35 Things - Eighteen through Twenty-six

It is taking me entirely too long to get through this list, not because I haven't learned 35 things, but because when you try to distill what you've learned into just 35 things, it's hard to select and articulate the most significant.  I keep getting hung up on trying to say something profound, something meaningful -- or at least something hopeful and optimistic.  It's not working.  So, without much discernment, eighteen through twenty-five -- and, with substantially more thought, and also with humility, twenty-six:

18. I may be scarred, but I am not destroyed.  On the other hand, I may not be destroyed, but I am nonetheless damaged.  And that makes me afraid, both that no one will be willing to love me again, and that I won't be willing to let them.

19. The best friends provide comic relief, wise ears, stern words, and open arms, all of which are absolutely necessary.  Laugh with them, speak to them, listen to them, embrace them.


Thank you to all of my wonderful friends (new and old), and especially to Julie, for giving me all of the above, even (and particularly) when I don't like it, which is when I need it the most.

20. I would rather struggle to be better, to change, than live with ease, blind to my own failings.

21. Wanting to to be better is not even close to enough.  Change requires small, excruciating steps, frequently in the wrong direction.  It requires daily effort and endurance, and may not be apparent for a long while.  I still have a long way to go.

22.  I'm not sure I can stop loving someone I have once loved.  I can love them less, and in a different way, but I'm just not sure I can stop entirely.  And I'm not sure that's something I want to change.

23. Two people can share an experience -- or a love, or a life -- yet experience two entirely different things.

24. Strong, brilliant, otherwise self-possessed women regularly define themselves by the men (or man) in their lives.  We mold ourselves to them -- or try.  I do it, women I love and admire do it.  I'm befuddled.

25. Family, family, family.  Aunts, mother, sister, cousins.  They have buoyed me through dark times again and again, and this year is no exception.  They ground me, they lift me, they infuriate me, they delight me.  They push and inspire me to be better, to be more like them.  These are the strong women -- and the strong man who will always be thirteen in my mind and a brother in my heart -- who help me define myself.  They are my ties, my history, my fabric.

Speaking of strong women, I feel compelled to mention Erin Poston Stone, a classmate and fellow Model Arab Leaguer of mine from Converse, whose husband very recently passed away.  Her most recent blog post literally left me in  tears this morning, waiting for court and realizing that, if I didn't stop reading immediately, I would be sobbing in front of the judge.  After court, I was simply unable to get into the car and drive.  Instead, I could only sit in the parking lot at McDonalds to finish reading Erin's post.  I read it in its entirety again when I got home from work this evening, and cried for Erin, Cameron, Patrick and their entire family.  I also cried for Dr. B, the Professor, and his family.  The heart cries for those it loves.

Erin is, and has been, so breathtakingly strong.  Her writing is heartwrenching and real.  Her experience and her blog posts remind me that I am so lucky.  I am surrounded by women who endure and survive much worse than I have ever dreamed of going through, and I am humbled by that.

And so, lesson number twenty-six is that no matter your experience, however devastating it is, someone, somewhere, is almost certainly going through much, much worse -- unimaginably worse -- and they are doing it with grace and beauty.  Like Erin.

Erin's blog:

http://stonecancer20.blogspot.com/2011/10/good-man-lost.html

The Truth Is There Is No Truth

Despite the fact that no one has actually posted a comment on the blog itself, I've received more feedback on the last blog post than on any other post I've written, both in terms of the number of responses and their intensity.  It's been an interesting experience of discovery for me, because I didn't anticipate that a post painting me in such a negative light would elicit sympathy, encouragement, and passion.

Many responses have been along the lines of telling me I'm being too hard on myself, everyone has their bad moments, etc.  And I get that, I really do.  As I said at the end of the post, I know that's not the whole story.  As one generous friend said, it's a simplistic narrative.  And it is.  This blog is.  The reality has far more nuance and complexity than my last post -- or any single post taken alone -- can capture. 

The point of my last blog post was not that the end of my marriage was entirely my fault, or even mostly my fault.  But before I started this blog, I thought long and hard about what I wanted it to be.  I could use this as a forum to exact some meaningless, unfulfilling revenge.  I could play the victim, rally you to my corner (although, admittedly, most of you are already there).  I could say the Professor was terrible with money, emotionally inaccessible, utterly lacking in empathy.  I could tell you stories about how the Professor failed me, disappointed me, broke me.  And I'm sure I will.

But I have no illusions about the fact that I can also tell you stories about how I failed, disappointed and broke the Professor.  I don't mean that I deserved to be left.  I don't mean to justify his leaving or anything else he has done since then.  I couldn't want to mean that even if I wanted to want it.  And I don't want it, because this is all still a story I don't want to read.

But here I am, writing it nonetheless.  And, whatever else I do or don't know, I know that no single blog post can completely portray the Professor, or me.  No retelling can tell the true story of our relationship.  More likely, there simply is no true story, no single, definitive history.  And, if there is, it probably cannot be told from my perspective, because my perspective is necessarily limited by the fact that it's mine.

Or maybe that's wrong.  Maybe the Professor is a static, uncomplicated and unredeemable character, and my reluctance to accept that reflects an unwillingness to believe that I was taken.  But I don't really believe that.  I can't, for numerous, complex reasons.  And I don't want you to, either.  I loved him.  I still do.  And I have to believe there is something to that, something important and life-altering, even if I don't understand it.  Perhaps because it's true.  Perhaps because I need it to be true.  Probably some of both.

I'd like to say that I have some sort of broad, noble goal for this blog, some profound motivation for the things I write.  But I don't.  This is just me, living this experience in the most honest and thoughtful way that I can.  I will be angry, and I will write fury.  I will be sad, and I will write sorrow.  I will be selfish, and I will write pity.  I will be sorry, and I will write guilt.  But, whatever I write, I will try to temper it with awareness of the limitations of my own retelling.  I hope you can read it that way, as well.

35 Things - Number Seventeen: The Whole Story

You would think one long year would sufficiently exhaust my tears.  No.  There are still good days and bad days.  Don't get me wrong, most days are good -- or at least so filled with work and other commitments that they have room for nothing else.  But some days are still very bad.  Oddly, now that I don't see or talk to the Professor, I think more about the things I loved, the things I miss, not less.  (My therapist says it's "normal.")  In his absence, I suppose it's easier to forget the most exquisitely painful moments of the last year and, instead, to recall the sweet moments we shared in the seven years before.  Not that they were all sweet.  I recall many horrible moments as well, but the moments I recall best involve my being horrible.

I have a special skill for recalling the worst in myself, but that probably has something to do with the fact that my worst is pretty bad.  I cannot deny that I am a person of extremes.  Like the nursery rhyme says, There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the  middle of her forehead.  When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.  

It would certainly be easy to embrace a version of my marriage in which I followed my husband to Chicago, worked at miserable, demoralizing job so that he could pursue his PhD with leisure, financed his every consumable (and expensive) desire, and was left once he secured a position teaching law before 80 new young and admiring students each semester (approximately 54% of which are female, according to statistics).  It would be easy to embrace the simple version in which he left (or, rather, did not leave but said he wanted out); began dating immediately, while still living in our house, regularly staying out well past midnight; yelled contemptuously at me to stop crying myself to sleep night after night, as I was keeping him awake; moved into an apartment with two total strangers and slept on a mattress on the floor for months (which apparently was more appealing than living with me); and asked me to nonetheless be available to him for practical and emotional purposes for many months thereafter -- a request I willingly, happily, and heartbreakingly obliged.  It would be easy, and those things are all factually true -- and painful to recall.  But that is not an accurate rendition of what happened, because it lacks context.

The context is this.  I am hard to live with and hard to love.  I am sensitive, demanding, bratty, selfish.  I am rigid.  I can be hysterical.  I can be nasty.  I can lose my temper, and lose control.  I have thrown a remote control across the room, splintering it.  (I had to order a new one from Tivo for $50.)  I scream.  I cry.  I do not tolerate dissent.  I have been known to bite my hand, literally, when I can't take it anymore, don't know what else to do to release my anger (although, in my defense, rarely).

The day before the Professor proposed, we bought him a new grill for Easter.  We assembled it together at home -- precisely the kind of task that brought out my worst, my most rigid and demanding self.  For not getting it exactly right, for not being quick enough, I derided him.  I degraded him, I dismissed him.  I know that much.  We had a terrible fight, which I can't precisely recall, but I'm sure it ended with me screaming and sobbing hysterically in bed, as they all did.  The next day, he asked me to marry him nonetheless.  He hid Easter eggs all over the house, a treasure hunt ending in a fuzzy yellow chick hiding a blue Tiffany box.  When I remember that weekend, I remember how I yelled at him over the grill.  And he was hiding Easter eggs, a sweet clue to the next egg tucked inside each one.

There are other, equally horrific and shameful memories, and they all share the same theme:  I was ugly, I was selfish, I was cruel.  I often acted like the Professor's love was assumed and expected, however I treated him, whatever I did.

Perhaps we were never a good fit, perhaps it would not have worked, however perfect I could be -- I don't know, and I never will.  But what I do know, what I have come to face over this last year, is that I have a huge hand in the end of my marriage.  In a way, I helped to set the end of things into motion before we'd even started.  I crushed him.

The last year is not the whole story.  It is humiliating and painful in a special way, because it means I have to take some ownership of my marriage and divorce -- to look at myself and cringe -- but, it is true.  I shared seven years with the Professor (eight, if you count this last year).  I knew him.  Despite what those who love me most may want to think, because it's easier, because they love me, because the alternative is complex and, thus, uncomfortable, the Professor is a good person -- a person enthusiastic and hopeful for love -- and for most of the eight years that we shared, he was probably better to me than I often deserved.  And so, whatever has happened in the last year that has hurt me, damaged me, destroyed my trust and hope, I have learned this:  I, too, am culpable.  

It is not the whole story, but the story is not whole without it.

Witness

I saw something important tonight.

Walking back to the office after a quick bite, I saw a crowd.  Nothing unusual in downtown Chicago.  I walked into the crowd, meaning to walk right through.  It was a circle of sorts, but people were leaning in towards each other, away from what their heads turned to face -- a young woman being forced to the ground by a man in jeans and a red sweatshirt.  I stopped walking, rocked on my feet, and turned half towards her, half away like the others.  No one seemed sure what to do, poised between stepping in or walking away.

It was a few seconds before he forced her to the sidewalk on her face, writhing.  She kept saying "why?"  He pulled handcuffs out of his jeans.  Apparently, she'd shop-lifted from H&M.  Who knows what she took.  She looked like a student, with a back back and lap top bag that had been flung to the street in their struggle.

The entire scuffle probably lasted five seconds and we all dispersed, set into motion when he snapped on the handcuffs and hoisted her to her feet, dragged her back towards the store.  I walked away feeling sad, like I'd just seen someone's worst shame, someone's life fall apart.

35 Things (The Most Important Thing)

I cut off all of my hair.  Ok, not all of it, but more than half.  I don't know what got into me.  I went in for a trim, and as I climbed into the chair and Mallory wrapped a black bib around my neck, I decided to cut it all off.   That's not exactly right.  I didn't contemplate it, but the words came out of my mouth.  She asked, how short, and I said I didn't care.  I just wanted something different.  I crave something different.

Why do we do that?  Do we think changing something physically will change something else?  Change our lives?  I have done it before, and I bet you have, too.  I have cut my hair short, colored it red, gotten a tattoo, pierced my belly button (the only one of the four that I regret).  I have lost weight and gained weight and lifted weights.  But it hasn't changed me.   Although I suppose it reflects something else, something already changing and moving inside, something that wants to stretch and get out, or hide.

Mallory's hair is neon pink, sometimes blue - the unnatural blue of children's food.  You might have some trepidation about letting someone with spiky pink hair cut or color yours, but I like talking to her.  She makes no judgment (after all, she has spiky pink hair!).  Like my therapist, but cheaper.  Friday night we got caught up on our love lives -- mine, still a daily process in healing; hers, sadly foundering.  Mallory asked me if it's still the first thing I think about when I wake up each morning.

I thought perhaps she was looking for comfort in what may be her own story soon, and I was reluctant to answer.  I was also caught off guard.  People who know you well don't ask those questions, probably because they hesitate to encourage you to think of the thing they most want you to forget, maybe naively hope you already have.  Strangers don't ask such questions because they wouldn't dare.  But shampoo and a warm bath towel create parameters that don't apply elsewhere.

I told her I don't wake every day immediately devastated by the loss, the way I once did.  But each morning, somewhere between the bed, the dog food bowl, the coffee pot and the shower, I have a thought of him, or of us.  It resides under the skin of my consciousness.

That's probably not what she wanted to hear and, frankly, not what I'd want to hear, either.  But it's there, and I carry it with me.  And perhaps the things I'm doing now -- working 14 hours a day, hang-gliding, cutting my hair, joining a gym for the first time in a decade, getting my scuba-diving certification -- are just a transparent attempt to build a new consciousness, one without him in it.  Or perhaps it's just me living my life, grasping it with a new awareness of how abruptly and painfully it could change, of how inconspicuously time can pass without my having done anything I should have done.

(After all, I did waste two years of my life unemployed, when I should have been writing, volunteering, learning, doing things.  I didn't know it was wasted, at the time.  I thought I was recovering from a hellish job, loving my family of four, then trying to patch it back together.  But I didn't know what was in store, and now I know that I can never know.  And so I feel compelled to move, to do things that scare me, to excite myself, to go for it, and I get restless when I don't have to be at the office by seven a.m. on a Saturday.)

Probably, it's some of both -- pushing myself away from what was, and racing into the night to find the next adventure because I've already lost too many opportunities through my own complacency.

I once wrote the Professor a letter in which I told him that I wanted to mark the moment, mark the seconds and days we shared in early love, in finding new adventures in making fried egg sandwiches and giggling in bed at night, because I knew that the moment would pass, that one day we would have hard times, we would struggle, and I didn't want us to look back on that moment and say, if only we had known how good it was.    I wrote that I wanted us to say we are so lucky that we knew.

Apparently we both forgot that letter, that moment, and what we knew then.  We blinked, and five years passed.  I resented him for the fact that I hated my job, and later because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and so I did nothing.  He resented me for being anxious and unhappy with work, and then for still being unhappy without it.  He lost respect for me and, to be honest, I think I lost respect for myself, as well.  And, in all that time, I did nothing to change it.  Or I did, but I was too late.  (I won't get into what the Professor did or didn't do, because this isn't really about him and was never meant to be.)

And so, this is the single most important thing I learned in the 35th year of my life:  If we let life happen to us, it will, and we will sit and watch, helpless and nothing more.

So, here's to impulsive hair cuts, new jobs, hang-gliding, scuba-diving, planting spring bulbs in September, working 14 hours a day and meeting friends for dinner when the day is done, drafting your own divorce papers, joining a gym and using it, dusting off your bike, getting a new passport, joining a book club, using a power saw, serving dinner at a soup kitchen, being an attorney again, and doing whatever else scares you most.

35 Things (Part One)

This post was supposed to be written on my birthday, but I've been thinking about turning 35 and what I've been through in the last year, and I've been overwhelmed by what to say.  And now, since I've procrastinated, this post cooincides with other important moments.  It's been one year since the Professor told me he wants a divorce.  Again, fall is coming, and that time feels close enough to press my cheek against.  The season reminds me.  I feel like I've been in twin worlds -- this fall, one year removed, and that one.  The Professor's brother is getting married in Georgia next weekend.  An epic event, to be sure.  Although I don't know the details (which feels wrong, like I've forgotten to set the alarm or turn off the coffee pot), I know my brother-in-law, and nothing he does is ordinary.  But the celebration will be marked by my father-in-law's absence.  Perhaps an empty chair to convey what is missing from the day, from their lives.  And, for me, it will also marked by my own absence.  Thinking of it, I feel like a ghost, watching my twin life go on without me.

Memories and emotion are close to the surface these days.  Some things are hard to write about not just because they are emotional or sad, but because words seem insufficient.  This is one of those times.

The last two months have been tough.  I billed 275 hours last month, which is a lot and then some.  I'm still trying to build credibility at my job, and I'm doing things I'm not very experienced at.  Between the hours and the newness, I've been completely overwhelmed, just trying to hang in there and do what has to be done.  I still enjoy the people I work with, but I cannot say I enjoy working 80 hours a week.  I am just trying to get things done, not do them well.

I can say the same for my personal life.  Seven weeks ago, I was divorced.  I spent approximately 90 seconds thinking about it that day, before heading into a conference call with a client, and I really haven't had much time to process it since then.  Instead I've been assembling furniture at midnight, packing the Professor's things at six a.m. before I head to work for the weekend.  Grinding coffee for the morning before I go to bed takes all the energy I can summon.  But I do it and fall into bed beside Chase, grateful for those few quiet moments when I can tell her how much I love her.

I don't mean to sound sorry for myself.  I have squeezed some lovely moments into the last two months:  a weekend visit from Aunt J and her friends; a ten p.m. birthday dinner at Next; my birthday party; and, last weekend, hang-gliding and a great weekend visit with my sister.  Yesterday I planted hyacinth bulbs during a break from excising the last of the Professor's things from the house.  I dug cool dirt with my fingernails, let earthworms crawl over my hands.  I ate a ham sandwich with a fresh tomato from my yard.

I have been lucky.  But I am also tired beyond belief.  It has been a long two months.  But it's been a long year, so it fits.

In many ways, this year was a crisis, and I wonder, have I gotten through it?  At times -- most times -- I think I have.  But then I am at my birthday dinner with our mutual friends.  Someone mentions his name, then stumbles.  I am embarrassed, although I shouldn't be, and sad.  I am folding laundry while it rains, white t-shirts that smell like bleach and fabric softener.  I am leaving work, almost too tired to pull out of the parking garage and fight Friday night traffic.  I clean out the garage, find some old cards and letters I'd overlooked before.  I sit outside and read them, crying.  The loss is there, in quiet corners, in brief but sobering moments.  The magnitude of it catches me off guard.    

It's hard to believe I'm 35 years old.  I feel fifteen, I feel 95.  I'd like to say the last year ultimately brought only good things, and I could certainly say that it brought only bad (and I think no one would judge me for that) -- but either statement would deny the complexity of the last year.  It has been ugly and cruel.  It has aged me more than any other.  At times, it left me broken, consumed by myself, by my panic, my sorrow, my immediate experience.  But the year has also been gracious -- in giving me wisdom, in teaching me silence, in forcing me to accept my own lack of control over anything but myself.  I have reflected and changed more than in any year before.

When my dear friend, Anna, died the year she graduated from college, I spoke at a memorial service the school held for her.  I struggled to write something worthy of her life, to find something meaningful in her death that I could share.  But I realized, and I think I said at the service, that I could not find meaning in her death.  Instead, I found meaning in her life, and in how I chose to move forward and change my own life as a result of that.  Sometimes that is the best we can do.  And that can bring us good and make us better.  That is what I have tried to do with this year.  I cannot find meaning in the Professor leaving me.  I have tried, but cannot find purpose in that, or say that it was meant to be.  I don't really believe those things.  But I can make meaning from it, from who I was and how I ended up there, and what I did with what happened next.  And I have tried my best to do that.  

A lot has come of this year, as painful as it has been to get at.  And so, to commemorate my 35th birthday, a little bit late, I am attempting to compile a list of 35 things I have discovered in the 35 year of my life.  Apparently I'm a slow learner, because it's taking a while.

The first fifteen:

1. I can stop crying, start a new job, get a divorce, work 14 hours a day, take care of two dogs, throw a baby shower, keep the house clean, pack my ex-husband's things, have the yard landscaped, hang with my girlfriends, throw a birthday party, assemble furniture at midnight and host house guests - all at once.  
2. But I don't have time to wash my hair every day.  Or even every other day.
3. I can still laugh.  I must laugh.  Despite everything, and because of everything. 
4. Acceptance is a battle we fight entirely with ourselves, and perhaps the bloodiest one.  
5. Everything else is easier.
6. People say strange and/or bizarrely inappropriate things when they don't know what else to say.  Like maybe he'll come back one day.  Someone said that this week.  There is really no adequate response.  Perhaps laughing maniacally while crying hysterically, if you can pull that off.  I can't. 
7. I can do and tolerate more than I thought.  We can do almost anything in order to keep living.  The guy who cut off his own arm?  I could do that.  I might bleed to death, but I would give it a shot.    
8. Grief is not a room we pass through.  It dwells within, blooms and recedes, evolves.  
9. I can climb onto a total stranger's back and let a go-cart with wings tow me 3000 feet into the air by a clothes line.  And love it.
10. I don't know if I can change certain fundamental aspects of my personality or temperament (and I'm not sure I want to), but I can become a better version of myself.  It's hard, and it's going to be a long journey, but I'm working on it.  For me.
11. I can trim a door with a circular saw and not cut off my fingers.
12. Speaking of cutting, I will never cut someone out of my life with no acknowledgment, explanation or goodbye.
13. I made a lot of mistakes.  I am not blameless, and I cannot pretend to myself that I am.  But I face that, and I am proud of myself for getting through this last year the way that I have.
14. I miss Crazy Dog more than I thought I would.  A lot more.  But if I ever get another Crazy Dog again, I'm returning him immediately, before I love him and without shame or guilt.
15. It's never too late to start over.  Taking this job was the right decision.  I faced my fears, it didn't kill me, and I am good at a lot of what I do.  But I'm still not so sure I want to do it for the next twenty years.  Thinking about that MFA.  

Birthdays

I turned 35 this week, on Wednesday, and I had a lovely birthday party for myself this weekend.  I feel like I should say something important and profound about turning 35, about how this year has changed me, and I will try, but not tonight.

This weekend brought another anniversary of sorts, and if this post is not very eloquent, it's probably because I'm crying a little while I type.

Yesterday, August 20, was my father-in-law's birthday.  Last year the Professor's family came to Chicago to spend the event with us here, the first after his death.  It was a strange and confusing time for me, and for the Professor and his family as well, I am sure.  Although, to be honest, I don't really know how it felt for them, because it's not the kind of thing they ever discussed.

This year I was preparing for my party.  The morning was gray and stormy, and I was in the kitchen up to my elbows in black beans and corn.  I turned on the television for background noise.  A few hours into my work in the kitchen, I realized the background noise I'd been listening to was a Dr. Who marathon on the BBC.  

It was fitting.  It was Dr. B's birthday, and he was an avid Dr. Who fan.  I admit that I never really got the show, and I never cared much for British television, but I decided to let it play while I worked.  And so I chopped onions, minced garlic, washed cilantro, and listened to Dr. Who and thought about Dr. B.  

It felt right to be thinking of him on his birthday, to listen to his favorite show.  It was sad, but good, to think of him and my own sadness at his death, a sadness I could never experience with anyone else, because he was not my husband, not my father, and so my own loss and sorrow were effectively meaningless - trite, next to the pain of those around me.  At the time, it seemed like it was not 'my' loss, but a much bigger loss belonging to others.  My own sadness seemed selfish.

Dr. B was jovial.  He could be hard to get at on an emotional level.  But I believed that, not having had any daughters, he had a special place in his heart for me.  And I did in mine, for him.  He teased me mercilessly, with what I thought or hoped was affection, and I teased back.  

The night before Dr. B died, I flew to Augusta and went straight to the hospital.  He was waiting to go home.  He could not speak, could barely write, but he was his jovial self.  He insisted that he be allowed to go home; he did not want to die in the hospital.  He wanted Yoohoo and cream soda.  When the Professor insisted I make my monkey face, Dr. B gave me a thumbs up.  He was brave.  Scared and sad, I am sure, but strong for those who loved him, for those whose devastation played out before him.  If you can face sudden and certain death with character, he did.

Dr. B was cremated, but there was a viewing, and the family had some quiet time alone with him.  I wanted to wrap my husband inside myself.  I wanted to kiss Dr. B and hold his face.  To grab his hands in mine, to see him laugh one more time.  I wanted to make it better.  Instead, I sat alone on a chair in the corner, watching my husband struggle not to cry.  I was helpless to make anything happen.

I never did figure out what to do.

Dr. B was a lovely man.  Someone impossible not to admire, not to fall a little bit in love with.  I had my own quiet time to remember him this weekend, to honor him in my own little way with my Dr. Who marathon.  So, while I prepared to celebrate my birthday yesterday, I celebrated his, as well. 

Crazy Dog

The time has officially come that Crazy Dog is leaving.  He's going to the kennel tomorrow, and the Professor is picking him up next weekend and taking him back to his new apartment.

I have been looking forward to the absence of the stress of Crazy Dog.  But we had our goodbyes tonight, and it was very sad.  He really is crazy, but I love him anyway.  Isn't that always the story?  He is messy and destructive, but he is loving and snuggly.  He cannot control himself, but he means well.  And, even I cannot believe I'm saying this, but I will miss him terribly.

It's one thing to send him to the kennel for the weekend because people are coming and he's too much to handle.   It's another thing entirely to say goodbye.

He is crazy, but he is my puppy.  Something about loving things when they are just tiny babies makes them forever have a special, totally heartbreaking, place in your life.

Our goodbyes were tearful -- at least on my end.  I'm pretty sure he was just thinking of all the ways he might pee and poop in the Professor's new apartment.

The Flight

The Professor moved his things out of the house today.  It was strange to come home to a half-empty house.  Oddly, with most of his things (and half the furniture) gone, it doesn't feel like my house anymore.

Nearly eleven months to the day, he told me he wanted a divorce.  At the time, I started keeping a journal.  After a while, and shortly before I started this blog, I stopped journaling.  It became too painful, became too much a reliving of the daily horror.  My last entry was December 21.

Walking in the door tonight, the house looked like I felt those eleven months ago.  Deconstructed, foreign, broken. Like someone fled imminent disaster, frantically snatching what they could carry, leaving tumble weeds of dog hair on the floor and nails in the walls.

And so it seems appropriate to post my first few journal entries.  They are me, panicked and throwing sand bags at the tsunami, unedited.

9.2.10

Last night my husband told me he wants a divorce.  Well, not that he “wants” one, because he says it’s not what he “wants” but that he cannot do this anymore and has chosen divorce.  I am simply devastated. 

He’s been saying for nearly a year that he isn’t sure he wants to stay in the marriage, but this is the first time he has said he affirmatively wants out in a calm and rational manner.  We have been married for three years, together for seven.  We’ve had a tough year in our marriage and personal lives, and we’ve been in counseling for a few months.    We haven’t had a major argument in a while (until last night), and I thought things were improving.  Not great, but getting better.  I do not want a divorce.

Last night he told me how unhappy he has been, even in the few months that I thought things were getting better.  Two weeks ago, he gave me a sweet card for my birthday in which he wrote that things were getting better.  Today, he wants a divorce.  I can’t seem to comprehend it.  We must be living in different realities.

My husband keeps his feelings pretty close to the vest.  I try to get him to talk to me about what he’s thinking and feeling, but it’s only when we argue that he does.  When we’re not arguing, he likes to maintain a certain pleasantness.  That’s not really my style, but I try to go along with it.  It take a lot of energy for me.  But I love him.  And I get taken in by that pleasantness, oblivious to the subtle undercurrent of his dissatisfaction.  It’s so frustrating, thinking he is happy and things are going well, then being hit with the unexpected blow of his hidden hostility and misery.  It feels like I never had a chance.

The first I heard of how unhappy he is in the marriage was a year ago.  Yet he says he has been unhappy for six years.  For six years, the relationship has been a struggle for him.  For six years, he’s felt like he’s put in more than he’s gotten out.  Six years of patterns make him believe there is no hope for our marriage.  Then why did he marry me three years ago?  I don’t think I would have married me, if I felt that way.  I would have run like hell.

But I didn’t feel that way.  I still don’t.  I would do anything to save our marriage.  Is that wrong? Too extreme, too desperate?  I say it not because I would stay in a loveless, miserable relationship, but because I still believe in us, in our future happiness, in our life together.  Or maybe I am desperate.  Maybe I should maturely accept the wisdom of his decision. After all, if he believes that this cannot repaired, isn’t it therefore necessarily true?

He has had one foot out the door for months.  I did not want that to be true, but now I see that it is and that, on some level, I’ve known that all along.  Isn’t that why I’ve been trying so hard, seeing not just our marriage counselor, but another therapist on my own to help me deal with my issues?  To help me become a better wife?  A better person.  Someone he would not divorce.  The fear and uncertainty of knowing he might leave was certainly a great motivator.  He did not have that fear and motivation.  He would probably have been relieved if I left.  It would save him the difficulty and blame of doing the leaving.  No one wants to be that person.  Not even him.  Maybe that’s the only thing that has kept him here this long.

I would like to think that being left means I’m somehow blameless.  But even I don’t buy that.  I have made my fair share of mistakes.  I have been bitchy and demanding.  I have been righteous and unyielding.  I have cared more for myself than for him.  I have tried to repair those things.  But it seems he is not willing to accept my reparations, or make his own.  I know he is unhappy and in pain, and that’s not what I want for him.  The generous part of me wants to make this easy for him, to let him ease out of his misery.  The other part of me wants to protest.  To say if only he could commit to our marriage and accept me for who I am, accept my mistakes and flaws, forgive me for my selfishness, then we could move forward together, embrace one another without judgment, map our problems, and his unhappiness and pain would fall away.  But maybe I am projecting.  Maybe that’s what I need and precisely what he wants to avoid.

I do not handle heartbreak well.  It consumes me.  I’ve been up all night.  My eyes are swollen and dry.  I’m exhausted, yet I feel like I’ll never be able to sleep again.  I feel like a failure.  I feel like the joke’s on me.  I feel like I can’t move, and I can’t sit still.  I may never get off the couch, walk upstairs to the bathroom, turn on the shower and wash my hair.  It’s too much effort. I need to Do Something.  I am.  I am writing.  Each word on the page is a salve, an anchor to sanity.  If I can formulate words, I am still here, I am still me. 

 I am on a train hurtling in a direction I don’t want to go.  I want off.  I want to turn around and return to where there is hope.  I want to weep and wail.  I want to rend something, or someone.  I want to beg.  I have begged.

I am decimated. 

It’s starting to rain.

9.5.10

Thursday morning, after telling me he wants a divorce, my husband told me he was sorry and doesn’t want a divorce.  He put his arms around me and held me.  It was the most authentic, vulnerable emotion I’ve seen from him in months.  It gave me hope.  It also left me confused, more uncertain of my marriage than I was just 36 hours earlier, more afraid and sad than I’ve been for the last few months.  It’s been very hard for me to deal with the pain and sorrow of knowing he isn’t sure he wants to stay in the marriage.  Just knowing that has caused me enormous stress and unhappiness.  But I’ve done my best to keep that to myself and deal with it on my own, because he doesn’t want to be a part of my emotional turmoil.  I feel like I’d gotten a pretty good handle on it over the three months we’ve been in counseling.  Now I feel like I’m starting 100 yards behind the starting line.  I get no credit for it.  I am not allowed to be angry about it.  How am I supposed to do this?    

Saturday morning we agreed to talk about our relationship.  My husband said he wants to continue in couple’s counseling, notwithstanding that he’s not sure he wants to stay married to me.  I told him that even if he can’t commit to the rest of our lives, I need him to commit to right now – to doing what needs to be done, whatever that is, to make things better.  If not long-term, at least for now.  He was unwilling or unable to agree to that.  I had to leave the house for the day, just to get away from the sadness.  If I didn’t leave, I would lay on the bed and sob, and he wouldn’t be able to give me the tenderness and support I want.  He wouldn’t be able to say he won’t leave me. 

This morning we biked to a bistro for brunch.  We had a disagreement about finances.  Something that should have been minor but turned into a major catastrophe.  The catastrophe was not about the financial disagreement, but about my getting upset and his anger at me for being upset. 

That seems to be a theme in our relationship, and was in large part the impetus for seeking couple’s counseling.  My husband doesn’t feel like he can deal with my emotional stress.  I am an admittedly emotionally sensitive, highly reactive person.  I’m in individual therapy to get a handle on that, and I feel like I’ve made tremendous progress.  But the level of his anger and hostility towards me when I do get upset is extreme.  It is as if the very fact of my upset triggers in him hatred and resentment.  Then everything spirals completely out of control.  When he becomes quietly furious, he becomes emotionally unavailable.  He seems to want nothing more than to escape me, and he has no regard for how rejected, hurt and worthless that makes me feel.  At that moment, he truly despises me, and it crushes me.  I become panicked and sad.  Which only makes him angrier and more determined to have nothing to do with me.  Which makes me desperate. 

I am trying to learn to stop this cycle.  I am trying not to become hysterical when he manifests his revulsion of me, when he closes himself away where I can’t reach him.  But I am also learning that I am helpless to start a new, healthier cycle if he is uninterested in joining me in that.  His anger at me at times is so acute that I feel paralyzed by it.  I don’t know how to get him to let go of that anger, so that we can move forward together.  I don’t think there is any other way.

As long as my husband is not committed to this marriage, he is not truly invested in making it better.  I feel like he’s just sticking around to see what happens.  That leaves the entire burden for our marriage on me, and it’s a burden that I am helpless to carry.  How “good” can I be?  I am surely going to fuck up at some point.  Like today.

This situation leaves me constantly terrified.  The next disagreement, the next marital stress, the next time I am anything less than perfect and he is anything less than perfectly happy with me might be the time he decides to physically leave.  My husband either doesn’t appreciate or doesn’t care that this is the situation I’m in.  It is a tremendous stress to walk around with that on your heart.  I feel like I am breaking in two.  I feel like the end is inevitable, yet entirely in my hands.   It makes me edgy and emotional, which are exactly the opposite of what he wants me to be and exactly the circumstances that make it likely I will screw this up.

I know a girl from college whose husband is almost certainly dying of cancer.  I know a girl from high school who has lupus.  Right now she’s in the hospital with numerous blood clots and a bleed the doctors cannot identify.   These things both give me perspective and make me feel guilty for wallowing in the sorrow of my own dying marriage. 

My husband just came home.  I sit here, terrified of what he will say, and of what he won’t.

9.6.10

He didn’t speak to me for several hours yesterday.  I told him that I have tried to talk to him, and that I wouldn’t try again then, or today or the next day.  I said I would just wait for him to try to talk to me.  A couple of hours later, he told me if I’m still going to be upset today, he doesn’t want me in the house.   So, I guess that’s all he has to say. 

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

~~~

My husband hasn’t spoken to me at all today, other than to email me and ask me to bring the car home so he could meet a friend for drinks. 

I left the house this morning, at his request.  He made no effort to contact me, did not inquire where I was, did not respond to my email early in the day letting him know my schedule.  I checked my email every ten minutes praying he would show me he cares.  He did not. 

He was watching baseball when I came home, whooping at some great play.   I cannot begin to describe the pain his apparent indifference to me causes.  I am so worth so little?  This man is supposed to be the person who loves me most of all, yet my sorrow, so deep and palpable I feel I’m wading through it to cross the room, doesn’t touch him.  It was all I could do to breathe and not hurl my hurt and angry words at him.  I stood on the stairs and wanted to scream at the back of his head, you are hurting me more than I can bear! I will never recover from this! We will never recover, if you don’t stop before it’s too late!   I wanted to fall to my knees and beg him to love me again, the way I thought he once loved me.  But I didn’t.  Even though it took great effort, I know there is no point. 

 My words have no meaning for him.  If they did, no one could silence me.

He left a few moments ago.  I heard the front door slam downstairs.  

My face is red and sore from sun and crying, and the tears burn my skin.

9.7.10

What is that quote, it’s always darkest before the dawn. There is something to that.  Midnight really is the loneliest time.  I’m glad there is a television in the guest room – i.e., my new room.  I tried to turn it off around midnight, but in the dark silence I started crying the kind of jerky, gasping sobs that make it hard to breath.  I was nauseous and sweaty and my heart was racing, so I thought of something my therapist told me about temperature regulation and mood, and I took a very cool shower.  To my surprise and mild delight (let’s not get crazy here), not only did it cool me off, but I felt calmer and more settled afterwards.   I turned the television back on and watched a show on MSNBC called Lockdown.  It’s a pretty brutal documentary about prison life and each episode is filmed in one or two (usually violent and notorious) prisons.  I think they run the show fairly regularly in the middle of the night, because I’ve watched it during several previous bouts of insomnia.  What does the programming say about the kind of folks who watch MSNBC at 1 a.m.?  Maybe the message is no matter why you can’t sleep, these guys have it worse than you.  At least I’m not in prison.

I think I slept five or six hours, which is good.  I lay in bed this morning crying and listening to my husband feed the dogs, shower and get dressed for work.  Just before he left, he opened my bedroom door.  He stood at the foot of the bed and said, without any conviction or visible emotion, that he was sorry he hasn’t been there for me and he wants to talk tonight.  I had no response.  Haven’t I said everything already?  Besides, it may be better to lie immobile.  If I moved, I might unleash a torrent of emotion that would push him further away.  I am on that precipice.  

I have a counseling appointment this afternoon.  At my last appointment, Dr. G told me she wants to see more emotion from me during our sessions–after all, I’m seeing her to deal with my supposedly out-of-control emotions.  Ironically, I don’t know if I can cry anymore. 

9.8.10

My husband told me tonight, again, that he wants a divorce.  Actually, what he said was I’m done with this relationship.  We weren’t even fighting.  We had a nice dinner – homemade lasagna – then he made the first fire of the season in our fire pit.  Later, he said something about whether I was going to “visit” my parents.  [I should insert here, after the fact and for clarity, that the visit to my parents, which we had previously discussed, was something I suggested as a temporary separation period, not a casual trip.]  He said it so casually, like it would be just a vacation.  That was very upsetting to me.   I tried to talk to him about it.  I was upset, but very calm.  And he said he was done with the relationship. 

I feel like I want to die.

The Biggest Fight

I realize my last post was "Week One" and today is week two.  At least I'm pretty sure it is, but the fact that I don't have the date etched in my mind is a good thing.

For a long while after the Professor said he wanted a divorce, everything was measured by that moment.  How many days ago did he say it, how many weeks and, later, months.  That dark anniversary never passed by unnoticed, unmourned.  But I am no longer counting days and weeks.  I'm not measuring the moments of my life by him or what happened.  Was it really just last week that I posted?  It feels like last year.

Here's what I can say about divorce:  if you are prepared, it isn't so bad.  Which isn't to say it's great.  I'm not exactly celebrating.  But I'm not killing myself, either.  The first week was pretty miserable, to say the least.  But I was prepared.  I spent the last ten months actively preparing myself for this, working hard to adjust and adapt, facing myself honestly and critically, reflecting on our relationship, evaluating who I was, who I am, and who I want to be.  I didn't bury my head in the sand or distract myself from dealing with things.  I have dealt with it all, in the most thoughtful, real and honest way I know how.  And I have tried to do it all in a way I could be proud of, in a way that I thought would have some dignity and honor, if dignity and honor can be found in the destruction of a marriage.

It has been painful in a way I cannot describe, and more difficult than anything I've ever done.  I have learned to be with myself, to bite my tongue, to let things go.  I have learned to measure the depth of my immediate pain against the gain, if any, of acting on it.  I have learned that -- much to my dismay -- I am not always right, and, even worse, that right or wrong, sometimes I just have to accept that I cannot have, will never have, what I want.  And I have learned that, while sitting with pain or anger hurts, and feels impossible, sometimes it is better than the alternative of being ignored, rejected or denied.  I have learned not to touch the hot stove that burns me, as tempted as I am.

These are good lessons for me, as I'm a fighter.  I'm a kicker and a screamer.  I will have what I demand, and I will be heard.  And, while it has been painful, it has also been necessary for me to learn that kicking and screaming don't always work, aren't always the most effective way to make your point.  To the contrary, they rarely are and often obscure the point altogether.  Not to mention that kicking and screaming is just plain exhausting.

Because of this -- because of the work that I've done, the pain I didn't fight, the temporary distractions I didn't embrace, the impulses I resisted -- I was prepared.  As prepared as anyone can be.  I didn't throw myself down and wail, I didn't rend my clothes.  I did not fight what I could not control.  Which is not to say that I didn't want to.  I wanted in a primal way.  But I didn't.  Because I know how not to.

And the moment passed.  The worst of it came and then, eventually, left.  There will be other moments, things that trigger memories and sorrow, things that remind me of this great loss, things that bring me to my knees.  I won't fight the pain.  I will sit with it, because I have learned how to.  And learning that is the biggest fight I've ever won.