Pesach 5780

I started this blog post by looking back, but I get to revise it.  I get to tell the story from the start, from now, not then.

Today was the start of my Pesach kitchen transformation.  I wished today that my mother were Jewish — which I have never wished before — so that I could call her and say, “I just did my refrigerator, where are you?  What are you doing about the seder plate this year?  What are you making?  Can we stream the seder?”  But she’s not.  We don’t share the holiday back end, and I am sad, especially as I am coming to fully inhabit this holiday.

I am proud of my Pesach kitchen.  I do more a thorough changeover than I did when I lived with Daniel, lived in that narrow place, trying to find a space between his disapproval and generalized rage at Pesach, his disdain for my Jewish practice, when I was balancing the whole burden of Orthodox practice on my head.  But now, it is for me — and for Milo, for a few days, and I’m not sure he’ll notice or not.  Even alone, I am connected to Jewish women (I wish Pesach cleaning weren’t so gendered… maybe it isn’t in other households.  In my current set up, all the domestic labor is gendered.  Milo vacuumed for the first time in his life when he was here two weekends ago.  He was delighted by the novelty, but took umbrage when I asked him to do it again.  He agreed to clean his desk, which was also his dining room for his two week of post-travel quarantine with me.  He took Women’s History last semester, so he has all the rhetoric, but gender privilege — modeled to a T by his father —  is in his marrow and he has to fight to overcome it).  I am connected to all of the people who spent hours today, wiping out the fridge, switching the contents of the cupboards, scheduling the controlled landslide (right metaphor?) of Pesach through the rest of the kitchen: sink, dishwasher, microwave, stovetop, oven countertops (why do we say “won in a landslide”? That doesn’t make sense.  We don’t say, won in a tidal wave.).

I control nothing at all outside my door.  The virus will affect one in seven residents of my city, according to the latest projections.  There are 15 apartments on 11 floors in my apartment building.  One trash room per floor.   One laundry room — 10 washers, 10 dryers — for all of us.  One package room for the endless deliveries that we believe keep us safe.  The odds are not in my favor.  So how glorious (my Will’s favorite expression of delight, “glorious,” in his really sexy light Queens accent. Why yes, Will does read my blog.  Why do you ask?)… how glorious it is to declare that my kitchen is as I want it, as it should be.  My kitchen, for Pesach, is communal, connected to all the other kitchens like it until the night of April 16, when Jack in the Box of the holiday springs open and we scatter.

This constrained Pesach feels full of possibility.   I will take time off, which is counter cultural and counter-intuitive.  My boss’s confusion radiates through her email.  Why would you take time off when you can’t do anything?  Exactly.  No doing.  Reading, walking, ceasing to push the heavy boulder up the steep incline of my job, which has ceased to engage or fulfill or reward or pay my bills.  This Pesach, with so much forbidden, I will be free.

(The last time I wrote about Pesach it was like this.  And now, with everything confused and so much fear about work and money and when will I be able to free myself from Daniel legally and financially,  I have all that I need, things that were literally unimaginable when I last wrote about Pesach, two years and four days ago.  I did this.  I made this.  It’s indelible.  Whatever else happens, whatever I might lose later, I did this.  I love you, my Will.)

 

Back for another disaster

Well, this is different.  I wonder what the world is preparing me for.  Every crisis is more frightening than the one before it, every test to my resilience more strenuous.  What is next?  Never mind.  I’ll wait.

I’m writing now because I was looking for a poem that I needed and went back through “Poems for Wednesday” posts to find it.  I needed the poem because my spirit couldn’t breathe, and a poem is like an inhaler.  I can’t say ventilator now.  That word is not for joking or metaphor.   I re-read my old posts, and thought, “That’s good and I should do more.”  I hate saying it: I’m a writer and I want to be a writer.

I’m writing because on Wednesday evening I was doing one of the things I do best and have done best my whole life, which is charming the daylights out of men over 70 (it used to be over 60, but now 60 is too close to my own age).  The gentleman in question was interviewing me for a job at an organization that I believe to be nearly a cult, and that others have described to me as a cult — “a tawdry cult” in one case.  During the interview, he himself said, “My wife asks me if [organization] is a cult because there is so much jargon and it changes all the time.”  So even in this time of great duress, I’m not going to work there.  Anyway, this senior acolyte asked a typical job interview question, “what is your career like in 10 years,” and my ungoverned mind said “writing” and my governed mouth said something more respectable.   And if I want to be writing in 10 years I need to write now.

My beloved, my Will (Daniel’s gone, but not gone enough.  He lurks malevolently), says I should write a novel of the coronavirus.  Not an original idea.  But I can capture the texture of a crisis, of me in yet another crisis.

Just when I have learned, or am starting to be open to the possibility of learning, to slow down, to believe there is enough for everyone, I am faced with grocery ordering: there is not enough for everyone.  I have to act RIGHT NOW.  I am TOO LATE.  Dear God not again!  Not that fear again of too late.  Too late for a brilliant career.  Too late to save Milo from his father’s influences (WordPress wanted me to say “influenzas,” suggesting some machine learning happening in the background.  My beloved knows about machine learning.  I try to be a learning machine.). I thought I was too late for great love, and I was wrong.   I thought I had a great love early in my life, and I was wrong.   So late, not too late, has possibilities, has pleasures.  Penelope Fitzgerald didn’t publish her first book till she was 50.  I am also behind schedule on that, having neither a publisher nor a manuscript, with 50 less than 6 months away.

It’s never too late for a crisis?  Never too late for a poem.

Fun

7:52

When I started studying for the LSAT for the second time, in 2000, the first question I encountered on the logical reasoning section was about a bumble bee.  I bumbled (pun intended a little bit — it’s the bourbon typing) the question because I overthought it.  I imagined contingencies that the question refused to countenance.  I saw multiplicities, unintended consequences, and none of the answers was on my side.  Eventually I learned to simplify, to stay within the boundaries of the question, and I got a perfect score on the LSAT.  That was the last time I was perfect.

I’m also a disaster at personality assessments and magazine quizzes.  Do they mean always?  More often than not?  On Tuesdays when I’m not busy?  With beloved friends or strangers?  When I was young or now? But now I’m particularly anxious, so maybe they mean when I’m not anxious.  Except, aren’t I always anxious?  But how anxious?

This is my oblique approach to the question that I can’t answer: What do you do for fun? Variation: What is “play” for you?  Please ask me something else.  But, no, the authors of Designing Your Life won’t budge.  They want me to evaluate myself on play:

“activity that is done just for the pure sake of doing it.  It can include organized activity or productive endeavors, but only if they are done for fun and not merit…. Play is all about joy… Play is any activity that brings you joy when you do it.  When an activity is done to win, to advance, to achieve — even if it’s ‘fun’ to do so–it’s not play… The question here is what brings you job purely in the doing.”

Can I have another question, please?  The authors also ask me to evaluate myself on health, work, and love.  You’d think I’d stumble on love but in fact I’m rock solid.  I have lots more love in my life, or I recognize lots more love in my life, than I did a year ago. I’m also much clearer on what is and isn’t love.  I don’t have all the varieties of love I want, but I understand the question.  Work has a complicated answer, but again I understand the question.  Health, I’m also solid, even on mental and spiritual dimensions.  I’m lagging spiritually, as always, but I know what it means.

Fun.  Play.  What are those things?  I find fun and play in the other things I do.  I find joy in the instrumental things, like cooking to feed myself and walking to work and walking to synagogue with Milo.  And thank God, because I am not sure I do anything at all that is not instrumental.  I read.  I read Louise Penny and other mysteries, not just excellent improving books (although I AM very literary.  I just choose otherwise sometimes.  Often.  When I’m stressed I read mysteries.  I have read mysteries almost exclusively for the last three years. Or five. )  I deeply enjoy yoga, but there is an edge of advancement and improvement.  I try to go for slow, aimless walks, but I find myself speeding up, my heart pounding, taking the hills.  And that’s fun, but would I do it if it weren’t good for me?  Cooking, but I get sad when it turns out badly, so that’s clearly instrumental.  Blogging?  It’s not joy as much as it is unpicking tightly, wrongly woven stitches.  Sighing and starting again at the beginning.  I aim to knit.  It seems soothing.  Is soothing instrumental?  It doesn’t sound like joy.

And yet, I want to believe, ALL evidence to the contrary, that I am a fun person.  Cruel men have told me otherwise, when I decline to do what they want me to do: “You’re no fun.”  I have a lot of joy in my life, even more in the last year when what I thought was my life was falling apart all around me like a building imploding in a summer blockbuster.  Milo and I make each other laugh till we can’t speak, and we go on and on and on.

Is this a gendered question?  Can women in families ever detach from instrumentalism? I’m about to find out, aren’t I, as Milo chooses to spend most of his time in the only home he’s ever known, which is not where I will live.  Creating my new apartment is fun, and instrumental because a person needs tables and chairs and rugs.

I can see coming to understand this question.  The previous question that used to stump me, stop me cold, cause tears of frustration was, “What do you *want* to do?”  What I wanted to do was a good job.  What I wanted to do was please, appease, get an A, exceed the standard, be praised and therefore loved.  Wasn’t that enough?  What do you want me to do, oh questioner?  Tell me and turn me loose and we’ll both be happy.  I am better now at this question.  I know the answer more often than not, and I know when to ask it. It tugs at me when I pick up the improving book (Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach.  I don’t think I trust her after Visit From the Goon Squad.  She didn’t answer the essential question, “how did they get from A to B?” I could have forgiven her in the name of experimental fiction, but then she put it in the mouth of one of her characters, which seemed like a cruel wink.  She knew what she was doing and she knew it was mean.  I don’t like mean girls.  But Manhattan Beach is supposed to be straight up traditional narrative.  Still…. I also have Homegoing, which I really wanted to read when it first came out.  But it still seems improving-ish.  So I read the second Joe Ide IQ novel, which was less wonderful than the first.  And not very literary.  But that former professor of mine can go jump in a lake.  I read Hopscotch for his class, which was not fun at all.)  It reminds me, per Mara Glatzel (she’s quite good, and quite woo-woo), that I should eat before I unload the dishwasher, go to the bathroom before I finish the email, get some water even when I’m late to the meeting.

What will that even be like, not to pay the debt to my family in the form of laundry and dishes and housework before I leave the house to go to yoga on Sunday?

I texted this question to three beloved friends.  Two have responded and they don’t really know either.  So I’m leaning towards it being a gendered thing.

8:31

Again

9:00

Here, again.

Three times the impulse arose to write, and I pushed it down.  But I’m working on following my impulses and saying yes, rather than no, to myself.  Good Lord, saying no for so many years did not work out like I thought it would.  Renunciation didn’t lead to elevation or transcendence.  It left me vulnerable to a false god, who, I thought, said yes and yes and yes, that I could have all the things I thought were not for me.  It didn’t end well.  The yeses that mattered most were not forthcoming.

Here, again, but also somewhere entirely new.  A week from today the movers come and carry me into a new apartment.  I’m done with Daniel.  Well, no, not ever done.  As a practical matter, there are the endless details, the logistics of divorce and property division, and that will take at least a year.  And the fact of Milo means we are always joined in some way and on some occasions.  And it will take so so so long to expel him from my consciousness, to stop refracting my thoughts around his presence, to stop deferring to him.  I’m in it for the long haul.

This blog’s first name was The Rebuilding Year.  I took the term from sports: a rebuilding year was what you called a losing year with a young, inexperienced team, when you’d traded or wrecked or lost your great players.  I’m rebuilding again.  And it’s time to write it (like disaster), write my way into it and through it.  I write differently here than in my journal.  I’m curious to see what I have to say.

When I read what I wrote in May, it seems brittle and superficial.  My story-shaping was too tidy.  I worry I’ll do that again.  I want to write into my new life, and not about Daniel.  I wonder if that will be possible or interesting.  Well, many things in my life will be newly possible and immensely interesting.  That’s the point.  No one gets divorced to feel worse.

Tomorrow I will go to a museum.   Going to museums with Daniel was one of life’s great joys, but I went to museums before I met him, and I’ll keep going.  Small reclamations.  I can’t pick up where I left off, in 1994.  That was half my life ago.  But I can pick up on things, on themes, that were emerging.  And I can take what I thought he gave me and realize it was mine all along.  A flashback to a professor telling me I wasn’t very literary, for some reason.  (Meaning, the reason for the flashback eludes me.  I know why the professor said it.  He was wrong, but I know why he said it.)  I’m perfectly literary.  I am many things that people have said I am not, and vice versa.

“Blessed are you O Lord our God, King of the Universe, for you restored my soul to me in mercy.  Great is Your Faithfulness.”

I will restore myself to me in mercy.

9:22

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

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

 

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.

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

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