Salve

7:46

Such a nice word, no?

A juicy yoga class, just enough to keep good tension and let bad tension go.  A funding reprieve (maybe — if it goes through) till the end of the year, which is what I wanted when the year started.  (Intentions are powerful things.)  A beautiful spring day.  Watching the baseball game from bed, with dinner on a tray beside me, and a new coconut cream dessert (from the co-op spending spree).  No obligations for the night ahead, or at least none that I’m going to attend to.  Daniel not home yet, so nothing to fake or fear or even, mildly, to interfere with my small pleasures.  I can live like this for a while.

About the funding.  If it comes in… I might feel relief.  I might feel relief for the first time in six months.  Or not.  It will be interesting to see.  Small glimmers of a fantasy: if Daniel has economic security, and I have economic security, could we find our way back to being happy?  Nope.  I mean… no.  Too many lies.  Too many questions: the urban outfitters tag, the Neiman’s bills that keep showing up.  The years of me thinking about divorce without taking myself seriously about it.  Pity, because I love him.  But not enough for repeated self-immolation.

So what, exactly, is that deus ex machina? I should send Daniel a link to this blog!  That would do it.

I will do the right thing at the right time.  Now is the right time to watch the game and feel good, even for just a little bit.

7:58

Strained

8:32

I wanted, four hours ago, to call this post “Silly” because I had, ridiculously, spent $200 today visiting a friend.  It wasn’t exactly like that — it never is.  Daniel took the car this afternoon to take Milo to an activity.  So I rented a Zip Car, to spare myself the cost of an Uber.  I wanted to drive, and that’s something I rarely feel, so I gave into it.  I believe, now, that I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts for the 30 minute ride to the suburbs, and I certainly didn’t want to be with a driver.  Driving gave me something else to think about.  And the cost wasn’t much more, if any more, than an Uber.   So that’s $45.

My friend Annabeth has cancer.  Bad cancer.  So $25 on flowers, that being the very least I could do.  And she is a gem.  We have seen each other maybe three times in the last dozen years since we graduated law school.  Folly!  She is a gem, and I need more of her in my life.  And she has cancer.  She’s remarried, and I mentioned that I’d last seen her right after she got married again.  She said, “Yes, the modern era.  So much better than before.  You know the first marriage was bad when now, even with cancer, is much better.”  We visited for an hour (“visited” is a verb from my childhood, usually used in past tense without the final consonant, as in, “It sure was nice visiting’ with you.”  Occasionally in the quasi imperative, “C’mon over here and let’s visit.”), and she got tired because she’s had a treatment recently.  She was delightful, then tired.  We laughed.  I didn’t ask her about her illness.  I did tell her the truth about my situation — she knew Daniel from our law school days, and he leaves an impression.

Then I went to the food co-op in her neighborhood.  I used to shop at a different branch, since closed, and I was so happy to be back.  I spent $150 on kombucha, beer, soap, chocolate, and environmentally righteous menstrual products.  Why?  Because Annabeth has cancer– bad cancer.  Because she has a truly, deeply loving husband, and a little girl who asked me if I did all the housework in my house (er… um… kind of, not really… yes it feels like it).  Because I don’t want her to die.  Because I don’t want to be married to Daniel.  Because I realized today that the feelings I wasn’t feeling weren’t feelings of relief or happiness, but of deep sadness.  And maybe I can drink and eat and bleed and wash all that stuff away.  Maybe I can surround myself, intimately even, with all this eco-luxury and that will make me feel entirely better.  At the very least, it was a reminder of a time when I had less clarity, and believed I was happy, and worried less about money.  I am worrying about money — the money it will take to buy my freedom — all the time, except when I’m filling my cart with luxury objects.

Then we did a family logistics thing — no need for details — which is always a recipe for extreme tension.  Milo and I are both on the ceiling right now, and he won’t talk to me about it, which is entirely age-appropriate but it makes me sad.

Annabeth makes me sad, too.  I am so sad.  Sad I haven’t seen her more.  Sad she has cancer.  Sad she is missing out on even a minute of happiness with her husband.  Sad about all my missed minutes, too.

What will I do?  Her cancer is not about me.  But this blog post is.  What will I do?  I know what I have to do.  Daniel came home from the grocery store and was actively nice for a bit.  I liked it.  I fell for it.  He believes it’s all fine.  It’s not fine.  It hasn’t been fine for a long time, and it will be so costly in every sense to make it so.  He’s already threatened me with an awful divorce.

I realized last night that when I first mentioned divorce, he said I couldn’t because of Milo, not because he loved me.  Maybe he gets a pass because he was angry and surprised.

I could decide to spring myself.  I could decide not to take the next round of grants and leave my job in June.  I could decide to leave Daniel now.  The money is there, from my parents.  If I said, “Daddy, I need the money, loan it to me, and you’ll have it back in two years,” I could do that.  I could do all those things.  I’m just so sad at having to right now.  I’m too sad right now.  And then I’ll be sad throughout.  And I still trust myself to do the right thing at the right time.  This is being brave for myself, and I have to be brave for myself so that the next good thing will come.

There was a point with Annabeth when I thought, as I have thought sometimes, “and yet, I’ve never been happier.”  I”m getting back to myself.  I am restoring my soul to me in mercy, and it feels pretty good.  I’m renting a car and driving to a granola suburb and spending silly money without justifying it to anyone, and it feels good.  It felt good.  Clarity is better than what I had before.

I should stop.  I should just read now.  I’m going to do health insurance reimbursements and iron instead.

8:56

 

 

Restorative

9:01

I hope this week will be restorative.  The last three weeks were intense.  I had thought that Friday I would get the final thumbs up or down on whether my job would exist after June… but, no, the call was delayed.  So I remain (remain, remainder, remnant — those would have been good title posts, probably better than the one I chose) suspended, and exhausted.

I was at a conference this week, with lots of friends.  One of them looked at me and said, “You aren’t going to make it two years.  You’ll get sick.  You need to call your parents and let them know you may ask them for money, even though you’ll try to avoid it.”  Not what I wanted to hear. I object to being in limbo, but I refuse to leave it, maritally.

Here’s a sampling of thoughts, just from the last 36 hours:

Milo was saying today how much he loves our house.

I was shocked to learn that divorce in my state requires 6 months of non-co-habitation, or a year if one person objects.

I might call my friend, who is a divorce lawyer, and ask her what the steps are.

Daniel stopped loving me a long time ago.  I have been living without love and not allowing myself to know it for so long.  On the one hand, I have to get out soon.  On the other hand… what’s another two years?

I am less desperate for the deus ex machina; but that doesn’t mean I’m not still waiting for it.

I am not feeling anything.  Daniel resents this.  He is ready for me to be happy again, relieved at some of the genuine professional wins (genuine, but insufficient, alas).  But I am not feeling anything but tired, and befuddled. My words have been failing me all day and all of yesterday.  I called my niece by the wrong name, and then forgot why I was speaking about her in the first place — and she was sitting two feet from me!  I feel fuzzy headed, and have sworn off drinking.  I would so like to feel relief.  I thought that I would after my conference and the big speech there.  But, no, just nothing.  Just the continued strain.  I could end the strain and uncertainty in my marriage by announcing I’m leaving.  I could do that.  It just seems impossible until there is economic security.  I had said that I would wait until Daniel has economic security, now he has some.  So, me next, and then the rupture.  Also a good name for this post.

How can I possibly do that?  How can I possibly keep living lie … a typo but a true one.  Living lying.  No wonder I don’t want to feel.  On the other hand, Daniel’s been living a lie for a hugely long time and prospered by it.  It’s not a lie. Right now, it’s a necessary mercy.  Six months ago, even four months ago, I was far from divorce.  It’s permanent, so no need to rush.

It’s not a lie.  It’s a reset, it’s a restorative.  It’s getting used to the honesty, it’s getting used to seeing.  It’s saving up money, it’s bolstering with therapy, it’s coddling and protecting Milo.  It’s one crisis at a time.  There is an integrity to this for now.  There will come a time when there is no integrity to it.  I trust myself to do the right thing at the right time.  Hey, that’s true.  I trust myself to do the right thing at the right time.  I trust myself to do the right thing at the right time.

9:15

Rage

9:39

Well, it is descriptive.

Per yesterday’s post, if Daniel is still sending gifts to girls, then he’s not serious about staying married.

We had a big tiff about walking the dog in the rain.  I was annoyed, I dared say the word “disappointed” and he blew up.  I forgot: no one must suggest Daniel shirks, even when he shirks.

Rage goes away once you start typing about it. Replaced by sadness, exhaustion, the edges of despair.  I wish he’d leave the room and let me be alone with Milo, who is sick in bed — really sick, not even watching TV.  Daniel is taking up all the oxygen, I feel, while I pound away on my laptop, here and not here, trying to keep rage from devolving into despair.

Milo just asked “What are you doing, Mommy” — and he never calls me Mommy any more.  So I’m done.

9:43

Reality

8:01

Reality is that, after I returned from a business trip Thursday, I saw a pricetag from Urban Outfitters for an item I never bought on the counter — my counter — in the bathroom.  Reality is, Daniel really did not want me to engage with this pricetag once I picked it up and said “This says black, extra small… I have nothing like that at all from Urban Outfitters.”  He got angry when he saw me put it in my pocket — he knew I was going to investigate.  I put it in the garbage and then I took it out and investigated.

It’s a top.  Not one I own.  I’ve twice previously found very small sized clothes in my house. I’ve found other things that Daniel can’t explain in a way that convinces me.

I had decided not to engage this latest installment of reality, and did a great job of it all weekend, forestalling the symptoms and awful feelings.  Then I decided to engage it in therapy, through a side door.  My therapist confessed that she was feeling really anxious about it or around it.  So now I am: all the old feelings, the dry mouth, the shivering, the shaking.  And Daniel will notice.  Everything around him feels like a lie.  And if I tell him, the truce will be destroyed and it will be yelling and hatred and I am enjoying the mendacious truce, the truce of untruth.  I need this calmness, because I am two months away from possibly losing my job — along with my gorgeous health insurance that pays more than half of my therapy bills, and the schedule that allows for lots of yoga and therapy, and good, hard creative work, and the dear colleagues, and the status just as it’s rising and rising.

And if I tell him, I won’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth unless he tells me that he did, in fact, buy it.  That would be refreshing.  I could work with that.  Should I give him that chance?  Or should I say, “Damn, if he’s on notice that I am thinking about divorce and he STILL fucks around like this, AND doesn’t clean up after himself when he does it, we are done as done can be, and all that’s left is my own timetable?”  By fucking around I don’t mean actual fucking. I meant the gifts and emotional engagements with other women.

It was so much better when I did not engage, when I half thought that maybe I picked up the tag on my business trip, in a shabby hotel room that might not have been cleaned well enough.  But I don’t remember clearly whether I set my things down on my counter before I saw the tag — I think I didn’t.  Or when I didn’t think at all.  Now I feel sick and tired.  I want not this.  But this is probably the future of staying.  Over and over and over again.

Do I owe it to him to give him even the chance to tell the truth?  No. Not now.  The costs are too high. I’ll fake it for a while. I get important job news on Friday, I think.

I hate living like this, but I hate the consequences of alternative actions so much more.  I also hated giving up the dream of my own apartment.  I was ready, am ready (?) for it to end, but not like this. Or maybe exactly like this.  I was looking for another incident to spring me, but it’s never this one, it’s always the next one, the one that hasn’t happened yet, and then the next and the next.  Daniel is just following protocol.

But what if he is innocent?  Why do I have to be such a mindreader, and wonder why he cared about the tag in my pocket and told me to take it out.

Daniel wants to be seen and to hide at the same time.  I am done.  And oddly sad and freaked out, but that’s commensurate with the seriousness of the project.

Milo melted down today in school because Daniel was treated so unfairly, which is true.  But I’m not treating him unfairly by leaving. I am treating him entirely fairly, and justly, if not entirely mercifully.  I need the mercy and the justice.

This is no good, no fun. I should have a whole category of blog posts called “lies.”

8:14

Quotidian

4:27

I considered Quondam, just because I like the sound of it, and am I sure I could have made use of its meaning (“that once was; former”), but I shied away from that because quondam husband, quondam marriage… I am and am not there.

Much less outer tumult, but so much inner tumult.  Quandary, you might say! I am paying close attention to how I feel when I am around him, or when I think about him, or the future.  It changes, a lot.

Friday & Saturday, I felt enormous relief at thinking, “I don’t have to stay with him. I don’t have to stay, I don’t have to stay, I don’t have to stay.  I get to decide.  He doesn’t decide, he doesn’t decide.”  I saw him talking to an old emotional-affair flame at synagogue and my guts feel to my feet.  And then I sat next to her, which was weird.  Avoiding her would have been weirder.  Why do I do this to myself?

When we settled in to watch our new Netflix series (Luther), I noticed how much I was doing to justify the choice, and to remind him that I have chosen a lot of great TV series… so much justification… what’s that for?  I also noticed that I felt uncomfortable around him.

Today is better, or rather today is different.  We had brunch together, unexpectedly.  We thought we were meeting another couple, but Daniel got the dates wrong, so there we were. It was nice. I asked if he wanted to go to the used book store around the corner.  He said no. I said, “I’ll say it differently: Will you come with me to the used book store?” Then yes.  It was role reversal — he had felt the pressure of other things when he declined.  He noted that.  I said, see, that’s how it feels to me, too.  Then I was explaining why I was so eager to go look at books: “As you know, I treat Sundays like weekdays, but without makeup–” “I know,” he interjected, not kindly.  “So, now that I have more time than I expected,” I continued, “I am very happy to do things I don’t normally do.”  Then I suggested we watch another Luther episode when we got home, and said we could even skip the bookstore to do it.  He was committed to the bookstore by then, though, so we went.

On the way there, I said, don’t worry about walking the dog before the episode, we can get right down to watching.  I realized, in the sting of what he said, that we both do a lot to control how the other person spends time, it just manifests itself differently.  He complains I boss him around.  He is right, I do, overtly.  He bosses me around in an insidious and indirect way, through his disapproval and disdain for my choices, by questioning, by sighing, by disrespecting.  When we got home I said, “We need to –both of us– respect how the other person spends time.  It’s not nice.  What you said stung.” He said what he always does, which is that he feels left out, like I prioritize these other things over him.  I don’t know what to do about that.  I could concede. But he prioritizes sleeping all day Saturday, and late into the mornings, and not taking an interest at all in kitchen matters or talking to me while I cook, or walking with me — that is Daniel’s anti-empathy M.O.  It’s always me coming to him, or not, while he never considers moving to my realm.  And then he rails that I am not interested in the things that interest him.

But I said nothing when it was clear to me that he would not have nearly enough time to do his errands before his 5pm meeting today.  That’s on him, he’s a grownup.  It felt good not to care, to leave it entirely to him, not to try to perfect him.

I usually don’t write in such detail. Maybe it’s because I am writing now only for myself.  The small matters (quotidian!) seem important, because I am looking for change and not-change in me.  Not change: justifying, appeasing.  Change: observing my reactions without judging them, holding off decisions, observing ways that it might feel good for me to behave differently, observing when I reach for Daniel’s medicine (metaphorically) to take it myself because it SO CLEARLY NEEDS TO BE TAKEN, and if he won’t, then I will, to model the behavior.

And now I feel exhausted.  Insufficient sleep.  Observing is tiring.  Holding myself at a distance, seeing it, explaining it to myself and mentally to him — even though I don’t owe him an explanation or anyone an explanation.

A realization as I re-read, briefly, about Daniel being a grownup.  Subtly but unmistakably… and in a way that is deafeningly loud to me… Daniel refuses to be a grownup in a million ways.  That is another significant issue. He refuses to take care of himself, physically. Okay, that can also be a choice and lots of people make it. But he also refuses to take responsibility in a serious way for his actions.  It is always someone else’s fault, usually mine. His demise is complicated, but he never has said, “I’m sorry for what I’m putting you through.” He has explicitly said that he can’t be held accountable for his behavior when he is angry or in the first two months (two months!) after his fall.  He has never considered that he was both a prince and an asshole, to the same people, at almost the same time. He refuses to be wrong, for anything.  The number of times he has shouted “My conscience is clear!” when he has lied or hurt me.  If your conscience is clear, why the lying and the sneaking?  “Because I know how you get, how you are, you are suspicious of things.”  Translation: Because I know it hurts you, because I want to keep these things secret, because (maybe) I love them because they are secret and because they hurt you and I kind of want to hurt you because you love me so much and I can’t bear it,

That last one is purely hypothetical, but it makes me cry. I do know, I do indeed, how it feels to be unable to bear that someone loves me so much. I know how it feels to want to hide.  The agreement I thought we made on our wedding day was not to hide.  I stopped feeling it was unbearable when I realized Daniel loved me a lot less than I thought.  And he has done a lot of work pushing my love away and steering me towards the nagging and bossing and away from how much I love him.  I take responsibility for my own business, and at the same time, I recognize when I’m being manipulated.

The not taking responsibility is old & deep and familial — his sister has it just as bad. He used to rail, “There is no music in the house!” So put on a CD! Or “they stole my day from me,” so tell people no, or quit spending half the daylight hours in bed, or do something. He has weird one-way boundaries (towards himself, but insufficient respect for those of others), and his sense of agency is like airport free wi-fi — maddeningly inconsistent. And when he has no agency, I am called upon to do the magic of reading his mind and doing all the salving.

He takes very little emotional responsibility.  Yesterday all was going well enough, and he asked me a question about work.  I said I can’t be sure, there were promising signs, I’d know more in a week, and I can’t attach myself to a good outcome because I’ve been so disappointed, but I’m sure something good will happen — I just don’t know what it will be.  Daniel sank. He got very low and said, “I wish we could have a conversation that wasn’t heavy all the time.” BUT HE ASKED!  To be fair, and scrupulous, and even handed, and the eternal keeper of the good girl flame, we had had a difficult conversation at lunch that he handled reasonably well (why he wasn’t mad at L, who caused it all, with an added does of H alerting him to trouble ahead. He tolerated my “thinking forensically”).

So: lack of trust; lies; not taking responsibility for actions, emotions, well-being — not just in a physical sense but in a grown up emotional sense, sending out these demands for care and attention, so that being with him does become meeting need after need after need; emotional distancing.  That is a lot to overcome.  Did I just write an indictment?  That’s absolutely what he would say.  What I say is: I can indict if I want to; it’s helpful to see all the pieces together in one place; clarity is good, and I think seeing him clearly is essential for seeing myself and my own changes and choices more clearly.  Why do I boss him around? Because I see him not acting like an adult in so many ways — or like I believe adults should act — and I can’t stand it, so I take over. What happens if I give up the bossing, let him bear the stress of it, if I put it on him?  Will he take it up, or will I further give up things, and how do I feel about all of that. Today at least I can see more clearly the “we both did it” aspects of our marriage, and that seems important.

I don’t have to leave, I don’t have to stay, I don’t have to choose right now. I can even enjoy the Luther episodes.  I can feel uncomfortable and eager to be away from him on Saturday, and happy to have his company on Sunday.  I can have all that because I am a person. Because it matters a lot to me right now to stake out this ground.   Because I matter most.  I do.  I do  I do I do.

A few other things I remembered after I published:

My family are great at not-seeing. I was thinking of my beloved grandmother who has passed away, and how little I really knew her.  She was so lovely and dear, and yet my dad is kind of noodled up.  How did that happen?  My dad was never really seen, not like he needed to be. And then he didn’t see my brother. And my mom is a champion not-seer, or if she sees she doesn’t tell.  And I was an olympian (Olympian! as in Mount) not-seer of myself, entirely, or sometimes at all, and certainly not of many things about Daniel. So a lot of not-seeing.  Now I am trying to see both of us, entirely.  And I can see (ha!) that my not-seeing was damaging to both of us.  But Daniel also likes to hide, yet he craves being seen, until it might actually happen, then he hides again.  So much to untangle.

The Zoe character in Luther is admirable, or was — now she’s backsliding.  I wonder if Daniel saw how much I admire her and was fearful, whether or not he knew what was happening. She loves Luther, but can’t live with him.  But, as I said, now backsliding.  I strongly disapprove.

Quashed (or not)

7:00

very little time before Shabbat, but enough time to shore myself up.  Daniel wants to reset, to walk away from the wreckage and start to be normal again.  I understand why it’s compelling, and I see some of his points: we need to be normal again some time, and re-hashing is not the same as a redo.  We have to start walking even if it hurts and we feel unready.  Those are good points. I will turn them over in my mind and heart.

What I also see is, that is a good way for Daniel not to take responsibility.  What I also see is, that might not work for me over the long haul.  What I also see is, maybe I don’t want things to work under any circumstances.  And that’s my prerogative.  Daniel’s policy is exactly right in foreign relations, and he calls this a truce, and often often often invokes Israel & Palestine — no kidding.  I am not sure it is right in intimate relations.  I told him I have the bends — we’ve moved very quickly from not talking to each other to him lamenting how little time we spend together.  I said, “Um, yeah, but I need to keep going to yoga.”  He got very upset.  Shrug.  Yoga has been better to me over the years than Daniel.  Much, much, much better.  Yoga never broke my heart, yoga never scared me, yoga never de-personed me or kicked me out of the circle of its regard.  Yoga routinely makes me feel great about myself and my body and my life.  Even when I told him “We weren’t talking to each other two weeks ago,” he replied, “Sometimes that happens.”  As if we somehow mutually or even independently decided to stop talking.  No.  What happened was, Daniel stopped talking to me, brutally.

Daniel insists right now on equal fault.  That is a lie. I will not continue my marriage on a lie.  I can wait for a while for him to get strong enough, to spend enough time with his therapist, to stop that particular lie.  But it’s a giant fucking lie and I will not live the next 25 years with it.  I don’t have to do what he says.  I don’t have to believe what he believes.   I can say, nope, fuck it, and leave.  That is bringing me tremendous relief right now.  The thought of leaving makes me feel better than the thought of staying.  And I can observe and see how that feeling changes or not.  And my story doesn’t have to make sense to anyone at all but me.  That is my Shabbat gift to myself.  That is what feels great.  I am the boss of me.

More stuff coming up: Daniel keeps setting boundaries about what we will and won’t talk about, what is and isn’t allowed.  I need to show him that he is not setting the boundaries anymore.  We are negotiating them, and they have to be good for me, not just him.  No more fucking fiats from him.  I didn’t show that strongly now — although I suggested it.

Oh this is terrible, but I’m glad his anti-depressants are doing what anti-depressants do, which is suppress and crush and strangle and kill the libido.  I greatly miss sex, but I can’t have sex with him right now.  I’ll consider getting there.  But this is my pace, my terms for me.  Life is like that.  Daniel refuses to be on parole, but he kind of is… he broke things.  That sounds maybe vindictive, but it’s self-protective.  Anything else is a lie.  He needs that lie right now.  Okay, I won’t push.  He needs to take seriously — and I need to tell him — that the default is not staying married.  The default is me leaving, because I can do that.  What is he going to do?  And he can say “Nothing.”  Cool.  Goodbye, good luck, I’m so sorry.

This is why I write.  I write to de-quash, de-crush.

Also, while not writing, I’ve been over-spending.  Stress bought 3 books, one of which looks like loads of fun, one of which looks disastrous, one of which is in the middle.  Stress bought a pair of shoes, which I can justify as “needing” spring work shoes that won’t hurt my feet and will accommodate my heel insert and my lack of interest in pedicures.  It is true that most of my old sandals are useless to me now.  Stress bought a dress on Ebay for $35… but I am so so tired of all my black clothes, and this is made of organic cotton and under conditions that are good for workers.  Stress bought a fair amount of food in NYC yesterday — turmeric drinks, esoteric chocolates, lots of tea.  That said, it all adds up, I think, to less than the cost of a therapy session, and I missed therapy on Weds.  But… it’s not less than the cost of therapy after insurance reimbursement…  I’ll retune.

7:20.  must set the Shabbat table.

Quiet

8:46

One would think my life was normal — of course, this is normal right now, this entirely unsettled, unknown, one day at a time because that’s as far as I can see, kind of living.  But I meant the other kind of normal.

Daniel and I are getting along because he’s being nice and we aren’t talking about anything serious.  It’s easy now, if not deep.  I have to keep reminding myself of the things underneath, until I decide I don’t want to remind myself, that I want to be quiet and still, instead, and enjoy being nice and watching a movie I didn’t particularly want to watch (Call Me By Your Name — lovely, but made me sad and lonely and dreary feeling), buying Daniel a chocolate bar, which he won’t ever eat, because he ran out of his favorites.  It’s nice this way.  I can see why I was so angry and wrecked when it disappeared.

And a small but invaluable breakthrough at work — not external but internal. I can negotiate for a better exit than I originally foresaw.  I know what I mean by that.  I can make a case for staying on at no pay, but also no rent charged, until I find my next job.  I’ll need the order, the structure, the fast wifi and kitchen and reason to get up and get dressed in the morning.  And I’m going to ask for it.  And if the first response is refusal, I’ll say, “Why can’t you?  The space is not in demand.  This is better for all concerned.  I think you can do this.”  That turned things right around.  It makes the possible– even likely — end of my work more bearable.  I”m not losing everything at once, just a paycheck.  It turns out the other stuff matters quite a lot, too.  And it also matters that I am recognizing myself as the kind of person who can ask for this, and who can expect to get it.  That, I think, will be what gets me through to the next place.

And maybe that notion of smaller stepping stones, of breaking things down into only the immediate necessary pieces explains why I am blank on the divorce front.  It’s not necessary to decide that right now.  It’s one thing at a time, and right now, that thing is minimizing — ideally to zero — the lag between paychecks.  Actually, right now that thing is tomorrow, and getting across town tomorrow in time for my therapy appointment, and then that thing is figuring out packing for a tiny bit complex double-header business trip while my assistant is away.

I’ve stopped insisting that someone else or something else has to move and help, and I am simply acting as if that will in fact be the case, and I’ll recognize it when it comes.  Ironically, what enabled me to do that was finding my agency in terms of my exit at work.  I can, in fact, do something. I can get a little running room.  At the end of the rope, there’s a little more rope, most times.

And that also might explain why I am entirely unmotivated to finish a speech I have to give in 10 days: it’s not the next thing, yet.  Just one thing.  Just a little more rope.

9:01

Perception

9:11

I thought I had something to say… I think I feel better, physically, when I write, also when I exercise a lot.  I’ve had a stomach ache for days. I kept trying to tell myself it was purely physical, purely about the dietary whiplash of Passover, or too much chewing gum with  artificial sweetener, or harsh unfiltered water (which actually does hurt my stomach — I’m unusually sensitive to water).  But once I considered that it might be emotional, that my body might be having the very hard time that my mind refuses to acknowledge, then I felt better.

Sometimes pain just wants to be noticed and acknowledged, a delivery signed for, even if you don’t open the package just yet.  I suppose.

I am so fearful of feeling worse.  I am so fearful of the devastation I’m trying not to recognize.  My therapist (now a 3 day a week part of my life because if not now, really, when?) suggests that the devastation might not be so bad.  What has gotten into her these days?  Per my previous post, we are considering whether I’ve actually been quietly and unacknowledgedly (where’s the adverbial form when you need it?), devastated for years, and am just now… now that it’s fucking undeniable on these important and long-fragile fronts (I had typed most important, but most important is my relationship with Milo and with my body… so many parentheticals.  I’m baaack.).  Anyway, devastated for years and just now have the external wreckage to match the long-standing internal wreckage.  And am finding it’s both worse and not as bad as I thought.  Worse, in that my stomach hurts all the time, or did.  Worse in that… what if there is not another job that’s good, and not another life that is good.  Not as bad in that I can conceive that it’s not my fault, entirely, that sometimes things happen and all the good-behavior-as-incantation-and-magic-spell doesn’t ward it off.  Not as bad in that there is still breath and yoga and laughter and sleep and friends now more than ever.  Not as bad in that I see how strong I am, so I can also be weak.  Not even sure what I mean by that last part but it makes sense, even though it sounds like something you’d find on an inspirational pinterest board.

I had something else to say… not sure where it went.  I’ll come back tomorrow for it.  Good to write again, even badly.

9:25

Placeholder 2

I’ve used placeholder as a title before.  I don’t want to forget this:

I was trying previously to be successful and not devastated.  On the outside I was successful in marriage and work, but on the inside it was awful: crying, feeling like a completely failure and feeling like it was all my fault.

Now, I am failing, or close to failing, on the outside: openly talking about divorce, and coming to the end of my current job because I can’t find people to invest, to literally buy in to my vision and capabilities.  But I also might be moving away from being devastated, because none of my magic incantations worked. So I might be free of them.  I did everything I could, I failed anyway, some of it was related to circumstances well beyond my control, and I’m still alive anyway.  And I rejecting (then embracing, the rejecting again) the familiar feeling of devastation.  I am saying, yes sometimes that, and sometimes not that.

Maybe the gift of this time… not the reason it happened, but the gift of this time is the failure so I’ve done it.  Like getting a B in college — it’s done, so I can stop being afraid of it and start to live bigger.  Possible.