Adventures in Stepford

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Order up

What I am looking for is a blessing that's not in disguise. -Kitty O'Neill Collins

Labels: quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 1:48 PM 1 comments

Monday, August 11, 2008

The Long & Winding Road

A long dispute means both parties are wrong
-Voltaire

I'm sitting in a wi-fi cafe catching up on emails and attempting to blog. Here's a great quote, and I have several posts rattling around that I'm going to empty on the page today/tonight, so more to come.

No, really

Labels: quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 1:38 PM 0 comments

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Cracked Rear View

The definition of hell: proximity without intimacy -Dante

Labels: quotes, snapshots

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 9:10 PM 4 comments

Monday, March 17, 2008

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

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

Friday, October 26, 2007

Inside Out

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. -Proverbs 14:1 NIV

Woe to you ... you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

Woe to you ... you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. -Matthew 23:25-27 NIV

Labels: life in stepford, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 7:16 PM 1 comments

Monday, October 01, 2007

Fire Up a Colortini

Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air.

-broadcaster Tom Snyder,1935-2007

Wheeee! Lots of sh!t flying through the air.

Sure enough, I open my mouth and satan sees where to get me. Fcuker. The engine noise has been so loud in the last week, I just want to lay down and give up. He who is in me is greater, He who is in me is greater, He who is in me....

I am weary of this seesaw I live on. Hope - and change, and then backsliding and nothing good. Fall is in the air ...literally.

Ya'll, truly. I'm ashamed to post anymore. I cannot imagine what a fcuking SNORE it is to read 'hey, big insight' and then 'hey, i still suck'. I hate being me, and then every once in a while I don't. I keep pushing this elephant up the stairs, I keep blowing it, yet I keep having hope. Many days, I honestly do not know why, other than God won't let me quit completely. And, lucky you, are stuck on the ride with me.

I also feel like I'm giving God a bad rap. Not like I'm some big influence or He can't take it, but I keep saying Yay God about stuff that happens, thinking I'm on the upswing, giving Him credit. And then BOOM, I crash, my inner garbage coming out from underneath the carpet where I've apparently swept it, and it kind of makes God look bad to those of you who don't know Him well.

I am not representing Him worth a sh!t. This is not God's fault, it's mine. And looking back over old posts from last fall/winter, some of my world is different and yet much of my Insight remains un-acted-upon. Again, that's my fault. Emotional impotence.

I have seen changes in me, and I write those first to encourage myself. The most positive changes have been with my children. I have been, in the past, a scary horrible no-good parent. Selfish, downright mean, and easily irritated by small people who were not intentionally doing me harm.

Every parent struggles with pieces of this puzzle, but my struggles were more than sleep-deprivation and normal stress. There was a black place inside me, still is, that puts a shield between myself and my family. Cannot put words on it, but it was ugly with the people who least deserved it. And rose up in a swift tsunami-type fashion when it came.

If nothing else, that change in me is Real. And I weep, that deep-down painful sorrow of regret, when I think back. I would give anything, anything to rewind -and tape over- that part of my movie.

I look back in my rearview mirror with a clarity that I don't have in The Moment (or The Month, or The Year). Honestly, I feel like I'm several years behind myself. Like now, for instance. I'm learning much about me that would have SO better served me two years ago. But it's not enough to know it now, because such damage was done in the interim that I need bigger forces than Two-years-ago-Insight. Capice?

Like bringing in FEMA way too late for Katrina; would have been beneficial on the ground before landfall, not playing catch-up in its wake. Bigger forces (military, etc) were needed in the aftermath - and even then, it was impossible to 'fix'. Granted, hindsight and all. Who can know what is needed ahead of time, or how much destruction we'll find ourselves in, etc. But really, ya'll. You know what I'm saying? I am just now getting the FEMA funds in, far too late for where the circumstances are.

There is a deep piece of my heart that swings in a free fall, scared and frightened. It looks for a place to grab onto something safe, but chooses people & circumstances to validate me. Especially my husband: please love me, please like me, please find me to be good, please please please.

Nothing 'sticks' to my heart, it's like Teflon. God sees me as I really am: filthy rags. BUT. He also sees me through the blood as I am in Jesus, worthy of love. Why can't that stick to me?

I wander through life like a Wemmick, letting people put their gold stars or red dots on me as they choose. Even those don't stick: and not for the good reason in the story, but because the ways of other-seeking validation don't work.

I'm no fool. I am actually a smart person, good student, quick study. But not where the rubber meets the road obviously. I'm an asset to most situations - outside of my own home. For the most part, I like who I am with everyone else in my world. I've learned to be a better friend to people, really be interested in them and concerned for their wellbeing, I accept responsibility for dropping the ball - personally with friends, or professionally with coworkers. Quickly. I don't need to be reminded or prompted for that.

At home I do. It has taken the better part of three years for me to to step around the screen of My Defensiveness with my children - my own children, for fcuk's sake - and apologize when necessary. My husband had to call me out, listen to me deflect like a petulant teenager, and finally, I would say I was sorry about something to my own child. I am sick at myself when I think of it all. This was not some isolated incident; it happened often.

On the thank-you-Jesus flipside, I can now spot when it happens without a Proctor/Chaperon/Husband present and apologize immediately to my children, with a non-deflecting explanation. Even more than half the time (praise God), I can see it coming and stop the Bad in a pre-emptive strike, completely foregoing the need for apology and repentance. Am I making any sense? she asks the invisible internet.

But I can do none of these things with my own husband. There have been very itty-bitty-small, too-little-too-late FEMA-type improvements, but again, they are small in proportion to where we are -and where I need to be with this stronghold. I need to be down the road a-piece, people. And I don't move. Much. WTF?

I do not, without great wailing/gnashing of teeth- if ever - say "you're right, i'm wrong" right off the bat. I imagine myself being able to do it, but when we arrive at an opportunity: WALL. Fear. Defense. And it's only with my spouse. I will own up to anything, anywhere. Elsewhere. Here online, at work, with my counselor - about the very thing my husband has told me. I can't think of anywhere else that I do NOT eat my sandwich I made.

But to his face, in the moment? I am mute, with my insides contorting. Dying to connect in a real way, yet placing a firm wedge between us that grows larger with each conversation: But that's not what I meant, I never said that, I didn't do that. Because, as he so aptly puts it, if I am never wrong he is the one who always must be. That's not relational balance, nor is it fair. Dammit, I am NOT this person. I'm not. But here I am, having been her for the better part of my life.

This screams "Trouble with Authority Males over Me", as there is only him really. And God. I fool myself that I'm cool with God, just not my husband. I'm probably not cool with either of them. This is something else my husband has suggested. And, like all his points, I cannot come to grips with in his presence, yet mull it over afterwards. He thinks I don't believe anything he mentions or insights, but that's not it.

I've been on my knees about this problem, and others, and continue to be. And will continue to be, until He changes me or I die. I can't do this alone. I crave relationship, yet am so damaged. The area of Relationship is where my damage was done initially (childhood/innocence/trust betrayed, etc). Why do you think it's hard for me to even trust God, a heavenly Father, when parental relationship was so perverted in my reality.

I have no excuses: yes, my past is why I've made all these fortresses to my heart, but I no longer live in a battlefield. I should not function like I do, to the detriment of everything I ever wanted. And years behind the learning curve.

I see through a lens of competition with my husband. I want to be Good Enough, I think he's a Better Person, I reflexively feel like a Loser and/or Belittle him in some way. Not always directly, just not Building Him Up or Supporting him. I pray for the know-how to Get Over Myself and my implanted fear that if he is a Happy, Successful human being, he'll want nothing from me or not need me. Or find someone Better. This is a whole different topic, but it all ties in to the tangle that is my black, ugly places. Fear is immobilizing

Ironically, or not so much, I do Build Him Up in my conversations about him. Just not to him. Like it's Giving In, or some such bullsh!t. Again, in my rational mind, I see all (well, most) of my wrong behaviors and know I need to change. Every opportunity reveals my failures.

He's really a good man, my husband. And I really want to be a good woman. In general, but especially in my home. I want to be well-matched with him. I want to be vulnerable with him, rest in him. I have likely never done that, at least not since we were very newly in love maybe. The undercurrent of Us is static and tension, as I manipulate all things in order to Keep Me Comfortable. I want victory where I've previously had nothing but defeat. But I want it on my own, not depending on him to validate me. And this is where it's so tricky. Where I fall down.

So easy to see it in your mind, especially after the fact, but impossible to implement. I am NOT the one person too fcuked up for God to fix. I just had to write that 'out loud' because I need the reminder. I'm too big for me to fix, but not for Him.

When "You're right, I'm wrong" about anything (but especially the big things) I pray to step over myself and tell him so. Within minutes, not hours, days or never. With God's help, and only through that, I will change.

From this day forward, I drag my sinful prideful self to a standing position and attempt to move forward. Again. Damn, ya'll.

Labels: introspection, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 8:02 AM 6 comments

Sunday, September 23, 2007

My hope is a habit

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.

Labels: introspection, life in stepford, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 5:17 AM 2 comments

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Getting the Script

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.

Labels: introspection, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 3:15 AM 0 comments

Friday, September 14, 2007

Twisted up inside

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'.

Labels: introspection, life in stepford, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 6:03 AM 3 comments

Sunday, July 29, 2007

2007, or The Year I finally got an Easy Bake Oven

"to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. -t.s. elliot

I don't know why I have always wanted an Easy Bake Oven. No clue. Perhaps having grown up on the Wrong Side of the Tracks, it was the appeal of the Glamour toy. It certainly wasn't the cooking aspect; I was such a latchkey kid that I did a lot of cooking for myself. Mainly noodles and Ragu, or Swanson's chicken pot pies -but still. I was not craving time in a kitchen.

But I never received one as a present. And frankly, I'm not even sure that I ever told anyone that I wanted one. Maybe it never was written on a Wish List for Santa, but I cannot remember a time when I didn't want one. Perhaps in my fantasy thinking, someone would just know and get me one.

Never happened.

I was not scarred for life by it. As ya'll know, there were plenty of real-life events in my childhood to scar my psyche. The lack of an Easy Bake was not one of them.

Eventually I became an adult(-ish) person. And I have mentioned over the years that I always wanted an EBO. I even remotely entertained the idea that perhaps one day a creative, thoughtful boyfriend (or later Husband) would buy one and put it under the tree for me. I never asked for one outright, but subconsciously I pictured a sweet man giving me the Easy Bake Oven I never had.

Ya'll, I am not right.

As an aside, I will tell you something wonderful that The Husband did years ago that resembled this little fantasy. There is a Dr. Seuss book called Happy Birthday To You! about a Seussical place called Katroo where on your birthday all kinds of amazing stuff is done for You! Just for You! I loved it as a child. So happy and celebratory, and completely opposite of my entire childhood. It's not a widely known book, and we found it one day in a bookstore. I waxed all kinds of nostalgic about it to my husband. The next year on my birthday, that book was one of my presents, complete with a sweet inscription from said husband. It's one of my favorite presents ever, and I read it to the children on their birthdays at bedtime. I doubt my husband even realizes how special that was for me.

Moving on!

So here I am back in Stepford after a horrific time dealing with my mother suddenly, unexpectedly in ICU and her subsequent death, and all these swirling emotions. One Saturday morning we go to a yard sale as a family. And what to my wandering eyes should appear? A brand new, still in the box, Easy Bake Oven.

Of course we bought it for my daughter you see, but my inner little girl was sated. A wrinkle in the fabric of my life was smoothed. I do not pretend to know why, it just was.

The next day we made a chocolate-frosted cake from the still-unopened mixes included in the box. I knew from licking the batter that it would be perfectly hideous, so I didn't even have a bite of the finished product. That wasn't the point, and I knew that going in. I just wanted to have one. And I do. How did an Easy Bake Oven get on my cosmic To Do List? I've no idea. But now I can check it off the list. And I'm oddly thankful. Go figure.

Labels: introspection, past tense, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 7:37 PM 3 comments

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Learning to Surf

You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. -Jon Kabat-Zinn

Labels: life in stepford, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 6:34 PM 3 comments

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Beauty for Ashes

I have much to process and share with you and absolutely no stinkin' time for online navel gazing of late. What's marinating here deserves more than some limp synopsis on borrowed time.

As those great philosophers Toad the Wet Sprocket sang, "All I Need Is Hope." I'm getting some, and I want to share it with you. God's grace is huge -it is- but the road is long ...and fraught with potholes.

Thanks for waiting. Here are some pertinent words in the meantime (Ya'll know how I am about my quotes and lyrics):

I am unwritten
Can't read my mind
I'm undefined

I'm just beginning,
The pen's in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else

No one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open

Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
-Unwritten, Natasha Bedingfield

When nothing is sure, everything is possible. -Margaret Drabble

You have to be willing to give up the life you planned in order to live the life that's waiting for you. -Joseph Campbell

Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible. -Corrie Ten Boom

Labels: lyrical gangsta, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 9:47 AM 1 comments

Monday, May 21, 2007

This made me laugh today

"I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." -Otter, Animal House, 1978.

Labels: quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 11:17 AM 1 comments

Sunday, May 13, 2007

What We Do

If only we could brand this on our souls when it really counted:

What we do is more important than what is done to us.
-Nikki Giovanni, a Virginia Tech English professor

Labels: quotes, snapshots

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 4:35 AM 0 comments

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Although I wouldn't mind a bit of Comfort, as I'm good on Adversity

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as adversity has done.

Out of pain and problems have come the sweetest songs, the most poignant poems, the most gripping stories.

Out of suffering and tears have come the greatest spirits and the most blessed lives. -Billy Graham

Labels: quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 8:33 PM 0 comments

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Gotta Keep 'Em Separated

An old, old, old entry never posted...

I am weary of crying myself to sleep alone. I'm tired of being at work so much. I miss my kids. I miss having a life. A real one, with laughter, and flirting, and silent smiling eye contact, and touch. And TIME. OMgosh, ya'll, I physically ache from touch withdrawl. I'm tired of hugging myself in bed at night so I don't fly apart. I'm so sad. I need to increase my meds. I want to be something more than someone's pain in the ass. Someone to avoid each day. And each night. Continuously. Without end.

I know a lot of sh!t is my fault. I know it. But I'm tired of being so alone. Unloved. So, so tired. Just a bad night, long hours at work, not enough sleep. I'm sure people pay good money for the salty facials I give myself at night with my tears. I can't even see the fcuking monitor. A glance at his lower back in passing makes my heart hurt. I want to kiss his arms as they grip the steering wheel.

I want him to want my skin touching his. He does not. I am blessed to get a foot touching mine in the late night when he returns to bed. I am not being facetious. I am blessed to have it. I love to feel his skin, and if that is all I get so be it. I am just sad he may never want it again. That his Default mode is sleeping-with-his-back-facing-wife. Only when I leave the bed does he turn to face my side. Even while sleeping. It's that deeply ingrained to Avoid Me.

We live a life of halves. Our clean laundry barely touches in the hamper. His side. My side. I want it all mixed up together. He separates it. So I do, too. I smell his shirts before they go in the washer. I cannot even imagine him doing something like that. (Not with mine)

I see potential for so much positives, but it's like the bridge washed out and we just look at each other over the chasm and think, well, damn. that's too bad. When a quick look around and some joint effort would build something better.

I see other people light up when I walk in. He doesn't anymore. He goes dimmer. Other people used to comment about how I would light up when I saw him. Did he ever notice that? Does it matter?

Save a place for me
Save a space for me
In your heart
In your heart
-Tracy Chapman

You break me open
-Jars of Clay

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. -Thomas Jefferson

Labels: past tense, quotes, relational

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 7:08 PM 1 comments

Friday, April 13, 2007

R-rated Random Musings

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory –Albert Schweitzer

I grew up sexually abused. I've since learned that we 'survivors' have a universal habit of looking at our situation as Could Have Been Worse Than It Was.

I do it, too. Mine has always been: Well, at least it wasn't a blood relative (because it wasn't my biological father). I don't know why we do this, but we do. In order not to drown in the Awfulness of it all? To find someone who Had It Worse?

I don't know. I do know that about 10 years ago, I was a part of a group of sexual abuse survivors who met for several months. It was my first time with Real Life other people "like me" and it was eye-opening. It also reinforced my habit of 'downplaying' my abuse. OMGosh, these women had it SO bad. Fathers and brothers abusing them, their pasts so traumatic that most of them had gaping holes in their memories where they couldn't remember everything, most of them overweight in an effort to 'hide' themselves and their bodies from being attractive.

I, on the other hand, remained thin, had no problem remembering every second of my abuse vividly, and it was 'only' my stepfather not a "real" relative. (and because my mother didn't end up marrying him for years later, he really wasn't even 'related' to me at the time of the abuse). So I concluded again that It Could Have Been Worse.

When anyone hears that I was abused (it's precious few that know), and that subsequently had a problematic marriage they assume that I have "sex" problems. That my husband Wants It, but I must have some Post-Traumatic Sex Disorder.

As we all know here, that's not an issue for me. Not in my marriage anyway, but it was once a hill to climb.

I was pretty sexual early on; that seems to be the fork in the road for abuse victims: they either shut down their sexuality as 'dirty', or else go hog-wild to the other end. I threw sex around without much concern. The more the better. Oink.

Yet, I recall crying silently during The Act on more than one occasion. College, mostly. In the missionary position, I have some vivid memories of wanting to scream, to claw, to Stop It, (with a long-term boyfriend whom I really did love) -and yet I remained silent and wept secretly into his shoulder as I grit my teeth.

There was this one summer of unspecified angst, and then it somehow worked itself out. I have never felt that way again during sex. [With one exception, but it wasn't an abuse flashback, I was just having sex with someone who I wished was someone else. So that doesn't really count, but it was the same wanting-to-scream-while-crying-silently misery, so I'll include it here in my quest for full disclosure].

It did take me some years to quit being all about my partner's pleasure, to the exclusion of my own. That was just general ignorance -coupled with the desire for 'power' in the bed (residual from not having any power previously, I'm sure). Now I really love the idea of being 'taken' and controlled in a sexy, eyes-open, healthy-relationship type of way. So I've come full circle, I suppose.

I actually discovered my first non-faked orgasm completely by accident with my college boyfriend. So that's what the big deal was. Sex had been fun, but it got a LOT more fun that year. And I learned how to ask for what I wanted, which I learned (surprise) was pretty appealing. You know, I haven't done that kind of asking in many years. Shame on me. Something to change.

I think about that "bad sex" time occasionally because -in hindsight- I'm grateful for it. [Edited to Add: the time I'm speaking about here is the college-boyfriend-time. Needed to clarify] It was brutal, but it exorcised a demon out of me. I've never felt 'abused' before, during, or after consensual sex. That, I think, was a God thing. Only He could fix that so decisively. And I'm thankful to not have that issue on the table. Life's hard enough.

Labels: past tense, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 5:34 PM 1 comments

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Strange Things Are Afoot At The Circle K

Things are happening here. God is brewing a strong pot of coffee; I'll let you know when He pours the cup what we end up discussing.

Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit. -Alexandre Dumas

Marriage is like submarines: they only work if you are COMPLETELY IN. -Frank Pittman

We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness. -Ellen Goodman

Labels: life in stepford, quotes

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 8:40 PM 0 comments

Adventures in Stepford

instepford (at) gmail.com

Shoutbox

"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.