Little Jagged Hole

The day dawns cold but bright

Chug chug, off to work

Never enough time, can’t even see my desk

Always worried my time is coming

He leaves today

Another round-the-world trip

Another two weeks at home with the boys

Our boys, our silly goofy boys

And that little, nagging, jagged hole

She left.

It looks much smaller than it is

But I keep telling my self it’s hardly there

That little place

Where she ripped herself out of my life,

Out of my family.

That little place that’s empty now

We all pretend not to see it

But it’s always there

And it’s not always a bad thing

But it’s always there.

I tell her goodnight every night

Even though I know she isn’t listening.

At least she knows I think of her

And I still see

That little, nagging, jagged hole.

Thoughts and Changes

Leaning against the back porch

Cool breeze on my cheek from the new fallen snow

Two silly dogs crunching at the ice on the deck

Enjoying the early evening calm

Once again asking the constant question,

Did I make the right decision?

I see my furniture back in it’s old places

I wake to the sounds and smells of family

This is my home, my family, my husband.

I am home.

Definitely, yes.

Fly in the ointment

So, things are going pretty well with the marriage counseling and the hubby and I are feeling pretty good about the progress we are making. I think we both see improvements in each other and our ability to listen and respect each other, and that’s been a huge improvement. We are definitely headed in the right direction.

Here’s the problem: my daughter is absolutely against the whole thing. She won’t even entertain the idea that we might work things out, she has said she won’t move back in to the house if that’s what I decide to do, and when I suggested she accompany us for some counseling, the next thing I know I got an angry phone call from her father about what I was supposedly “forcing” her to do against her will.

This kid has spent the last six months overinflating every negative encounter she has ever had with my husband and convinced herself he is Satan in human form, which he certainly is not. In fact, overall he has not been nearly as disciplinary with her as I have been. Now, everyone else in the family is willing to put the past behind us and work on the tools we need to move forward in a more positive way, except her. She absolutely will not let go of every tiny little injustice she feels she’s been dealt, from as far back as second grade (she is going on seventeen). And her dad is just fueling the fire. He uses terms like ‘outcast’ to describe her and it makes me absolutely nuts. She has never been treated like anything but a complete and total member of my family, often to her disliking.

So what am I supposed to do? If I let her move in with her dad full time, I can guarantee her diploma and any purposeful future will go right down the drain. But I have spent sixteen years trying to love this disrespectful, hateful little user, and when is it time for ME to get a break? I have tried, and tried, and tried… and her affection and respect for me only go as far as what she’s getting from me. The minute ‘NO’ comes in to the picture, I’m a rotten bad guy all over again. People, I am so exhausted.  She has worn my heart right out.

My husband feels hurt, and is hurting for me right now that she would turn away from me and her brothers simply to avoid the effort of making a new start with him. She can’t face the fact that she has been truly awful to him over the years, and our entire family has spent a great deal of time walking on eggshells as a result of her moods and tempers.

So what do I do? How can I move forward? I have told her I will never choose between her and my husband, but it seems she HAS made a choice… how do I deal with that?

Self-Affirmation

Long nights of half-sleep

Anxiety over the nothing

Plodding through the tight stomach days

Living for the sunshine on my face

Slowly shrugging off the nonproductive habits

Learning to be okay with it all

Looking at life from a fair perspective

Taking stock of where I am and how I got myself here

Assessing what’s really important

Letting myself be human, even in my own eyes

Taking responsibility

Setting a better example for my children

Trying to put my life back together

Reminding myself what I can be capable of

Allowing myself to hope

Setting my sights on what I deserve

Communicating in positive ways

Developing better tools to relate

I will be okay.

I will be OKAY.

Brain scans, and other things

So, I came home from work yesterday to find a voicemail on my message machine from the eye doctor’s assistant saying they had already scheduled my MRI appointment for this coming Monday. I have to arrive an hour early so they can give me the little pill that makes it okay to shove me all the way in that tight little tube and leave me there for an hour while all the horrible noises go on all around me. And since they’re giving me the little pill, I have to have someone to drive me home.

This is ridiculous. I have such a high tolerance to the little pill, they could give me three or four and I could still pass a field sobriety test without blinking. Oh, I know it’s procedure, its protocol, it’s for the hospital’s safety as well as my own… but it’s still stupid. Now I have to hope my husband will be available to drive me all the way uptown in the middle of the day Monday, which I won’t know until he gets back from Italy, which won’t be until late Sunday night, by which time it will be far too late to reschedule. Arrrgh, why do things have to be so complicated all the time?? On a lighter note, I started taking the medication he prescribed, and maybe it’s too soon to tell, but my eye seems steadier already…

I thought it would be nice housesitting for a week while my husband was away, being back in my house again, but I find that staying there as a visitor is really bizarre and frustrating. Things are weird right now; I’m feeling pulled halfway between two worlds – the married world and the separated world, and I don’t feel like I belong entirely in either one right now. I feel… displaced, I guess. It’s an odd feeling, and I don’t know quite what to do with it.

Part of me is sure that eventually I will move back home and resume my marriage. But another part of me believes that to do so would only continue the unhappiness I had been feeling for years. Things seem much better now, but is it only because I’m gone? He treats me differently, but is it only because he’s trying to get me back home? Would it last, or would he go back to being the same indifferent, distant roommate he was before? I know this is why we are in counseling. And it’s early yet. But I just wish there were easy answers, and I know there aren’t. What to do, what to do??

So Long, 2008…

 

Well, this has been one of the most bizarre years of my adult life.

I entered it in a stable marriage, a secure job, a comfortable house, and good financial status.

I am leaving it in a state of separation, a job I worry about keeping, a cold basement apartment, and never enough cash to stretch from one pay day to the next.

It’s been interesting.

In between there have been lost loves, internet relationships, and plenty of heartache and heartbreak. It has been tough learning to be on my own, but I really think I am making progress. It’s hard, and it’s lonely, but if there’s one resolution I make for 2009, it will be that I refuse to sacrifice my self, my personality, my happiness, to appease a man. I have rediscovered what it’s like to really be able to just be me… and I like me.

My husband and I are getting along well, spending some time together, and will start counseling in January. But I have been very clear that I have made no promises, aloud or inferred, that I will be returning home. It seems I like him as a friend, but as a husband? I still have no idea if we’ll ever get back to that point. Much change is needed.

My kids will return from my parent’s place in Southern Utah on Sunday; I have missed them and can’t wait to see their little faces again (reminding myself they’re just not so little anymore). School starts up again Monday, and life resumes as normal again for everyone… well, as normal as it can be right now.

So what will 2009 bring? Hard to imagine. So many things in the air right now, I can’t possibly predict what might happen next… but stay tuned,  faithful readers, it’s sure to be entertaining!

It Happened….

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s almost upon us… maybe it’s the look of all the presents under the tree… maybe it’s the fact that my doctor just upped my antidepressants… but I have to admit, the Christmas Spirit has actually finally hit me. Just sauntered on up and whopped me upside the head, it did. Totally took me by surprise, too – I certainly wasn’t feeling very Christmas-y and wasn’t expecting to this year. Sure, I was putting on a brave face for the kids, but man, I sure wasn’t feeling it.

Then Saturday I went shopping with my husband, picked up the last few things I needed. He and I have been spending more time together and doing a lot of talking, and that’s been going well. We have decided to have the family Christmas together, and I feel really good about that.

Then I went home, and wrapped and wrapped… when I stood back and surveyed my little tree and all the gifts beneath it, I found myself saying a little prayer of thanks. I don’t know how I pulled it off, but I did. I did good for my kids this year, all by myself. I can’t wait to see their faces on Christmas morning when they see what’s in store.

I took a little gift upstairs to my neighbors, and was greeted with the news that their twin girls had been born Friday evening, healthy and beautiful. What an awesome Christmas gift for them! I can’t wait to see them, hold them… then hand them back….

I don’t know how it happened, or exactly when, or why. But sometime in the last few days, somehow, my heart got filled up. I had forgotten what that feels like, and I’m tearing up even as I write this, because it’s a good feeling and I don’t want it to go away. I feel like the Grinch when his heart grew two (or was it three? I can’t remember) sizes bigger all at once.

You know what? Life is good.

Magpye’s ‘Life Sucks’ Poem

 

 

Stumbling blind

Reaching wildly

Finding no purchase

The sound of dark, smell of cold

I am enveloped in lonliness

I see

But I do not see

I feel

But feeling is excrutiating

I fight

But the struggle pulls me further under

Until I cannot breathe

Voices around me

As if from underwater

Unreal, distorted

Time is a sharp wire that winds ever tighter around me

I scream

But no one wants to hear

I am truly alone

Trying so hard to be productive….

I am trying so hard today to be productive…. But it is just not happening. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s Friday, or because of the impending huge storm that’s coming in tonight that’s supposed to put all of Salt Lake on it’s ear, or because I’m supposed to have ‘movie night’ tonight with my husband and kids, and stay over because I have to work tomorrow for a few hours and the house is only blocks away from work and due to the snow it just makes more sense to stay close by, or if I’m just ready to be done for the week, or all of the above, or WHAT.

Yeah, Im having movie night with my husband. So what? Lately the lines of communication have been more open, and it actually seems like he has been LISTENING to me. I don’t know what that means, or if it means anything, I’m certainly not jumping to conclusions. But we are planning to look into some couples and family counseling at the first of the year. Who knows what will happen. Im definitely not tying my hopes and dreams to anything yet, as far as I’m concerned we have a long way to go before I’m even close to making any decisions, and I’ve made that clear. I haven’t gone through the last several months of Hell just to go back to the way life was before.

But I have learned some things about myself, some good, some bad. And I think he has too. And maybe it’s time to stand back and evaluate. I think that’s at least fair. For us, for the kids. For the thirteen years we will or won’t walk away from.

I have to give him credit; since the day I walked out, any time I needed him, he was there. Flat tire, broken door, money to feed the kids, he was there, and that does count for something.

Funny… if I had been at home, would he have been nearly as quick to respond?

Hmmmm…..

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Well, I guess I blew it again. This time I went into the chat room where R and I always meet, and I went under a different name, because he always does, and I thought maybe I’d show him how it felt not to know who you were talking to.

Long story short, BIG MISTAKE. He was in under a different name and we got in a huge fight not even knowing who we were and now it seems the whole chat room I have frequented for months as my solace in a lonely life hates me. I don’t know that he has been saying things about me, so I won’t make assumptions, but something is very strange about the sudden hatefest going on in the room where everybody knew and liked me. And I can hardly get him to talk to me because he doesn’t think I understand his point of view about what started the whole thing. I do now. But it was still a scary side of him I had never seen before and it shocked me.

So… what now? I don’t know… are we done? I wish I knew. Part of me says if he can be like that, I need to take my leave. But honestly, a bigger part of me still deeply cares for him and is extremely dismayed over what has happened. I don’t want to let go. But I don’t know that it’s my choice anymore.

Hey, Newsflash… Magpye screws up again. Stupid, stupid me.