First

3:30

Also, right now, failure.  Failure to rest.  I ironed and cooked instead.  I tried to have lunch with Daniel.  Well, we ate lunch next to each other at the same time, looking at the same newspaper (different sections).

First as in, me first.  As in first things first.  I want to start simple and small: feed myself before doing household chores.  Go to the bathroom or get water when I need to, regardless of where I am in any particular project.  A small thing… but try it.  It will feel like more of a change than you expect, if you are me.

First as in, feelings first.  And feeling them, not outworking them.  Feeling them even as I iron.  Feeling, for example, that I am so tired of only making a difference to Daniel in a negative way, never a positive one.  I can bring him down, but I never seem to be able to lift him up.  I can (always) err, but never excel.  Then questioning that feeling: is that a problem for him or for me?  Is it my fault?  (Oh, a post titled Fault.  That would be something.  It’s either all my fault or not one tiny bit my fault.  Daniel is the same.  And we cause each other untold suffering because of it, although I’m trying to tell my part.  The next post would be Fight.  It might be yet.)

False: what I just wrote sounds false to me, even though all the words are true.  I’m tired of constructing it that way.  That was how I thought of things before our crisis, but now I desperately (Fervently?) need the crisis to mean something and signal a change or release.  So what if I release myself, and say that I am good and bad, and Daniel’s reception of me is not the most relevant metric.  Oh, I so wish it were.  I wish I could measure myself positively in Daniel’s eyes.  I wish I trusted him enough.  I wish I didn’t have to trust myself.

Fallback: That’s what might doom us, is that our perceptions of our own selves vis a vis the other will never line up with the other’s.  He will never see me-to-him as I see me-to-him.  Is that a failing?  Is that even possible for anyone?  Can a person ever overcome subjectivity?  Hypothesis: no couple can ever achieve what I laid out. So the fall back (in a Fallen world) is trust and an effort to see it in the best light.  The fallback is generosity and gentle inquiry.

Failure: And we, Daniel and I, me and the man I love most and want to love more, we fail catastrophically at generosity and gentle inquiry.  My soul is crushed like an aluminum can at that realization, and the tears come.  I want this so much.  I promise I try to give it, except when I don’t.  Is is true that for some happy, blessed people, it’s natural, it’s like breathing, it’s like knowing right and left (which I don’t.  A big cost of divorce will be literally losing my orientation in the world when the rings leave my left hand.).  Or maybe, it’s something no one does beautifully, but people do often enough, and when it fails, there’s no catastrophe.

Daniel and I shrug when we should celebrate, and we explode when we should shrug.  And that is a very sad state of affairs for two people who had what I thought was a great love.  But maybe I was very very wrong about that.  The other couple I knew who I thought had a great love is divorced.  We all had great words, and great energy, but it’s not lasting.  And the couples I thought were settling look gorgeous and strong.

Falling: I am sad because I’ve been sending energy to Daniel and not getting much back.   I am falling back into trying, and being so sad when it doesn’t work and feeling like it’s because of my unworthiness.

When I was at yoga this morning, the burly, bearded substitute instructor adjusted my posture three times.  I’ve been practicing yoga for 20 years, so I don’t usually get hands-on adjustments: instructors tend to think I know what I’m doing, so they help people whose physical postures are less solid.  But he touched me on three occasions, pulling back my shoulders, kneading my sacrum down in child’s pose, adjusting my shoulders (again) and neck in shivasana.  It was a gift.  I thanked him after class, but didn’t ask why he treated me that way.  Was it a gift or a rescue?

3:56