Barnmaven

Picking Scabs

I find myself circling in the center of the room, holding patterns, avoiding the loss swept into the corners.  So much pain there, so little of it truly resolved.  I pushed it away to forget it, and this new life keeps asking me to sift through those painful memories and feel them all over again, this time really feel them, so I can grieve them and let them go.

I like the center, I like the pretending part where even though I was hurt, I was tougher than the hurt and the pain didn't really touch me.  I like the middle of the room where I imagine that these things today are not monsters I helped create but that they are all somebody else's fault.  I fear getting lost down the rabbit hole of black, jagged edges where everything I was supposed to be able to trust in wasn't ever really real.  I don't want to be confronted with those feelings yet.  I wanted to wait to deal with them, wait forever as if that's all it would take to make them less painful.

That's the tricky thing about them.  You would think that time would blunt them, burn down the hard and sharp parts, soften the clout to the side of my head and ease the squeeze of the fist on my heart.  And then I find that no, there has been not one iota of change in those feelings of helplessness and grief and anger and excruciating pain.  Not one shred of lessening of the feeling that it wouldn't have happened if I had been better, if I had less ugly, less messy, less self-absorbed. 

Thousands of miles between you and I and there's no comfort to be found, no shoulder to hide my face in, no enabler to help me pretend the past isn't real and that now and the tomorrow is all there ever was or ever will be.  No strong hand to hold to reassure me that this time its different, that you are not the other one.  Every shattered nerve, every thread of anxiety that loops itself through my gut adds more miles to what already exists between us.  But really, its only me putting them there. 

Where do I find the balance between unfocusing enough to make the time pass more quickly and crawling into the hole with old grief and letting it burn its way out of my core?  How do I keep myself from dropping - no, throwing down - the lines of connection so that we can still be reached?

Trust comes so hard for me.  No, you are not the other. I know that.   Never have I had any reason to do anything other than trust you. But the ugly voice from the corners reminds me:  There was a time when I didn't have any reason not to trust him, either.  Open and transparent-seeming eyes looked straight at me, reasonable voices comforted me, soothed me and fed me buckets of steaming lies.  Which part is the part where I can distinguish between the real and the construct?  

And so I avoid the corners.  Let the things swept there lie a while longer.  

Shaming and blaming

In respect to the issue that prompted my last post:

I directly approached someone who crossed a personal boundary and asked them to be more considerate in the future.

I received a response in which I was told that they would, but that I should "lighten up."

I'm sorry, did you hear me giggle?  I giggled.  And I politely responded:  "You don't get to set my boundaries for me.  Thank you for [doing what I asked.]

See, here's the thing.  I get to decide what I will put up with and what I won't.  I certainly can't force other people to respect my boundaries, nor would I want to.  But no one can decide for me what those boundaries are.  I'm old enough and wise enough to be able to determine what is acceptable to me and what is not.   Its not as if I'm going to punish someone for crossing lines, that's not my job.  There's no implicit threat of retaliation.  Its a simple request:  Please don't do that in the future because I find it unacceptable.  The offender is free to continue to offend or not; that's really irrelevant to me.  I've called them out on something and I'll continue to do so if its warranted.  By the same token, I'm perfectly happy to let bygones be bygones and treat others with the same respect I expect them to give to me.

I didn't used to be good at boundaries.  I was married for almost ten years to someone who pooh-poohed my boundaries around a couple of issues.  No matter how I tried to explain that I was really uncomfortable with these issues, all I got in response was "you're being silly."  "It's really not that bad."  "You don't understand."  I got shamed, blamed, and for a long time I tried to ignore what my heart and my mind told me for the sake of keeping peace.  It sucked ASS.  It hurt me.  It hurt our relationship. 

I know better now.

When my heart and my mind tell me something is not okay, I'm going to sit down with that feeling and examine it.  I'm either going to understand why situation x is not okay with me, or I'm going to resolve my feelings around it so that it doesn't cause me a terrible amount of angst.  I'm willing to consider that I might overreact to some things based on my personal experience and history, but I'm also fully capable of understanding and verbalizing what things are not acceptable to me. 

I frankly don't give two shits if you think I'm being silly or if you feel compelled to tell me to "lighten up."  You don't get to set my boundaries for me.  I'm old enough, wise enough and comfortable enough in my own skin to determine what passes for acceptable treatment of me and my family.  If you cross a line, don't waste your breath trying to shame me for your trespass.  I don't play that game and neither should you.

Boundaries, compassion and coexisting

Play nice.

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Treat other people the way you want to be treated.

Over and over, all my life, I've heard these adages.  From my parents, my teachers, my mentors, my peers. 

Those phrases are often well-intentioned.  Some people live strictly within them, some ignore them completely.  Both avenues are fraught with peril.  Being overly concerned with the actions of others, particularly when those actions have no bearing on you personally or aren't flagrant violations of the rights of others is an easy way to have a miserable existence, constantly up in arms, consistently and loudly berating others.   It is horribly unhealthy to be able to function when others don't follow the rules you've laid down for them to live by. 

Every pendulum has a dewpoint on the opposite end of the swing, though.  The opposite of being an overly controlling douchecanoe is not rolling over and limply allowing others to trample freely over you. 

There are always going to be times in our lives when other people push our boundaries.  As I grow and learn, I try to distance myself from my initial reactions.  What was done or said?  How does it impact me or those I love?  Does it violate my moral code?  What would I gain if I said something?  What would I lose if I said nothing?  Without being able to guess the intent of the person who violated my boundary, how can I establish that boundary and still have compassion for the person who hurt me?

Any person who has  strong presence will inevitably rub some people the wrong way, and so I have done most of my life.  Part of my maturing process has been to examine my reaction to being considered a downright bitch by an alarming number of folks.  It hurts when people don't like me, but I have to consider that sometimes their reactions to me are a direct byproduct of my own actions.  And there's nothing terribly mature or growth-producing about being proud of being monikered The Wicked Witch of the West by your coworkers.  But there's also not a thing wrong with finding ways to be both strong and compassionate.

I can recognize that others may not be mindful of what they do or say, because they are human and like them, I am not always giving the right amount of attention to how my words or actions impact others.  But when those thoughtless comments or actions directly violate my personal boundaries and beliefs, there's not a thing wrong with me pointing out that what was done or said wasn't OK with me.  And I don't particularly care if you get your feelings hurt because I let you know you crossed a line.  If I've been clear without being mean, then your reaction is your own problem.

That doesn't make me a bitch.

That doesn't mean I don't like you.  It doesn't mean I don't think we can all exist together in a reasonable facsimile of pleasant harmony.

It just means I'd like you to be more considerate of how you interact with me and my family.

Understood?

Three rooms and a hallway left and oh, God, I'm somebody's WIFE

I've been painting.

I've wanted to repaint my kitchen since the day I moved in to the house.  It has had this horribly busy wallpaper, and I avoided doing anything about it like the plague because I had to strip wallpaper before and I would quite honestly rather have my fingernails removed with hot pokers while simultaneously having a root canal.  As if it weren't bad enough, my walls are mostly plaster walls.  Wallpaper on plaster.  Absolutely heinous that someone would do that to me.  Well, I've done the next owner one worse, because I painted over wallpaper on Saturday. 

To be fair, I sanded things really well first. 

I also painted my dining room a few weeks ago, and next up is the living room and the hallway and probably the master bedroom and the little man's room as well.  My daughter's room was the only room we painted when we bought the house, its pink and purple (her choice, not mine) and can stay that way.

Painting adds something extra to help keep the days passing quickly by until SG can come home again, which right now looks to be two days before Christmas for a very quick visit. 

In one of our many phone conversations he was talking about the holidays and he made some comment about the company giving the contractors enough time for the holidays to go home even if it wasn't close.  "Not all of us live a couple of hours drive away, for crying out loud," he said.  "I want to have time to fly home and spend a few days with my wife."

Wife.

HE SAID WIFE.

When my ex and I got married, we had about six months of being engaged.  We had been together two years at that point, and I had plenty of time to process the concept of being married and what it really entailed.  Being a wife.  Having a husband.  Being a "we."  Having in-laws.  And a stepson!  And cousins for my kids!  And exes and all those family relationships that spring into existence when you bind your lives together.

We've been married a whole 19 days so far, and I'm still not quite used to wrapping my mouth around the word Hu-huh-Husband.    

I have to say, its pretty damn awesome. 

Not the being apart, part, of course.  As you can imagine, being a newlywed with your spouse about as geographically far from you as he can get on the continental U.S. is full of the suck.  But awesome in the way of commited, together, not alone on the island anymore, loving someone that much and being loved that much.  All the really great kinds of awesome. 

Getting used to this is really really cool.

 

Counting things

I keep the pillow you slept on when you were home next to me at night.  Its a poor substitute, but I imagine it still retains the scent of you.  Sometimes it comforts me, but other times it just makes me miss you all the more.

When I can't sleep, I start counting. 

You left for the first job 65 days ago.

 41 days later you came home for 11 days.

We got married 15 days ago.

You will come home again in 36 days and stay for 5 days (5?  or 4?).

Then you'll go back to work and be gone for another 122 days, give or take travel time between this job and the next.

Altogether, when these three contracts are done, you will have been gone somewhere around 225 days altogether.  Over seven months.  More than half a year. 

I need to stop counting.   Its not helping me sleep.

On understanding why life is sometimes a mountain of crap

I just posted a comment over on a blog I read fairly regularly.  If you want to read some exceptionally beautiful writing, go read Finding Your Voice.  Jennifer Lawler is a gifted writer, and everytime I read one of her posts there are three thoughts that go through my head.

1.  She has an amazing talent and prose that gives shapes to words, makes sentences into concrete things and describes feelings that punch you right in the stomach.

2.  My writing, in comparison, is crap

and 3., most of all 3., the petty things that I tend to complain about are hangnails taken in the context of what she and her daughter live with and go through.

Go read her blog, really. 

I was commenting on her most recent post and as I was considering what she had written, I thought of that old saying "you always get what you deserve," and I thought to myself, no, that's not really true.  And typed instead, Nobody ever really gets what they deserve, do they.

But then I wonder, what is it we really DO deserve?

Do we deserve anything?

And where do we cross the line, either way, into accepting what it is we've got or not got, or into being either smugly entitled or sadly feeling as if we earned some kind of terrible karma?  When is it OK to say "I earned this, I worked hard for it, and I'm proud of myself," and when is it better to just shut up and be thankful that you've had opportunities maybe other people didn't get? 

There's no universal great equalizer that I can determine.  There is always the potential of equalization, either via natural disaster, coincidence, or consequence, but the fact of the matter is that in this life, at least so far as I can see, there are always people who have more and people who have less.  And perhaps its a simple twist of fate that one person who has a great idea finds the right set of circumstances to turn that idea into wealth and fame, and another person who is also full of good ideas never finds exactly the right opportunity to make it big.  That one couple has lots of healthy babies and another couple can't have any, or they have a baby who is desperately ill or who dies.  That someone who is less capable gets into the college of someone else's dreams.  That one baby out of six other babies gets to go live with parents who were for the most part gentle and loving and the other five got a brutal existence at the hands of a pedophile and their abusive mother.  That one guy steals other people blind and lives the high life and doesn't get caught, and another guy can't steal a gallon of gas to get to work on time without getting nailed and jailed.   That a faithful spouse gets cheated on.  That some folks are unbelievably wealthy through no real effort of their own while others live in brutal poverty simply, each because they just happened to be born to a particular set of parents.

And what is it, exactly, that we are supposed to learn from this?  What's the takeaway, kids?

Damned if I know.

Or maybe, I'm not sure yet, but I'm trying as hard as I can to understand.

I am then reminded of David Richo's Five Things:

Everything changes and ends.  Things do not always go according to plan.  Life is not always fair.  Pain is part of life.  Poeple are not loving and loyal all the time.

Richo presents a philosophy that says "I can either be crushed, possessed, devastated by the circumstances in my life or I can become a witness to them."  This doesn't mean being a beaming ray of sunshine "Oh, hey, everything's great! Yep!  Never mind that my marriage ended or I lost my job or I have a terminal illness, don't worry -- I'm just FINE!"  No, what he means is that we neither stifle nor give in to the emotions that are an inevitable part of being alive and human, but that we feel them so fully that they move through us and move on. 

Neither stoic nor overwhelmed.  And accepting that there is a big pile of awful, unfair things that happen in this world that we have no control over.  Living with compassion for others and being moved by their circumstances, listening to their pain and caring what happens to them.  Caring about what happens to us. 

I don't know sometimes how I'll find that balance.  Richo and other writers like him often recommend meditation as a path to mindfulness.  Which sort of makes me feel left out of the game, because meditation and I are not close acquaintances, not now and not likely ever to be.  But I find myself more often turning the radio off in the car and using the silence to ponder life's great mysteries (and try to decide what I'm making for dinner).  I'm trying to be less of a "fixer" of other people's lives and more of a witness and a companion to their suffering.   I'm working on being willing to let my feelings be what they are and to let go of the need to assuage them somehow. 

Maybe I'll never get there, maybe I'll spend the rest of my life looking for pocket gurus to answer my questions and tell me how I'm supposed to live.  

I do believe that I'm never going to actually become a truly enlightened being, not on this earth, anyways, but I hope I at least grow and learn enough to find the beginnings of understanding.  Because I would very much like to understand. 

 

NaBloPoNoMoHuhWha and thoughts on the "obesity problem"

I'm just not going to kill myself writing some piece of crap blog post just so I can say I posted every day. 

I thought about it.  I thought about trying to pass of some piece of brain dead drivel as a "blog post" and simply opted out.  That's not the way I like to do things.

After I spent the day finishing up repainting my dining room and doing a few minor bits of housework (and inadvertently going "WHOOF" every time  I tried to sit down and my thighs reminded me about all the posting in my dressage lesson) I went and I got a haircut and I came home and I sat down and drank a glass of wine and I completely lost the will to move or talk or even think.  I was that kind of tired where your body just wants to curl up in bed and maybe you'll be able to sleep and maybe you won't but every second you insist on staying past horizontal your skin and your eyes and your hair and your feet all scream at you to just crawl between the covers already because you're DONE.

And so I did.

---------

So this stupid sprained ankle has me struggling with feelings of guilt every time I put something in my mouth.  If I'm not running I shouldn't be eating says my shameful self.  Riding your horse and painting your living room don't exactly qualify as "sitting around," interjects my healthy self. 

Those two continue at war, and I continue to watch the battle being waged across magazines and news stories and blogs, the battle over whether being overweight is dangerous or healthy.  I commented on a recent blog post at Jessica Gottlieb's blog wherein Jessica took exception with a photo of a beautiful, albeit very curvy young woman.  Many commenters agreed with her contention that this woman was obese and therefore completely unhealthy.  I disagreed.

Looking at someone's picture tells you virtually nothing about their level of health or fitness.   There are plenty of active people who are also overweight, just as there are a great deal of thin people who are sedentary. 

There was a great interview with author and PhD Linda Bacon in the recent issue of MORE.  Bacon is a physiologist and the author of Health at Every Size.

In the interview, Bacon  contends that the term "obesity epidemic" is misleading.  While it is true that as a whole people in our society are heavier than they have been (at least in the years since we started tracking factors like weight), it is not an "epidemic" by any means, nor is there evidence that being heavier actually poses deadly risk.

She points out that while there is indeed a link between being overweight and developing Type II diabetes, its not a proven fact that being overweight actually causes the diabetes.  Scientifically it is well-known that being insulin resistant causes a person to gain weight.  It is more likely that the insulin resistance, which can have genetic and environmental factors, causes the diabetes and the state of being overweight.  Even so, those leading the charge in the anti-fat movement love to tell everyone how being overweight is causing everyone to become diabetic.    Similary there are associations between other illnesses and weight, but because there is an association between the two doesn't necessarly prove that one causes the other.

Bacon posits that the most dangerous and unhealthy condition is not that of being obese, but that of being sedentary.  In study after study, people who are overweight but active are healthier and live longer.   A 2008 Harvard study found that overweight women who exercised at least 4 days a week have a significantly lower risk of heart disease than people who don't exercise (regardless of weight).    Bacon also refers to studies that show that obese people with cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, hypertension and type 2 diabetes actually live longer than thin people with the same conditions. 

Dieting doesn't work.  People who restrict their calories and lose a lot of weight gain it back when they start eating normally again.  It is only a very small percentage of dieters who actually succeed, and the negative emotional effect of failing at weight loss is causing people to feel disproportionately unhappy.  And for what reason?  Because they don't look like someone else thinks they should?  That's no reason to feel bad. 

I'm not advocating being unhealthy, not by any means.  I see no redeeming value in loading yourself up with junk food and spending all of your time sitting on the couch watching TV or in front of the computer playing games.   But nowhere is it proven that all overweight people are sitting on the sofa twenty-four-seven gorging themselves on potato chips.

What I AM saying is that the shaming of fat people needs to stop.  Nothing is gained by insisting that fat people are unhealthy.  Trying to get people to feel bad about themselves accomplishes nothing except to make the finger-pointers look like judgemental so-and-sos.    I've never been a small person.  I'm tall, for one, and genetically built on the...er..."sturdy" side.  I've been heavy, I've been thin, but at any size, I've felt my very best when I've been physically active.  I can stack two tons of hay, I can cut my own wood, build a chicken coop from scratch and I can carry a 90 pound dog into the vet's office.  I can make a 1500 pound animal back the hell off by simply looking at him and lifting my hand.  I am powerful.  I can polish my toes and put makeup on my face and wear a killer dress and look fabulous.  I am beautiful.  I can do all of this despite the fact that you probably can't count my ribs and I'm inching past the "halfway" mark in my 40's. 

I refuse to feel bad about myself because I don't fit a magazine definition of what beauty is supposed to look like. 

Don't let them fool you into it, either.

 

 

 

Tired for all the right reasons

I had a bunch of things I meant to try to get done today. 

Bathrooms to clean.  Laundry to do.  Floors to sweep and wash.  Dishes to put away.  Painting in the living room and the kitchen.

Its after 8 pm, its dark out now.  I'm tired, mentally and physically. And not a single damn one of those tasks were accomplished.  Far from being wasted, however, the day was full.

I took my first dressage lesson with Bugs -- and I think I'm hooked.  It was cold and windy and by the end of the lesson raining sideways on us -- and I'm still hooked.  So much forward motion, so much contact, so much FUN. 

And then I took my kids to an afternoon movie, and then out to the local pizza buffet, and then we played arcade games until we ran the machines flat out of tickets it seemed like.  You forget as an adult how much fun it was to take your tickets up to the counter and trade them in for prizes.  Remember how shiny and fantastic those plastic slinkies and parachute army guys seemed when we got them from the counter at the arcade at the skating rink?  The slinkies are still there and so are the army guys, and they're every bit as wondrous to my children's young eyes as they once were to mine. 

And we stood in line forever to get the tickets turned in and then to pick our prizes, and they didn't fight and they stayed calm, and when it was their turn at the counter, as they walked away with their loot they both politely thanked the gangly teenaged boy behind the counter, making this mom awfully proud.

And I'm exhausted and we all got a little overwhelmed by the noise and the birthday party crowds at the pizza joint, and maybe one of us got a little bent out of joint and had a meltdown, but all he needed was a little quiet time in his room to gather himself back up.  They're playing with their doodads now, and bedtime will come soon for all of us.  Tomorrow they head to their dad's and it there will be far too much time to do things like clean and paint and fold.

My house is messy, but it will keep.  Days like today are precious and too quickly gone to let them pass by.

Wish you well

 

The thin, cold skies of November are filled with wisps of smoke from all the burning leaves.  Hands thrust into my pockets, face tucked into my turtleneck to save my chin from frostbite, I walk determinedly ahead.  I consider my dogged persistence in not sitting still one minute longer than I am required to, and it begs comparison to...then. 

I do not regret my going.  That open door beckoned and for far too long I told the longings of my heart to be still and abide.  I pled with the angels for the fortitude to withstand it, all of it.  I looked at the earnest, eager faces of my children and begged God for something to change so that we could all just be happy.  Still, the gap between the threshold and the road whispered to me of promise, of freedom, a path whereby I might find my escape.

I struggled with the wanting.  The dark angel on my other shoulder wrapped her small claws around the top of my ear and said Illusion.  Its wrong to go.  Stay and suffer. 

The process of setting aside my doubts was a process of years, not days or weeks or months.  At long last, the final drawn breath of what might have once been love, and then...freedom.

With faith and hope I pulled on the thread of possibility and it unwound sparkling into a new life.  I began to stand ever taller, remembering my dreams.  Welcoming possibility.  I put one foot in front of the other and what began as a slow trudge became a brisk walk, a run.  Sometime along the way I found myself.  Loved myself.  Forgave myself. Stumbled upon the one person whose need to heal matched mine.

Like hand in glove, our hurts and our love met in perfect harmony.  In one shining moment of grace I let the refuse of the past burn in the steel barrel with the November leaves, gone into smoke and blown away.  There is no need to dwell there, no time to be filled with regret or loss.

We did what we did.

We are who we are.

I am loved.  I am happy.

I wish you well.

A tiny speck in the universe

Committing to writing daily for a month is a big undertaking.  Life inside my bubble isn't quite what one might consider relaxed or leisurely.  I think its a good and necessary opportunity to flex a muscle in my brain, to the point where I can write when I have to write, even if there isn't some thought crying out to be shared.  It forces me to dig deeper past my sometimes foggy thoughts and search for threads to pull.  Some threads have decidedly short strings (you should see my drafts folder - it needs purging desperately) but some threads reveal surprising depth. 

I'm not doing NaBloPoMo to gain readership.  I'm not expecting that somehow I'll have a magic moment that launches this space into the atmosphere of the pithy and famous (though any blogger who doesn't admit that they're at least hoping for that is probably being disingenuous).

I'm doing this to become a better writer.  Not mechanically better, if I want that I'll join a writer's group and let others pick apart my plot, sentence structure and word choices.  But better in terms of my ability to write at will and as needed.  To be disciplined and capable at writing so that when I, like a million other dreamers, will finally send an envelope - lots of envelopes - to lots of publishers in hopes that one of them will read what's enclosed and decide to take a chance on backing me.

When I went to check the NaBloPoMo blogroll to verify my information was included I was reminded in a very concrete way that I'm just one amoeba in a vast sea of writers seeking to be heard and recognized.  There are over 2200 blogs listed on this month's blogroll.  If I were looking for new blogs to add to my own feed, even if I read 5 new blogs a day from that list (and I really don't have that kind of time) I'd have to repeat that daily for over a year just to get through them all.

When you realize how big the blogging world is - at least, when I realize how big it is - I'm humbled by the handful of you who keep stopping by here to read and to sometimes comment.  (Even you, Mom, who would come here and read even if it were all drivel, as it sometimes is).  So thank you.  You honor me with your investment of time and attention.