Adventures in Stepford

Monday, March 17, 2008

Pause in the yadda yadda yadda

Oh, lookie. This is a draft from last month I worked on but never posted, which says basically the same thing about the gabbing on and on thing I just posted a minute ago. Hmm. It's not finished, and I've revised some of my thinking, but I'll throw it out here for general discussion.

I've been quiet for a bit, just stopped talktalktalk-ing about my life to the world at large (well, ya'll. and my counselor. and accountability partner. and phone-a-friend lay counselor. I just got sick of blahblahblahing. It happens).

I just sort of hid away and tried to just be for a bit. That's hard too, b/c my judgment is wonky (I think) without people to bounce things off of, and yet no one can really know my life except God, me, and The Husband. And the kidlets, inasmuch as they can know.

I read somewhere (and may have posted this before) about living with pain in your life, that you just have to be still sometimes because if you flail around in it, the blades of pain will only cut deeper. I am a master flailer; my emotions have had me spinning around for years in my pain, just letting the blades do more damage.

So I stopped for a bit. And am regrouping.

And I am probably having some kind of annotated mid-life crisis, because I hated turning 40 last year. It really doesn't matter that I don't look 40, and co-workers/friends are constantly shocked that I am this age. I hate being 40 and feeling trapped and stuck and unhappy and regretful of most of my life. I feel gypped, I told God the other day. No surprise to Him, but I'm attempting to be more honest with Him about the Ugly.

Labels: introspection, life in stepford

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 10:14 AM 4 comments

Fermenting

Love conquers all, rapes all, pillages all, leaves all for dead." -Pratt

I'm around, ya'll, just fermenting a bit, trying not to whine and bemoan my life, but find the purpose in it, and get off the throne in my heart and let God have a seat there. Every time I think I have done so, I grab it back like we're playing Musical Chairs and the music has stopped. Nobody wins that, especially me.

Is it just me, or does this blog take for-freaking-EVAH to load in your browser too? Clue me in. I love my template but I think there's some hiccup in it that hangs up the speed.

Thanks for checking in, my internet friends.

Labels: life in stepford, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 9:33 AM 2 comments

Monday, February 18, 2008

Real Boats Rock

"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -Frank Herbert

Damn straight, Skippy. Wish everybody got this.

Labels: quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 12:54 PM 1 comments

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

A Rapid Succession of Continual Days

The Husband said something in recent weeks that makes sense: (a) he has no one to talk to, which is very very true. There is nobody. And (b) for the last two years, people have only wanted to talk about his Marriage, not his Hurt.

I am ALL ABOUT talking about my marriage - it's the most important thing to me. But it's not the most important thing to him, to be honest. He lost his whole Life, his Purpose, his Friends, his Reputation, his (perceived?) ability to Provide and Protect, and Nobody has come alongside him in Stepford to walk this long road.

He is coming undone, off and on, after years of the same. He has nothing to give to anyone (except to the kids), and feels like he's losing his mind and his faith, along with his life. It's the Loss trifecta.

Yes, sure, I selfishly think it's been cruel and sinful - the physical/emotional freezing out of me by him, pre- and post-affair, I am ready to come undone over that point alone. But this post isn't about me today. (shocker, I know) And as I've spelled out before, ad nauseum: he has his reasons. I've been an abusive spouse. But the affair (his part, my part, the aftermath) complicates the 'black & white' of it all.

The Husband has often thought that God must be waiting for him to get something, or solve some spiritual Rubik's Cube - that he simply does not have the strength to do, and cannot understand - before God will move/encourage him/change his circumstances.

And, honestly, between you and me, and at the risk of sounding like the Total Fcuking Center of the Universe: I do sometimes wonder if the lack of effort/focus toward the Wife and Marriage Relationship plays any part of his lack of Restoration in other areas. Is it 1Peter that says something about how you treat your wife affecting your prayer life? Plus the whole your-body-is-not-your-own stuff, etc. from Corinthians.

BUT.

BUT: I realize that I may likely be extrapolating out of my self-centeredness here. That's just me me me, want want want, take take take- which is how The Husband views me, and has said so. And at this desperate point for me, is certainly the case.

BUT.

He has no one to talk to, and that still remains true. And moreso now, two years later. No friends, no phone calls, silence. He falls frequently into a pit that gets deeper with no one offering a hand that doesn't point back to me, what he did, and Fixing the Marriage above all else. No one else is in this house to see him slowly dying from the hurt. Losing his mind from the stress. Falling down in his continued, never-ending pain. A succession of days go by with no change. Day after day after day. He is coming apart with nowhere to put it. He can't sleep. He has mysterious aches and pains. He keeps a headcold/sinus infection that flares about once a month. This from the Artist Formerly Known as the Picture of Health.

We both have our Falling Down days, and then somehow live to crawl the next inch.

He was reading a book a few months ago, Rebuilding Your Broken World, that made this point: that if the church/community doesn't offer grace, restoration cannot occur. I understand that, but don't believe the church/community is bigger than God, who can do anything no matter what the world does.

And although He's not come through yet, I still hold up my tee-tiny Bic lighter in this darkened concert venue in my -albeit faltering- hope that God, the Ultimate Rockstar Savior, will come back for an encore performance. But my husband holds onto this book's point as The Reason (or one of them) that his World Will Not Be Restored.

He's in no shape for marriage counseling (as so many people continue to recommend), or any form of 'counseling' - he is SO alone, and feels God is punishing/ignoring him. He is in his own cocoon of self-loathing and hopelessness - I swear I don't think anybody GETS that. And in order to have someone talk to him, he has to pay them (when we've counseled). And even those people quickly focus on Fixing the Marriage, and don't give any value to his pain and the Loss of Who He Was; only What He Did.

Which compounds his hurt and only continues the path of Aloneness.

So. I am desperate for The Husband to have someone to talk to, before I come home to find him dead from a stroke or heart attack, or worse.

He is a good person. I believe in him - even while I have emotionally beaten the sh!t out of him for far too long, and continue to when I feel threatened. Damn me. He has talents and gifts being wasted and unused. I believe God has a purpose for him that it's not time for yet, for whatever frustrating/heartbreaking reason. He has lost faith in his future, and he has NOTHING coming in.

No one feeding him hope. I try to encourage him and tell him what I see, but obviously, I am so enmeshed in this situation from my own stuff, sins, wants, and the complexities of our situation - that it's laughable to think I could possibly be effective at this point.

And so I continue to pray for him, for me, for us, and struggle with my own faith issues because of the lack of God-Saving-the-Day here.

He needs a friend. Just one. Just someone to listen to him and validate him. And hold his arms up in this battle (what Bible story was that? I can't remember). Would he even be able to see that person reach out -and reach back - at this point, this late in the Disillusioned and Mistrustful game?

More on my crap later, of which there is always much.

Labels: life in stepford, relational

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 5:46 PM 5 comments

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Which Pill?

Where does the time go? Been 10 days since I posted? geez. That was unheard of back in the day.

Anyway, got stopped dead in my tracks last night by these words of a Wise Internet Sage (especially the last paragraph). Shared with ya'll with said Sage's permission

Maybe forgiveness is simply the act of letting go of the hurt and allowing ourselves to move past it while continuing to live. To take the lesson we have learned and use that knowledge, instead of being paralyzed by the fear that it will happen again. Not to be stupid, no, nor turn a blind eye, but instead to trust ourselves, knowing that we have already faced a terrible thing and survived. We try to teach our children to learn from their experiences - why then do our own often experiences make us want to hide.

Bitterness, resentment, anger, these are all extremely heavy burdens to carry. If we can find a way to forgive, maybe we can just lay down that burden and cherish what we do have.

Sometimes I look around at other couples in their mediocre relationships and wonder if there is a bomb in there waiting to drop. Or maybe the bomb will never drop and they will simply continue to go on as they are, never realizing how much more there could be to their relationships.

Maybe we are the "lucky" ones in that we all really know how great our marriages could be, and we have this wonderful goal to strive for. All they have is what they think they know, the same thing, day in, day out. I don't know what is better: to never really live and never really hurt, existing in a state of numb indifference, taking each other for granted; or to experience the highs and lows of what we are going through - at least we know we are alive, we know what we want, we are striving to make ourselves better people and to, hopefully, make our marriages better in the process.

If you saw The Matrix (the original), you may see the parallel here - which pill would you choose?

Labels: other people's words

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 1:20 PM 0 comments

Monday, January 07, 2008

2008

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. -Benjamin Franklin

Labels: quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 4:51 PM 0 comments

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Pausing for Perspective, and non-snarkiness

...Is that a word, Snarkiness? Or should I spell it Snarkyness?

Anyway, every post I'm composing over here in Stepford is sounding like a complete b*tch-fest (a/k/a Snarky), and that's not very nice, so I'm keeping them marinating in the Drafts folder until I can be a little more balanced.

Which does not seem to be today. Dammit.

I'm mad and frustrated and hurt and p*ssed off. And it's not even PMS-week. But I still want to be fair, since the pen is mightier than the sword and all that.

As my husband attests, I love to be miserable, and the victim, and in the middle of Drama. Yes and no. Drama, yes, I've copped to that before. Victim? check, but I've been working to confess those times in the past and act accordingly in the present. Miserable? It may be a familiar thing in my life, but I don't aim to be miserable, or want it. That pisses me off. Take this fcuking misery, you can have it.

Ugh. My snow-covered acorn is becoming an avalanche. Will post an update when I recover my center.

Labels: life in stepford, rant

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 6:41 PM 2 comments

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Behind the Facade

As ya'll may have noticed, I'm not posting every day - or even close to it - like I was when I first started this blog. Sometimes, I wonder if it's been toxic to my Real Life to overthink all this garbage. (Although over-thinking is certainly not limited to my writing here, nosiree! I analyze my existence like a 3rd party narrator in my brain all the freaking TIME!). I've only recently made some effort to stop the Narrator/Analyzer in my head at times. Long road, that. It's hardwired in me. Like my own version of The Truman Show, starring Moi.

From some of the comments/concern expressed (and thanks for them), I also wanted to clarify that this blog is a dumping ground of my inner black rot, and reading this blog only and not knowing the rest of me (which is 99.8% of ya'll I imagine), would give the impression that I should be placed in a facility to prevent harm to myself and others. Or to just be slapped around and told to Quit The Whining, For Pete's Sake. I can see that.

If you saw the other 95% of me in a casual setting, or at work, or as my friend, you would probably be stunned to realize the extent of inner sludge I dump here as part of the girl you have known. Not that everything is entirely separated, but you realize my point, yes? OMGosh, at work the other day we were talking about a former coworker who was really negative in general, and I mentioned how hard it is for me to be around that kind of person [because: I am a sponge, absorbing the emotions of others] and someone said, "That's because you are such a happy, upbeat person" and I laughed the laugh of the embittered soul and said, "That is such a crock of sh!t"

So I wanted to at least pop in and say hello.

Life in Stepford is a freefall right now, and I'm trying to not fight it. To just fall, feel the scary stuff, and trust that God will catch me before I Splat. That sh!t is HARD, ya'll. I am the first to admit I do not do this well, or consistently. I default to 'it's going to be all right' happy-ending scenarios in my head, just to calm my inner panic when things are scary. I even dream life as I wish it to be, and wake up absorbing that faux 'Life's Okay' into my psyche. And you know, sometimes it's not going to be all right (in the short term), and I have to quit fooling myself in order to gain some false sense of control of the situation. I fake myself out, I've realized, so I don't have a complete panic attack and sit in a corner eating my hair.

At this rate, I'll have my life together by the fourth of Never.

Labels: introspection, life in stepford

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 6:27 PM 1 comments

Adventures in Stepford

instepford (at) gmail.com

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"And now, with God's help, I shall become myself" - Soren Kierkegaard

I was damaged and hurt from the get-go. I buried it and lived on mind-numbing autopilot ... to the detriment of my life and marriage.

But everything looked good from the outside.

Welcome to Stepford.