
Mr. Finkel and Ms. Sprecher are part of a team that wrote a longer psychology paper, summarized on Science of Us, arguing this in greater depth. What a person might find attractive on a profile may have no correlation to what they find attractive in real life, the report says, and browsing profiles “fosters judgmental, assessment-oriented evaluations and can cognitively overwhelm users, two processes that can ultimately undermine romantic outcomes.”
Yes, that about sums up my experience (and my blog post "Online Dating Makes Me Shallow.") It went on to say: "Matthew Kassel, writing for The Observer, found online dating similarly unsatisfying. It meant that his “lifetime date count had, like a strain of mutant amoebae, multiplied by more than sevenfold” as he “ricocheted from one woman to the next.” But very few of his encounters led to a second date, and the whole thing, he writes, “was starting to feel forced, perfunctory, dehumanizing and, yes, expensive.”"
In short, online dating isn't for me. This in itself is not a huge revelation, but here's what is:
I realize that online dating was a crutch that made me believe that I could limp along and find my life partner there, hiding in the pixels of OkCupid, and that gave me a lot of hope in that variety of the future. The crutch gone, I feel like I'm going to be alone forever, because I rarely if ever meet single men or put myself in a situation to meet single men.
So here I am, healthy, loved, safe in my comfortable home and with a beautiful daughter; educated, employed, and with a fridge full of food....and all of that seems shadowed by the thought that I may, indeed, never find soulmate love, romantic partner alignment, the joy of shared laughter during intimacy.
Very teenager-macabre sounding. If one of my friends said this to me, I'd scoff. I'd say, "Oh, give me a break, you're lovely and together and it'll happen when it happens, so just relax and enjoy the ride."
Telling myself this has not yet been helpful.
***
I keep thinking back to my vacation and the less-than-perfect family of origin stuff, too. I've come by my problems honestly, and it is not a surprise to me now, having lived it, that the model of relationships of how men should treat me, taught by my father, led me to the wrong place. I'm processing, trying to see it from different angles, trying to acknowledge it without letting anger or sadness consume me. It is mostly in my past, after all, and what I do in the present can be more informed than what has defined me in the past.
But here's the rub:
I can run a half marathon, rework my whole job, be a career woman, take care of my daughter, find fun things to do, hike, write, read, volunteer at things that fill my heart.....and it doesn't fill up the hole that I feel growing inside of me, and that IS SO ANNOYING!
I want to work my way out of this. I want to DO something to make it feel better. I am willing to meditate, to exercise, to actively ignore, to confront, to discuss, to do whatever it takes to get rid of this feeling, but the bottom line is that I think I'm going to have to just wait it out, and patience is the thing that I do not do well.
I can do it all "right" and yet I can't change the feelings, and I can't force my life to create a partner of my choosing. Do I have to just wait for this to pass? I am not good at waiting.
So I'm trying to be patient with the idea, slowly owning the idea that I might be alone forever, that the things I've dreamed of may never come to fruition, and that I might need to be okay with that.
It doesn't sit well with me, though, and I want to figure out how to be an optimist in the face of those feelings.
If you've got the answers, drop me a line, will you? Because I'm feeling really stuck, and I hate being stuck.
Lots of things are going right. Life is pretty on track: healthy, Katherine is doing well, we just had a week of vacation in the sunshine on a boat, my career is moving forward, my home is comfortable and filled with the things we need, there's lots of friends on speed dial, I live in a beautiful part of the world where not only do I have clean drinking water and a lack of war, I'm also surrounded by sparkling seas and majestic trees and rich green. My dog loves me, my cat makes me laugh, I've got a zillion books to read, good music to hear, lots of dreams and plans.
And yet, I feel an undercurrent that makes me uncomfortable. All of that goodness in my life, and I still want more.
I want a lot more, actually, and I feel like a selfish ingrate for it. So many blessings in my life, and so many in this world would likely give up almost anything to have the things that I do. I see pictures of Gaza, Afghanistan, Syria, Missouri, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Russia, and I know how blessed I am.
I'm a white, educated, middle class woman with a great support network and equity in her house. My daughter loves me and today, because she wasn't feeling well, I worked from home part of the day to be with her. She started to feel better and decided to make cupcakes with ingredients we had on hand (I'm a firm believer that there should always be a pound of butter in the fridge for moments just like this - we bake from scratch around here.). Everyone should be so lucky.
You get the point. On planet earth, I think I'm in the 1%. I've never had to walk to get water, except when I do it on purpose to rough it while backpacking. I cook on a stove, not a campfire. If the power went out, I could use my gas grill. When I hear a loud noise in my neighborhood at night, I think "What idiot is putting off fireworks in August?" and not "Oh no, guns!"
A lucky girl. Even though my car is on the edge of dying, the house always needs work, money is tight, and I haven't been overseas in a decade and I need a haircut (it's been what, six months? more?) and I can't remember the last time I had a pedicure and I eat beans instead of meat sometimes because it's cheaper, I know how lucky I am.
And yet...struggling a bit.
This loneliness that I'm feeling is different than anything I've felt before. When I was first separated, I felt the lack of Bryan, and the hole in my life where I thought he was supposed to be before it all fell apart. But this hole isn't about Bryan at all, it is only about myself, the life I have created for myself. I don't want him, or the marriage that I now realize was never very good.
My marriage was a train wreck. I look back on it, and the girl I was, and the "rules" that I agreed to, and the way I walked on eggshells, and the lack of connection to my spouse and how I tried so hard to do the right thing, accept him as he was, compromise....and I feel lonely. Lonely that I did not get what I worked so hard to create.
I feel lonely because I have never been loved the way I want to love and be loved, and because I do not know if I will ever find that kind of love, and I do not feel like I have any control over it.
I've pretty much given up on online dating. A recent article about online dating in the NY Times ( http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/a-meet-cute-of-professional-networking-and-online-dating/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 ) was interesting, but it was this that caught my eye:
Mr. Finkel and Ms. Sprecher are part of a team that wrote a longer psychology paper, summarized on Science of Us, arguing this in greater depth. What a person might find attractive on a profile may have no correlation to what they find attractive in real life, the report says, and browsing profiles “fosters judgmental, assessment-oriented evaluations and can cognitively overwhelm users, two processes that can ultimately undermine romantic outcomes.”
Yes, that about sums up my experience (and my blog post "Online Dating Makes Me Shallow.") It went on to say: "Matthew Kassel, writing for The Observer, found online dating similarly unsatisfying. It meant that his “lifetime date count had, like a strain of mutant amoebae, multiplied by more than sevenfold” as he “ricocheted from one woman to the next.” But very few of his encounters led to a second date, and the whole thing, he writes, “was starting to feel forced, perfunctory, dehumanizing and, yes, expensive.”"
In short, online dating isn't for me. This in itself is not a huge revelation, but here's what is:
I realize that online dating was a crutch that made me believe that I could limp along and find my life partner there, hiding in the pixels of OkCupid, and that gave me a lot of hope in that variety of the future. The crutch gone, I feel like I'm going to be alone forever, because I rarely if ever meet single men or put myself in a situation to meet single men.
So here I am, healthy, loved, safe in my comfortable home and with a beautiful daughter; educated, employed, and with a fridge full of food....and all of that seems shadowed by the thought that I may, indeed, never find soulmate love, romantic partner alignment, the joy of shared laughter during intimacy.
Very teenager-macabre sounding. If one of my friends said this to me, I'd scoff. I'd say, "Oh, give me a break, you're lovely and together and it'll happen when it happens, so just relax and enjoy the ride."
Telling myself this has not yet been helpful.
***
I keep thinking back to my vacation and the less-than-perfect family of origin stuff, too. I've come by my problems honestly, and it is not a surprise to me now, having lived it, that the model of relationships of how men should treat me, taught by my father, led me to the wrong place. I'm processing, trying to see it from different angles, trying to acknowledge it without letting anger or sadness consume me. It is mostly in my past, after all, and what I do in the present can be more informed than what has defined me in the past.
But here's the rub:
I can run a half marathon, rework my whole job, be a career woman, take care of my daughter, find fun things to do, hike, write, read, volunteer at things that fill my heart.....and it doesn't fill up the hole that I feel growing inside of me, and that IS SO ANNOYING!
I want to work my way out of this. I want to DO something to make it feel better. I am willing to meditate, to exercise, to actively ignore, to confront, to discuss, to do whatever it takes to get rid of this feeling, but the bottom line is that I think I'm going to have to just wait it out, and patience is the thing that I do not do well.
I can do it all "right" and yet I can't change the feelings, and I can't force my life to create a partner of my choosing. Do I have to just wait for this to pass? I am not good at waiting.
So I'm trying to be patient with the idea, slowly owning the idea that I might be alone forever, that the things I've dreamed of may never come to fruition, and that I might need to be okay with that.
It doesn't sit well with me, though, and I want to figure out how to be an optimist in the face of those feelings.
If you've got the answers, drop me a line, will you? Because I'm feeling really stuck, and I hate being stuck.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Alternate plans and epiphanies
I had a gorgeous weekend.
First, a whole pile of chores front-loaded onto the three day weekend, so that I got them out of the way. Then, fireworks and BBQ with dear, dear friends. Then, off to the woods to go backpacking, just Katherine and I (oh, and our big dog). We hiked through snow -okay, I can handle this! we're prepared! - to a river too high to cross.
So, we begrudgingly turned around and went back. I felt heartsick - I really wanted that time in nature, under the stars, and I was longing for it. But as if to prove a point, the weather turned, and it started raining (no rain was in the forecast, but the mountains are funny that way), so down we went. We tried to find a car campsite somewhere at lower elevation, even in the rain, but to no avail: on the holiday weekend nothing was available except what we did not want.
We drowned our sorrows in good cheeseburgers and Katherine got a milkshake (a treat) and sulked home. I felt like our weekend had been lost....
Until I remembered that I'd just hiked for three hours with my daughter in the wilderness. Until I thought about how many wildflowers we'd seen. Until I though about how fun it was to play with snow in July. Until I remembered that we still had a day to do as we wished, even if it wasn't camped out. We didn't do the whole distance, but we DID backpack. I felt strong and able and confident, out alone with those packs on our back, and that WAS success.
Why on earth did I think I had figured out the only way to have fun, and that all else was somehow wrong because I didn't get what I wanted on my original plan?
A good night's sleep, and the day started anew.
Today, it was a ten mile bike ride along the sparkling sea, breakfast outdoors at a coffee shop, and climbing on the rocks to look for sea stars. It was running into urban goats (what?!) on the way home and feeding them. And then, bikinis and sunscreen and hats and sarong wraps, and friends picked us up and we went back to the beach. Swimming, sunning, catching up with our friends, picnicking.
I dove into the icy Sound, laughing. I kept my eyes open underwater, seeing the pebbles below me and the bits of seaweed floating by, and I felt like I was grinning from ear to ear. I think was the only 44 year old to attempt such insanity, as even the children usually only go wading as it's so cold...but it was 80 degrees and perfect weather, easy to warm up afterwards.
I sat on a chair with my friend, laughing and having girl talk in between mothering.
My fallback plan was perfection. Not at all the day I'd envisioned, but no less because of it.
***
I have relaxed into my idea of not dating, of perhaps being solo forever. There is liberation in not giving a damn, and it's sweet. It makes me feel giddy, even: I can do what I want whenever I want.
And yet?
Something isn't sitting quite right It's not "me" even if I am independent, sassy, strong, capable I don't "need" anyone, but don't I want someone? Isn't life more beautiful with a loving partner?
By relaxing into my feelings, I think I had a new epiphany.
Since my divorce, I've sought a partner to share the good stuff: my strength, courage, zest for living have all been offered up. My ability to rock a pair of high heels or waterproof hiking boots, my drive to run long distances, my can-do attitude. I've sought my partner for all those things, and I've wondered why the men I've met have come up so short.
I think I'm starting to figure it out.
I have been completely closed to The Big Stuff. The way that sometimes cars break down, or things go wrong, or bodies are imperfect. I've been willing to share my good stuff - hey, I'm proud of who am! - but not my insecurities.
I am one of the bravest people I know, and I don't say that lightly. I am damned proud of the way I stared cancer in the eye and made incredibly difficult decisions about treatment and faced those decisions every day for years. I am proud of the way I cared for my daughter in the midst of that, putting her needs beyond my own even on the worst days. I am proud of my career change, because it takes some serious nerve to do that at my age. I am proud of getting divorced when I had no idea how to feed myself. I have shown great strength and courage, and I'm proud of that bravery.
And yet?
I am slowly realizing that I am not at all brave about relationships with men. I don't put myself out there at all, and I've got walls that make Sleeping Beauty's thorn forest look like nothing.
All this dating, and I think it's only stopping the dating that made me see it clearly for the first time.
My father, and my ex-husband, both had the ability to look me in the eye and tell me what I wanted to hear and then go do the exact opposite of what they'd told me. They both had the ability to then say it was my fault that things worked out that way, or that I needed to be more accommodating, or that 'what's the big deal?' My family of origin - not perfect. My marriage - really messed up.
I managed those issues by not needing anyone. Witty repartee? Oh yes. A running partner? Sure - I could outrun most people. Talk about books, or politics? Absolutely. Put on the pretty dress and bring on appreciative looks and more? Of course.
But let someone in? I think I'm afraid of that. Me! Afraid! I thought I was afraid of almost nothing!
But I think I've got a lot of fear about letting someone else treat me the way my dad treated me, or the way Bryan treated me. I don't ever want to be treated like that ever again.....and I don't think I could handle it. For all my strength, courage, bravery....I think it would do me in.
And so the giant walls go up around me, and nobody gets in, and I don't get hurt.
Wellll.......shit. There is no other word for it.
I'm going to have to mull this over, and figure it out, because I believe in Living with a capital L, and letting fear get in the way of the good stuff is NOT my way of being.
I don't know how to face it entirely, but I'm going to figure this out. I believe that life is better with a companion, that sex is marvelous, that someone to hold me when I'm crying is pure magic. I won't let that idea go without a fight.
I'm going to work on this without someone else. I'm not about to start dating again. But I'm going to learn how to face the fear, face this idea head on....
Because when that icy water hits hot skin, and I'm in the green sea with the sun above me....it is magical. Let those on land say "oh I couldn't!" and "are you crazy?" and "wow you're brave." As for me, I like to get out there and live, deeply and richly, feeling every bit of it, and I know that breaking through the cold water and hitting the warm air is one of the best sensations in the world, and well worth the feeling of the frigid water making me gasp when it first hits my thighs. (Come to think of it, it's a bit like sex....all tingling and gasping and surprises and shivers....but I digress!)
I will face my fear. I will learn to let someone in. I have no idea how, but knowing that it's me - well, that's huge, and I'm happy with it.
But I have fear. I'm scared. Someone could hurt me. If I love someone, they WILL hurt me - it comes with the territory even in the best of loves.
But I intend to learn how to let the right someone in.
First, a whole pile of chores front-loaded onto the three day weekend, so that I got them out of the way. Then, fireworks and BBQ with dear, dear friends. Then, off to the woods to go backpacking, just Katherine and I (oh, and our big dog). We hiked through snow -okay, I can handle this! we're prepared! - to a river too high to cross.
So, we begrudgingly turned around and went back. I felt heartsick - I really wanted that time in nature, under the stars, and I was longing for it. But as if to prove a point, the weather turned, and it started raining (no rain was in the forecast, but the mountains are funny that way), so down we went. We tried to find a car campsite somewhere at lower elevation, even in the rain, but to no avail: on the holiday weekend nothing was available except what we did not want.
We drowned our sorrows in good cheeseburgers and Katherine got a milkshake (a treat) and sulked home. I felt like our weekend had been lost....
Until I remembered that I'd just hiked for three hours with my daughter in the wilderness. Until I thought about how many wildflowers we'd seen. Until I though about how fun it was to play with snow in July. Until I remembered that we still had a day to do as we wished, even if it wasn't camped out. We didn't do the whole distance, but we DID backpack. I felt strong and able and confident, out alone with those packs on our back, and that WAS success.
Why on earth did I think I had figured out the only way to have fun, and that all else was somehow wrong because I didn't get what I wanted on my original plan?
A good night's sleep, and the day started anew.
Today, it was a ten mile bike ride along the sparkling sea, breakfast outdoors at a coffee shop, and climbing on the rocks to look for sea stars. It was running into urban goats (what?!) on the way home and feeding them. And then, bikinis and sunscreen and hats and sarong wraps, and friends picked us up and we went back to the beach. Swimming, sunning, catching up with our friends, picnicking.
I dove into the icy Sound, laughing. I kept my eyes open underwater, seeing the pebbles below me and the bits of seaweed floating by, and I felt like I was grinning from ear to ear. I think was the only 44 year old to attempt such insanity, as even the children usually only go wading as it's so cold...but it was 80 degrees and perfect weather, easy to warm up afterwards.
I sat on a chair with my friend, laughing and having girl talk in between mothering.
My fallback plan was perfection. Not at all the day I'd envisioned, but no less because of it.
***
I have relaxed into my idea of not dating, of perhaps being solo forever. There is liberation in not giving a damn, and it's sweet. It makes me feel giddy, even: I can do what I want whenever I want.
And yet?
Something isn't sitting quite right It's not "me" even if I am independent, sassy, strong, capable I don't "need" anyone, but don't I want someone? Isn't life more beautiful with a loving partner?
By relaxing into my feelings, I think I had a new epiphany.
Since my divorce, I've sought a partner to share the good stuff: my strength, courage, zest for living have all been offered up. My ability to rock a pair of high heels or waterproof hiking boots, my drive to run long distances, my can-do attitude. I've sought my partner for all those things, and I've wondered why the men I've met have come up so short.
I think I'm starting to figure it out.
I have been completely closed to The Big Stuff. The way that sometimes cars break down, or things go wrong, or bodies are imperfect. I've been willing to share my good stuff - hey, I'm proud of who am! - but not my insecurities.
I am one of the bravest people I know, and I don't say that lightly. I am damned proud of the way I stared cancer in the eye and made incredibly difficult decisions about treatment and faced those decisions every day for years. I am proud of the way I cared for my daughter in the midst of that, putting her needs beyond my own even on the worst days. I am proud of my career change, because it takes some serious nerve to do that at my age. I am proud of getting divorced when I had no idea how to feed myself. I have shown great strength and courage, and I'm proud of that bravery.
And yet?
I am slowly realizing that I am not at all brave about relationships with men. I don't put myself out there at all, and I've got walls that make Sleeping Beauty's thorn forest look like nothing.
All this dating, and I think it's only stopping the dating that made me see it clearly for the first time.
My father, and my ex-husband, both had the ability to look me in the eye and tell me what I wanted to hear and then go do the exact opposite of what they'd told me. They both had the ability to then say it was my fault that things worked out that way, or that I needed to be more accommodating, or that 'what's the big deal?' My family of origin - not perfect. My marriage - really messed up.
I managed those issues by not needing anyone. Witty repartee? Oh yes. A running partner? Sure - I could outrun most people. Talk about books, or politics? Absolutely. Put on the pretty dress and bring on appreciative looks and more? Of course.
But let someone in? I think I'm afraid of that. Me! Afraid! I thought I was afraid of almost nothing!
But I think I've got a lot of fear about letting someone else treat me the way my dad treated me, or the way Bryan treated me. I don't ever want to be treated like that ever again.....and I don't think I could handle it. For all my strength, courage, bravery....I think it would do me in.
And so the giant walls go up around me, and nobody gets in, and I don't get hurt.
Wellll.......shit. There is no other word for it.
I'm going to have to mull this over, and figure it out, because I believe in Living with a capital L, and letting fear get in the way of the good stuff is NOT my way of being.
I don't know how to face it entirely, but I'm going to figure this out. I believe that life is better with a companion, that sex is marvelous, that someone to hold me when I'm crying is pure magic. I won't let that idea go without a fight.
I'm going to work on this without someone else. I'm not about to start dating again. But I'm going to learn how to face the fear, face this idea head on....
Because when that icy water hits hot skin, and I'm in the green sea with the sun above me....it is magical. Let those on land say "oh I couldn't!" and "are you crazy?" and "wow you're brave." As for me, I like to get out there and live, deeply and richly, feeling every bit of it, and I know that breaking through the cold water and hitting the warm air is one of the best sensations in the world, and well worth the feeling of the frigid water making me gasp when it first hits my thighs. (Come to think of it, it's a bit like sex....all tingling and gasping and surprises and shivers....but I digress!)
I will face my fear. I will learn to let someone in. I have no idea how, but knowing that it's me - well, that's huge, and I'm happy with it.
But I have fear. I'm scared. Someone could hurt me. If I love someone, they WILL hurt me - it comes with the territory even in the best of loves.
But I intend to learn how to let the right someone in.
Monday, June 30, 2014
A new liberation
Today I cut ties with the last of my gentleman callers.
Oh, did I say "gentleman caller"? My mistake. I meant to say "incessant texters." Sure, he sent me nice messages several times a day and was gentlemanly (not a single penis in sight in those messages), but really, what is the deal with all of the texting?
Side rant: Texting is not dating. Texting is not a relationship. Texting is little pixels of short sentences and is best used to say "Does 5pm work for you?" or "Do you want me to pick up dog food on the way home?" or "Call me when you get a minute." Texting is not a good way to establish connections, to have a real relationship, or to be romantic. I don't care if you call me sweetheart....it's still not romantic. It's texting. (End rant, thanks for listening.)
Now, where was I?
Oh, yes. As I was saying: I cut ties. We weren't a fit. He was kind, sweet, smart, and funny - all amazing traits. But he was also non-committal ("I want to see you again" wasn't followed by "on this day at this time"), we had some serious religious differences (I know people figure that out all the time, but I'm not sure that I'm willing to take that on), and the big one...I just wasn't feeling it.
I just wasn't feeling it.
And here's the thing...
I don't feel like feeling it.
I'm not sure if this new stage will last, but right now, I just don't care to date. I am not terribly interested in men (except for the occasional "oh meowwwwww!" moment), because I can't be bothered.
WHAT?! "I can't be bothered!" isn't my style at all, but there it is.
Right now, when I think about dating, I think about compromising (where to go, what to do). I think about "putting on my best face" and what, impress someone? I think about dealing with someone else's quirks, someone else's baggage, someone else's schedule. I think of giving up time with my friends, or time with myself. I think about compromising the way I'm raising Katherine in some way (sharing her time, or my focus on the life that the two of us have created).
I know, don't I make romance sound grand? Quite the dream date I am.
I don't know when I became this blasé about it all, but there it is.
And I feel liberated.
I'm not leaving room in my schedule for dates, and I don't appear to care what any gentlemen think of me at this time.
If I try to adopt a bunch of cats and become a crazy cat lady, you'll stop me, won't you?
But until then, you'll find me on the trail. In a book. At work. (Oh boy, will you ever find me at work.) On the beach. In a museum. Hosting friends for dinner.
But you won't find me shopping the man-mall (online dating) or on a date.
How liberating!
P.S. My friends hear this and say, "Now you're ready." Comical, isn't it? Because I may be ready. But if Superman came along, I would have a hard time saying yes to him, because I'm not kidding about al of this.
Oh, did I say "gentleman caller"? My mistake. I meant to say "incessant texters." Sure, he sent me nice messages several times a day and was gentlemanly (not a single penis in sight in those messages), but really, what is the deal with all of the texting?
Side rant: Texting is not dating. Texting is not a relationship. Texting is little pixels of short sentences and is best used to say "Does 5pm work for you?" or "Do you want me to pick up dog food on the way home?" or "Call me when you get a minute." Texting is not a good way to establish connections, to have a real relationship, or to be romantic. I don't care if you call me sweetheart....it's still not romantic. It's texting. (End rant, thanks for listening.)
Now, where was I?
Oh, yes. As I was saying: I cut ties. We weren't a fit. He was kind, sweet, smart, and funny - all amazing traits. But he was also non-committal ("I want to see you again" wasn't followed by "on this day at this time"), we had some serious religious differences (I know people figure that out all the time, but I'm not sure that I'm willing to take that on), and the big one...I just wasn't feeling it.
I just wasn't feeling it.
And here's the thing...
I don't feel like feeling it.
I'm not sure if this new stage will last, but right now, I just don't care to date. I am not terribly interested in men (except for the occasional "oh meowwwwww!" moment), because I can't be bothered.
WHAT?! "I can't be bothered!" isn't my style at all, but there it is.
Right now, when I think about dating, I think about compromising (where to go, what to do). I think about "putting on my best face" and what, impress someone? I think about dealing with someone else's quirks, someone else's baggage, someone else's schedule. I think of giving up time with my friends, or time with myself. I think about compromising the way I'm raising Katherine in some way (sharing her time, or my focus on the life that the two of us have created).
I know, don't I make romance sound grand? Quite the dream date I am.
I don't know when I became this blasé about it all, but there it is.
And I feel liberated.
I'm not leaving room in my schedule for dates, and I don't appear to care what any gentlemen think of me at this time.
If I try to adopt a bunch of cats and become a crazy cat lady, you'll stop me, won't you?
But until then, you'll find me on the trail. In a book. At work. (Oh boy, will you ever find me at work.) On the beach. In a museum. Hosting friends for dinner.
But you won't find me shopping the man-mall (online dating) or on a date.
How liberating!
P.S. My friends hear this and say, "Now you're ready." Comical, isn't it? Because I may be ready. But if Superman came along, I would have a hard time saying yes to him, because I'm not kidding about al of this.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Definitions
I started blogging as Pollyanna as a response to my divorce.
Recap: I decided to get divorced in May 2011, and we lived separately-apart (upstairs downstairs) in the same house until June 2012, when he moved out. We were officially divorced in January 2013, but I have "felt" divorced since that first decision three years ago.
When I first started blogging at http://pollyannasdivorce.BlogSpot.com, I strongly identified with that word "divorced." It seemed to define me in many ways, just as "wife" and "mother" had defined me.
I felt like it was on my forehead, tattooed in large, ugly letters: DIVORCED. I knew the baggage that such a label carried: unsuccessful, broken home, quitter, vow-breaker. It was my scarlet D, and I faithfully pinned it to my chest each day when I got dressed, and before I left the house. I slept with it, too, tucking it under my pillow near my cheek, alone in my bed.
Being divorced has baggage, no way around that. Others would judge, and I judged myself, despite the brave face I put on to make it through the day.
But time passed.
I can barely remember the girl I was three years ago. Isn't that funny? The thoughts that went through my head then seem only tangentially related to the thoughts I have now - she seems like not-me, like someone from another era, someone from a book, someone not quite real.
Somewhere along the way, I lost my scarlet D.
***
When I first took steps towards divorce, I didn't know exactly what I wanted, I only knew what I did not want. With every fiber in my being, I realized that I needed to be divorced to stay alive. I was suffocating in my marriage as if I had a plastic bag over my face that only ocassionally blew to the side to give me enough air to hold on to life, but not enough to live. The anger of our household, the yelling, the lies, and the utter lack of support or partnership made it hard for me to breathe. I did not know what I would do with my life, but I was determined to live.
With the first gasps of freedom, I think I thought "New partner! I will find The Right Man and all will be well!" I embarked upon a series of dating misadventures to this end, and unsurprisingly, found nobody who fit the bill. I cringe a bit to think of some of those dates: I was not exactly a catch, as bruised and battered (fortunately, "only" psychologically and not physically) as I was.
More time passed, and I reconnected to so many parts of myself. The hiking that my partner professed to enjoy but neither joined nor accommodated became, once again, a regular part of my life. Camping trips increased. My attendance at concerts (including the free ones) increased. The house filled with friends. I ate healthier food, and watched my body change. I ran, and ran, and ran, and felt the exhilaration of it. I volunteered - with nobody telling me that it was a foolish way to spend my time, or grumbling about how I was gone - and found deep fulfillment in it.
I mothered. I found mothering to be suddenly easier, not harder, with his influence out of the house: no more managing moods, no more explaining his temper tantrums. Consistent rules, a smiling mother, and my daughter blossomed. The more I blossomed, the more she blossomed.
***
I don't know how to pinpoint the moment that the D fell off, but it's lost and I haven't seen it in ages. I don't think about it very much at all, to be honest.
Sure, my ex is still a regular part of my life, and I communicate with him nearly every day (even if the communications are one way: informing him of summer childcare, gymnastics schedules, etc.)...but he's just a person that's involved in my life, much like a neighbor or a cousin. He's not someone I think about unless we're face to face. I can't explain it - he is just not an important part of my life any more, even though he's a regular in my life. He just "is".
I don't debate where my marriage fell apart any more. I don't spend a bunch of time wondering where I went wrong, or why he behaved the way he did, or how to prevent that from ever happening to me again.
The D seems to have slipped off.
***
What's it been replaced with?
"Single Mom" mostly. Being a single mom is a regular part of my day to day, and my decisions revolve around my single-mom-ness. Everything from what time I go to work to how I structure my free time to if/when I go on dates to, well, everything, is about being a single mom. I know my daughter counts on me for much, including love and stability, and I do everything in my power to provide the stability of two parents even though I am only one. (Her dad loves her, but "stability" isn't his specialty. She spends on average 3 nights a month at his place....his choice.)
I like being a single mom. How's that for bizarre? To me it means that I'm independent and strong, that I'm capable and brave. It means that I demonstrate how capable I am on a daily basis: I manage to pack a healthy lunch, get my child off to school, be one of the first ones in the office, bust my rear end all day (working through lunch because I can't work late, because I need to take my daughter to gymnastics or simply get home to feed her and be there for her), and manage to keep the laundry more-or-less caught up, the yard mowed (bane of my existence!), the bills paid, the birthday party presents purchased, the right sized clothes in the closet (no matter how fast she grows). The money parts of that equation are tricky, but I'm managing, and I like that I can manage it.
I think that before I was a single mom I associated that term with vulnerability, fear, anxiety, brokenness. But no longer.
Now I associate it with being a freaking rock star.
Yup, I'm feeling like a rock star. Sure, there's a new gray streak in my hair, and I'm too tired to stay out until 10pm....but still, a rock star.
***
My ex was updating his Facebook status recently (not sure why it took him so long!) to "Divorced" and it popped up on my feed. I couldn't remember what my status was, so I looked up my own status. "Single." That feels so much better to me than "Divorced" even though it amounts to the same thing. I am not defined by having had a failed relationship. I'm just not in a relationship right now. I'm single. I like that.
***
Define me how you wish. Sure, I'm divorced, and I won't deny that, and if you want to think of me as a Divorced Woman then go ahead - I can't stop you. But for me, the label has lost its power, and I'm just back to being myself. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
************
On a totally different note....
I enjoy being single so much that I can't seem to find a single man in fifty miles who meets my exacting criteria for dating. I amuse myself with this: it's not like I'm a supermodel millionaire famous artist cancer-curer, for Pete's sake, so where do I get off being so picky? I don't know, I only know that nobody can capture my interest. I think that, because of this, I'm going to become a crazy cat lady (hold the cats, though). I want to do what I want to do without reporting in to anyone, and I like my busy life, and I don't want to make room for anyone in that life, it seems.
But there's a problem.
Sex.
I am NOT agreeing to live out the rest of my days in celibacy. And the whole friends-with-benefits thing doesn't appeal, and there's only so much appeal to solo acts, and I'm not a one-night-stand kind of girl.
Not sure what I'm going to do about that.
Recap: I decided to get divorced in May 2011, and we lived separately-apart (upstairs downstairs) in the same house until June 2012, when he moved out. We were officially divorced in January 2013, but I have "felt" divorced since that first decision three years ago.
When I first started blogging at http://pollyannasdivorce.BlogSpot.com, I strongly identified with that word "divorced." It seemed to define me in many ways, just as "wife" and "mother" had defined me.
I felt like it was on my forehead, tattooed in large, ugly letters: DIVORCED. I knew the baggage that such a label carried: unsuccessful, broken home, quitter, vow-breaker. It was my scarlet D, and I faithfully pinned it to my chest each day when I got dressed, and before I left the house. I slept with it, too, tucking it under my pillow near my cheek, alone in my bed.
Being divorced has baggage, no way around that. Others would judge, and I judged myself, despite the brave face I put on to make it through the day.
But time passed.
I can barely remember the girl I was three years ago. Isn't that funny? The thoughts that went through my head then seem only tangentially related to the thoughts I have now - she seems like not-me, like someone from another era, someone from a book, someone not quite real.
Somewhere along the way, I lost my scarlet D.
***
When I first took steps towards divorce, I didn't know exactly what I wanted, I only knew what I did not want. With every fiber in my being, I realized that I needed to be divorced to stay alive. I was suffocating in my marriage as if I had a plastic bag over my face that only ocassionally blew to the side to give me enough air to hold on to life, but not enough to live. The anger of our household, the yelling, the lies, and the utter lack of support or partnership made it hard for me to breathe. I did not know what I would do with my life, but I was determined to live.
With the first gasps of freedom, I think I thought "New partner! I will find The Right Man and all will be well!" I embarked upon a series of dating misadventures to this end, and unsurprisingly, found nobody who fit the bill. I cringe a bit to think of some of those dates: I was not exactly a catch, as bruised and battered (fortunately, "only" psychologically and not physically) as I was.
More time passed, and I reconnected to so many parts of myself. The hiking that my partner professed to enjoy but neither joined nor accommodated became, once again, a regular part of my life. Camping trips increased. My attendance at concerts (including the free ones) increased. The house filled with friends. I ate healthier food, and watched my body change. I ran, and ran, and ran, and felt the exhilaration of it. I volunteered - with nobody telling me that it was a foolish way to spend my time, or grumbling about how I was gone - and found deep fulfillment in it.
I mothered. I found mothering to be suddenly easier, not harder, with his influence out of the house: no more managing moods, no more explaining his temper tantrums. Consistent rules, a smiling mother, and my daughter blossomed. The more I blossomed, the more she blossomed.
***
I don't know how to pinpoint the moment that the D fell off, but it's lost and I haven't seen it in ages. I don't think about it very much at all, to be honest.
Sure, my ex is still a regular part of my life, and I communicate with him nearly every day (even if the communications are one way: informing him of summer childcare, gymnastics schedules, etc.)...but he's just a person that's involved in my life, much like a neighbor or a cousin. He's not someone I think about unless we're face to face. I can't explain it - he is just not an important part of my life any more, even though he's a regular in my life. He just "is".
I don't debate where my marriage fell apart any more. I don't spend a bunch of time wondering where I went wrong, or why he behaved the way he did, or how to prevent that from ever happening to me again.
The D seems to have slipped off.
***
What's it been replaced with?
"Single Mom" mostly. Being a single mom is a regular part of my day to day, and my decisions revolve around my single-mom-ness. Everything from what time I go to work to how I structure my free time to if/when I go on dates to, well, everything, is about being a single mom. I know my daughter counts on me for much, including love and stability, and I do everything in my power to provide the stability of two parents even though I am only one. (Her dad loves her, but "stability" isn't his specialty. She spends on average 3 nights a month at his place....his choice.)
I like being a single mom. How's that for bizarre? To me it means that I'm independent and strong, that I'm capable and brave. It means that I demonstrate how capable I am on a daily basis: I manage to pack a healthy lunch, get my child off to school, be one of the first ones in the office, bust my rear end all day (working through lunch because I can't work late, because I need to take my daughter to gymnastics or simply get home to feed her and be there for her), and manage to keep the laundry more-or-less caught up, the yard mowed (bane of my existence!), the bills paid, the birthday party presents purchased, the right sized clothes in the closet (no matter how fast she grows). The money parts of that equation are tricky, but I'm managing, and I like that I can manage it.
I think that before I was a single mom I associated that term with vulnerability, fear, anxiety, brokenness. But no longer.
Now I associate it with being a freaking rock star.
Yup, I'm feeling like a rock star. Sure, there's a new gray streak in my hair, and I'm too tired to stay out until 10pm....but still, a rock star.
***
My ex was updating his Facebook status recently (not sure why it took him so long!) to "Divorced" and it popped up on my feed. I couldn't remember what my status was, so I looked up my own status. "Single." That feels so much better to me than "Divorced" even though it amounts to the same thing. I am not defined by having had a failed relationship. I'm just not in a relationship right now. I'm single. I like that.
***
Define me how you wish. Sure, I'm divorced, and I won't deny that, and if you want to think of me as a Divorced Woman then go ahead - I can't stop you. But for me, the label has lost its power, and I'm just back to being myself. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
************
On a totally different note....
I enjoy being single so much that I can't seem to find a single man in fifty miles who meets my exacting criteria for dating. I amuse myself with this: it's not like I'm a supermodel millionaire famous artist cancer-curer, for Pete's sake, so where do I get off being so picky? I don't know, I only know that nobody can capture my interest. I think that, because of this, I'm going to become a crazy cat lady (hold the cats, though). I want to do what I want to do without reporting in to anyone, and I like my busy life, and I don't want to make room for anyone in that life, it seems.
But there's a problem.
Sex.
I am NOT agreeing to live out the rest of my days in celibacy. And the whole friends-with-benefits thing doesn't appeal, and there's only so much appeal to solo acts, and I'm not a one-night-stand kind of girl.
Not sure what I'm going to do about that.
Friday, February 14, 2014
From Me to You on Valentine's Day
I believe that one of the most beautiful sentences ever spoken is "I see you."
Dear reader, I see you. I see your struggles, your fears, your hopes. I see your anger that life has not worked out the way you'd planned. I see you when you're lonely. I see you. And I embrace you. You are worthy of love, and this is my Valentine for you.
***
I have been in a terrible slump. "Slump" is a word that doesn't convey just what it feels like to feel the doubts that I've been feeling lately. Doubts that I have done anything right. Doubts that I will ever get what I really want. Doubts that I will ever be seen. Doubts about my own worth. Doubts that I will ever be held in love the way I wish to be held.
It's tough to find a metaphor around all that doubt that even touches on it. I thought, "lost in a dark cave, too dark to see, damp and cold," but that doesn't sound right. I thought "lost at sea, clinging to a log, fearful of the sharks that could come, almost too tired to hold on," but that's not it. "Lost" is a common theme of the metaphors that I've come up with.
I'm lost, but I don't quite know where and I can't describe my surroundings because my mind is a blur of confusion, and the only thing I know for sure are the questions: Why? When? How? What? Where barely matters.
***
It is not easy to be a divorcee' in a world of intact families. Today, my parents celebrate their forty-fifth wedding anniversary, and I mentioned getting together with them, but I was turned down because my dad told me that he was excited to go away for the weekend with his "bride." He said, "Your mom bought lingerie!" and I had to nearly shout at him to stop talking - of course, because no child, no matter how old, wants to imagine what her mother does with her father when lingerie is involved (ack! please bleach my brain!), but also because it's hard to think about how I am surrounded by couples who really adore each other, marriages that maintain a spark for decades, and I am quite utterly, truly alone.
***
What is a girl to do? What is a PollyAnna to do? What should *I* do?
Misery is not my style, though it chases me sometimes. I keep running away from misery, looking back over my shoulder to yell "GET LOST!" sometimes. In a slump, I feel like stopping and just hanging out with misery, giving up...
But I won't.
***
This morning I greeted Katherine with a gift bag that was covered in hearts, and a cheerful "Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart!" She received her trinkets with a smile - the obligatory chocolate heart box, a little stuffed animal, a necklace with hearts on it purchased at Forever21. I put a maple syrup heart on her oatmeal, sent her to school in her Valentine's outfit (heart necklace and earrings, and a t-shirt with a heart on it; she carried a bag of Valentine's, each with a Valentine's wrapped chocolate taped to it, to hand out to her classmates and teachers.
The table is set for six with a red tablecloth and my everyday white dishes; on each dinner plate there is a red heart box of chocolates, the cheap drugstore kind, wrapped in cellophane. In the center of the table there are heart dishes filled with heart chocolates, and a dessert platter filled with pink frosted heart cookies; soon I'll make chocolate covered strawberries and a heart shaped chocolate cake to go with them. Above the table, sparkly red hearts hang in a garland draped over the chandelier. For dinner, another single mom and her daughter, plus two of Katherine's friends (whose parents are going out on dates, happy for my free babysitting on a day when babysitters are hard to find) are coming over for simple food - home made pizza (red and white) and salad.
I'll wear my red silk tank top over my skinny jeans, in a color tribute to the day. (I'll have to wear a sweater too - it's not tank top weather!)
***
I can not control my loneliness. I can not control my lack of understanding about my path. I can not control the fear that if I am not in a loving relationship I must be turning into a crazy cat lady. (We only have ONE cat, and she technically belongs to Katherine.) My Valentine preparations feel a bit forced, because it would certainly be easier to curl up in a ball and sob.
But I won't, and that's why I'm PollyAnna.
I invited Katherine's friends over because I want their parents to celebrate love, glad as I am to have marriages around me that are still filled with love. I invited a single friend so that she would not be alone, and so nor would I. I made the house look festive because I want to feel festive, and "fake it 'til you make it" works a lot of the time. I made the day special for Katherine, because I want her to grow up solid in the knowledge that I think that love is worth celebrating
***
Love is worth celebrating.
Dear readers, if you are madly in love, I celebrate that with you today. Your love for your beloved is proof to me that it is possible to find such a love, and I am grateful to you for modeling it. Hold your beloved in your arms, close your eyes, and allow the joy of it to wash over you. Whether you are a hearts and flowers kind of Valentine, or a "this is a Hallmark holiday" person, please take a moment to fully appreciate your beloved's existence today.
And dear readers, if you, like me, are alone, then I celebrate you today. I celebrate your strength, your struggle, and your future. As I look around my table this evening, with chattering children and all that dessert, I'll raise my glass of red wine to toast you. We'll get through this, and I celebrate your courage - as well as my own - in moving forward.
***
Just think of all of the firsts that we have before us. I believe that our loves await, and we have the joy of all of those firsts floating out there, waiting for us. There will be the day we first meet; there will be a moment when we think, "Oh! Could it be...?" There will be first intimacies, from shy glances to smoldering ones; from tentative first kisses to tangled sheets. There will be the first argument, and the make up that comes afterwards; there will be deep talks as well as playful ones. There will be challenges miraculously navigated, and joys that are hundredfold because shares. There will be tears in life's challenges, but there will be someone to dry them, too.
We will be so appreciative, because we will not take one second for granted.
There will be a look exchanged that says, "I see you. I really, really see you." We will melt. We will see our beloved, too, and know our fortune.
***
Happy Valentine's Day, dear reader. Don your red and pink. Call a single friend and invite them over, call a married friend and congratulate her (and bite her tongue when she complains about her husband's lack of Valentine attentiveness!). Make paper hearts with a child. Listen to love songs, even the sad ones. Eat chocolate, drink red wine. Go to the beach and look for heart shaped rocks, or go to happy hour with a friend and drink a Valentine's cocktail.
Tomorrow we can breathe a bit easier, with a bit less focus on how we live in a world designed for pairs. But today, let's just fake it the best we can.
And know this: I see you. And I appreciate you. Thank you for sharing your journey with me, and for letting me share mine with you. Today, as always, I send you my love, and my wish that your burdens will feel light.
xoxo
Dear reader, I see you. I see your struggles, your fears, your hopes. I see your anger that life has not worked out the way you'd planned. I see you when you're lonely. I see you. And I embrace you. You are worthy of love, and this is my Valentine for you.
***
I have been in a terrible slump. "Slump" is a word that doesn't convey just what it feels like to feel the doubts that I've been feeling lately. Doubts that I have done anything right. Doubts that I will ever get what I really want. Doubts that I will ever be seen. Doubts about my own worth. Doubts that I will ever be held in love the way I wish to be held.
It's tough to find a metaphor around all that doubt that even touches on it. I thought, "lost in a dark cave, too dark to see, damp and cold," but that doesn't sound right. I thought "lost at sea, clinging to a log, fearful of the sharks that could come, almost too tired to hold on," but that's not it. "Lost" is a common theme of the metaphors that I've come up with.
I'm lost, but I don't quite know where and I can't describe my surroundings because my mind is a blur of confusion, and the only thing I know for sure are the questions: Why? When? How? What? Where barely matters.
***
It is not easy to be a divorcee' in a world of intact families. Today, my parents celebrate their forty-fifth wedding anniversary, and I mentioned getting together with them, but I was turned down because my dad told me that he was excited to go away for the weekend with his "bride." He said, "Your mom bought lingerie!" and I had to nearly shout at him to stop talking - of course, because no child, no matter how old, wants to imagine what her mother does with her father when lingerie is involved (ack! please bleach my brain!), but also because it's hard to think about how I am surrounded by couples who really adore each other, marriages that maintain a spark for decades, and I am quite utterly, truly alone.
***
What is a girl to do? What is a PollyAnna to do? What should *I* do?
Misery is not my style, though it chases me sometimes. I keep running away from misery, looking back over my shoulder to yell "GET LOST!" sometimes. In a slump, I feel like stopping and just hanging out with misery, giving up...
But I won't.
***
This morning I greeted Katherine with a gift bag that was covered in hearts, and a cheerful "Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart!" She received her trinkets with a smile - the obligatory chocolate heart box, a little stuffed animal, a necklace with hearts on it purchased at Forever21. I put a maple syrup heart on her oatmeal, sent her to school in her Valentine's outfit (heart necklace and earrings, and a t-shirt with a heart on it; she carried a bag of Valentine's, each with a Valentine's wrapped chocolate taped to it, to hand out to her classmates and teachers.
The table is set for six with a red tablecloth and my everyday white dishes; on each dinner plate there is a red heart box of chocolates, the cheap drugstore kind, wrapped in cellophane. In the center of the table there are heart dishes filled with heart chocolates, and a dessert platter filled with pink frosted heart cookies; soon I'll make chocolate covered strawberries and a heart shaped chocolate cake to go with them. Above the table, sparkly red hearts hang in a garland draped over the chandelier. For dinner, another single mom and her daughter, plus two of Katherine's friends (whose parents are going out on dates, happy for my free babysitting on a day when babysitters are hard to find) are coming over for simple food - home made pizza (red and white) and salad.
I'll wear my red silk tank top over my skinny jeans, in a color tribute to the day. (I'll have to wear a sweater too - it's not tank top weather!)
***
I can not control my loneliness. I can not control my lack of understanding about my path. I can not control the fear that if I am not in a loving relationship I must be turning into a crazy cat lady. (We only have ONE cat, and she technically belongs to Katherine.) My Valentine preparations feel a bit forced, because it would certainly be easier to curl up in a ball and sob.
But I won't, and that's why I'm PollyAnna.
I invited Katherine's friends over because I want their parents to celebrate love, glad as I am to have marriages around me that are still filled with love. I invited a single friend so that she would not be alone, and so nor would I. I made the house look festive because I want to feel festive, and "fake it 'til you make it" works a lot of the time. I made the day special for Katherine, because I want her to grow up solid in the knowledge that I think that love is worth celebrating
***
Love is worth celebrating.
Dear readers, if you are madly in love, I celebrate that with you today. Your love for your beloved is proof to me that it is possible to find such a love, and I am grateful to you for modeling it. Hold your beloved in your arms, close your eyes, and allow the joy of it to wash over you. Whether you are a hearts and flowers kind of Valentine, or a "this is a Hallmark holiday" person, please take a moment to fully appreciate your beloved's existence today.
And dear readers, if you, like me, are alone, then I celebrate you today. I celebrate your strength, your struggle, and your future. As I look around my table this evening, with chattering children and all that dessert, I'll raise my glass of red wine to toast you. We'll get through this, and I celebrate your courage - as well as my own - in moving forward.
***
Just think of all of the firsts that we have before us. I believe that our loves await, and we have the joy of all of those firsts floating out there, waiting for us. There will be the day we first meet; there will be a moment when we think, "Oh! Could it be...?" There will be first intimacies, from shy glances to smoldering ones; from tentative first kisses to tangled sheets. There will be the first argument, and the make up that comes afterwards; there will be deep talks as well as playful ones. There will be challenges miraculously navigated, and joys that are hundredfold because shares. There will be tears in life's challenges, but there will be someone to dry them, too.
We will be so appreciative, because we will not take one second for granted.
There will be a look exchanged that says, "I see you. I really, really see you." We will melt. We will see our beloved, too, and know our fortune.
***
Happy Valentine's Day, dear reader. Don your red and pink. Call a single friend and invite them over, call a married friend and congratulate her (and bite her tongue when she complains about her husband's lack of Valentine attentiveness!). Make paper hearts with a child. Listen to love songs, even the sad ones. Eat chocolate, drink red wine. Go to the beach and look for heart shaped rocks, or go to happy hour with a friend and drink a Valentine's cocktail.
Tomorrow we can breathe a bit easier, with a bit less focus on how we live in a world designed for pairs. But today, let's just fake it the best we can.
And know this: I see you. And I appreciate you. Thank you for sharing your journey with me, and for letting me share mine with you. Today, as always, I send you my love, and my wish that your burdens will feel light.
xoxo
Monday, February 3, 2014
Visitor
I've been avoiding her for a while, this sister of mine. I see her around, and when she smiles at me I always look away. I don't want to catch her eye, and I certainly don't want to talk to her, because frankly she always asks questions that make me squirm.
She keeps popping up, though, to the point where the sight of her makes my chest give a little anxious squeeze, knowing that I can't avoid her for too long. Well, she finally caught up with me.
She sat down on the bench next to me and didn't say anything, didn't even look at me, knowing that I'd have to be the one to say the first word this time.
I could not speak, caught off guard and embarrassed. She is not the kind I'd like to be seen with, not someone I'd like associated with my good name. She has a tendency to say things to which I have no response, and her social awkwardness is discomfiting. She's not the prettiest girl, and she's not the kindest, but I fear that she's the smartest, because she always knows what I'm really thinking, and she's so bold she never hesitates to say it out loud and make me feel incredibly, incredibly uncomfortable, hearing the ugliness of my own words out there in front of me.
But she's unavoidable, so this time I didn't run away, or tell her off, or tell her that I didn't want her in my life any more.
I just stared at the ground, feeling her on the bench next to me, her eyes on me, waiting for me to speak.
Her stare broke something in me. I have done such a good job of avoiding her, but it seemed inevitable that she'd wind up here next to me, sitting on a bench, reading my thoughts. Now that we were here, I couldn't wind up the strength to tell her off, and she seemed to sense that in me - she wasn't as prickly as I expected her to be, and she didn't tell me off for avoiding her. She surprised me by reaching over and taking my hand, and her tenderness nearly made me burst into tears from the surprise of how acknowledging her made me feel.
Hello, Loneliness.
She didn't say a word, just slid over and wrapped her arms around me, laying her head on my shoulder. I stared at the ground, thrown off guard at my own relief: avoiding her has taken a lot of energy, and I don't have to pretend any more that I don't know her. No more looking away quickly, no more answering questions from well intentioned friends, "Don't you guys know each other?" We're old friends, she and I, and we'd grown quite close during my marriage. I thought she'd gone forever when the marriage ended, but such relationships are complicated, and can't be ended with courtroom papers.
And now, here we sit, alone in the crowd. She joined me on my morning run - ten miles with a PR, accomplishing a time I'd thought impossible, passing the smiling couples running on the same trail, running by the families playing on the beach even in the cold weather. She sat on a chair in the kitchen, watching me as I prepped for a Superbowl party at my house, silently observing me as I made chili and brownies. She joined me at the party, sitting next to me on the loveseat, watching the couples I'd invited laugh together, observing the siblings teasing each other at the party. I saw her take a look at my daughter, an only child, and elbowed her sharply. "Cut it out. She's got friends, and you can leave her alone." My voice was sharp - I have my limits.
She's moved into the guest room, but I know that when I wake up in the night she will have slipped into my bed; the cat will flee from her disturbance, and I will lie there, wide awake and not speaking. Loneliness will roll over and ignore me to fall asleep on her side of my bed, but I will lie awake, clinging to my edge of the bed, feeling pushed out but with nowhere to go.
She's a part of my life, for better or for worse. I might as well try to make friends with her.
She keeps popping up, though, to the point where the sight of her makes my chest give a little anxious squeeze, knowing that I can't avoid her for too long. Well, she finally caught up with me.
She sat down on the bench next to me and didn't say anything, didn't even look at me, knowing that I'd have to be the one to say the first word this time.
I could not speak, caught off guard and embarrassed. She is not the kind I'd like to be seen with, not someone I'd like associated with my good name. She has a tendency to say things to which I have no response, and her social awkwardness is discomfiting. She's not the prettiest girl, and she's not the kindest, but I fear that she's the smartest, because she always knows what I'm really thinking, and she's so bold she never hesitates to say it out loud and make me feel incredibly, incredibly uncomfortable, hearing the ugliness of my own words out there in front of me.
But she's unavoidable, so this time I didn't run away, or tell her off, or tell her that I didn't want her in my life any more.
I just stared at the ground, feeling her on the bench next to me, her eyes on me, waiting for me to speak.
Her stare broke something in me. I have done such a good job of avoiding her, but it seemed inevitable that she'd wind up here next to me, sitting on a bench, reading my thoughts. Now that we were here, I couldn't wind up the strength to tell her off, and she seemed to sense that in me - she wasn't as prickly as I expected her to be, and she didn't tell me off for avoiding her. She surprised me by reaching over and taking my hand, and her tenderness nearly made me burst into tears from the surprise of how acknowledging her made me feel.
Hello, Loneliness.
She didn't say a word, just slid over and wrapped her arms around me, laying her head on my shoulder. I stared at the ground, thrown off guard at my own relief: avoiding her has taken a lot of energy, and I don't have to pretend any more that I don't know her. No more looking away quickly, no more answering questions from well intentioned friends, "Don't you guys know each other?" We're old friends, she and I, and we'd grown quite close during my marriage. I thought she'd gone forever when the marriage ended, but such relationships are complicated, and can't be ended with courtroom papers.
And now, here we sit, alone in the crowd. She joined me on my morning run - ten miles with a PR, accomplishing a time I'd thought impossible, passing the smiling couples running on the same trail, running by the families playing on the beach even in the cold weather. She sat on a chair in the kitchen, watching me as I prepped for a Superbowl party at my house, silently observing me as I made chili and brownies. She joined me at the party, sitting next to me on the loveseat, watching the couples I'd invited laugh together, observing the siblings teasing each other at the party. I saw her take a look at my daughter, an only child, and elbowed her sharply. "Cut it out. She's got friends, and you can leave her alone." My voice was sharp - I have my limits.
She's moved into the guest room, but I know that when I wake up in the night she will have slipped into my bed; the cat will flee from her disturbance, and I will lie there, wide awake and not speaking. Loneliness will roll over and ignore me to fall asleep on her side of my bed, but I will lie awake, clinging to my edge of the bed, feeling pushed out but with nowhere to go.
She's a part of my life, for better or for worse. I might as well try to make friends with her.
Monday, December 23, 2013
My ex's relationship to money
Bryan has money issues.
And I'm blogging about them because they're stressing me out and I don't know what else to do besides think it through here with you, my gentle readers. Thanks for listening, and for sharing your stories with me, and lending your advice and emotional support.
First: a glance at my finances. During my marriage, I thought I was the overspender, because I did all the trips to Target and Costco and the grocery store, I bought the school supplies and the items for the science project and the birthday presents and I filled the car with gas and took Katherine for haircuts. Bryan told me, repeatedly, that I needed to cut back. I tried. I grew increasingly frugal, spending less and less on myself, trying to make our budget work.
Even though Bryan made a good salary with great benefits.
I always thought it was my fault that we were short, that we had to put the item on the credit card, that we were struggling.
Enter: divorce, and separate finances.
I had no idea what an incredible financial relief divorce could be. I thought, because my combined income (salary and child support) was less than our joint married income, and we struggled during marriage, that I would struggle IMMENSELY after divorce, especially because I'd bought into the line that I was the over-spender.
Au contraire.
I was so afraid of running out of money that I managed it well. I acquired a small savings. I paid all my bills, on time. I didn't use credit (though, at the advice of friends, I did get my own credit card). I saved enough to do our Disneyland trip in cash. When I got laid off, I had a small savings and an empty credit card, a house full of groceries, etc.
Bryan was laid off (fired?) recently. I knew already that he'd acquired a great deal of debt since our divorce, that he was living close to the edge....even though he makes more than I do (did).
Three things are going on right now that make me think about this, and they all put a knot into my stomach.
1) Bryan told me not to send Katherine over until after dinner because he didn't have groceries or money to buy them.
2) I am uncertain as to whether I'm ever going to receive another child support payment again.
3) Bryan had a bit of a fit today because he wants Katherine's college fund information, and said, "I need to have access to that! It's a lot of money!"
It's that last one that has me spinning. I think that desperate times call for desperate measures, and I think that Bryan is planning on making some withdrawals from Katherine's meager college savings. Let it be known: most of that savings comes from grandparents' gifts, only a small portion comes from Bryan and I. It is Katherine's money, not ours, and she is on track to go to college, and there is probably enough money in that account to put her through one freakin' semester (I hope I'm kidding but I'm not sure that I am) and under NO circumstances do I want to see that money shrink.
Seen from a distance, I feel so sorry for Bryan. I have no idea what he's doing with his life, if he has any goals, if he ever even dreams of being happy or stable any more. He's a disaster, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and fiscally. It's hard to watch: he used to have so much potential, he used to live such a different life, he used to have so much success. Now I wonder how he'll ever get it together enough to survive, and it's so scary. He is Katherine's father, and no matter how imperfect (ha!) he is, she needs him.
I bought him a grocery gift card. I've invited him for a couple of meals with Katherine. He should get unemployment soon, and that will help him.
I am working HARD at getting a job that will support Katherine and I without his assistance. Right now, I'm talking to five organizations that are interested in me, and I feel really good about my prospects. One of those organizations makes my heart flutter because it sounds like such a good fit...and one of those organizations is going to hire me. Soon, I will be working for a world class organization with great benefits and a good salary, and I will take care of Katherine and I, regardless of what a train wreck Bryan is. I'm going to be okay. I will build my savings back up, I will do what it takes to create a beautiful, glorious life.
Bryan, the man who doesn't have enough money to buy groceries, hangs out at his favorite coffee shop daily. He buys $5-$10 worth of coffee and treats there every single day - it's his favorite place. At breakfast when he came by to pick up Katherine (and I offered to feed him...sigh) he told her all about how he goes to the local steak house a lot and how much he loves their potato pancakes. I haven't been to a steak house in....I don't know how long. I can't afford it, you see. (I did go to the steak house near my old office for happy hour, actually. For $6, I could get tenderloin sliders to die for, and enjoy the atmosphere, and a $6 glass of house red, with a friend as my "big night out". But I stopped ordering the filet mignon with all the sides many years ago. Bryan believes he "deserves" the filet mignon, so he keeps ordering it, and believes that it's a compromise when he orders the smaller size, which only costs $30, and you can bet that he has several glasses of wine to go along with it. Frequently.)
I don't know what the point of telling my blog all of this is, except that I couldn't carry it inside me, because inside me it hurts, and I want it out of me.
I need to practice deep compassion for the human being who is my ex-husband and the father of my child. I hand out protein bars to homeless people on street corners, I have helped out with a homeless shelter, I donate to food banks. I can help out my ex to make sure that he's not hungry, and that Katherine doesn't feel how hard things are for him right now (because that would hurt her). I will try to do the right thing, to be compassionate, to be kind.
But I also need to practice boundaries. If he doesn't pay child support, I'm going to have to take loans from my parents, and that makes me mad. (I don't see a paycheck coming until Feb. 1 at absolute earliest, and things are getting closer and more pinched. Still okay, but I count on that child support to make ends meet.) I am not just going to roll over and let him kick me; I am not going to let him walk away with a free pass from his responsibilities.
I am not letting him take Katherine's college money. That is HER future. It's also mine - I don't think he'll ever give any more money to her college fund, and I am not going to let that stop her from going to college. I will do what it takes for her to go to college, to help her in any ways I can, and that is important to me....and also means that whatever he takes now, I have to pay for later. I am NOT okay with that.
Something else I'm not going to do - I'm not going to let him move back in my house.
There is a guest room here. I think he will ask to move into it, and he can not. I would lose my mind, and the compassion I strive so hard for would absolutely go out the window. He is inconsiderate and rude to me, forgetful about his responsibilities, and a total slob. He's short tempered and impatient and judgmental (and vocal about it) to me. I can not afford to invite that in my life ever again. I can put up with a certain amount when he is my dinner guest....but no way could I put up with it if I came home to it every day.
Boundaries. I have to figure out where my boundaries are, and where the line between compassion and common sense lies.
Please wish me luck.
And I'm blogging about them because they're stressing me out and I don't know what else to do besides think it through here with you, my gentle readers. Thanks for listening, and for sharing your stories with me, and lending your advice and emotional support.
First: a glance at my finances. During my marriage, I thought I was the overspender, because I did all the trips to Target and Costco and the grocery store, I bought the school supplies and the items for the science project and the birthday presents and I filled the car with gas and took Katherine for haircuts. Bryan told me, repeatedly, that I needed to cut back. I tried. I grew increasingly frugal, spending less and less on myself, trying to make our budget work.
Even though Bryan made a good salary with great benefits.
I always thought it was my fault that we were short, that we had to put the item on the credit card, that we were struggling.
Enter: divorce, and separate finances.
I had no idea what an incredible financial relief divorce could be. I thought, because my combined income (salary and child support) was less than our joint married income, and we struggled during marriage, that I would struggle IMMENSELY after divorce, especially because I'd bought into the line that I was the over-spender.
Au contraire.
I was so afraid of running out of money that I managed it well. I acquired a small savings. I paid all my bills, on time. I didn't use credit (though, at the advice of friends, I did get my own credit card). I saved enough to do our Disneyland trip in cash. When I got laid off, I had a small savings and an empty credit card, a house full of groceries, etc.
Bryan was laid off (fired?) recently. I knew already that he'd acquired a great deal of debt since our divorce, that he was living close to the edge....even though he makes more than I do (did).
Three things are going on right now that make me think about this, and they all put a knot into my stomach.
1) Bryan told me not to send Katherine over until after dinner because he didn't have groceries or money to buy them.
2) I am uncertain as to whether I'm ever going to receive another child support payment again.
3) Bryan had a bit of a fit today because he wants Katherine's college fund information, and said, "I need to have access to that! It's a lot of money!"
It's that last one that has me spinning. I think that desperate times call for desperate measures, and I think that Bryan is planning on making some withdrawals from Katherine's meager college savings. Let it be known: most of that savings comes from grandparents' gifts, only a small portion comes from Bryan and I. It is Katherine's money, not ours, and she is on track to go to college, and there is probably enough money in that account to put her through one freakin' semester (I hope I'm kidding but I'm not sure that I am) and under NO circumstances do I want to see that money shrink.
Seen from a distance, I feel so sorry for Bryan. I have no idea what he's doing with his life, if he has any goals, if he ever even dreams of being happy or stable any more. He's a disaster, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and fiscally. It's hard to watch: he used to have so much potential, he used to live such a different life, he used to have so much success. Now I wonder how he'll ever get it together enough to survive, and it's so scary. He is Katherine's father, and no matter how imperfect (ha!) he is, she needs him.
I bought him a grocery gift card. I've invited him for a couple of meals with Katherine. He should get unemployment soon, and that will help him.
I am working HARD at getting a job that will support Katherine and I without his assistance. Right now, I'm talking to five organizations that are interested in me, and I feel really good about my prospects. One of those organizations makes my heart flutter because it sounds like such a good fit...and one of those organizations is going to hire me. Soon, I will be working for a world class organization with great benefits and a good salary, and I will take care of Katherine and I, regardless of what a train wreck Bryan is. I'm going to be okay. I will build my savings back up, I will do what it takes to create a beautiful, glorious life.
Bryan, the man who doesn't have enough money to buy groceries, hangs out at his favorite coffee shop daily. He buys $5-$10 worth of coffee and treats there every single day - it's his favorite place. At breakfast when he came by to pick up Katherine (and I offered to feed him...sigh) he told her all about how he goes to the local steak house a lot and how much he loves their potato pancakes. I haven't been to a steak house in....I don't know how long. I can't afford it, you see. (I did go to the steak house near my old office for happy hour, actually. For $6, I could get tenderloin sliders to die for, and enjoy the atmosphere, and a $6 glass of house red, with a friend as my "big night out". But I stopped ordering the filet mignon with all the sides many years ago. Bryan believes he "deserves" the filet mignon, so he keeps ordering it, and believes that it's a compromise when he orders the smaller size, which only costs $30, and you can bet that he has several glasses of wine to go along with it. Frequently.)
I don't know what the point of telling my blog all of this is, except that I couldn't carry it inside me, because inside me it hurts, and I want it out of me.
I need to practice deep compassion for the human being who is my ex-husband and the father of my child. I hand out protein bars to homeless people on street corners, I have helped out with a homeless shelter, I donate to food banks. I can help out my ex to make sure that he's not hungry, and that Katherine doesn't feel how hard things are for him right now (because that would hurt her). I will try to do the right thing, to be compassionate, to be kind.
But I also need to practice boundaries. If he doesn't pay child support, I'm going to have to take loans from my parents, and that makes me mad. (I don't see a paycheck coming until Feb. 1 at absolute earliest, and things are getting closer and more pinched. Still okay, but I count on that child support to make ends meet.) I am not just going to roll over and let him kick me; I am not going to let him walk away with a free pass from his responsibilities.
I am not letting him take Katherine's college money. That is HER future. It's also mine - I don't think he'll ever give any more money to her college fund, and I am not going to let that stop her from going to college. I will do what it takes for her to go to college, to help her in any ways I can, and that is important to me....and also means that whatever he takes now, I have to pay for later. I am NOT okay with that.
Something else I'm not going to do - I'm not going to let him move back in my house.
There is a guest room here. I think he will ask to move into it, and he can not. I would lose my mind, and the compassion I strive so hard for would absolutely go out the window. He is inconsiderate and rude to me, forgetful about his responsibilities, and a total slob. He's short tempered and impatient and judgmental (and vocal about it) to me. I can not afford to invite that in my life ever again. I can put up with a certain amount when he is my dinner guest....but no way could I put up with it if I came home to it every day.
Boundaries. I have to figure out where my boundaries are, and where the line between compassion and common sense lies.
Please wish me luck.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
The third mile
Another running epiphany. And it's not about running at all, really, so see if you can hang on here with me as I get to my point - it's there, I promise.
Today I headed out for a long run. I'm a bit behind on my mileage for the month because it's been cold enough to be icy, and running on icy sidewalks and paths terrifies me - and doubly so because I live at the top of a hill, and hills, ice, and concrete are a lethal combo. So, today, with no ice and temps in the upper 40s (how balmy), I laced up my shoes and headed outside.
The first three miles area always, always, always a slog. I've run several hundred miles this year (I didn't track them all, but I'd say at least 550, maybe more like 650; it's only since September that I've been logging 20-25 miles per week), and this never changes. I lie in bed, dreading getting up, especially when it's cold. I lie there for a few minutes, debating: maybe I should roll over. I'm definitely too tired to get up. Maybe I'll run tomorrow. But most of the time, I haul myself out of bed, feeling sleepy and anything but athletic.
Even when my running clothes are on, I'm still debating - maybe I won't go. I feel achy. It's not the day today.
But mostly I go. I remember that I love the running endorphins, that I love being able to eat whatever I like without suffering from a thick middle, that I love feeling strong, I love pushing past what I thought were my limits.
And yet...
In the first three miles, I don't feel even a tiny little bit of that. I head out the door, feeling proud of myself that I didn't go back to sleep, and then it hits me. Running is hard. I go a couple of blocks, waiting to find my stride. No, it's still hard. I keep going, and I feel weird little twinges and I think "wait I just barely started and I already feel tired!" and I wonder if I should turn around after three blocks. I keep going out of sheer stubbornness because, well, I just started and I am out of bed and already feeling sweaty, so I might as well go a bit more, but I start negotiating with myself. Maybe I'll just run to the water - it's only 1.1 miles, and then maybe I could just sit on a log and admire the view and listen to the changing tide, smell the seaweed, and walk home. Feeling half certain that is what I will do, I keep going. I start to think, "Wait, MayMyRun must have stopped, because haven't I gone a mile yet?" as I wait for the little voice on my headphones to tell me my one mile pace. The voice comes on...it didn't stop, I was just impatient to hear it.
(These days, I often run without music, but I wear the headphones anyway to hear MapMyRun tell me my milage, split pace, and overall time.)
I get to the beach, sigh, and think "One mile isn't far enough. I should keep going," although I'm not really feeling it.
I push through the roughness of all of it, and the voice in my ear tells me I've gone two miles. I think, "I should be warmed up by now!"
The next mile is the worst. I do NOT feel warmed up, my head is NOT in a good space, and it is getting harder, not easier. I realize that I am a crappy runner, that I may never enjoy it again, and that I'm heading the wrong direction to get home, and that I'll probably be late getting home because I'll have to walk the last couple of miles because it's going so poorly.
Still with me? Well, good, because this is where the magic starts.
I don't understand it, but after the third mile is where something mysterious happens. I can't describe it, except that it's the thing that keeps me going through all these miles, it's the thing that means I don't really want to quit. It's the reason I can get out of bed to go, even when the voices in my head tell me that I'd rather stay wrapped in flannel and down.
At mile three, I stop thinking, and at the exact same time my head fills with all kinds of ideas that come out of nowhere. I think of nothing, and yet I start to solve all of life's problems.
I forget that I'm running.
I look for seals, orcas, porpoises, eagles, river otters, osprey, blue herons, and sea lions. I see all kinds of shorebirds that I can not yet name.
My legs keep moving, and I nearly forget them until the voice in my ear keeps counting off the miles. At the third mile, I'm losing speed and slowing down, but in the fourth, fifth, sixth I find myself getting faster without trying.
I remember what's important to me. I think about people I know and their struggles, and I wish them healing. I problem solve things going on in my life. My legs keep going, and I'm certainly sweaty, but I'm feeling good.
It goes like that for a few more miles, until I start to move towards my current physical limitations - around mile ten I start feeling it for real, and I reenter the physical world with some more genuine aches and pains, but by then I feel strong and proud and sometimes I push a bit farther past that feeling, too, simply because I can, or sometimes I decide that it's enough, and I'm proud of whatever distance I really did.
What happens after mile three surprises me every time, even though I've grown to anticipate it - I always wonder if that magical feeling will go away, if this time I won't get the epiphanies, if it will be ordinary this time. But no, at the end of mile three, every time, magic happen.
Today I was really thinking about mile three (when I was in mile four), and the epiphany was this: so often, we try to do something amazing and challenging that brings us closer to our dreams, and when we start, it's really hard and scary and it seems like it's impossible. We definitely consider going back to bed. Sometimes we do. But sometimes, we keep going. Three miles is considered a respectable distance for a daily run, so often, we use it as our little yardstick - "I did my three miles, so I can stop."
I ran three miles at a time for years and years, and it never really got better. If only I had known that the magic starts AFTER three miles! That the endorphins, the thinking, the mind silencing, and the mind productivity, never ever seem to kick in before three miles. So, for all those years, I ground out the three mile runs, but I always quit just before it got good.
And the epiphany in my epiphany: I think that all my life, I thought that because the beginning was hard, the end would be even harder, and so I never kept going 'til the epiphany, and I gave up after what I thought was a respectable try, taking the good-enough job, the good-enough life, and the good-enough (for a while) partner and marriage. Ouch. Because "good enough" isn't good enough, AT ALL.
Right now, I'm in the hard part of my job search: 10 weeks on unemployment, tiny savings dwindling, and more questions than answers. I've gotten close to what I hoped for, and then been turned down, and I don't know how many times that will happen .
In some sense, it would make sense to quit. Go back to the familiar - or stay in bed. I could go back to the world I already know (private sector). I could lower my salary, benefit, or commuting expectations. I could run to my parents' house (horrors).
Or I could keep going, and wait for the epiphany. It always comes, sometimes big, sometimes small, but it comes. The longer the run, the more it hurts, and the better I feel afterwards.
This evening, I'm lying on the sofa in my PJs while the rest of the world seems to be out and about, playing and having fun, because I'm tired from my run and my legs ache with a slow throbbing. To someone who doesn't run, maybe that sounds like a form of hell, but to me, it's amazing. I feel - amazing. Strong, capable, confident. Today I ran eleven miles, and it wasn't my best run, because I did a "nutrition experiment" and thought "surely those crazy GU things aren't that great and maybe I can go without them." Well, I can go for ten miles, but eleven miles pushed me to my edge with no calorie boosts, and I really regretted not having at least one little energy hit and a whole lot more water to keep going. Did you hear that? I could "only" run eleven miles. Crazy.
I'm going to get the job I'm dreaming of, because I am not quitting at the three mile slump. Sure, I'll make mistakes like skipping the GU or not drinking enough water (or screwing up an interview or missing an opportunity), but I will keep going. I'll do another long run next weekend, and next week I'll keep making connections, finding interesting jobs to apply for. I will run ten miles, or eleven, or fifteen; I will reach out to every connection I can.
But I am NOT stopping when it just starts to get hard, because I want to hold out for the magic.
Always.
Today I headed out for a long run. I'm a bit behind on my mileage for the month because it's been cold enough to be icy, and running on icy sidewalks and paths terrifies me - and doubly so because I live at the top of a hill, and hills, ice, and concrete are a lethal combo. So, today, with no ice and temps in the upper 40s (how balmy), I laced up my shoes and headed outside.
The first three miles area always, always, always a slog. I've run several hundred miles this year (I didn't track them all, but I'd say at least 550, maybe more like 650; it's only since September that I've been logging 20-25 miles per week), and this never changes. I lie in bed, dreading getting up, especially when it's cold. I lie there for a few minutes, debating: maybe I should roll over. I'm definitely too tired to get up. Maybe I'll run tomorrow. But most of the time, I haul myself out of bed, feeling sleepy and anything but athletic.
Even when my running clothes are on, I'm still debating - maybe I won't go. I feel achy. It's not the day today.
But mostly I go. I remember that I love the running endorphins, that I love being able to eat whatever I like without suffering from a thick middle, that I love feeling strong, I love pushing past what I thought were my limits.
And yet...
In the first three miles, I don't feel even a tiny little bit of that. I head out the door, feeling proud of myself that I didn't go back to sleep, and then it hits me. Running is hard. I go a couple of blocks, waiting to find my stride. No, it's still hard. I keep going, and I feel weird little twinges and I think "wait I just barely started and I already feel tired!" and I wonder if I should turn around after three blocks. I keep going out of sheer stubbornness because, well, I just started and I am out of bed and already feeling sweaty, so I might as well go a bit more, but I start negotiating with myself. Maybe I'll just run to the water - it's only 1.1 miles, and then maybe I could just sit on a log and admire the view and listen to the changing tide, smell the seaweed, and walk home. Feeling half certain that is what I will do, I keep going. I start to think, "Wait, MayMyRun must have stopped, because haven't I gone a mile yet?" as I wait for the little voice on my headphones to tell me my one mile pace. The voice comes on...it didn't stop, I was just impatient to hear it.
(These days, I often run without music, but I wear the headphones anyway to hear MapMyRun tell me my milage, split pace, and overall time.)
I get to the beach, sigh, and think "One mile isn't far enough. I should keep going," although I'm not really feeling it.
I push through the roughness of all of it, and the voice in my ear tells me I've gone two miles. I think, "I should be warmed up by now!"
The next mile is the worst. I do NOT feel warmed up, my head is NOT in a good space, and it is getting harder, not easier. I realize that I am a crappy runner, that I may never enjoy it again, and that I'm heading the wrong direction to get home, and that I'll probably be late getting home because I'll have to walk the last couple of miles because it's going so poorly.
Still with me? Well, good, because this is where the magic starts.
I don't understand it, but after the third mile is where something mysterious happens. I can't describe it, except that it's the thing that keeps me going through all these miles, it's the thing that means I don't really want to quit. It's the reason I can get out of bed to go, even when the voices in my head tell me that I'd rather stay wrapped in flannel and down.
At mile three, I stop thinking, and at the exact same time my head fills with all kinds of ideas that come out of nowhere. I think of nothing, and yet I start to solve all of life's problems.
I forget that I'm running.
I look for seals, orcas, porpoises, eagles, river otters, osprey, blue herons, and sea lions. I see all kinds of shorebirds that I can not yet name.
My legs keep moving, and I nearly forget them until the voice in my ear keeps counting off the miles. At the third mile, I'm losing speed and slowing down, but in the fourth, fifth, sixth I find myself getting faster without trying.
I remember what's important to me. I think about people I know and their struggles, and I wish them healing. I problem solve things going on in my life. My legs keep going, and I'm certainly sweaty, but I'm feeling good.
It goes like that for a few more miles, until I start to move towards my current physical limitations - around mile ten I start feeling it for real, and I reenter the physical world with some more genuine aches and pains, but by then I feel strong and proud and sometimes I push a bit farther past that feeling, too, simply because I can, or sometimes I decide that it's enough, and I'm proud of whatever distance I really did.
What happens after mile three surprises me every time, even though I've grown to anticipate it - I always wonder if that magical feeling will go away, if this time I won't get the epiphanies, if it will be ordinary this time. But no, at the end of mile three, every time, magic happen.
Today I was really thinking about mile three (when I was in mile four), and the epiphany was this: so often, we try to do something amazing and challenging that brings us closer to our dreams, and when we start, it's really hard and scary and it seems like it's impossible. We definitely consider going back to bed. Sometimes we do. But sometimes, we keep going. Three miles is considered a respectable distance for a daily run, so often, we use it as our little yardstick - "I did my three miles, so I can stop."
I ran three miles at a time for years and years, and it never really got better. If only I had known that the magic starts AFTER three miles! That the endorphins, the thinking, the mind silencing, and the mind productivity, never ever seem to kick in before three miles. So, for all those years, I ground out the three mile runs, but I always quit just before it got good.
And the epiphany in my epiphany: I think that all my life, I thought that because the beginning was hard, the end would be even harder, and so I never kept going 'til the epiphany, and I gave up after what I thought was a respectable try, taking the good-enough job, the good-enough life, and the good-enough (for a while) partner and marriage. Ouch. Because "good enough" isn't good enough, AT ALL.
Right now, I'm in the hard part of my job search: 10 weeks on unemployment, tiny savings dwindling, and more questions than answers. I've gotten close to what I hoped for, and then been turned down, and I don't know how many times that will happen .
In some sense, it would make sense to quit. Go back to the familiar - or stay in bed. I could go back to the world I already know (private sector). I could lower my salary, benefit, or commuting expectations. I could run to my parents' house (horrors).
Or I could keep going, and wait for the epiphany. It always comes, sometimes big, sometimes small, but it comes. The longer the run, the more it hurts, and the better I feel afterwards.
This evening, I'm lying on the sofa in my PJs while the rest of the world seems to be out and about, playing and having fun, because I'm tired from my run and my legs ache with a slow throbbing. To someone who doesn't run, maybe that sounds like a form of hell, but to me, it's amazing. I feel - amazing. Strong, capable, confident. Today I ran eleven miles, and it wasn't my best run, because I did a "nutrition experiment" and thought "surely those crazy GU things aren't that great and maybe I can go without them." Well, I can go for ten miles, but eleven miles pushed me to my edge with no calorie boosts, and I really regretted not having at least one little energy hit and a whole lot more water to keep going. Did you hear that? I could "only" run eleven miles. Crazy.
I'm going to get the job I'm dreaming of, because I am not quitting at the three mile slump. Sure, I'll make mistakes like skipping the GU or not drinking enough water (or screwing up an interview or missing an opportunity), but I will keep going. I'll do another long run next weekend, and next week I'll keep making connections, finding interesting jobs to apply for. I will run ten miles, or eleven, or fifteen; I will reach out to every connection I can.
But I am NOT stopping when it just starts to get hard, because I want to hold out for the magic.
Always.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Letting Go
I find it really easy to scoop up new things - possessions for sure, but also friends, ideas, activities, volunteer projects. It's so easy to add to my life when the world is full of interesting things to do and I refuse to sit and just let them pass me by.
Letting things go is much harder. Actually, it's easiest to let possessions go: I like nice things, for certain, but I've never been a shopper the way some people are. I actually wish that my house could magically fill with the perfect items but that I never had to step foot in a mall again. In the past few years I realized that I had everything I needed - a fully functional kitchen, plenty of chairs to sit on, extra blankets, etc. - and I've really focused only on replacing what breaks or wears out (it happens) or on adding hand made pieces. (One day, there will not be a single print hanging on my walls, to be replaced by all original artwork. Not sure when that day is coming. ;-) ) I love going on a de-cluttering streak, and I've constantly got a pile of stuff in the attic in the "Goes to Goodwill" area. (Where does all that stuff COME from?!)
But letting go of ideas is harder, and letting go of people is the hardest of all.
This year, in addition to adding to my life - work, running, volunteering, hiking, backpacking - I have had to let things go.
I've never really had a hard time keeping my house clean and tidy: I grew up in a home that was a disaster zone, so perhaps my rebellion is keeping the towels in tidy stacks in the cupboard, the newspapers in a special basket next to the chair (but not all over the sofa), the kitchen sink clean and ready for the next batch of dishes. Rebellion can come in mysterious ways. ;-) This year, I had to let go of some of that. I don't know how many times Katherine asked me for an item of clothing and I said, "I dunno. Have you looked in the laundry baskets?" because getting things folded and put away simply hadn't happened yet. I used to vacuum practically daily - I have a large, hairy dog - and I've all but given up on ever having clean floors again, vacuuming once a week now. I cringe a bit to write that - maybe I could vacuum before bedtime daily? or right before dinner? - because it IS nice to have clean floors....but forget it. I am letting go, and the result is that I have more time to do things I *do* care about, like talk to my daughter. My house is less clean than it's ever been, my garden (which used to be lovely and filled with abundance) is all but abandoned, and I have accepted that. It is what it is right now, and at some level, I'm okay with it. We're not slobs by any means, but I've let my cleaning standards fall in my single mom life, and I think it's the right thing to do.
I've had to let go of the idea that I could do everything that interests me, everything that I value. I loved having a vegetable garden - interspersed with flowers - and delighted in telling Katherine to go pick "a tomato, some lettuce, and some radishes for salad" and having her say "I'm going to pull a carrot for a snack, too!" at dinnertime. My home made strawberry jam (made with strawberries from my garden) is to die for - the best you've ever tasted - but I don't know when I'll make that again. I no longer serve on committees at church. Actually, I often skip church, because there are so many things to do and time is so short. (It's hard to leave town for the weekend AND be at church, for example.)
I've had to let go of people, too, and that is some of the most difficult letting go. I can not rescue every person who comes into my path, for one, and sometimes in the past year I've had women who are going through divorce approach me and ask for my help. I'm very willing to give that help....to a degree. I am not willing to give up my life to become an (unqualified) therapist...and I'm not willing to help people who do not want to be helped, at the cost of my own sanity. Plenty of women going through divorce say to me, "You're so successful at your divorce, and you're so happy, and I want what you have!" and so I tell them how I do it, and then they say, "That is too hard" and "But my ex is unreasonable!" and "But I want to do it my way!" I'm having to let all of that go, and to learn how to smile and wish them well, but refuse to be a part of it, wishing them well from the sidelines but not an active part of it. I'm also learning not to second-guess myself about my decision not to be involved - I really would like to help save the world, but something I know now is that you can not save someone who doesn't want to be saved.
And the person I can not save, that I tried the hardest to save, is my ex.
You might think that I let that go when I asked for a divorce, but the process has actually been much longer than that.
I watch my ex struggle. He struggles with his whole life: friendships, family relationships, work, health (depression, high blood pressure, cholesterol) and weight. He has trouble managing his money, and accrues debt easily, always living paycheck to paycheck. He also struggles with parenting, and relies heavily on television and junk food to reach our daughter's heart. I have wanted, even in divorce, to make him the parent that I want him to be.
How foolish of me. If I couldn't influence him in marriage, what made me think I could influence him by divorcing him?!
When Bryan told me that he wanted to have our daughter on an every other weekend schedule (with two hours on Wednesdays), I was dumbfounded. So little?! But he told me how much he loved her, how the idea of living apart from her was a nightmare to him! I have had to let go of the idea that she will have a dad who seeks her out, and offers his whole self to parenting. I have had to let go of the idea that there is another member of my team willing to drive around purchasing school supplies, or getting poster materials for the science fair. Nobody else is going to check to see if her homework is done, or sit at the table to help her work through her essay. Nobody else is going to say "When was the last time you ate a vegetable?!" and nobody else is going to say "Hurry up and eat your breakfast, honey, or you'll be late for school." Nobody else is going to talk to her about dating, or drugs, or college.
I've had to let go of a lot of expectations with my ex. Letting go has been painful, because I deeply believe that if he behaved differently, he'd be a better parent, a better person, and actually a lot happier.
But it's out of my control, so I'm letting go.
Letting go does NOT mean sitting here seething as I write this. That's not letting go, that's holding on to anger and feeling powerless.
I have chosen to feel powerful in every aspect of my life, but my power is not over others, it's over myself. I refuse to be ashamed of my less-than-clean floors, and I refuse to live in anger because my ex is not who I wish he was.
I feel powerful because I recognize that I have a great deal to offer our daughter, and that when he left all of the heavy lifting of parenting to me, he gave me not only the responsibility but also the gift. I feel powerful because I know I'm capable, and that I can do a good job.
I can let go of my ex's behavior because holding on to the desire to change him doesn't serve anyone. I have decided that four days of junk food and television per month won't kill Katherine, and I've learned that it's a good idea to serve a vegetable AND a fruit with dinner when she gets home from her dad's place, because she arrives with an upset stomach (and pockets full of empty candy bar wrappers). I've learned that it's pointless to waste time hoping that they'll go to the pool, the park, hop on a bike, go for a hike, or spend any time moving their bodies when they're together, because that is just not what he does. I've learned that the advantage of being the only one to have the tough homework conversations, the "big stuff" conversations, is that I know I am thoughtful in my approach and I have the tools to be successful, so I can control those conversations better, I can teach the homework skills (discipline, topic sentences, whatever it may be), and I have the opportunity to be the primary influence over her values, because I'm the only one talking about them.
I am getting better at letting go. It doesn't come easily to me, as I've spent the majority of my life trying to control every possible outcome, desperate to make things okay. Realizing that I'm okay even without controlling everything is, well, a huge relief, but the unexpected consequence of that is that when I recognized that my ability to control people is limited at best, instead of feeling like the world was spiraling in a scary way, I feel more grounded than ever.
It turns out that letting go is one of those leaps of faith that has to be felt to be believed. I have held on tenaciously, desperately, to my old ideas of how things "should" be, only to feel the world unravel, crumbling in my grip. For years and years, I tried to make my marriage something it was not, and the desperation in that holding on was painful beyond description. When I "let go" of that was when my life started to come together, when I actually started to feel the peace that I'd been so anxiously seeking. It turns out that there is a lot of letting go that needs to happen in my life, even post divorce, and that perhaps I will have to spend the rest of my life letting go of Bryan, and of what I wished he could be for Katherine. I do this letting go imperfectly, but I am seeing the value in it, and that the only way I'll ever feel true peace is if I embrace it.
I believe that only by letting go of what is outside my control can I truly create the life I want. Maybe that is one of the gifts of my divorce: by giving up the thing I fought so hard for, I found that other gifts came to me, perhaps even more valuable than what I had tried so hard to hold onto.
****
What have you had to let go of? What is it that you try to control, that actually controls you? What gifts have you received by letting go of what no longer serves you?
Letting things go is much harder. Actually, it's easiest to let possessions go: I like nice things, for certain, but I've never been a shopper the way some people are. I actually wish that my house could magically fill with the perfect items but that I never had to step foot in a mall again. In the past few years I realized that I had everything I needed - a fully functional kitchen, plenty of chairs to sit on, extra blankets, etc. - and I've really focused only on replacing what breaks or wears out (it happens) or on adding hand made pieces. (One day, there will not be a single print hanging on my walls, to be replaced by all original artwork. Not sure when that day is coming. ;-) ) I love going on a de-cluttering streak, and I've constantly got a pile of stuff in the attic in the "Goes to Goodwill" area. (Where does all that stuff COME from?!)
But letting go of ideas is harder, and letting go of people is the hardest of all.
This year, in addition to adding to my life - work, running, volunteering, hiking, backpacking - I have had to let things go.
I've never really had a hard time keeping my house clean and tidy: I grew up in a home that was a disaster zone, so perhaps my rebellion is keeping the towels in tidy stacks in the cupboard, the newspapers in a special basket next to the chair (but not all over the sofa), the kitchen sink clean and ready for the next batch of dishes. Rebellion can come in mysterious ways. ;-) This year, I had to let go of some of that. I don't know how many times Katherine asked me for an item of clothing and I said, "I dunno. Have you looked in the laundry baskets?" because getting things folded and put away simply hadn't happened yet. I used to vacuum practically daily - I have a large, hairy dog - and I've all but given up on ever having clean floors again, vacuuming once a week now. I cringe a bit to write that - maybe I could vacuum before bedtime daily? or right before dinner? - because it IS nice to have clean floors....but forget it. I am letting go, and the result is that I have more time to do things I *do* care about, like talk to my daughter. My house is less clean than it's ever been, my garden (which used to be lovely and filled with abundance) is all but abandoned, and I have accepted that. It is what it is right now, and at some level, I'm okay with it. We're not slobs by any means, but I've let my cleaning standards fall in my single mom life, and I think it's the right thing to do.
I've had to let go of the idea that I could do everything that interests me, everything that I value. I loved having a vegetable garden - interspersed with flowers - and delighted in telling Katherine to go pick "a tomato, some lettuce, and some radishes for salad" and having her say "I'm going to pull a carrot for a snack, too!" at dinnertime. My home made strawberry jam (made with strawberries from my garden) is to die for - the best you've ever tasted - but I don't know when I'll make that again. I no longer serve on committees at church. Actually, I often skip church, because there are so many things to do and time is so short. (It's hard to leave town for the weekend AND be at church, for example.)
I've had to let go of people, too, and that is some of the most difficult letting go. I can not rescue every person who comes into my path, for one, and sometimes in the past year I've had women who are going through divorce approach me and ask for my help. I'm very willing to give that help....to a degree. I am not willing to give up my life to become an (unqualified) therapist...and I'm not willing to help people who do not want to be helped, at the cost of my own sanity. Plenty of women going through divorce say to me, "You're so successful at your divorce, and you're so happy, and I want what you have!" and so I tell them how I do it, and then they say, "That is too hard" and "But my ex is unreasonable!" and "But I want to do it my way!" I'm having to let all of that go, and to learn how to smile and wish them well, but refuse to be a part of it, wishing them well from the sidelines but not an active part of it. I'm also learning not to second-guess myself about my decision not to be involved - I really would like to help save the world, but something I know now is that you can not save someone who doesn't want to be saved.
And the person I can not save, that I tried the hardest to save, is my ex.
You might think that I let that go when I asked for a divorce, but the process has actually been much longer than that.
I watch my ex struggle. He struggles with his whole life: friendships, family relationships, work, health (depression, high blood pressure, cholesterol) and weight. He has trouble managing his money, and accrues debt easily, always living paycheck to paycheck. He also struggles with parenting, and relies heavily on television and junk food to reach our daughter's heart. I have wanted, even in divorce, to make him the parent that I want him to be.
How foolish of me. If I couldn't influence him in marriage, what made me think I could influence him by divorcing him?!
When Bryan told me that he wanted to have our daughter on an every other weekend schedule (with two hours on Wednesdays), I was dumbfounded. So little?! But he told me how much he loved her, how the idea of living apart from her was a nightmare to him! I have had to let go of the idea that she will have a dad who seeks her out, and offers his whole self to parenting. I have had to let go of the idea that there is another member of my team willing to drive around purchasing school supplies, or getting poster materials for the science fair. Nobody else is going to check to see if her homework is done, or sit at the table to help her work through her essay. Nobody else is going to say "When was the last time you ate a vegetable?!" and nobody else is going to say "Hurry up and eat your breakfast, honey, or you'll be late for school." Nobody else is going to talk to her about dating, or drugs, or college.
I've had to let go of a lot of expectations with my ex. Letting go has been painful, because I deeply believe that if he behaved differently, he'd be a better parent, a better person, and actually a lot happier.
But it's out of my control, so I'm letting go.
Letting go does NOT mean sitting here seething as I write this. That's not letting go, that's holding on to anger and feeling powerless.
I have chosen to feel powerful in every aspect of my life, but my power is not over others, it's over myself. I refuse to be ashamed of my less-than-clean floors, and I refuse to live in anger because my ex is not who I wish he was.
I feel powerful because I recognize that I have a great deal to offer our daughter, and that when he left all of the heavy lifting of parenting to me, he gave me not only the responsibility but also the gift. I feel powerful because I know I'm capable, and that I can do a good job.
I can let go of my ex's behavior because holding on to the desire to change him doesn't serve anyone. I have decided that four days of junk food and television per month won't kill Katherine, and I've learned that it's a good idea to serve a vegetable AND a fruit with dinner when she gets home from her dad's place, because she arrives with an upset stomach (and pockets full of empty candy bar wrappers). I've learned that it's pointless to waste time hoping that they'll go to the pool, the park, hop on a bike, go for a hike, or spend any time moving their bodies when they're together, because that is just not what he does. I've learned that the advantage of being the only one to have the tough homework conversations, the "big stuff" conversations, is that I know I am thoughtful in my approach and I have the tools to be successful, so I can control those conversations better, I can teach the homework skills (discipline, topic sentences, whatever it may be), and I have the opportunity to be the primary influence over her values, because I'm the only one talking about them.
I am getting better at letting go. It doesn't come easily to me, as I've spent the majority of my life trying to control every possible outcome, desperate to make things okay. Realizing that I'm okay even without controlling everything is, well, a huge relief, but the unexpected consequence of that is that when I recognized that my ability to control people is limited at best, instead of feeling like the world was spiraling in a scary way, I feel more grounded than ever.
It turns out that letting go is one of those leaps of faith that has to be felt to be believed. I have held on tenaciously, desperately, to my old ideas of how things "should" be, only to feel the world unravel, crumbling in my grip. For years and years, I tried to make my marriage something it was not, and the desperation in that holding on was painful beyond description. When I "let go" of that was when my life started to come together, when I actually started to feel the peace that I'd been so anxiously seeking. It turns out that there is a lot of letting go that needs to happen in my life, even post divorce, and that perhaps I will have to spend the rest of my life letting go of Bryan, and of what I wished he could be for Katherine. I do this letting go imperfectly, but I am seeing the value in it, and that the only way I'll ever feel true peace is if I embrace it.
I believe that only by letting go of what is outside my control can I truly create the life I want. Maybe that is one of the gifts of my divorce: by giving up the thing I fought so hard for, I found that other gifts came to me, perhaps even more valuable than what I had tried so hard to hold onto.
****
What have you had to let go of? What is it that you try to control, that actually controls you? What gifts have you received by letting go of what no longer serves you?
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