The question is…
How do you proceed when you know so much about growth mindset, and the situation just sucks, and you want to reach out to someone, but don’t want advice and just want the comfort of someone’s knowing presence?
Tag: marriage
Inside of your hand.
This morning felt sad. I could have wallowed in it. Or drowned in it. But that’s not so much my style. So L and I went to Target for a gift card I needed, and while we were there I got icicle lights for the living room.
There is never enough light in here and this helps, without making it too bright. I like the feel of it, so I think I’ll get more tomorrow. After Christmas sales are cool like that.
I also packed up and organized L’s toy area. The clutter and excess is getting to me. I decluttered the top of Yoshi’s tank and put laundry away and picked up my stuff from our room.
And Chris asked the question, which opened up the opportunity for communication, which I took. And that always feels better.
Every chance I’m able, I’ll grab movement over stagnation.
Damn sure better than rain.
I went to my first Al-Anon meeting.
I wasn’t nervous at all when I left for the meeting. When I got there and sat down I was suddenly doing all my nervous things. People were inviting and warm, but also people were inviting and warm. They were paying attention to me and fawning and supportive and caring and gosh, that is a lot.
But I went. And I stayed. And I plan to go back.
Really, I already knew I’d go back before the meeting. I’ve been to AA meetings and OA meetings and I know the program is good. I know the people are supportive.
Well, most of the people. OA was a completely different fish. I once had a man tell me I didn’t belong there because I was too skinny. As if my appearance precludes me from using food as a coping mechanism. As if anyone in food recovery has to forfeit community support once they find healthier tools to survive. But I digress.
Al-Anon isn’t like that. I can be there for any reason, for any timeline in my life, for any alcoholic who has touched my life. And I didn’t really understand until recently that I probably should have been going all along.
I should have gone six years ago when Chris and I started dating. In the days when a small argument could have compromised his short sobriety. Or when he switched jobs for his dream job and then they insisted he throw away his integrity or quit. And he quit. At an immeasurable hit to his self worth, closing not only that dream in his mind, but a true hope for any dream at all. Or the moment we got pregnant and then miscarried and didn’t get to keep Caleb and he retreated from life for a bit. I could have used Al-Anon when his doctor and seizure medication fucked him over completely. Or when he started taking another medicine he put all his faith in and it backfired and, for all intents and purposes, took away his sobriety. For three years.
I could have used Al-Anon. I could have used the support and guidance of people. And I just…I didn’t know better. I didn’t know there was help for me for all of that or where to find it or, really, that I needed the help. That I deserved the help. I thought maybe that’s just how it was going to be from now on. I knew I needed help–wanted help–, but I didn’t know the help I needed was possible to receive. That it was out there.
And so now here I am. Going to meetings. Getting the community I have so desperately needed. Allowing myself the self-care of actual help. Of not going at it alone. Of being told I’m braver and stronger for showing up than I ever was of trying to hold it together by myself. And so I’m gonna keep doing this awhile.
Thinking of ways to get back home.
Fuck. My eating disorder is fucking loud today.
I had started my day excited that it felt like a new start of healthiness and healing.
I made Brussels sprouts even!
Oh, but did my body (mind?) have other plans!
This fucking sucks.
Like, truly. And I want to turn it off. But it’s not a switch. It’s a weight. And I really just don’t have the means to push it off or shrug.
All I can do is write.
And of course it didn’t occur to me before the ice cream bar at 9am to write. Or the cake at 9:45. It was only at 10:30 when the sugar high made my head swim and I realized I should make some protein that I remembered writing is the shrug. I need the accountability. But now I still have to eat this despite not being hungry because fuck, the swimming.
But then I will sit down. And I won’t eat more. And I won’t self-medicate–I’ll only self-care. And maybe cry some because it hurts a lot, and then I will sleep. I need to oxygen mask myself today, even if just for a little while.
Just hold on.
I’m having a moment where I’m trying to remember all our lasts. In case you don’t come back. In case the devastation of that undoes me so irrevocably that I can’t recall a single thing about today. Or yesterday.
I slept on you this morning. It was the best half hour of sleep I’ve had in months and I don’t think I ever actually slept. You kissed me and called me beautiful when I got home from my walk. I don’t want to remember that last tho…because it wasn’t you anymore.
We kissed last night. It felt like you. A glimpse of you between the drinks.
I’m trying to find the hope and the light, but it is currently too far to reach.
Your life doesn’t mean anything to you in this moment and I am now standing here, the girl who doesn’t know which story will be hers. Will I be the girl who loses you forever come morning? Will I be able to honor the me in another universe who got to keep you when I didn’t get to? Is there another me in some other universe who has already gotten the call?
I’ve never been this sick with worry and fear. They say that to keep going, you just have to put one foot in front of the other. I’m doing that, but all I can manage is pacing circles.
Spinning in your head.
The voices in my head could shut the fuck up now. This is the least relaxing walk ever.
~~~~~~~
Eta
It was my intention to turn the day around. Just because Chris was on the phone and the girl was sleeping and the boys were doing homework and watching netflix (respectable) didn’t mean I had to lose the last warm weather day. So I took Harley for a walk.
But instead of enjoying the walk and the weather and the outside, I just could not stop the voices in my head. The voices waiting for the argument to ensue. It was like I was trying to protect some future me, in case my walk was misconstrued. And so now I’m back home and the sun is slowing going down and the weather is mild, but verging chilly and…this weekend was no reprieve at all.
I get to practice again tomorrow.
The sun broke free of the clouds.
A letter to my husband:
He once told you that I feel trapped. And I feel like it’s the biggest disservice he ever did us.
There was never ever going to be me convincing you otherwise because his word was gospel. So while I never argue the point, I never agreed with it either. I know at the time I said I didn’t agree, but any time you’ve brought it up since, I’ve let it be. It felt too big a thing to put my energy against. Because that’s what it was. Energy against. And not energy into.
Pouring energy into something is positive and constructive. Pouring energy against something is just…insanity.
So I let it be.
This morning a wave of depression crashed upon me. Yesterday was more than I could take after last week. Then this morning when the tire pressure light came on again and I was driving on empty it all got really big. I still went about life anyway. Kids needed to be taken to school. Dishes needed to be done. Life goes on.
But just now as I was washing the dishes, a snapshot of a text conversation flashed in my mind. I was in the basement doing laundry. There was a suggestion to do something fun because it was my birthday. The insinuation that I could go elsewhere with elseothers. “Go out and do karaoke.” I would like that, I had replied. “So go now with Chris.” It’s not the same, I replied.
It’s not the same.
That one line. That one line caused someone else to form the belief that I felt trapped.
He told you I felt trapped. The assumption was always that it was about you and our children. That was the lie I haven’t been able to undo.
I see it clearly now. As I stand here with half-washed dishes behind me. Because this just couldn’t wait. I had to type this out right away. Because I couldn’t squander this moment of clarity. This opportunity of having all the right words.
I said it wouldn’t be the same doing karaoke with you. It wasn’t a slight against you. It wasn’t because I felt trapped by you. I felt trapped within myself.
It wasn’t until just right now, while I stood under a shroud of heavy depression that I could better recall that night. A night filled with depression. Months of depression. And when I said I would love to go out, it was the image of escaping me that filled my head.
I would never go somewhere and sing in front of people. That sounds terrible. But I wanted to be the person who could do that and think of it as fun, just so I could get away from me.
I wanted an escape from me, for just a moment. The thought of a physical escape from being trapped inside myself was appealing. Desperately appealing. For just that moment I needed the illusion of escape.
If anything real existed in that illusion, it would break. So, if you–the most real thing in my life–came, it wouldn’t be the same. You would have broken the illusion.
I never felt trapped in this life with you. I felt trapped in my own head. He didn’t think to differentiate.
I’m sorry I didn’t have the words until now. I’m sorry I felt so small and that that conversation gave way to a misunderstanding that was so big. I don’t feel small like that anymore, not even today under the weight of…all the things. I don’t feel trapped inside myself. It would mean everything if you’d believe me that I never felt trapped by you. It would be everything to heal this part.
Some kind of light at the end.
I’m not going to eat tonight. I’m so tired from making decisions I shouldn’t have been making. I’m so exhausted I could cry.
I’m so exhausted I didn’t realize I was already crying.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to catch up from the last week. I don’t think I’ll ever try. I think I will just blank slate it. And I will just sleep instead. And maybe sometime tonight my skin will pass by Chris’s skin and he won’t shudder. Because finally finally he has found his way back to me.
Anything but empty.
Not much is harder than watching someone you love have the hardest week of their life. He is hurting so much. The medication was tearing him apart while he was on it, but now that he’s stopped taking it, it’s a whole different war. He is so fucking strong to detox this out of his system. So brave. And even still, I see him feeling like he’s losing the fight.
He looks at me and he makes the face of my husband, smiling as if to connect and soothe me. But I don’t feel connected. I don’t feel soothed.
My husband is in that body somewhere. Fighting for his life. Fighting for our life together and for our family. I will not distract him with the pain of missing him. I will not distract him with the things I can handle. But make no mistake, I am so utterly lost without our connection.
Today, on day seven, he said he was thinking of throwing in the towel. Because it’s so bad and because it’s still so bad, days after he thought he’d be on the upswing. And because there’s only so much a body can take and he has far surpassed that point.
And maybe it’s selfish of me, but damn, if he could just endure another couple days. They say the worst is over after seven to ten days. He could be on the other side of this! And then no more waiting weeks, months, years to be off it again.
But still. To have to look at him today and be completely helpless in providing any real relief–and probably making it even worse to flat out tell him “Don’t do it. Don’t give up.” It hurts. It hurts like dying inside. And I don’t even know if I’m right. There is no guarantee he’ll be over the hump by day ten. I can say I have enough faith for the both of us. But it doesn’t stop any of it from hurting so damn much.
We laughed into the sky.
I have this quiet philosophy. I believe that there are infinite parallel lives where a moment branched and a whole other life is played out differently elsewhere.
I don’t much entertain thoughts of most of these paths. Rarely do I wonder the discontentment of the Jill who didn’t get a divorce. Or the Jill who married the first guy she dated. But it does spark thought in my head randomly.
Last night Chris was on the brink of a grand mal seizure. He updated all the information I’d need for the doctors. He, for the first time in six and a half years, told me to call for an ambulance if he fell out. He felt one coming and we were as prepared as we could be.
I know too tho that if he were to have a grand mal like his last, it’s possible that would just be the end of him as I know him. Nothing prepares for that.
But as I stand here in my kitchen and he shaves in the bathroom, I’m reminded of my philosophy. Because somewhere, some Jill is living her worst day. Somewhere she hasn’t slept or is waking into the nightmare that her husband had a seizure that took him from her. And my heart hurts.
A few years back, I fell down a flight of stairs. When Chris opened the basement door to come after me, because of the position I was in, he thought I was dead. Sometimes I think about that Chris. The one in the parallel universe who lost Jill that night. My heart hurts for him too.
So today, I just feel immense gratitude. And every cell of my being honors the us on different branches, living out different lives, some immeasurably paralyzing, while others blissfully content. And I hope I remember too, in times of great darkness, that some me somewhere else is living out goodness and wishing me well.
TectonicDraft 