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Dear, dear wonderful commenters,

Thank you for your kind and reassuring words, your torrential rain of kindness when I was in a desert of my own making.  You don’t know how important it is to me to know you are there, and that you understand what I’m trying to do and that you support me all the way through it.  Even though I post very infrequently now, this blog means a lot to me because of all of you.

It’s now only 10 days since my spasm of shame and sadness, and things are much much better.  The things that I was extremely anxious about and busy with in my domestic life, which were sapping my reserves of resilience, were completed wonderfully and with much joy for all concerned.  I got through a business trip and some ridiculous work drama (ongoing, but I’m about to leave the country for 10 days, so I’m literally getting a lot of distance on it).

And most importantly, I’m working on forgiveness.  The events that upended me sparked a tremendous fight (row — that’s for you, Sister) with Daniel, in which he said, “You blame me.  You blame me because we didn’t have a second child.  You’ll never forgive me.”  At the time, mid-fight, I thought, “Of course I do, and of course I won’t because that’s what happened and I am correct.”  And then I realized that I needed to be able to forgive, even though I didn’t want to.  I didn’t think he deserved it, or had earned it (!) or that I could do it.  So I prayed about it.  Some people pray for forgiveness.  I prayed for the ability to forgive.

And I bought some books to support my intention.  I’m about a third of the way through this one, and have turned down dozens of pages because I found them important or moving.  I was so nervous about ordering books without seeing them first, because I was feeling vulnerable (I still am, or will, once I turn back to the subject).  But this book is very gentle.  I particularly like how it reassures the reader that whatever is hurting her really hurts.  It’s valid, even if it’s not as traumatic as what happened to some of the people whose stories are in the book. At one point, the authors write something like, “You were there, you know what you felt, and you know you were hurt.”  For someone like me, who suffers grievously from comparison poisoning, reading this was a balm.  The authors say what I knew intellectually but could never act on, which is that one forgives for one’s own benefit.  It’s a gift to oneself, not to the unforgiven person.  (It’s also that, but unforgiven people have a way of going about their merry, unforgiven way while the hurt people fume and stew.)

So things are better.  I’m tired and wrapped up in getting everything together before our trip abroad, during which I won’t be blogging.  But I wanted my dear, dear commenters to know how much you helped and how grateful I am.  You gave me steadiness when I couldn’t provide my own.

When the universe is in on the joke

(Only frenzied people do three posts in 7 hours.  I get that.)

Daniel and I went to a big lively cocktail party this evening.  The first person we said hello to was a friend we haven’t seen in years.  The first words out of his mouth: “Hey, how many kids do y’all have now?”

Even I, in my utterly crazed state, realize that this is funny.

I drank rather more than was wise at this cocktail party.

Un-everything

I want to un-publish, un-send, un-write, and un-feel all of that last post.  Other people’s happiness makes me sad?  I am ashamed.  I am also ashamed of where I am in my career, and ashamed that I am ashamed.  I want to write my way into a place where I can be sure you think well of me, and not poorly because of what I just wrote.

In short, I am in a giant spiral of freak-out.  Can you imagine what I’d be like if I hadn’t been doing yoga 3 days a week for the last month?  Daniel says he can tell I am in frenzy because of the way I walk from room to room (which makes it very hard to walk normally in his presence.  Monty Python’s ministry of silly walks comes to mind, but I’m too frenzied to pause to find the link.)

I will get through this.  The things that are really stressing me out are good things.  Nothing bad is happening to me or to anyone I love — in fact, there’s a surfeit of good things.  I’m just finding it challenging to manage the details of those good things.  I am starting to feel tugs of shame for not being able to manage the details of the good things, but that’s just gratuitous spinning into the freak-out, and I will resist.  I will find my center again.  I am grateful for this space and for your patience while I do that.

Trying to stand tall in a stiff wind

Warning: This is one of those yucky inside-my-mind posts in which I reveal my worst and smallest self.  I’m not erasing it because of my feelings about blogging honestly, but I’m not feeling good about it.  I ought not be blogging at work, but I can either think about this blog post and not work, or write this blog post and not work, and maybe if I do the latter, I can salvage more of the afternoon.

So… on Friday P, the woman I wrote about in this post,  delivered a lovely, perfect baby.  I started my career as a writer, wish I wrote more, and am struggling terribly to write a book that I believe will be widely ignored.  P’s first book won a major award.  I work on policy issues that I hope may make a difference.  She works on policy issues and her work has quite demonstrably saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives.  When Daniel and I struggled to become pregnant, he resisted strongly because of his age — “I don’t want to be driving carpool when I’m 70!” he would say.  Her husband is roughly Daniel’s age, and although he’s not the sort to drive carpool, could be doing so at age 70 because he just couldn’t tell his wife no when she wanted a second child. 

I know that comparisons are rotten, but boy oh boy, the divergence here is challenging, very challenging indeed.  Every point at which I feel vulnerable, she looks very very strong — every single one.  I’m struggling.  I wish I weren’t, but I am.  I thought I was doing okay.  I had a good reckoning with myself this afternoon on the way to one of my sanity-saving lunchtime yoga classes.  I said to myself, “Okay, P’s life is not going to change to suit your emotional needs.  The only thing you can do is make your own life better.  You are in charge of that.  If you are bummed about writing, well, act.  If you want to write a great book, then make that happen.  That’s your field of action, so act.”

That’s great advice, right? And I gave myself other great advice too, this weekend and today, when I was sliding toward despair.  I thought, pitifully, “I don’t know where to start.”  And I answered myself: “Start from where you are.”  So Zen!  So meditative! So correct!

Then, just a few minutes ago, one of my closest friends just told me via email that his wife will have their 3rd child late this year.  (One of my other closest friends will have her second in the fall.  Thus, of the four friends I hold dearest in the universe, half are expecting.  All have or will have more than one child.) I expected this news, because I’d seen my friend and his wife a few months ago and thought something was up.  But my friend was lamenting how hard it is to get any work done, and how he’s trying to get a burst of writing completed before the new baby comes. 

And that is a hell of a stiff wind in which to keep my steady footing, dear readers.  Why?  Because I have neither the family I had dreamed of (although my family is a dream… Milo especially lately, and Daniel and I are getting there — terrible quarrels but some valuable reconciliations) nor the career I had hoped.  P looks to me to have both, which is to say, to have everything.  My dear friend has very clearly made a tradeoff, choking off some professional ambitions in order to have a robust family life in which he is very, very engaged, so he has one but not the other.  I feel like I’ve lost on both counts.  I can’t look at my career and say, “I’m am doing so well here, and it takes so much energy.  I couldn’t be such an ass-kicker, I couldn’t be flourishing so much here if I had the family I thought I would have, so it’s balanced out.”

That’s what’s got me wrapped around the axle here — the feeling that I’ve fallen short on both home and work fronts.  One I can’t do anything about at all.  The other I ostensibly should be able to correct, but just at the moment I’m feeling powerless to do so.  Work feels like a dead-end, a bog, a hole I can’t lift myself out of. 

It seemed better, when I started this post, to let the feelings of sadness and inadequacy out, to give them this semi-public airing.  I am ashamed to feel this way.  I have so much to be grateful for.  I had promised God I wouldn’t do this anymore.  (Long story — last week Milo was playing in such a way that he could easily, easily have been hit and killed by a car.  I wasn’t paying close enough attention.  I could have lost Milo, and it would have been my fault.  I thanked God vigorously that this didn’t happen, and told God that it was very clear to me that He had not forgotten or abandoned me, but was in fact taking excellent care of me.)

So this is just me being sad and small and ashamed, and wishing I could be big and generous — not just to others but even to my sad and small self.   My astrological sign (which I’m not supposed to care about) is Libra, and I am forever trying to balance the scales in situations in which it’s not at all appropriate or kind to myself or others.  Daniel is ferocious in trying to extirpate this bad habit of mine, which makes me even more ashamed and which makes it harder to work it out and eventually let go of it.  So I turn to my patient and trusted readers.  I am sorry, I am sad, I am ashamed.