Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid

There are a lot of things I don't say -- on this blog or otherwise.  In the last nine months, I have learned the art of saying nothing.  Letting the moment pass.  I have learned that sometimes silence makes the point better than words.  Or sometimes there's not a point to be made, although accepting that takes patience and time.  I have learned that if I sit back, hold my breath and wait, the moment passes.  Things often work themselves out or become clearer -- or even irrelevant. Circumstances change, my emotions evolve.

Maybe I just come to terms with the way things are.  Deal with it.  Move on.  Or maybe I don't.  It's not too late to say what I wanted to say, only now I can say it thoughtfully, not emotionally.  I am learning, as my therapist would say, to listen to my wise mind instead of my emotional mind.  You might say I am growing up.

This lesson has been important for me, perhaps necessary and too long in coming.  It doesn't fundamentally change me.  It doesn't change my emotions, my hurts, my needs.  It doesn't make those things any less important or any less valid.  But it alters my perspective.  I have tended to say what I feel when I feel it, without really thinking it through. I have regretted many things I've said emotionally in my life. In the last nine months, I have not once regretted saying nothing.  To the contrary.

It's also been a tough lesson -- one that required suffering deep emotional pain in silence, and one that required (and still requires) looking back on certain things I've said and done with a critical and honest eye.  That means coming to terms with having acted like a child, with having been unnecessarily nasty and cruel to those I love most. (And, in that regard, I am not referring only to the Professor, but also to my dear parents, siblings and friends.)  It means acknowledging that I have often let a flare of intense emotion dictate my words and actions in shameful ways.

I will almost certainly always be emotional, sensitive and reactive. Those are aspects of my temperament that I probably cannot change.  And I don't know that I would change those things, anyway, because they are also what make me empathetic, open and loving -- and connect me to those I love, and those I don't even know, in a way that feels right, and real, and necessary.  But I can continue to practice patience with my emotions, to step back from them, to be aware that they will pass.

If nothing else, it's a good thing to come of this last difficult year. And, for that, I am grateful and blessed.  

Truth

There has never been a moment that didn't pass.   Just wait.

Inconceivable

There is an uncomfortable dichotomy in having been left by your husband.  On the one hand, you accept it.  More than that, you begin to agree that he is not for you, not a good fit or perhaps even not good enough.  Maybe he was never a good fit - or maybe he was (or could have been if he'd wanted to be), and the idea that he was not is merely an inevitable part of your progression, regardless of the previous reality.  The fact of his having left you makes that old reality a part of the past that is simply unknown and unknowable.

What you do know, however, is that his having left says something about him - and even if you can't quite figure out what that something is, you know it's something that alters everything else.  And even if he came to you, professed his love and asked for redemption, it wouldn't change what you now know, however elusive and ambiguous that knowledge is.  And (although you still love him, despite that confused and uncertain knowledge) you're not sure you'd want to change it, anyway.

On the other hand, it remains inconceivable.  Your husband left you.  Your husband.  Your best friend.  The loss is ineffable.

~~~

The alarm forces me from restless sleep.  It's five-thirty.  I lift Chase from the bed, follow the dogs downstairs, let them out, start the coffee.  The morning routine.  Wrapped in a winter coat, I sip coffee outside.  I look at the patio, the firepit, and remember laying the stones last April - me on bruised knees, the Professor with gloved hands, handing me the pavers, calculating which to put where, leveling the firepit.  We rented a 100lb compactor, heaved it from the car, wrestled it to the back yard and filled it with water.  It had a geyser of a leak.  We wrestled it back to the car and went back for an encore.

~~~

For two soft-handed intellectuals, the patio is a masterpiece.  It survived last winter - which is more than I can say for the Professor and me.  Kneeling on those stones, sweating in the Chicago spring (a feat in itself), I never imagined the patio would outlast our marriage.

Inconceivable.  But true nonetheless.

Red Light, Green Light

When I was six years old, my mom's youngest sister spent the summer with us in South Carolina.  Aunt J was 21, and she waited tables at a Chinese restaurant in town.  The front doors were a large red circle.  Red circle doors - those are the things you remember when you're six.

I can close my eyes and see the pjs I wore that summer - white with orange ribbing on the cuffs, a basket of peaches and "Just Peachy" on the shirt.  That summer Aunt J started calling me "Peaches" and it stuck.  I was just a kid, and so was she.

I remember riding in the car with Aunt J, telling her not to stop because I could make the light turn green.  Aunt J inched forward until the car nearly bucked and stalled, and I willed that light to turn green.  And when it did I shrieked in a peal of six year old laughter.  Despite knowing better, Aunt J laughed with me.  Time and again I willed those lights to turn green.  She never let me in on the secret that, of course, the light would always, eventually, turn green.  

Close to thirty years later Aunt J is my dear, beloved friend.  Her sisters and her children have my heart, and have been my haven.  And she still helps me make red lights turn green. 

It's impossible to know what will change someone in an unexpected and profound way.  But if you can be someone's round red doors or light that turns green at the very last, crucial moment - it just might stick.  

Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

Tomorrow I'll finish my sixth full week at my new law firm. It's hard to believe it's only been six weeks. It seems like I've been there forever, and I mean that in a good way.

After only six weeks, it's impossible to say whether this is my forever-job, but it's the right job for me right now. I've been working long hours (by my standards, anyway), but the partners I've been lucky enough to work with are genuine and decent. I haven't been yelled at for binding documents with a clip instead of a staple. (Yes, that happened to me.) I haven't been told I committed malpractice three times in the last five minutes. (It happened to someone I know.) I haven't told someone to stop screaming at me, and walked out of their office and back to mine, only to be followed while they yelled the whole way. (Yes, that really happened. And, yes, they told me I was unprofessional. I begged to differ. To put it nicely.)

Instead, I've gotten so much positive feedback that I'm literally glowing. I'm radioactive. And I know it probably doesn't mean much in the long run because, let's face it, I just haven't been there long enough to screw anything up yet. And I will screw something up - many somethings. But for right now, in this moment, this job is precisely what I needed.

In the last six weeks, I've been slightly altered. Just a nudge here and there. And, somehow, that changes everything.

I feel valuable and competent and appreciated. I feel relieved and vindicated - because in the last six weeks, I have learned that I can take care of myself. I have learned that I will not only be okay, but better than that. I have what it takes, come hell or high water.

When I was considering this job offer, I emailed my mom and told her that if I turned it down, my only reason was fear. Almost right away, my sister emailed me. She said she was thinking of my job offers, and she wanted to tell me that I shouldn't turn this one down just because I was afraid. Assuming Mom had forwarded my email, I called her. It turned out that she hadn't seen my email to Mom. She just felt it was something she needed to say.

Perhaps that isn't a good reason to accept a job, but it was mine nonetheless. Call it God, call it kismet, call it coincidence. It was what I needed to hear, and I'm so glad I did.

If this job doesn't work out, there will be another job. And if there isn't another job, I can work for myself. 

I'm not afraid anymore.

A Brief History Of The World

In the beginning, sadness choked out the living.  


Later, there was life in the midst of sadness.  


Now there's sadness in the midst of life.


I didn't write that.  I wish I had, because it's beautiful, and my true history, my past and my present.  It is painful poetry.


Last weekend, at a bridal shower for my sweet cousin-to-be, I sat at a table surrounded cousins, aunts and my grandmother's sister.  We celebrated the love that brought us all together, the new family being formed, the extension of our family.  We celebrated one another, and ourselves.  I was struck with awareness of the pain, the deaths, the illness, the loss that those women had experienced, that many are going through at this very moment.  And yet we reveled in the joy of one another, in the joy -- in the painful poetry -- of our lives.  

It Happens

The office was quiet today.  Too much work to do, but quiet nonetheless. I spent most of my day doing research on the computer.  After eight or nine hours spent staring at pixels, I looked up and outside, noticed how the sky and lake melted together in a gray haze.  And I realized that my husband left me.

I started crying.  

It happens.

Muddy Waters

This post is not about the blues, in case you were wondering.  Okay, maybe it's about the blues, in a manner of speaking, but it's not about THE blues.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, forget it and keep reading.

I'm navigating some muddy waters on my long drive to Someplace Other Than Where I've Been.  I'm navigating the waters of a brand new job, working 70+ hours a week and hoping they like me (or don't hate me) enough not to fire me any time soon.  I'm navigating the waters of figuring out what I want, professionally, and realizing that maybe I want to be a litigator, after all.  I'm also navigating the waters of we're-getting-divorced-but-we-still-see-each-other-every-week.  And that's a rough river.

It's been like this since January.  Since I gave the Professor my One Last Stand - my closing argument for the case of our marriage.  Since that night, when he sat reluctantly on a chair across from me and said, no, love isn't enough, we can't go back, and even if we could, I don't want to.  At that moment, I started holding my breath, learning to wait for the tears to pass, the panic to fade to something manageable, learning to wait until he was out of the room or off the phone to let myself collapse into the dust of my devastated life.  And from those small moments of holding my breath and then gasping for air, came longer moments, when my lungs didn't ache and I could pause and savor the now.

Those moments have continued to grow longer, and I've continued growing stronger.  I am thriving in my new job, relieved to have the stress and distraction and import of something other than my own life.  And as I fill my lungs and my life with these new things, and put distance between myself and the sheer awfulness of being left by my husband, I put distance between myself and my love for him.

But still.  Isn't there always a "but still"?  But still, here we are, getting-divorced-but-still-seeing-each-other-every-week.  We still celebrate one another's small victories, commiserate one another's small defeats.  We still chat about the dogs, catch up on the general goings on of our lives.  Last weekend, I had to work, and he cooked dinner when I got home and later made a fire in the fire pit we built together last spring.  We had beers and smoked, and we chatted about the stresses of work and parents growing older, siblings and cousins getting married, and even our divorce papers (which I will probably draw up).  The conversation was pleasant, the fire was warm.  I felt calm and strong and honest and full of integrity for the way I've handled things until now.

But still.

Tonight, of all things, I was watching American Idol.  One of the contestants sang You've Got A Friend.  It took me back to a shared moment, a James Taylor concert, courtesy of the law firm I summered with in 2003, outdoors, the Professor sitting beside me in the Atlanta heat.  Those early days of giddiness and hope.

I have been disappointed and hurt.  I have been devastated.  I have moved away from the wreckage, and I will continue to move forward, to navigate my way through these waters.

But still - I love him.

Poem

My husband floats

beside me on a river, in a paper boat 
folded and bent by a child

I don't know.

684 Days

No, the title of this post does not refer to the number of days since my last post.  Nor does it refer to the number of days that have passed since the Professor asked for a divorce --although I feel like I've aged at least two years over the last six months and 28 days.  Rather, the title of this post refers to the 684 days since my last day of work at my old law firm.  Yes, I've had a 684 day "vacation," as certain of my proud family members call it.

In theory, a two year break from work certainly seems like it would be a welcome vacation.  And it should have been.  But, in reality, I've spent much of the last 684 days navigating the murky waters of depression, marital dissatisfaction, death and divorce.  Fun times.

Tomorrow I'm returning to litigation, also known as hell on earth.  Other than the occasional nightmare in which I'm being fired for missing a typo in a brief, I haven't thought about litigation, or the law, in almost two years.  I don't remember how to bluebook a case citation or have a subpoena issued.  I should be terrified.  Oddly, I'm not.

Instead, I'm excited.  I'm excited about childish details like having an office, a business card, and a reason to wear heels.  A reason to get dressed before ten a.m.  And actually wash my hair.  I'm also excited about feeling useful, even if it is as someone's billable hour slave.

Perhaps I'm not terrified because I've adapted, I've forgotten what it's like to live the stress and anxiety of litigation on a 60 hour per week basis.  I'm sure that's true to some extent.  But I like to think (or hope) that it's mostly because the last 684 days have changed me, have changed my perspective about what's worth getting stressed over, what's scary enough to be afraid of, what can kill me and what can't.

I've been lucky to have these 684 days.  I've been blessed to have the utter freedom of endless hours with no one to answer to, and morning coffee on the back porch with my dogs.  But more importantly, I've been blessed to learn that court deadlines, screaming partners and missed typos are not even close to the worst things I can get through with grace and dignity.  And that, I will do.