Off

3:04

It’s erev Pesach and Good Friday, or it’s one or the other, since few believe both at once.  So, it’s a good time to get off the cross.  I shouldn’t think that because I’m not Catholic anymore, but Jesus was Jewish.

I realized today, as I sat in the car while Daniel went in to the get the last bit of prepared for for Pesach, that I believe I am Jesus. I believe that I take upon myself all the sufferings of others (in this instance, I was thinking of Milo and Gabby & Jacob — my niece and nephew, who are mine and have been mine, although they are Daniel’s sister’s children, so our relationship is by choice and permission, not blood), and if I suffer horribly enough, and bleed from a variety of wounds enough, you will love me.

So, off the cross.

I upset Daniel last night, so he’s not speaking to me. It was a very quiet, suffocating car ride for the errands. I’m trying to stand strong and remember that I can’t be in exile if I don’t believe myself to be, if I refuse the exile.  Sometimes it works.

I doubt myself. I doubt that what he has done is wrong, because he is so certain it was not wrong. I worry that I am giving in to the mob, as he calls it. I wonder if, centuries ago, I would have been on the side of the slave-owning majority, or decades ago on the side of the Jew-hating or Communist-hating majority.

Even as I type that, I see that I am insane. Daniel did things that hurt me and hurt others. He did not do it with intention to hurt, but he does them and does them and does them, and he will never stop. It’s a feature, not a bug. I misunderstood which was which. I thought love for me was the feature, and the wounding, lying, withdrawing, hatefulness, the insatiable need for the constantly refreshed attentions of new, other women was the bug. I was wrong. It’s the feature. It’s who he is. He is making that clearer and clearer with every passing day, and I keep not getting to the point.  Last night I said “Can you consider both that you did something wrong AND that you are being grossly, gruesomely, vastly overpunished for it?” No, he cannot.  Only the latter makes sense to him.

Milo believes that last night, though an unbelievably humane, courageous, and honest, intervention he saved us. He was wrong. How can I tell him that later?

3:39 with many interruptions

Onward

8:43

Ceaselessly, ceaselessly, ceaselessly onward, for the good thing that will come after this unbearable period that I am bearing so well.  I want to eject myself from the journey.  Time will do what time does, but only minute by minute.  Minutia by minutia.

My mood shifts rapidly.  I feel that most of my life is an obstacle course, things to be endured and overcome.  Nothing for joy.  Then, I find my spirits lifting because… why not?  Because a woman who ran a yoga studio that I went to, almost daily, 5 years ago, saw me today and recognized me immediately, despite my grey hair and sunglasses.  A friend says my institution might not be the best place for my work, and lists a dozen other places that I could look at.  No guarantees — they could all turn me away just as easily as everyone else has.  But the possibility of possibility is heartening.  Yes, the possibility of possibility.  Capped with a safe ride on the bike highway.  It was only six blocks, but it felt like a good distance, traveled well.

And then another turn.  I fear Pesach.  I fear so much time with Daniel, so much inertia in our house.  I’m not working, so I can rest, but I can’t rest with him because, as I’ve written before, it feels like lying.  I can’t help it that I have to wait, but I want to wait as actively as possible.  This, though, is frenzy.  And obstacle course thinking, where there is no joy.  Frenzy makes it much much worse because I forget what’s interesting.

Enough.  A book, another story, one that races to a conclusion, as I wish mine would.

8:55

Nonsense

9:19

I just like that word. I originally titled this post Numbers, but that was too depressing.  I meant, originally, strength in numbers, because women in my organization, especially women like me whose jobs are vulnerable, are organizing against a bad (crushing, actually) development. Sisterhood is powerful! It’s great to feel supported and embraced — literally embraced in some cases. Yesterday was, in some ways, one of the best days I’ve had at my organization because of this strong feeling of solidarity.

But otherwise, the numbers are not coming in, and my number might be up.  I am so driven by numbers that the word itself exhausts and enervates me: number of hours worked, proposals sent, hours worked, dollars awarded, years spent, tears cried, days till Passover, hours of kashering, children not had. I think I can stop there. Exhaustion falls on me again like a sofa.

My work sisters are telling me that it’s nonsense to believe that my coming collapse is all my fault, so that’s nice.  But we are all warped by the nonsense of more is better when it comes to hours worked, and of the nonsense mindset that allows work to consume the best of us. Our institution is failing us, so why are we devoting more and more hours to it at the expense of our families?

Well, in my case, it’s because I prefer to do that. I’d rather work than be home with Daniel, even with Milo. I need to feel efficacious and in motion. Sitting quietly feels like lying. I want to move away, onward, upward, outward. I want very much to be not here, so I won’t stay in one place too long, unless it’s my office chair. And Daniel continues to be so nice. He admires me. There are hugs and chaste kisses. This is getting boring to write, and it’s maddening to live.

Here’s what I wrote to a friend today (approximately):

What’s keeping me going is 1) a belief that there is something better on the other side of this; 2) a feeling that this is a time of refining fire, in which I’m burning off all the ideas and beliefs that no longer serve me; 3) noticing that I’m doing really well, all things considered; and 4) the love of my friends and Milo.

I am glad, though not entirely comfortable, that I am not making myself unnecessarily miserable in this period. I understand time and change. This won’t be forever. Something is always next, whether we like it or not. I was queen of the world on October 20th, 2017. And now I am… less so.

I’m also realizing I’ve been wrong about the world. I thought it was better than it is, and that my flaws were excluding me from its goodness. It turns out, the world is both wonderful and messed up. It’s not all my fault. It’s my participation in the world.

9:33

Nugatory

10:12

That’s rather the opposite of magnificent, but it was a very rough day.  Another futile, dead-end call with a prospective funder, or non-funder.  Some complicated drama at work that initially left me feeling elated because it became very clear that my institution does not stand behind me and support me, and therefore my difficulties are not entirely my fault. But now the elation has passed, like drunkenness, and curdled into anxiety.

A friend wrote to me, about the work situation: “Sometimes the Universe is like, “One door closes, another opens. In that order.” And the Universe doesn’t just believe you need to get the direction right on your own, it knows you are the only one who can.”  So that was sweet, because she doesn’t know about this blog.  The door is closing. On my fingers. And something better is on the other side.

I’m fighting, kind of, with my therapist, about what she has and hasn’t done for me, and why she’s being rewarded (with more money) and I’m being tasked with more work (an extra session every week) when I’m struggling in all the old ways.

Daniel is being extremely kind, which totally undermines my plan, although it makes things easier in the short term. But he can be nice without being my husband, I hope.

Everything is unsettled and in the air, and I am creating my own comfort, poorly. Well, not poorly, but it would be nice to have a co-creator. I hope all that’s happening will lead me there.

10:17 because I can’t right now.

Now

8:44

That is one of the most comforting words, “now.” When Milo was small, I used to say “akshav” which is Hebrew for now, meaning, let’s go, do it now, c’mon hurry up. I used “now” a lot like that, then.

Now “now” is different. Now is a beautiful expression of the passing of time. Now things are impossible and hard and I don’t see a way out. But that’s just now, only now. There will be later, and things will be different then. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

Today I did therapy on the couch. I like it. I should have done it before. It’s a very different experience. I was faster, more emotional, more open. My therapist-as-disembodied voice seemed more active, too, pushing me more.  It was excruciating, but I need that now. I need that refining pain. The cross fit junkies say pain is weakness leaving the body.  Okay, I need that weakness to leave my soul.

It was crushingly frustrating, though, to hear myself say and feel myself feel all the old things, things I thought I had exorcised: that I have to be perfect to be loved; that I have to do everything myself; that it’s all my fault; that I have to protect Daniel no matter the cost to myself, that I owe Daniel everything; that my happiness is made up of the leftovers once Milo, Daniel, the rest of the world have taken what they want; that I can’t, that they won’t let me.  All the old stuff I thought I so boldly wrote myself away from, that I have been working on with my therapist for the past five years and though I had escaped. Hah. Not now.  Not yet.  It’s come back (now) that I am especially low and feeling entirely alone.

I re-read old posts last night and saw how many times I have asked for help. So many! Help not coming is an old story. But help does come. In graduate school my friend Avi helped. Right now my friend Lou is being a wonderful help, putting aside lots of time to walk through funding issues. He’s really going the extra mile for me. Sharon, my co-pedicure-recipient helps. My oldest and loveliest friend Leah, and my dear college friend Kat help.  They took me away to the mountains and paid for everything.  That helps.  But the help I’m looking for right now has dollar signs and job titles attached to it.  That’s what counts for me now — Lou is doing that.  It’s good to see what I’m not seeing.  Still, what I’d like to see is the calvary coming hard and fast over the hill, carrying bags of money, waving flags with dollar signs, and with abundant offers of the right jobs in their hip pockets. Not seeing that, sadly. Not now, not yet.

It’s hard to write because Milo is writing his resume out loud behind me and constantly seeking my input and it’s distracting.  Sweet, though.

I had this thought today: if doing my job, or any job, well right now requires 60 hours a week, then that’s not the right job for me– now, or perhaps ever. That is a huge act of defiance in my culture of highly educated, highly honored, high achieving and high earning people.  But I don’t want to, and never have wanted to, work 60 hours a week, and I never have, at least not for pay.  Maybe in college, out of anxiety.  Possibly in graduate school, also out of anxiety.  I can’t really remember. 60 hours a week is a whole lot.  And it’s not what I want. I fear if I say it out loud to people no one will want to hire me.  More for the couch tomorrow.

9:18

Magnificent

8:25

Things are still terrible.  On Friday, I was in tears at 9:20am in my office.  Usually tears, like drinking, wait till the end of the day. But “magnificent” has been in my head for a couple of days as a post title, and I’m sticking with it.

I am being magnificent, in my dire straits.  I am showing love. I am laughing. I am not crying all the time. I give and receive kindness. Whatever is on the other side of this awful awful time will be met by a really great me.

What’s also true: Daniel’s therapist has said that Daniel has suffered a trauma. True enough. I am going to be the person who leaves a person who has suffered a trauma. True enough. Maybe the trauma was our marriage. I come back to that. Maybe Daniel has been so unhappy all of these years because of our marriage. Maybe it was about me. Hah! That would be such an irony. Who will ever know the truth? I have written this before, but it shocks me again and again to realize that Daniel’s therapist (Dr. G) is not my ally. Dr. G. is not going to restore Daniel to me in mercy, great is his faithfulness (more hah. Daniel was never great on faithfulness). Dr. G. might confirm Daniel’s view that I am subpar, that I am the cause of his pain (I might be, by being his wife), that I am the shiny, brittle, heartless, self-serving bitch who left him after, or during, his trauma. I care enough to write it, but not much more than that, right now.

Here is what has happened. I thought Daniel and I were building a house, the house of our marriage. I kept wondering where the drafts were coming from, why the floors were tilting and walls were weeping. I became quite agitated to find and repair. And all the while, Daniel, intentionally or not, was blowing holes in the roof, introducing termites into the beams, and pouring acid onto the foundation (I’m not exactly sure how one would undermine a foundation. Faithlessly, I suppose).  And now Daniel, traumatized, says, “Dorothea, why is this house not warm and safe and dry? Why are you so wrong? What did you do? What happened?” Indeed, Daniel. What happened? I’m traumatized too, it’s just slower rolling and I’ve spent a lot more money getting to the root of it. A lot more money. And I cared to find out. Well, I cared to blame myself for years and years and years because realizing Daniel’s role was worse. Until it wasn’t.

Daniel should be married to a woman who cares nothing for cooking and laundry. Who goes to bed at 2am and sleeps till 10, and has nowhere to be till noon. I spent 3 hours in the kitchen today, cooking really nice things for lunches between now and Passover (I vastly overdid it on lentils, which I can’t eat during Passover. They’ll freeze.) I tried to show Daniel sympathy while carrying a load of towels, in my scruffy yoga clothes and desexed wool socks, hair limp and dirty.

AND I”M STILL FUCKING AWESOME AND SOMEONE IS GOING TO LOVE ME SO MUCH THAT WAY. SOMEONE IS GOING TO WANT TO EAT MY GOOD FOOD AND ADMIRE ME AND BUY ME WOOL SOCKS BECAUSE I LOVE THEM, AND FUCK ME ALL THE TIME.

I spent a couple days this week at my parents house, because a work trip took me to their city. I loved being with people I didn’t have to explain myself to. What’s weird is explaining my divorce aspirations to my Catholic mother. She’s cool with it. She asks what my plan is. I have no plan, other than the plan to divorce… eventually. First I need a steady income, and that is laughably and usefully far away.

Really, I need a miracle. I need a Deus ex Machina. I need a 3rd party intervention. I’m hustling as hard as I can here. Someone has to take the ball from me. So I keep showing up, ready whenever that person appears. Soon, please? I’m open tomorrow, for example. Tomorrow would be quite good. I’d clear my calendar, no problem. Even skip some workouts.

Wouldn’t it be great if I left Daniel and he immediately got better– stopped being depressed, lost weight, ate better, slept better, got out of bed in the morning, wrote like a demon and an angel at the same time –and everyone would love me? Including Daniel?

Here are my ethical challenges, in order of occurrence-to-me:

1. how can I stay, and tell Daniel I love him (which I do, I just don’t like him. He likes me, ish, but doesn’t love me), when I have zero wish to reconcile or continue to be his wife once we are both economically secure? Am I lying to him? This ethical problem is compounded if I have a period of unemployment during which he has to support me. Y’know, as if I am his wife or something. But it would be at least tacky, and possibly unethical for me to leave him once I got a job after 6 months on the marital dole, right? I’m finding that I don’t really super much care. I need to ask the rabbi.
2. (Because I am so good at this) how can I leave now that Daniel has told me he has suffered a trauma? I would literally be kicking him out of his house by forcing a sale to get my share of the marital assets. Wait, IT”S OUR HOUSE, MINE TOO. And if he can buy me out, I’d be delighted because I don’t want Milo to feel he’s lost his home, too. Another Deus ex Machina would be useful here, but I’m a monotheist. (Hah. I amuse myself)

Somebody is going to have to figure this out on my behalf, or at the very least (really, really the very least) shine a light on the path forward. I am getting as far as I can on my own.

Still, magnificent. Sometimes I find this situation interesting. I made it through three weeks of being out most nights, which is very hard for me, very limited workouts, and workouts are absolutely keeping me going, they are the gasoline for my engine of joy.  (Milo is the oil.  Meditation is the air. I don’t know more than that about engines.)  I spent 90 minutes touring a college campus with the (very very very young woman) to whom Daniel declared, “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you… yes, yes, yes, yes, I love you” on Jan 1 of this year, and about whom he has lied to me since 2016 (there were texts he lied about, and a questionable receipt).  She’s a college student. I haven’t entirely processed that yet. I was radiant with happiness at my cousin’s wedding. People whose marriages have failed are perhaps more optimistic about the possibilities of marriage. We have high standards.

I want Daniel’s happiness as much as I want my own. The thing is, I have just started to want my own, ardently and uncompromisingly. And I have lost my patience with people — including myself!!  Mostly myself!! — who tell me it has to come later, or be eviscerated for someone else. Why is it zero sum? Why can’t we all just compromise a bit, so we are all happy enough. Daniel’s happiness can’t be built on my misery, nor can my darling Milo’s. I won’t do it. I’m a soldier now, but the tour of duty — yes! this is a tour of a duty, longer than I thought — will end.

Also, manifesto.

9:02

 

Mindset

10:04 am

Blogging at work again, which is bad, particularly when my job is as tenuous as it is. But I need all the self-support I can muster (“mustering” would have been a better title. I wanted to give up my title rules, but if I start giving up, I might not stop).  The idea of other support is so far fetched it makes me laugh.

Another grant fell through. I’ve lost count now how many 4, or 5? It depends how I count. Clearly I was miscounting, counting chickens before they hatched, dis-counting how whimisical and lottery-like the whole system is. I am miserable. Truly miserable (“misery”– also a good post title.) Daniel might be rescued — someone showed him an extraordinary kindness and might give him a job. Daniel, who does so much harm and so much good, gets rescued. I, who does little harm and a bit of good, fall and fall and fall because people believe I can pick myself up just fine. Won’t they be surprised?!

I would like to say otherwise, but Daniel’s glimmer of hope made me feel worse. The huge shift in the power dynamic of our marriage was doing some good work for me. He is being very kind and attentive and careful. He praises my resilience and pluck. He gives me hugs. I struggle to bear this kindness. It feels like good behavior, not like love. Or maybe our love is now so attenuated that this is what it is: good behavior. It makes it so much worse.

I tell myself that it won’t always feel like this. Sometimes that stops the tears, sometimes it startsthem.

Oh dear. When I started this post, it felt reassuring to hear my voice again, rather than the voices in my head that say that, if this is happening, I must deserve it. I made bad choices, so I don’t get the pretty things (I ran into a friend yesterday who is pregnant with her 3rd child. I thought with wonder, “How did you get your husband to love you so much?” That is a very sad question to ask because most people never have to think of it. I never got that. Is that my failure or his? Or both of ours? See how easy it is to fall and fall and fall and fall?)

Maybe writing wasn’t a great idea. That’s the challenge now. It’s harder to fight off the waves of despair, and they come hard and fast.

10:16

Multitudes

8:54

As in, “I Contain Multitudes.” I’ve never read the poem, actually, and when I googled “I Contain Multitudes” the top hits were for a book about microbes in the human body, which is an excellent title for the subject.

What I do not contain is job security. The grant that I thought would turn everything around will, like the two other turn-everything-around grants before it, will come in small, or late, or not at all. It will not come in now, so I am much closer to the end of my run in the best job I have ever had, which is the best fit and brings out the best in me. I have an important call tomorrow — that call is really the last turn-everything-around possibility. And I’m probably going to stay up ridiculously late to watch the Oscars.

Last night, when I found out after Shabbat that the grant was not going to come through, I was angry. I was angry this morning at Daniel (various reasons, some justified: I thought he woke me up at 2am to move the dog from my bed to his. He denies this. He says he was just moved to kiss me when he came home. Sadly, he lacks this enthusiasm during, say, daylight hours.) But during yoga this morning, I stopped being angry because there’s no benefit, there’s no joy in it, and I need joy and joy and joy and joy. Something just happened, and something else will happen. I believe that I will have a job at the end of 2018. I believe that, if I have a period of unemployment, it will be manageable, even if it drains all my savings. It’s only money.

Today I got a pedicure with a friend, and she told me how much she earned at her old job, and what she earns now. I feel like we are sisters after this. It was a beautiful experience. She made me laugh till I almost cried (not when we talked about money, when we talked about Passover). I have her, and many other friends, so it’s going to be okay. It’s just information, just experience, just another step on the way to the next kind of thing.

So, I am weirdly happy. I was angry, then shut down, then happy. I’ll go through this cycle many more times. But now I’ll just be happy & watch the Oscars.

9:11

Lax

8:08

The luxury of waiting for someone else to make the next move turned to laxity and then (almost) lachrymosity. It turns out that when I am not moving the big rock up the steep hill, the rock succumbs to gravity and flattens and bruises me on the way down the slope.  I was insufficiently ambitious this week, and my mood reflects it. I’m on my second (heavily iced, in a small glass) bourbon.

So, writing again because I have goals. I make commitments. I can propel myself forward by sheer force of will. And because I find I do somewhat better emotionally when I write than when I don’t.

I miss someone to be vulnerable with. Daniel is not that person, and hasn’t been for a long time. Ironically (not the right word… tragically? Too strong. Sadly, yes, every minute of every day) Daniel has a greater tolerance for my vulnerability and fear about work than he ever has. I used to get so many lectures and corrections when I fussed or complained or expressed fear. Now, he is appropriately sympathetic and says things along the lines of, “Wow that sucks. It’s just like that.” But I can’t tell him the whole story. I can’t say, “I have to keep this job because being at my desk at work is so much nicer than being at home.” “I have to keep this job because if both of us are home all day, I will not have any respite from the distance between us nor from my desire to either close it or make it 100 times bigger.”

My shrink wants to see me 3 times a week now. I said yes. I have some money coming from my mother (“There is a condition,” she said, “You have to spend it only on yourself. So, buy a new dress, or go to yoga. But you have to spend it only on yourself.”  That reminds me of when I was in college, and my father sent me $100 to buy a new suit for a colossally important interview. He left me a photocopy of a note that my grandfather had sent my father, along with $20, when he (my father) was in college. “This will buy you a hamburger when you call home. But you have to call home.” My father and grandfather had so much more whimsy and wonder and delight to give the world than the world called forth from them. I don’t know if my grandfather suffered from it. When I knew him, he seemed wonderfully content with his life, and his adored and adoring wife. My grandparents would be so broken hearted at my own broken heart. They wouldn’t be able to comprehend what has happened to me. They would be unspeakably sad, so, so, so  sad. My grandmother might also be angry. My father has suffered greatly from having more to give the world than the world called forth, and my brother suffered because of my father and because the same thing is happening to him. I hope, when my brother has children, that he has only girls.)

So three times a week, even though I am only now coming to realize that I am not broken, except by circumstances. I am not inherently broken. I am broken hearted. There’s a difference. I’m worried about this. I don’t want to do more work on myself. It’s been five years of that — to excellent, extraordinary, unexpected effect. Massively worth it. But 3 times a week? On the couch, free associating? Really? That said, joy has been scarce, I’m sliding backwards, bruised and over-rolled, and I need help. Maybe this is help. Damn expensive, though.

Things seem both extremely possible and extremely impossible. I had lunch with a gentleman colleague today. For him, everything is possible. I found myself saying, repeatedly, “I can’t…” and he would say, “Why can’t you?” I didn’t have good answers.  This colleague founded a school for children in rough circumstances, so I am sure he has a lot of experience with people who say, “I can’t…” Under his influence and the excellent oolong tea, I fired off a few brave emails when I got back to the office. I bring up his gender because I do wonder if it’s a gender thing. This colleague is also exceptionally gifted. He is a maker of yes. I would like to be a yes-maker. (I can’t! Why can’t I?)

8:32