Later

(Ls are easy)

8:22

It got better. It always does, just not on demand. This time, it was yoga class that saved me, that took my mind enough away to escape the destructive loop it was in. Then I threw myself into cooking for Milo, who has a cold that he’s taking a little too seriously. He needs a break.

And I found a friend, who is herself divorcing, and talked to her. And I had an honest, excruciating conversation with Daniel, and he didn’t yell. He got snippy at the end, and he wasn’t kind, but he was honest and didn’t yell. I told him that this was a conversation between two people who were very hurt but had some kind of relationship going and wanted to go forward. He thought we already were those people.

I told my friend that Daniel and I are on different planets, and on our own planet, we are perfectly justified, and there is no bridge between our worlds. I’m reading Left Hand of Darkness now, hence the science fiction metaphor. She, bless her, suggested that it was a mistake to give Daniel his own planet. Ceding to Daniel’s narrative is always disastrous for me. The terrible feeling of all day yesterday, the crying, the worthlessness, that is a familiar feeling, although I’d escaped it for a while. That’s the feeling of trying to live in Daniel’s narrative. We might never agree. My narrative is the least-harm narrative.

As I suspected, Daniel believes that since our last big fight, the one where he told me I was inadequate and asked who could be married to me (but of course those statements don’t count because “obviously” he said them in anger, and that doesn’t count), since our last big fight I have been much better. After that fight, the careful reader will recall, I gave up on expecting anything at all from Daniel, and set myself to serving him. So that is “better.” In fairness (to him, not me) I did realize only then how soul-sick he is. I realize just now, writing this (which is why I write) that the flare up on Friday came when I told him that I did, in fact, expect things from him. That’s when it all went to hell and I thought of self harm.

This is all information. Daniel will be furious if he ever learns I am keeping a record. But it’s for myself, for the next time. A hedge against self harm. I think Daniel is trying, but he insists that the scrim of hatred was created by both of us because “It’s a marriage, and marriage is two people.” I can’t hear that, and he can’t hear otherwise. It’s a problem. He agreed in principle to go to counseling later. We’ll see. I need to remember that, to record that, too. He agreed in principle to go to counseling later. He doesn’t want divorce, that is clear. He might not want the same marriage I want.

8:33

Joy

4:38

I’m breaking one of my cardinal rules, and blogging during the workday.  I will leave my desk in 22 minutes anyway to go to yoga, and there’s nothing work related that I can accomplish in 22 minutes. Well there almost certainly is, but nothing is coming to mind and I’m not looking hard.

So some things that are bringing me joy right now, regardless of all other things, and in no particular order

1. Frugality. When I am thoughtful about spending money, buying new things only to replace old things,and using up all the old things and clearing out and letting go, I magically have money for the things that matter (therapy!). I’m loosening my grip a little, but so far, it’s not been too hard and the psychic rewards are much greater than the rewards of careless spending.

2. My new CSA subscription. To be fair, I won’t see the produce for a couple more weeks, but I am very happy about the idea of the fresh produce and adventures in cooking. This subscription touts itself as being extremely easy to manage. A few weeks ago, I would have said I couldn’t afford it (groceries come from Daniel’s portion of the budget), but I think it will make me happy to spend this money in this way.

3. Bringing my lunch to work. Before our financial pinch, I never brought my lunch, and thought it would be impossible to do so. Who wanted to cook on Sundays for the week? Me, it turns out. Some three months in, it’s not oppressive. I have a very high tolerance for eating the same foods over and over (I’m on week 2 of lentils every day). I go into the common areas of our offices, and have my nice lunch away from my desk. I think eating away from my desk is essential to this enterprise, and the food is incidental.

4. My new offices. I thought I would hate this location, but the space is delightful. It feels fresh and new. I also like working in a slightly different neighborhood. I enjoy being an urban explorer.

5. Bicycling. The new offices are most easily reached by bike, and I delight in unlocking a bike every day and flying along the streets. My bike commute is very short, downhill (I usually take the bus or walk home) and energizing. I feel like a college student, or little kid, and I enjoy that.

6. Writing. At work, I write for 10 minutes a day on whatever project is at hand — mostly playing around, brainstorming, sometimes revising. It is magic. I have ideas I wouldn’t have come up with otherwise. I move projects along that would have seemed too daunting to take on. Even when I don’t feel like it, it’s just 10 minutes. I didn’t read about this practice on a blog or in a productivity book.  I just made it up, and I love the results.

7. Milo. He’s spectacular. He shows me what mutual love looks like, and there is so much freedom and happiness in it. (Shadow to this: my relationship with Milo, and the goodness in it, revealed to me so many of the limitations of my relationship with Daniel, and the wrongness of what Daniel said about me and how he treated me. It’s an awkward truth: Milo’s love showed me that I have to leave his dad. Hmm. Milo will need a good therapist of his own.)

8. My friends. I thought for years I was a bad friend, needy, self-centered, only showing up when I needed something. My friends show me something different. If these amazing women want to spend time with me, then there is something really right with me, and it gets more right the more time I spend with them. I didn’t have models of female friendship growing up. These women are saving me, every day.

9. The gym in the office building. Finally, finally, I’m running. Just the treadmill, just for 15 minute HIIT workouts, but I’m running and it’s hard and I like it. I’m also doing some weights and resistance work. I looked forward to it all day yesterday. It feels better (and is so much cheaper) than spinning.

4:59. Not my best prose, repetitive and pedestrian. I care enough to note it, but not enough to change it.

Interstitial

9:48

Interstitial is so much nicer than inertia, which is really what I feel. I forgot to write yesterday, which rarely happens. Maybe being away from writing explains this sense of lassitude (what a great word) that has come over me. There is so much to be done, but none of it can be done at the moment. So I wait, and plan, and dread.

Inconsequential: Daniel’s actions towards me have, thus far, carried little consequence for him and enormous, devastating consequences for me. And yet, I hesitate to impose the Big Consequence, which I am defining as the loss of the house– not the loss of me. That right there tells you something, that I think Daniel will mourn real estate more than a real person.  Actually, losing the house will be the insult added to the injury, or the injury piled upon the injury. I don’t think of myself as losing the house, although I will likely be very sad to leave it. I’m choosing the loss, which mitigates.  The loss is the downside of my upside.  When I mentioned that I was scared to impose consequences on Daniel, and on my bad college boyfriend, and on my bad ex-boss, my therapist said, in a rare-for-her fed up and sarcastic tone, “Well, if you’re wondering why you keep ending up in these bad relationships…” I warned her, through tears, to tread gently.

Maybe there were consequences for Daniel, actually, but they were the downside of his upside — and I don’t know what his upside was but it had something to do with control or  self-hatred or resistance to change even as he might have wanted the change.

Instability: He was nice to me last night, maybe because Milo wasn’t home and the dog isn’t interested in the new Netflix series. I gave him some good advice. On another night, I might have been yelled at for the same advice. He was nice. Nice is hard to take now. It weakens my resolve. Tonight he was nice enough, but nice is not enough. I’m writing that to remember it.

Inebriated: No, nothing to say there, just playing with words. My drinking is way down these days. I never got blind drunk, as it were, but I don’t need the distraction or the blunting of the edge anymore. (See: invisible)

Integrity: When I have the energy for this line of inquiry (inquiry?) I wonder if living as I am living now, with the grenade in my bathrobe pocket, masquerading as a pair of socks or an orange, is a low integrity way to live. Then I turn on Netflix.

Invisible: I made so much invisible by sheer force of will. I think Daniel might find me much nicer later, if he cares to find me at all, and Milo certainly will. That not-seeing took a lot of work, and caused anxiety and controlling behavior to leak out elsewhere. I saw a lot of household chores, rather than the chasm in my household. (That line would work better if the ch in chasm wasn’t sounded like a K.) I also, even just a few weeks ago, was telling my therapist that I needed her to see what I was going through, and that I wanted other people to see what I was going through, to see the truth about our marriage. I refused to see it myself, so someone else needed to. I needed someone else to tell me what they saw, because I wasn’t going to describe it properly. Now that I am seeing it, I don’t need other witnesses. In fact, I’d kind of rather they not know. If I could sneak out of my marriage, I would. (I notice I’m not writing the word divorce in this post. Invisible? Impossible? Incredible?)

Indelible: What will be indelible when it’s all over? What of Daniel and our time together, good and bad, will always remain? Will Daniel and I have a relationship at all? I hope so.

Invincible: Me, I suppose. I will have to be, but I don’t really want to be. I want to sneak away to 2021, and wake up in my apartment, maybe with a lover in my bed, maybe by myself, with all the big decisions made (and indelible). I skip to the end of mystery novels. I would rather live through this knowing how it ends — the discoveries between now and then hold no pleasure that I can see.

10:09

Heart

9:15

The longest, hardest distance to cover is the distance between head and heart. In late November, I wrote, almost blithely, that this blog might be a history of being married to a man who didn’t want to be married to me. That was my head. Now my heart is getting the message, and is staggered by it.

Aren’t I supposed to DO something with this knowledge? Am I not obligated to catapult myself out of this sham marriage? (oh, be gentle. It was never a sham to me. I was all in, even when I thought, “something is not right.” I was all in, fully committed. I organized my life around preserving my marriage, because divorce was unthinkable and because I loved Daniel and mostly loved our life except when I was crying all the time.  I tried and tried and tried and tried. I thought it was real and good. It was real. It was what being married was for me. It was real to me.)

I remembered this morning, one foot in my navy-blue tights, one foot suspended in the air, that one should not make any big changes for a year after a catastrophe. It felt like a relief. I’m on a layover for eight and a half months.  But then, later, I wondered about the implications of living falsely, of knowing and not acting on the knowledge.  Again, gentleness: I am acting. I am going from head to heart, over and over again because it will take a lot of trips to make this road.  I am protecting Daniel so that he can do what he needs — this is my last gift of protection to him.  I wonder if he’ll miss it when it’s gone, or whether he will be so happy to be free, finally.  I am protecting Milo for just a while longer so he can get older and stronger and less invested in the life that’s falling away and more comfortable with bilateral relationships with his parents.  So he can stop thinking of his parents as a whole and think of his mother and his father. I am holding up the sky while people I love dearly organize themselves for its fall, and then replacement by a new sky.  Me, too. I am organizing myself for a financially independent life. I am rehearsing the division of furniture, I am sending boxes of clothes away to consignment, cleaning out drawers in an off-hand way. I am girding myself with restored habits of frugality. I am strengthening relationships with friends. I am lifting weights and doing HIIT workouts (so tiring!). I am moving divorce from head to heart to law. What a lot of work! So much work. It’s like planning … well, I wanted to say D-Day, but I hope for a lot less carnage.

I am wearing a warm knit beanie and wool socks and plastic birkenstocks, either to recapture a vaguely hippie youth I never had, or to feel a little more rebellious in the present, or to prepare for a enjoyably crazy old lady future.

9:34 (but long intervals for reading older posts)

Human

5:55

On Thursday night, a few hours after my post entitled “Good,” Daniel said to me, “Who could possibly want to be married to you?” I replied, mostly calmly “Well, I think a lot of people would.”  Then we fought more, then I went to bed.

(This always happens.  I write these beautiful posts in my mind, and then they fall apart like blown-away dandelions when I sit down at the keyboard.)

Help: I hadn’t realized until then just how soul-sick Daniel is. He is in a terrible state, and when he gets in that state, there are no boundaries to his verbal cruelty to me.

Hurt: I am trying to stay clinically detached from Thursday night, and doing a good job of not feeling, but every now and then it alights on me like a malevolent bird (raven, of course, but I kind of like malevolent sparrow: commonplace, and no one would notice it, and it flits away.  A raven is rather more majestic.  A sparrow is everywhere), and I realize I am very sad. I never have trouble getting out of bed, but these last two days, gravity has been stronger, and it’s a little harder to get upright.

Howl: At dinner last night (Saturday night) Daniel was charming to our friends.  He has been charming and winning, as usual, to Milo.  I didn’t realize this was making me furious until left the table to go to the bathroom, and our friends asked me how I really was.  I told them what he’d said 48 hours before, which is absolutely a breach of privacy and etiquette — it was telling them things they should not know.  But I was furious because this happens over and over and over and over: Daniel has energy and vitality for all other human beings — just before our Thursday fight he’d been out at a chic hotel having drinks with a friend — but absolutely none for me. I get unfiltered rage and verbal violence.

History: When did he begin to hate me, and why? Years ago, but why?  What happened? My therapist (yes, she’s here a lot) and I worked out during an emergency Friday appointment how I could get through the weekend, which was by having no expectations of reciprocity or care from Daniel. I am treating him as a very sick person in my care, but not as husband.  It’s worked beautifully so far. It’s exactly what Daniel wants, and perhaps what he was wanted for years and years from me.  I would never give, even when I thought I so much wanted to. My soul or subconscious or something balked and I couldn’t see when and how to give. Now, it’s easy and evident, because I’ve removed the hope of return.  This relationship is no longer opaque to me: my job is to serve.  I’m the help. And I am very very good help — I am good at it. I am good at nursing and care taking.  It is an incredible relief to be free of this internal conflict that I couldn’t articulate, and to feel that I am actually doing something good in relation to Daniel (another thing that he said Thursday was that I was inadequate.  I said I had felt that way 17 years.  He lost all control then).  But I didn’t marry for one-way service. He might have. He might think, as this goes on, that things are really good between us now.  He is smarter than that, but he is eager to fool himself and stay fooled. I might go along because he will heal faster that way, and once he is healed, I can leave.  I might leave before then.

Happy: I have, amidst the visiting malevolent sparrows, some moments or even hours of real happiness. I am moving very slowly, and savoring food or quiet or warmth or my powers of observation. I survived some of the worst things he could say to me (I’m sure there’s worse in the future. I’m sure he’ll find it), and had joy anyway.  I might be beyond his reach, which is a beautiful freedom. It is also a definition of divorce.

Hey: I’m adding this later, but it’s really important, so I want to remember it. Really simple things like eating before I do housework (well, that’s really the thing) enable me to slow down and be more gracious to Milo and to Daniel, and I’m happier in myself.  So I should do this always.

Grind

9:07

Is writing so often the problem or the solution (yes to both)?  Should I just quit now, 20 seconds in, and find something on Netflix to watch (since no book seems to satisfy me)?  And, the scary question: why, since I found out a week ago that I might actually get a grant that might actually allow me to keep my job, why have I felt worse not better?

I know the answer, and I’ve been writing about nothing else for the week.  The easing of the existential threat opened space for the feelings I’ve held off for three months.  Knowing that doesn’t make it easier.  It scares me more.  What if nothing is enough? What if it will take so very much more to make me feel better, and what if that very much more never ever comes?

Earlier today, I felt an odd sort of congratulations to myself.  I’m in a rough place, but I believed that I was not anxious about being in the rough place.  I thought I was settling in with a lot of wisdom, and not draining even more energy by fighting my feelings.  But it’s hard to maintain that wisdom for long.  Now I want an out, again, and fast, and am worried because the last one vanished like a sugar high.

Is there anything left to say?  How does anyone describe a grind, which is the absence of vividness (vividity?  I wish that were a word) and freshness, in a way that is vivid and fresh?  It’s not bad prose, it’s the emotional equivalent of onomatopoeia. Having nothing to say is a sign of authenticity.

Meh.

9;19

Grand

6:40

That’s less a title than a provocation.  What would be grand right now?  A grant would grand!  A grant of, say several-hundred grand, which would keep my show on the road for a while… until the next grant.

Grandly fraudulent, is how I felt today discussing my tiny seed, not even a seed, more like a cell, of a project with someone who is an expert in the two fields I’ll be grandly traipsing into, trailing clouds of privilege and status, and never mind the grand-canyon sized gap in my mastery of the subject matter.

Grand is… what is grand?  Not this post, which is a mess, reflective of my mess of a mood.  I was in sales mode today, a travelling saleswoman with her tired kit of half-baked ideas.  People seem to think that there is some stronger underpinning — both financial and intellectual– to what I am doing.  Nope.  It’s me and an anxious assistant on a shoestring — both financial and intellectual.  I don’t even aspire to be grand, I aspire to be solid.

Oh, yes, solid.  I was going to write that it will be grand to be on the other side of the current difficulty, but I don’t think that is true.  I think it will be small and sad and quiet, and I’ll build from there to middle-sized and happy and sometimes loud– no delusions of grandeur here!  But it will also be solid.  I would like solidity in work and home.  Solid like a good wooden table at which to eat meals with people I love.  Solid like a lover’s arms around me at night, or his back against mine in the morning before we turn to face each other.  Solid like good shoes for a long climb.  I’m tired of tottering, of wondering where the floor is and if it will hold me.

So my task for now is to be solid in myself, like a tree in a strong wind.  I have to bring the solid to circumstances, rather than wait for circumstances to solidify.  I can do that.  And won’t that be grand?

6:55

Feelings

9:08

Who needs ’em?

Coming here and writing makes me feel better, I suppose. I feel a slight quickening, a little lift, when I sit down to write, even though it’s possible, or likely, that I’ll end up in tears.  There is something good about going into the feelings and wondering about them, even if it means making them into a story.

Feeling things I’ve never felt before… it does seem different to be observing the feelings and living with them, however much I would rather be living with other feelings, instead of trying to explain/manage/conquer/redirect/minimize/under-describe/evade/avoid the feelings — which is what got me here in the first place.  The feelings now, even though they are relentless and disturb my rest and make me so lonely, are so necessary.  Feel them now so I can not feel them again and again and again and again, with Daniel or with every relationship in the future.  The first incarnation of this blog was about feelings management and justification–> is it okay that I’m feeling this?  I still have that tendency.  But there’s something different happening now.  There is more comfort with, more respect for what I’m feeling, and therefore the feelings are both bigger and smaller — they are just their proper size, and I am not mistaking a feeling for a commitment.

This is very muddled, again.   This is very diary-like and I don’t like that.  Too much feeling perhaps?  Not enough thinking, not enough refinement, not enough polish, not enough storytelling around it?  A bit adolescent?  Oh well, no one is forced to come here — not even me.  I have two other notebooks that I bought for private reflection, but I don’t use them any more. I just opened one of them, and saw that everything I am feeling now, and thinking now, and writing now, I wrote back in December (Dec 3: “If I had been stronger, if I had set a boundary or pushed back, I would have been so much more interesting to be married to.”)  That’s too self-involved and meta, quoting my diary in my blog.  I am a little bit stricter in pixels.  A little less droopy, a little more shaped.  (My writing wears a bra?)

That’s all for tonight.  I’m tired and have an early morning and another business trip tomorrow.  I’m weary and need to conserve energy.

9:25

Care-less

8:15

Too much work!  I am reeling — not because, say, I had a shot of bourbon and a beer with dinner (8% ABV), no, not for that reason — from so much writing today.  I wrote a 950 word blog post for work, made much easier by my new habit of 10 minute writing sprints each morning.  I want to, need to, write more professionally, so I decided to experiment with free writing 10 minutes each morning on something I’ll put on my real-name Medium account on a topic related to work.  I’ve been in the field 20 years. I’m not more stupid than most people popping off on stuff all the time.  Look at Brad Feld or Nick Grossman, who I love to read and who are Important and Admired Dudes Entrusted With Lots of Money — they write about all kinds of stuff and it’s awesome.  I can, too.

It turns out that free writing for 10 minutes at a go makes more serious writing a lot easier, and even more fun.  I suppose it gets the subconscious all fired up and ready.

What I’m not writing about is the Care-less that gives this post its title.  I’ve used that title or a version of it before.  (That’s another way of not writing about the thing itself, that unnecessary excursion.  As is this parenthetical.)  Anyway, last night, just before sleep I felt that I had released my attachment to my marriage.  I felt that I had complete equanimity about whether our marriage continues or ceases.  A feeling of great ease and freedom followed, and it took flight before almost a half century of cultural conditioning (mine), and more than a century of custom and duty (religion, culture, all the reasons Margaret couldn’t marry Peter in the Crown even though the whole Church of England was created because of a desire for divorce for Heaven’s sake so why were they such sticklers in the 1950s?) could catch up to it.  Yes, it felt like freedom to say to myself, “I could go either way, and I don’t have to go one way or the other.”

Hah!  What woman has been able to say that?  To deftly sidestep the love and duty conundrum and say, “Oh, I dunno, whatever, I’ll see how I feel about it later” about her own marriage!?  It’s freakishly liberating to be so care-less.  No wonder I’m scared to write it down, and only the wallop of the alcohol, just landing now, frees me to do so.  I had thought about sending Daniel the link to this blog and saying, “read all the posts tagged marriage, then talk to me about how I have squished you three times — three times! — when you were down.  Count the squishes!”  Okay, I”m a wee bit drunk so “count the squishes” is dizzingly funny.  Everything is dizzying anyway.  To return to the thread, I will not be sending Daniel said link.  No one should know a partner has this frightening, shrugging equanimity or lack of do-or-die commitment to the relationship.  It flies in the face of what marriage is supposed to be, the forever-no-matter-what-ness of whole enterprise.  It might be monstrous.  It’s certainly dangerous.  It’s crazy liberating and I”m kind of enjoying it, in my drunkenness.  Maybe I’m drunk on that thought, and the booze is just a cover.

8:35, with interruptions

Bends

10:16

I sent an email to a colleague/friend today saying that every interaction I have with her is awesome (which is true).  She wrote back to thank me, and said “sometimes my passion overwhelms folks.”  I had to laugh.  I’m staring down the end of my marriage and the loss of my job — that is overwhelming.  God, how I would love to be overwhelmed by passion, by something positive and energetic. It’s been a long time.  I was overwhelmed by passion for and from Daniel once, 20+ years ago.  We didn’t learn to maintain a nice, sweet, sexy simmer.  Daniel is seeking continual, repetitive overwhelm.

Anyway, B is Bends, as in the unpleasant and even dangerous condition of moving too quickly from deep underwater to the surface (as far as I know, that’s what bends are).  I suppose it’s good news that telling Daniel I wanted to leave the marriage caused an immediate and positive change in his behavior.  On Tuesday, he was a gem– attentive, friendly, and without the scrim of resentment, hostility, free-floating anger that had been between us for so long I’d stopped noticing it until it was gone.

(Diversion: do you also wish there was a word for finding out someone had died and thinking, “I didn’t know they had still been alive”?  Misplaced prescience?)

It was all very shiny.  Very solved.  Daniel knows what his problem is, and he will fix it!  Okay, onward!

Like hell.  I didn’t say that to him.  It seemed churlish to doubt his shiny certainty that he was capable of fast reform.  But it’s still hard for me to be around him. Tuesday night I went to bed early, emotionally — almost literally– dizzy from the rapid change in his attitude.  And last night I had a dream that left me feeling wrung out, and clarified for me just how much pressure I’ve been living under with him. He doesn’t know what it’s like to fear that every phone conversation you overhear, every stray text message you see, is the end, is a bomb going off in your gut, is a revelation that will have you sick and shaking for a day or more.  I know what it’s like, and I can’t unknow it.  And at this moment, I don’t see at all how Daniel can convince me that I will never have that fear again.

10:28, and I am tired beyond words from trying to keep my job.  But more on that later.  I do know that I am very alive, so that’s something.  If I fail, it will be whole-heartedly and with full on vulnerability, holding nothing back.  That’s work.  Marriage is best summed up by Taylor Swift:  It’s gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames.