Wrecked

8:37

and free.  Not wretched, yet, and maybe not anymore, but a big sadness, a big agony is waiting for me, and I’m going to proceed towards it at my own pace.

The real truth is that I do best when I am not trying to do others’ job.  When I was raising money earlier this year, I was free. I was not trying to do anyone else’s job, or placate them, or make it easy.  I put what I needed on the table, and believed and presented that help would come.

In my planning, I have been trying to do Daniel’s work for him — “hey, no stress, no worries, I’ve got it all figured out, and I’ll just disappear without causing you any stress or concern or fear or worry.  See, I am still going to take care of you, I’m still going to make it all okay, I’m still going to prioritize your wellbeing over anything I might need for myself.”  Now, I might need to operationalize my plan anyway, and leave my house for my own safety and sanity, or because it’s what we negotiate.  But this is our problem, not just mine.  And Daniel will have to bear some of it.  I will not erase myself.  I’ve done that enough.

What has changed is incontrovertible evidence of lies, deceit, infidelity even if there was no fucking.  That hardly matters.  I can see what I have been looking at all along, and I can’t bear it.

And I am done.  I think it feels good.  It will feel unbearably bad, but this feels honest and cleansing.  Maybe by fire, but okay.  I am fireproof.

8:44

Waiting

9:37

Here are some things I’m thinking.

This is my life right now.  My life isn’t on the other side of my marriage to Daniel.  My life is right here, so that’s where the joy is.  I remember that I had a lot of periods of joy when I was in the midst of intense uncertainty at work.  Perhaps I got joy from feeling inner directed, and setting my own course when things were hard and scary.  I saw myself through it.  I can be sad about not getting enough support at critical points in my life, and I can also have developed incredible skills for navigating on my own, and making good high-stakes decisions.

Maybe I’ve been draining my happiness because I’ve been waiting for others, and feeling rigid about deciding or not, or being locked in, rather than saying that this is a time for discovery and digestion (per Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart).  I’m exploring, and it’s on my timetable.  Maybe what would work is getting curious and feeling free.

Some things will make me sad: not being honest with Daniel; not feeling free to love him, although I could move back to that or move away from it as I need — this is about my need to love, not his needs; not getting love that I want.  That’s hard to live with.  It’s data.

Another thing from When Things Fall Apart: run to the fear.  Swim in it, agree with it, welcome it.  That’s the work now, along with the practical work.  Acknowledge the fear and then get curious about it.  Don’t disparage myself for it, just live in it.

Finally, I wonder if I’ve been using Dr. H. wrong, asking her to solve the problem. This goes back to setting my own direction.  Dr. H. can’t correct the past.  This might be shrugging, and deciding I can’t ever get or am not worthy of the support that I want.  But there’s a sense of peace restored when I think: I will make the right decision at the right time — and that is all the time.  I am great as I am.  I can restore my soul to me in mercy.

10:05

Working

4:18

Or not, but working things out in my mind.

Lots of conflict in my mind around advice.  I seem to be running to criticism, even though that’s not my medicine.  I want to be chastised for how I’ve spent money because I don’t have $100K in the bank like I “should.”  I want to be criticized for my shopping decisions.   What’s that about?  I say I want to be supported, but I find myself running to something different, or drawn to something different.

Also, I say I want advice, but I am not sure I really do want to take it.  I don’t trust people to give me the right advice or support, somehow.  I think, “no, you’re wrong, you don’t get it, I really get it.”  Or, “No, that’s not exactly my situation.”  I say I want to be taken care of and have someone guide me, but I don’t necessarily like how they propose to do it.   Exception: yoga teachers I trust — yes, tell me what to do.  So asking for and refusing help “No help, assistance!”  Forum shopping.

Wanting to show Dr. H — oh yes I have decided, I told Daniel I’m leaving him, so there! Hah!  I have decided, so you can just go jump in a lake.

Bouncing between feeling like I need to have decided, and very defensive about Dr. H suggesting that I haven’t, and saying, “Okay, maybe I haven’t, and I’m gathering information, and this is a big deal and there is so much happening, so I’m going at my own pace because this is A GIANT IRREVERSIBLE LIFE DECISION THAT IMPACTS MY ONLY CHILD FOREVER IN A HUMONGOUS WAY AND REWRITES EVERYTHING I THOUGHT ABOUT MY FUTURE, so hey, it might take a bit of time!”  Except that sounds defensive.

There is both wanting to be very tender and self-compassionate, and not treat this like a “make progress every day” kind of project, but having resources stored up like a Mormon pantry AND opening myself up to and reckoning with the incredible fear I feel about Daniel, my life, the unknown, what is possible, Milo’s reaction and impact on his life.   I have to do this all by myself, but I resist that, too.

4:43 with interruptions & meh

Verisimilitude

7:55

best title yet

I wonder if planning (scheming?  That’s what bad women do, right?  We scheme) for divorce is like having an affair without the upside — the romance, the sex, the thrill.  Secrets, tension, hiding, living a double life — Daniel loves, adores, the double life.  He has few household responsibilities, so he can keep it all in his head, I suppose.  Appearing like a good wife to all who know me (I visited a friend this afternoon, seeking business advice) The foolish risks, like shredding the very last of polaroids today, when Daniel was just downstairs and could easily have caught me at it.  When Milo was home, and could easily have caught me at it.  But the overwhelming desire to do the thing and be done with it, even though it was foolish.

How do I feel about shredding the polaroids?  Less bad than I thought.  They were porn, and, like all porn, repetitive to the point of boredom.  I was gorgeous, the times were gorgeous, and it is good to remember that.  I like the sense of punishing Daniel — you rejected me, you took this away from me, but yet you wanted only this from me,  (it’s confusing), but now I am in control. You can’t have it anymore.  Leave aside the fact that you hadn’t touched them in years, a decade at least.  You can’t have it anymore when you want it, if you ever want it.  I am in control of our sex life, of my image, of my memories of those days.  And, I see again what I fell for, in all the senses.  Who could have known, would have thought, it would end like it is ending?  Certainly not that electric flower in all the photos.  (Also, I should consider dying my hair very blonde.  It was a good look for me.  It looks good with black.  Of course, 27 and legs to there and a skirt to a lot less than that, and a little drunk on wine and sex and love and attention looks good with anything at all.)  Maybe this is another milestone, another way of separating, of saying, “That was the thing it was, and it was indeed gorgeous, and there were things I didn’t know or see, and I don’t blame myself, but it is not the thing now.  I am stopping that thing, I am creating discontinuity.  That thing is now over, on my terms.”

How do I feel about my relationship with my therapist?  Conflicted.  I hate how meta it is.  I want to leave her as a rehearsal for leaving Daniel, I am mad at Daniel for not giving me what he promised so I am mad at her for not helping me see it.  And, as with Daniel, I will never get the back story.  I will never ever get what he felt about what he was doing and what was really true because he might not know himself and he will never give it to me.  And I will never know what Dr. H is really thinking on a human level because that’s not what she give me, I will never know her story about my story.   I went to yoga today rather than to therapy.  I was excused since it’s a public holiday.  But it was weird to use that time slot for yoga. I enjoyed being released from my regular routine, my regular obligations and relationships.  Except, I’ve been extremely anxious all day, agitated, even shaking, with the burden– the muscular, skeletal burden — of my secrets.  Telling her feels like an action.

Bumper sticker: It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it’s not what I want.  This is my imaginary response to the friend I saw this afternoon, who thinks that Daniel and I have a great marriage, who thinks that the only thing more remarkable, more a credit to my character, than me choosing Daniel is Daniel choosing me.  Which is partly true, but also deeply, deeply false.  We failed to live up to that promise.

8:12, Milo approaches for dinner & it’s his birthday.

Visible

4:38

that’s a good title.

I miss loving and being loved.  Even what Daniel and I had before, that thin residue, was better than this.  I miss directing love, genuine love to someone.  I am trying to be kind, to cook food he likes, to offer compliments and support, to enact caring.  Sometimes it connects, and he gives me a hug.  And I realize how infrequent that is and how much I miss it.  As for being loved, well, I’ve been living on rations for a very long time so that’s oddly less painful except I’m crying as I type this.

I am tired all the time, and today in yoga, when I was struggling, I realized that I’m wearing a suit of armor all the time, the tension of secrets, of tasks, of sadness, of fear and fear and fear and fear and fear, so I am weighted and tight.  There is no flow.  This is new.  Until the money came in at work (but only through the end of the year), I had periods of outright joy.  It doesn’t make sense that this all goes together, the relief and the encasement of anxiety and fear and sadness, but it does.

I’m shredding hundreds of pornographic polaroids Daniel took of me between 1994 and 1999.  Once we moved into the house together, it stopped — a harbinger of things to come.  Plus, it got harder to get Polaroid film.  I bought him a Fuji instamatic, 10 years ago maybe and we never made it through the first pack of film.  Because he’d stopped by then.  Can I convey how gorgeous I was in the 90s?  No, I cannot.  I was gorgeous.  I don’t usually photograph well at all, but all those photos are stunning.  Daniel never took a bad picture of me.  He capture me as I truly was.  And now all that beauty and sex is being shredded.  I shredded photos once before, a few, when Daniel stopped having sex with me the first time.  That was analogous to cutting myself, it was a way to express the pain. Now it’s protection against blackmail or other kinds of ugliness.  He won’t notice until he wants to wound me.

He fussed at me again, and I am undone.  I told him too many times to walk the dog (twice).  I asked him to go to the grocery.  I asked him to take the dog to the vet.  The proportion of asks/commands, he says, to him and to Milo, he says, is very high.  Fuck him.  And he’s welcome, by the way, that I tried to fix the cable in our bedroom.  Our bedroom.  That’s another phrase that makes me sad.

Why didn’t my therapist suggest that Daniel (and others) are narcissistic?  It would have given a name to the pain, and made things make sense.  But I might not have changed my behavior or left anyway.  I find it hard to leave now, leave a man who loses his temper — that’s an exaggeration.  He didn’t lose his temper.  He expressed strong displeasure.  A man who fusses when I ask him to walk the dog.  And when he fusses, even a little, I get so scared.  I get scared there will be more yelling.  I get scared I will get the silent treatment or the force field of anger.  METAPHORICALLY only, when he raises his little finger, I fear a crushing blow.  METAPHORICALLY ONLY.  Just verbal aggression here, not physical.

I know all that I know, and I am still STILL undone by his casual displeasure.  I am gutted actually.  It’s the opposite of building up resistance.  I have absolutely no resistance.  I think it’s because there’s no tempering of interest or love.  I’ve written this before — no protective layer, no cushion of affection (or belief in affection.)  Just bone on bone, grinding.  Just the knowledge of how much rage and hatred he can and will direct towards me.  He’s trying to keep a rein on it, but he hates that we both know it’s there.  Maybe.  I don’t know him — how could I possibly presume.

And all this when I was feeling soft towards him.  Sometimes I think I’ve ruined my life, my self, my soul.  But yesterday at synagogue, at the early service that I never go to anymore but went to yesterday, I had a lovely talk with a friend and thought, “I know her because of Daniel, and I had some really amazing things happen, and it’s all okay.  It wasn’t a total disaster.  There were beautiful moments with him, and beautiful moments that happened because of him, which I wouldn’t have had any other way.”  But now I feel defeated and crushed, just before Milo’s birthday dinner and I’m typing this utterly maudlin blog post that was so much better in my head.  And I worry that’s what my future life will be: so much better in my head before I start living it.  But there’s nothing here with Daniel.  Nothing at all between us that is good anymore, except Milo’s whole entire life.

4:56

Voluble

9:44

Not really.  I’ve been quite silent, actually.  I’m pretending I can write, in between looking at apartments and wondering how in the world the numbers will work out for me.  They won’t. Bad women who leave good houses have to live in cramped quarters with ugly kitchens and second bedrooms too small for their teenaged and then adult sons.  So their (my) son won’t come see them anymore, because it’s not comfortable. Because they are bad. Because they broke the family, broke the rule, broke the promise.  So no more happy, pretty things.

Well, that’s worth writing, isn’t it?  I do need to recover my voice (Voice would have been a better title), but am just so tired.  What I have to do is crystal clear, except it’s still easy to pretend I don’t have to do it, that I can live this half-life for longer, till I am ready, till Milo is ready, till…something else.

Here’s where I say it’s good we never had that other child, because with her in the picture, it would have been impossible to go. Emotionally but mostly financially.  We’re in the measuring out the rest of life with coffee spoons phase.  Where is the money?  Where is the money?  Where is the money to live separately, with Milo, sometimes, until we can sell the house.

Milo will want to stay with Daniel, in the real house, in his house, in the house of his whole life, in the house his mother vacated (vacant, another good title).

It’s been a while since I had a rescue fantasy, but it’s coming on very strong right now.  Definitely need a rescue, in the form of 100K, right now.  I could get it.  I could borrow it.  That could happen.  The attorney was shocked, shocked at our lack of assets. All that money on food we threw out, on 72 degrees in the summer, on clothes, on books, on ease.  Where did I go wrong there?  Too many uphill battles to contemplate.  Daniel made money appear when we needed it, by magic.  And I want to disappear, as if by magic, but I want 100K to appear, by magic. It’s about what I’ve spent on therapy these years, which might have been a lifesaver but…

I know it’s okay on the other side, but there is no okay way to get to the other side.

9:55 worthless

 

Untold

7:46

(too much like Telling, from a few days ago, but apt anyway)

When I was 7 years old, Rajeshi Lev’s mother read my palm at Rajeshi’s birthday slumber party.  She told me I would die at around age 70 — horrifically unwise.  I remember signing up for my first 401K deductions and thinking, very briefly, “Well, if I’m going to die when I’m 70, then there’s not much point in saving now.”  Since then, I have been a ferocious retirement saver, but I do worry, occasionally, that my cells were programmed 40 years ago to expire at 70.  That said, her mother also said I would have two children, a boy and a girl, and that never happened so her credibility is shot.  She also predicted “islands in your love life” which meant difficulties, and I immediately thought of my maternal grandparents and their voluble, unstoppable unhappiness.  She said that there would be someone I loved but who, eventually, just wouldn’t matter any more.  She gave the example of her ex-husband in her own life.  I later came to wonder if, in my life, it was Jesus who was the beloved who fell into irrelevance.

Before she released my little hand, she asked if I had questions.  Perhaps thinking of her “just doesn’t matter any more” example — divorce was exotic in my Catholic elementary school, non-existent in my extended family (eventually my uncle toppled, twice, but he’s the only one out of my parents’ 5 combined siblings who has — I asked, “Will I ever be divorced.”  She said no.

Divorce so I can live past 70.  Divorce so I can live.

I think about this all the time, obviously. I hang on to the fantasy that I won’t have to do what I have to do.

Daniel’s overriding, overpowering way of expressing his love is gifts.  No mother’s day gift for me, not even a card.  He would dispute that.  When he went to get flowers, he brought home a lovely orchid, saying “this is one of your mother’s day presents.”  But nothing that required forethought or going out of his way.  A few years ago (2016, but who remembers), he skipped my birthday — birthday! — present entirely.  And for years the presents have been thoughtless, lazy.  It’s not the materiality, it’s the consideration — even as he feels sentimental and cozy listening to our greatest hits compilation of 2005.

Others get gifts.  He sends his sister music, regularly.  He was in bookstore on Friday — bookstore! — and didn’t think to buy me anything.  I sound so petty, so small.  How can he be so blind, though.  Dude, your wife has said “divorce” repeatedly since January, and you fall down on Mother’s Day?  You don’t even unload the dishwasher?  You are really not trying.  You don’t care to try.

Everything is about him and he doesn’t even notice the difference, and I would rather stay safe than tell him. I will be complicit in my own disappearance, until I disappear with a bang.  That’s so sad. I could consider changing it, but… I would prefer not. I’m not angry.  I’m a little angry.  I started writing to find a way to get to the anger and pour it onto the screen, but I find I lack the energy.  Anger bespeaks a remedy, someone to notice (I notice), some result, some eventual discharge. I recall his sister saying, “You have a lot of anger.  You’ll have to do something with it.”  As if my ounces even rate compared to her oceans and his.   I have vacated the space.

Well, here’s something that’s worth talking about with my therapist. I just got a message from myself that I am too scared to be angry.  The surface meaning is that I am too scared of his wrath and rage and bullying and stripping and de-personing to allow myself anger.  The only very very slightly deeper meaning is that I am scared of my own anger, scared of being that angry person that his sister saw.  Daniel has a monopoly on anger, and I let him. He presents such an ugly anger, such a poisonous, obliterating, selfish anger.  Why would I want any part of that.

I’ll get angry again when he de-persons me… but what is shrugging off mother’s day except the gentle version of de-personing?  The non-angry version… except perhaps his anger at me is boundless.  It is the endless inverse of the love I thought we had.

Do I still love him?

What do “still” “love” and “him” mean?  I might have loved a person who was not there.  Or loved the fraction, not the whole.  So what does still & him mean in that situation?  The him that he hid from me before, or the him that he hides now (is it there at all, or do I just dream?).  Still?  That implies a continuity, some bridge from our wedding day to now, and I see a brutal fall, falling falling falling down a terrible cliff.  If I wake up will it stop?  I”m pretty woke now. Love.  I am not sure I know love.

Long pause while I went back through “How to Love” by Thich That Hanh, which I bought in an airport in 2016 on the way to see friends.  One of the passages made me angry and sad because it suggested that I did not truly love Daniel.  I couldn’t find it again. Reading it now, I think I misread it, or saw it defensively. I thought it said something like if you don’t put his needs before yours it’s not love. But the closest passage I can find says something like true love promises solidity, joy, freshness, freedom and peace, and if you don’t feel that when you feel love it’s not true love.  So it was there, maybe once, and now it is so clearly not.  I have vacated the space.

So damn sad.

8;22

Unicorn

7:52

A completely random title.  I worried that I would start with “un” and spiral downwards. “Un”-disciplined, for example, because I gave in to a years-long craving and bought white jeans on eBay, even though I’m trying to save money, trying not to buy things I don’t need, and white jeans don’t fit my real life.  It would have been wiser to buy pale trousers or a skirt, but those cost 2.5 to 3 times as much.  I wear too much denim to work as it is — no one else at my level dresses as casually as I do, and these jeans have very stylish but not very director-level frayed hems.  I’ll look like one of the stylish youngsters.  On the other hand, “dress for the job you wish you had…” I wish I had a job that was so secure, creative, and awesome that I could be my stylish casual self every day.   And… 30 day returns from the seller.

Unstoppable.  Uncrushable.  Undaunted. Un-cowed.  Unique.

I thought I would write more — that often happens.  I spent the day on the wet, cold, windy sidelines of Milo’s sports event.  I packed a notebook, thinking I would have so much to say and write, having felt the impulse to write on Friday and on Saturday.  But… not so much now.  Un-loquacious, I suppose. Unloud.  With nothing to unload.

I keep remembering that when Daniel’s crisis happened, I was so surprised when women I worked with said, “I am so sorry what’s happening to you.”  I only just now have realized that they very probably meant, “I am so sorry that your husband has turned out to be such an awful guy and that you are suffering from being married to him.”  I genuinely thought that they meant, “I am sorry that Daniel is suffering and lost so much and that you are affected by that, too.”

Unmoved.  Unmoving.  Not moving quickly towards divorce, although I did significantly increase my monthly saving amount starting now.  Meeting with a lawyer — more accurately, a dear dear friend who happens to be a divorce lawyer — in 10 days, just to understand the landscape.

Unworried: There is nothing wrong with waiting till Milo is older, particularly now that the verbal abuse has abated.  Nor is there anything wrong with moving forward.  But I do think I need at least 6 months of rent and living expenses in the bank, and maybe more if I have to sign a year’s lease on a new place (plus moving, new furniture, first month’s rent).  Again, I could borrow from my parents, but there is not a sense of urgency.  For right now, at least at this minute, keeping my distance feels just fine.  It feels safe.  I gently, gently, gently rebuked Daniel today for not unloading the dishwasher when he saw it was full & clean — on mother’s day no less!  He was defensive and fractious.

Am I the frog in boiling water? Yes.

I still find myself wondering, “How bad was it, really, what Daniel did… to others, and to me.”  And yet, getting ice cream with him tonight (after asking several times) was pleasant enough.

I wouldn’t marry him again, feeling as I do now.  I mean, I wouldn’t marry someone about whom I feel as I do about him right now.  I am not sure whether I would marry him again at all if I had an informed do-over.  There were lovely things, specifically with him, and that being his wife enabled.  And of course Milo.  I would have had other kids, maybe, but Milo and I have a very special relationship.

Uninspired and unmotivated to write more.

8:13

Uncomfortable

6:53

My therapist called me out on not being truthful to Daniel, by refusing to share my good news (which I did, 24 hours later), and by declining to speak up when he said something that definitely merited further discussion.  We discovered that I feel I have to chose between honesty and safety.  It makes me sad to type that.  In another time, I might have chosen honesty.  But I don’t feel safe.  Even small eruptions or uglinesses or slights or eye rolls undo me.  There’s no protective coating, no cushion of happiness anymore.

Today, when there was very little pressing at work (for the second or third day in a row), I felt exhausted, uncomfortable, all over the place.  I walked a lot in the city, noticing as I did that I felt awful, to and from an eye doctor appointment, which prevented me from reading, which I so wanted to do — it’s my favorite way to disappear.  I wondered if this is the tax of being in my marriage or of being dishonest, or just the aftermath, the hangover from the period of work insecurity.  That period was very long and I was very brave and relentless and vulnerable and honest.  It is like me to feel terrible once it’s over — once I’m safe in that way.  Safe and not safe.  Poor lovey, no wonder I’m worn.

Daniel knows something is up.  I am slow to say I love you, so he says “I love you [pause i which I don’t respond].  Don’t you love me?”  Yes, I do, and I know — per safety — that this reluctance will be thrown in my face like hot oil later.  Such violent metaphors.  I feel violence has been done to me, and my experience tells me that it will never be acknowledged as such — and the rejection itself will feel like violence.

I feel like I am moving without meaning from point to point, to the weekend, to sleep, to the next televised baseball game, to the next workout, to the next meal, as if these are markers on the way to a destination rather than the substance of life itself.  (That said, there are exceptions, there are periods of deep happiness and contentment at work and home.  Daniel’s desperation for my forgetfulness and absolution, and rubber-ball resilience, and a goldfish’s sense of personal history is high now, though, and that’s coloring things.)  I am desperate to be going somewhere, and that feeling is exceptionally strong at home.  At home I am a shark, in constant motion, looking for the next thing to do.  Not doing is not pleasant, although, to be fair, I consciously slowed down today while waiting for my eyes to resume their normal dilation.  I rested for 30 minutes, then did gentle yoga, not accomplishment yoga, then went for ice cream (well, groceries & ice cream)– before I walked the dog, which is a radical act of putting myself first.

And here’s Daniel in my head, telling me that I don’t slow down for anyone else, that it’s always me first.

I am so wounded by him.  And yet, when he’s nice, it’s nice.  He clearly wants me to join him in this happy meadow, forgetting the scorched landscape behind us.  Why, he would ask, do I want to keep going back to the scorched landscape when we could stay in this lovely meadow?  Why am I reaching for the blowtorch?  Oh, dear Daniel.  I’m reaching for it to keep it away from you.  And we need to get really clear about the source of the scorch, and you think it was me as much as you.  That’s not true.  I was about to write, “I wish I could give in, surrender, and go along with the niceness.” I am not sure that is true.  If it were true, I might do it, I might surrender.  But it doesn’t feel safe.  My domestic life is not okay, and I have to act as if it is okay.  Or, I chose to act as if it’s okay while I sort all this out and get really honest with myself, at least, in a place of relative safety.  Daniel knows it’s not right, but choses for his own reasons to go along.  He suffers, though.  I am sorry about that.

Why, with Daniel, is there a huge reservoir of poison, anger, rage, meanness, but not of love?  Why doesn’t that get drawn on?  Because he doesn’t have it for himself, and all the putting himself first in the world doesn’t fill it up.  Poor Daniel. I mean that sincerely.  It must be no fun at all to be him.

What would make my life at home feel real?  What would feel like love to me?

7:19

Telling

9:17

Or not.

My grant will come in.  The grant that will see me through the end of the year (if another grant comes in on top of it).  The grant that came about because I went to a funder/friend and said, “Let’s talk about 4 options: 1) a giant grant; 2) a big grant; 3) $150K to see me through a rough patch; 4) a different job. And I need a decision by June.”  This was a “just because we love you and your work and it’s an emergency” grant.  This was a “you are important to us grant.”

I got an inkling last week that it would come through, the $150K version.  And today I got the call confirming it, and the spirit of “we wanted to help you” was so evident.  My funder/friend didn’t even know how much of my time I could give him from this grant.  He will assuredly take more than I told him I could give — he’s like that and his employer is like that, and that’s all okay right now.

And I didn’t tell Daniel last week that it looked good.  And I didn’t tell Daniel tonight that it came through, and the spirit in which it came through.  And that is telling.  I don’t want to celebrate with him. I don’t yet want him to know this.  Or maybe I want him to ask, to keep it in his mind, all my deadlines and balls in the air, and know that to inquire.  But mainly I don’t want him to be happy in my direction me about this.  Not yet.  I want a separate happiness for a little while.  His happiness for me, and relief for himself, would be overwhelming.  I would have to accede to the idea that everything is fine now.  Everything is fine.  Let’s go back to the way it was.  Or his idea of how it was, rather than my actual memories of what was, which I keep wanting to talk about and he keeps wanting to dismiss and to bury under a torrent of rage and nasty words about me and how I never let go, never forget.

(We just had a heated disagreement about a MeToo situation).

I don’t want to go back to how it was, not the reality of how it was, not the how it was since 2005.  The how it was in 1995? “Yes, she said, isn’t it pretty to think so.” But no.

9:59, with a long interruption.