Ultimately, we're all dead men. Sadly we cannot choose how, but what we can decide is how we meet that end - in order that we are remembered as men. -unknown
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? ~Albert Camus
Want to tell ya'll what's been going on - yet scared if I open my big, fat, quick-to-claim-change mouth, it will go away. Aside: I felt the same way the day after I became a Christian, too. Everything felt very different, and I tiptoed around it for a while thinking it was some total bullsh!t placebo effect. Or if I acknowledged it in any way, it would dissipate immediately and prove me a gullible dumba$$. Trust no one. I am Fox Mulder.
I have been clinging, clinging, clinging to The Husband, or the Hope of him for-freaking-evah since the affair. Unhealthy and all that, well aware. Much advice given (and heard) to not focus on my spouse, but to look up to the Lord and put my faith in Him with the capital H, not the lowercase h. Concentrate on that at He will give you the desires of your heart, etc.
Heard it, understood it, totally agreed with it.
Still could not do it.
My emotions have been all tangled up with my husband's actions, what he was -or wasn't- doing. My validity as a woman, person, etc. all directly dependent on how my husband acted.
Trying to be pretty enough, helpful enough, or [fill in the blank] enough for him to [love me, be attracted to me, want me, need me] again. Fcuk. Who could stand that? He told me that I was measuring everything he did or said against how it Made Me Feel.
I kept wanting that to NOT be true.
But it was.
Even when I tried to disconnect from reacting to him, I did it in a p*ssed off kind of way. As if to Prove a Point, or Get Him To Notice. All about - still - his reactions, just from another angle.
I b*tched and moaned wherever I could ... on this blog, to my counselor, to a very few friends (who could still stand to hear me whine about my tribulations months later) ... all about how my marriage was difficult, how my life was SO HARD, how I needed, I wanted, I craved. Pity me, I am Suffering such Woe, I am the Victim of my Life.
Even while learning to see my own flaws in this relationship, and empathizing the state of my husband's painful path, I still did every action, thought, prayer, with the motivation of Getting What I Want.
So.
Long ago, when I was maybe 10 years old, I went to California and was able to ride in a glider one afternoon. Amazing. Gliders are unpowered airplanes, launched by an aerotow -or powered aircraft- tethered to the glider by a rope.
The tow plane pulls the glider until the desired altitude is reached and detaches the glider by disconnecting the rope. The glider then sails in the air until landing on its own.
While the tow plane is pulling the glider by the rope, you're surrounded by the loud engine roar and feeling the vibrations of the engined plane, as if you are riding in a regular small plane. And then, suddenly a loud pop occurs, and all noise and vibrations cease. Immediately. Everything is very, very quiet although your landscape has not changed a bit. It is unreal.
This is the perfect word picture for what happened to me about two weeks ago. My landscape has not changed one eensy iota, but suddenly everything changed inside my plane. It got quiet and smooth, and I didn't even do anything. I've been praying for change for, oh, years and on some random September day - in the middle of the day, no less - I untethered myself from the lead plane.
Or should I say God untethered me, because as we all know, in my own strength I am a glorious failure many times over.
He probably just got sick of watching me spin and spin, fiddling while Rome burns, tethered to the wrong thing. I imagine he reached out and said 'you know, this glider you are in is pretty cool, but you're not using it right. You're still hooked to someone else way past cruising altitude. No one else is supposed to be leading you at this point but me' and-
POP
end of freaked-out vibrations and jackhammer engine noise. Calm, eerie quiet and blue sky. While the landscape is exactly the same.
My external situation has not changed one whit, same marriage, kids, job, life, hardships. But my attitude has. Fo' reals, yo. Do I trust it? Are you kidding? Of course not (see: Fox Mulder), but I sure have enjoyed it. I got untethered from The Husband and found some sense of Who I Am, validation on my own, and a sense of worth in spite of all that jazz.
Oh my, this sounds all kind of self-helpy. Eww. I swear there will be no summer-camp karaoke version of "Friends are friends forever" sung at the end of this post.
The fact remains that this is a significant change in my thought pattern (regardless of how I've come off as so Enlightened or whatnot); no self-pity, no hovering around him, aching that he doesn't want to be around me or love me or whatever.
I've been most careful to hip-check my motivations and make sure I'm still respectful and kind to him, not detached in that Fcuk-you kind of way at ALL. I keep proofreading myself, thinking I will surely be bursting into flames emotionally at any point because I cannot ever keep up any change I'm trying to make.
So far, there are a few twinges of my old stuff ready to bubble up on occasion, but I look up and pray for focus and it generally works. Inside my glider is still quiet, although not as dramatic as when it first occurred (dammit). But I think God knows that Drama gets my attention and He swung the pendulum waaaaaaaay to the extreme initially so I would know it was Him (with the capital 'H') and pay attention.
I'm working be a team member in the household, because it's Right, not because it might please (lowercase-'h') him.
I'm just kind of 'over' him, but not in the break-up way.
Dealing with my FOO (family of origin) as a grown-up is crazyhard, especially in the aftermath of my mother's death, but I don't think much healing would be happening without it.
But still.
I've been dealing with sh!t for a looooooong time now, and I've still been tethered to the towplane. So why now? Mid-afternoon in mid-September? His ways are SO not our ways, but when He steps in: you know it.
I've been working on an update from Stepford since the 16th; still working the kinks out! Anyway, ran across this brilliantly-put thought from a Wise Internet Sage this a.m. and had to post it. I know that when some folks end up in affairs, they really feel that they've found the person who "gets them", as opposed to their spouse. (but they're just in the "velcro phase" of a relationship)
You have this script in your head of what the perfect spouse would do and say when you're down, when you're excited, or whatever, and when they don't follow the script, you feel lost and alone, like no one really "gets" you, least of all the one person who's supposed to "get" you like no one ever has before. Of course that happens quite a bit because they haven't seen the script.
This song has been on my iPod for a looooong time, and I just recently caught the lyrics in my brain. It makes me smile because I have felt like this recently, busy concentrating on this damned elephant and -hey, would you lookit that- there goes a piano all to pieces right behind me. I've watched the stars fall silent from your eyes All the sights that I have seen I can't believe that I believed I wished That you could see There's a new planet in the solar system There is nothing up my sleeve
I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs I'm tossing up punchlines that were never there Over my shoulder a piano falls Crashing to the ground
And all this talk of time Talk is fine And I don't want to stay around Why can't we pantomime, just close our eyes And sleep sweet dreams Being here with wings on our feet
I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs I'm tossing up punchlines that were never there Over my shoulder a piano falls Crashing to the ground
I'm breaking through, I'm bending spoons I'm keeping flowers in full bloom I'm looking for answers from the great beyond
I want the hummingbirds, the dancing bears Sweetest dreams of you Look into the stars Look into the moon
I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs I'm tossing up punchlines that were never there Over my shoulder a piano falls Crashing to the ground
I'm breaking through I'm bending spoons I'm keeping flowers in full bloom I'm looking for answers from the great beyond
Geez, I cannot find a minute to gather my thoughts like roping a bull and reigning them in on paper. I'm working so much lately that I come home and collapse, preferring to pick up a book than turn on my laptop. So here's some of my simultaneous reading material of late.
Very readable, and surprisingly necessary. About halfway through, and so far highly recommended.
This book has been in my stash for maaaaaaany years, I just wasn't ready to read it until now. Very good stuff, even for someone like me who has read quite a lot about this subject, plus therapy ad nauseum, yadda yadda yadda. The author has personal experience with abuse, and has devoted his life to untangling the rest of us from it. He conducts seminars and small group workshops in Seattle, which may be an option at some point for me.
I drafted this entry well over a month ago, and never got around to posting it. There are more changes internally and I'm currently not so twisted up, at least in different areas now, but it's worth putting out there as late as it is. I am taking Yoda's advice (see below):
Train yourself to let go... of everything you fear to lose. -yoda
This has been a tough time. It could be worse, mind you. Much, much worse. But it is what it is: tough for me.
My mother is unexpectedly dead, with many things unresolved between us.
My marriage is ... different from what each party desires from a marriage. Is that PC enough?
I came back from my mother's illness/death/funeral and immediately returned to work and the rest of my full-time life. I'm having the bare minimum of free time, and no time that's without the frantic undercurrent of you need to be doing x,y, and z. My time to process everything is jagged and haphazard. Which leads to random ambushes of grief and tears.
And, oddly enough, pain from the affair is back in spades. Hello? It was over a year ago, almost two in a few months. I think perhaps because it's a known pain, and one I can deal with -compared to the complex pain about my mother.
I also think satan is throwing me curve balls. Exhibit A: I have over 700 songs on my iPod, and what shows up on Shuffle mode for the last two days: twice? Fcuking Sarah McLachlan and Song for a Winter's Night. Twice. In two days. WTF. It's playing now as I type this. I really like that song, but she burned a CD for him with it and it is a flesh-eating, heart-squeezing pain to hear it lately. Dammit. This should be loooooong gone, but it has made a comeback. Just what I need. Thanks.
The crease between my eyebrows is more prominent each day; etched from worry and past pain revisited. I've considered cosmetic intervention, it's so disturbing to me lately.
I am craving -craving- physical comfort, and quit begging for it long ago. I miss the spontaneous touches, hand holding, etc. Not to mention hearing "I love you" - well over a year-and-a-half for that.
And that's not to say there's no other side of the coin. There is all the crap I brought to my marriage to make things difficult at best. When things are emotionally arduous for me, I close off and lob my visceral grenades. And I'm not talking about just your regular, garden-variety difficult: I can get crappy over small things that just make me uncomfortable -and therefore defensive.
My husband has said that I have not ever 'built him up as a man' - and still do not. That includes support and respect. And over time (and time, and time again), we are grown far apart on a most basic level. Trust. Connection. All that Must-Be-There stuff. How do you renovate a house upon an eroded foundation? Can you recreate a foundation after things are so far gone? I mean, yeah, yeah, God can do anything. But, will He?
So. I know a lot in theory, but fail to implement. Acknowledge issues and fault, yet hope that the mere act of acknowledgment will somehow fix things, or give me a 'pass'.
