Treachery

8:23

An exaggeration to be sure… but how sure?  I came home to a sentimental and tender Daniel — both of those attitudes directed towards me.  He had unearthed a CD I made him in 2005 for father’s day.  This was the first in a series that lasted for at least 7 years, until I couldn’t come up with enough new music.  This was special, two mixed CDs, including the song we danced to at our wedding and the song that played as I walked down the aisle (“When I fall in love, it will be forever” OUCH).  Daniel danced with me in the kitchen.

It was a glorious CD, but I remember giving it to him, and even then it was a difficult time.  We had a hard time from 2003 to 2006 — I remember it clearly because Daniel had come home from visiting his mother in 2006, and Milo had made a drawing for him, and for a long time that drawing, carefully dated August 2006, hung in our kitchen.  He came back restored to me in mercy, and I was so grateful.  But 2005 was before then.  I remember that father’s day, and giving him the CD.  I remember getting a cute Louise Brooks haircut that day.  I remember my Lucky brand cargo capri pants (so cute! so of the moment!).  And I remember the heaviness, the feeling that this had to be perfect, and the feeling that it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t safe.  Even then.

So maybe not treachery.  Maybe mercy.  Maybe clear-eyed vision, finally (my glasses are held together with a paper clip.  It’s not at all professional, but I don’t care. I don’t really even notice).  Maybe being kind up to the very last possible minute.  I’ve lived on the cliff’s edge long enough to know it’s not a good place to live, and I don’t want anyone I love to live there.  So Daniel won’t have to live there, not by my actions.  I’ll just throw him right off the cliff.  Not treachery, mercy, right?

I had hoped to write well again, but it’s beyond me.  Sleep fled last night, and two nights before.  I fall asleep at midnight (I think, I never look at the clock) and wake up at 5.  I get dizzy when I stand up.  Maybe I can be in bed at 10 tonight.

Will we be able to be friends? No, not for a while.  Maybe later. (Treachery.  He won’t see mercy.  And, to be fair, it’s not merciful to him to present him with consequences, especially when he believes he’s suffered from excessive consequences in his professional life.  And, really, consequences are never merciful.  They might or might not be just, but they aren’t merciful.)

I need things from my husband that I will never get from Daniel. Even if he promises me these things, I have no reason to believe him, and a million reasons not to.  I need deep fidelity and truth.  I need accessibility.  I need erotic energy and focus.  I need someone who will refrain from doing things that hurt me, and, when he does them — because people hurt each other — doesn’t hide or lie about them, but is honest and reparative-minded.  Daniel has shown me in every way that I can’t have those from him.  So it’s treachery to myself to stay.  I keep coming back to that.

I ordered a book my rabbi mentioned, Divorce is a Mitzvah.  I sent it to my office, because Daniel assumes that all Amazon packages are for him and opens them.  I’m not sure how I’ll manage to read it at home — probably steal and re-size a book jacket from a hardback lying around, and there are myriad.  A boring hardback, too, like “the Institutional Revolution” or “Smart Citizens, Smarter State” or “You Have More Power than You Think.”  That last one would be a nice joke.

8:41

 

Temporary

9:16

And the next morning, it was all gone.  I heard Daniel talking in his sleep.  He has lovely, sexy morning dreams from what I can tell.  He’s not to blame that when he says “I love you,” in a tender way in his dream that he’s not talking to me.  But it made me so sad.  I’m not in the category of his mind or his love anymore.  Nor, perhaps, is he to me.  We are radically disrespecting what we once had.  This is why Van Morrison will forever make me cry.

I’ll write more and better tomorrow.  Now this is just record keeping.  I’ve decided to behave differently professionally.  A friend, who is president of a significant organization and acts like it, inspired me.  My way of showing up won’t look like hers, but it will look different than what I do now.  And, now that survival at work looks solid, I’m going to leap toward… abundance!  Growth!  I decided in January to set the bar at survival.  Now I’m resetting.  Survival

(restarting at 9″45)  Anyway, survival isn’t enough, it’s not fun, and if I’m still in survival mode in 12 months, that looks like failure. So, there.  I said it.  I intend it.  I intend growth mode.  Lots more to write tomorrow about this, and about my supportive friend, and about my no regrets position, and how the smart people do all kinds of risk mitigation.  I am all in with myself, for myself.  That doesn’t necessarily mean having blinders on about work.  I am all in, and persuadable if something else — more ambitious, more secure, more fulfilling — comes along.  I am all in on my own behalf, and on behalf of the theme of my work, but not necessarily my institution.  And that’s as it should be.

I made myself literally sick with anxiety Friday worrying that Daniel would not come on a 4 day work trip with me, that he would invite another woman into our home while I was away.  He is resisting, and that makes me sad, even as I have scheduled a meeting with a lawyer.  F. Scott Fitzgerald quote about the sign of a truly brilliant mind is to have two entirely opposing ideas at once.  Yes, that’s me now.  It might as well be nice until it’s over.

Spring-y

6:17

Just a few minutes before heading out for an event.

After a crushing therapy session in which I thought that all my work and marital woes were kinda my fault because I never demanded (there is that word again!) to be valued fully — because I never thought that was a possibility, because I didn’t know my full value (restored to me in mercy) — after that I decided to intend toward abundance.  It’s just as hokey as it sounds.  But it’s helping.  I had a lovely day yesterday, drinks with a friend, some fancy beauty product shopping (I’m hopping right back on the “only buy what I need” wagon, soon)  and a long walk home.  I felt positively cheery today.  I revised a funding proposal to make it bigger, to focus more on the end game and less on the tactics.  I was inspired by the idea of abundance.

I wrote “Abundance” in think blue sharpie on the goals page of my annual planner.  I have seen how powerful, subtle, and awesome intentions can be, so… here is my steadfast one.  I didn’t write intentions for this year because of a domestic explosion on Jan 1.  I wrote goals: be honest about what I need to stay married, stay in my current job, see friends, put $10K in the bank, write, and live in honesty and compassion.  All good goals, all well within reach.  I need, though, to move into something a little more mystical, or bigger, less concrete — that’s what intentions are for, they are motion toward.  I intend, ardently, abundance.

And in the meantime, I do the internal tending so that abundance can take root — so hokey, but it’s so much better than the non-feeling I was doing before.  I think about all I am worth, and put that out into the world, and trust myself, always, to do the right thing at the right time.

6;25