Busy & Tired

I've been alternating between too busy and too tired to fit this in. This blogging. This sorting out. This hoping for healing. It's been all about surviving; little room for thriving. So many trivial little things have been happening to tip the scales back and forth in the whether to keep trying or quit debate.

As of today, quit has sprinted out into the lead, but I'm too busy to do anything about it.

Todd just dumped a load of paperwork on me to "do now." He's had it for a week, but didn't tell me about it until the day it's due. I already had a full slate of things to do today, and when I didn't react with glee to his not-so-nicely worded "request," he launched into an argument about how what he was asking me to do was "easy" and he didn't understand why I have to turn everything into a fight. I'm too tired for these mind games. Maybe I really am the problem--overreacting and lacking in meekness and generosity. I know he believes his point of view is without flaw . . . so, I consider the fact that I am equally as stubborn as he.

After he finally let up (ie. left for "work"*), I was left shaken and confused. What happened? Why do these confrontations always leave me feeling so confused? Like sci-fi quality alternate realities are being constructed around me and I awake in the midst of a landscape that is totally unfamiliar . . . and Todd looks at me blankly as if nothing has changed. Is he deluded or schizophrenic or (?) himself, or is it a more sinister, intentional mind game he plays with me--trying to drive me crazy??? OR . . . maybe I actually am crazy--insane--mentally ill??? I don't know the answer, but I do know that it's hard to function in the simplest of tasks when you are questioning your own sanity.

One of my older daughters who was home during the argument came out from her room to comfort me. I apologized for the uproar. She said she understood. I said that Todd might be right--maybe the problem is all me. She then said, very precisely and deliberately: "Trust me. As an objective observer, I can tell you without a doubt, it's not you." I didn't want to get into it any more with her--to involve her in worries that shouldn't be hers to bear, so I welcomed the interruption of a phone call reminding me that it was time to rev up the mommy-taxi and go pick up the younger kids from their various activities. I wish I could accept her reassurance that I'm not insane, but I question whether the tie that binds mother and daughter is too strong for there to be true objectivity.

Work calls. The day is already more than half over, and I haven't started on my writing project yet . . . or hemming the dress my youngest daughter needs for a formal dance tomorrow . . . or numerous other bullet points on my never-ending "to do" list. BUT, Todd's paperwork is done. Now, all I have to do is try to pull myself together emotionally so I can really focus on my work. The producer on the project I'm doing just called and he needs a specific write-up delivered to him by tomorrow for a last minute meeting with some investors. Oh, and I'd better figure out what I'm making for dinner. My work day won't really get going until everyone else is fed and sound asleep.

*the mocking tone of voice indicated by "work" in quotation marks is because Todd says he only has about three hours of work today, and I know I have many more than that, but because I don't leave the house or punch a time clock, he seems to keep forgetting that I too have "work" to do -- I still owe work on a writing project for which I've already received an advance . . . and that's not to mention all the unpaid housework and hours of caring for and driving around his kids . . . .

Dirty Laundry

I mentioned in a response a few days ago that I was going to blog about an ugly altercation Todd and I had. At first, it was too raw. When I get shook up emotionally, it’s hard to function. That’s how this was-- the worst in a long time. It was familiar ground. I guess it just goes to show that just because something is repeated doesn’t make it any easier. I’m coming to think that if there were an illustration in a dictionary of phrases for the term “irreconcilable differences,” that illustration would be a picture of Todd and me.

When one looks at the little things that can “set us off” in isolation, it’s easy to label our differences petty. Oh, is that all?

This was a laundry room quarrel. I’ve heard newly weds bump heads over “little” things like him leaving the toilet seat up or her putting a “weird” spice in the quiche, but usually those things get worked out over time and are looked back on as silly. Compromises have to be reached in order for people to live together well, and these things are wonderful opportunities to show concession and respect. Some pet peeves are nothing more than miniature cases of OCD, but others are indicative of deeper problems. Tell me if you think I’m being petty here...

We have our laundry in the garage. Right next to the drier is a freezer (the chest type). It’s the perfect height and location for folding the laundry as it comes out of the drier. The freezer is heavy and difficult to move, but how often does one have to move a deep freeze?

Todd and I don’t mix our laundry because I like fabric softener and he doesn’t, so he does his and I do mine. That’s really not a problem, because it means we each get it done the way we like it. I do the household loads (towels, sheets, etc.) and the younger kids’ clothes, and the older kids do their own. That means the laundry area is shared by at least five different people, which I think is good practice in getting along and being considerate.

I’d venture to guess that anyone who has ever shared a laundry room in a dorm or apartment building has dealt with the people who leave their stuff in the machines too long so it has to be moved for the next load. I remember observing at college how different people reacted to such inconvenience. Some would get mad and intentionally wad the clothes that were in the way, others would carelessly wrinkle them, and yet others would take the extra effort to lay the clothes out in a manner that would prevent wrinkles. Laundry room inconveniences, it seems, offered golden opportunities to exercise the golden rule.

When I choose to spend the extra minute or so to treat the laundry of another as I would like mine to be treated, I don’t feel like I’m great, kind, noble or anything like that--I just think I’m doing a decent thing--something that I think should be expected of me as a person who believes that people have value.

Todd has a habit of taking other family members' laundry out of the drier and leaving it on top of the freezer, only to go out to the freezer later and open the lid without moving the laundry, causing some to get trapped behind the freezer. I have repeatedly expressed how much this bugs me as it means clothes get lost, wadded, and dusty, and have to be re-washed (wasting both time and money.) When Todd leaves his laundry in the machines (which he does all the time--much more frequently than I do), I smooth out his shirts and fold his pants and carry the neat stack into our room and set it on the bed. It really doesn’t take that much more time than it would have to have thrown it on the freezer and left it there. I’ve told Todd that I really don’t care if he folds the clothes as long as he brings them into the house when he comes back in. He could just toss them on the couch for the kids to deal with.

Our daughter was getting ready for a dance recital the other day, and she couldn't find the clothes she had left in the drier (her costume). We thought her sister had brought it in the house, but she couldn't find it anywhere.

Todd suggested that maybe it had fallen behind the freezer.

I asked how that could happen. He said, "When you open the lid, it just slides back there."

"Who would open the lid with laundry piled on it?" I asked (knowing full well the only one in the family who does that).

"I did several times today," he answered.

Our daughter was running late, others were depending on her to be at the theatre on time and in costume. I ran out to the garage and checked behind the freezer. There were a few missing socks and wash clothes and things like that, but no costume.

When I rushed back into the house, I didn’t tell him the costume wasn’t there--what did he care anyway?

“I just don’t understand why a pile of laundry would be left on top of the freezer in the fist place.”

“Maybe I didn’t have time to deal with it,” he objected.

“But if a person is coming back in the house anyway. How much longer does it take to throw some laundry on the couch?”

“Well, maybe my hands were dirty!”

“Your hands dirty? When you were just putting your own clean laundry into the drier?”

He came up with one excuse after another. What it boiled down to was “I’m busy,” and “My time is too valuable for that.” I can’t even remember all the excuses, but they were so ridiculous I finally said, “Do you hear yourself? Do you even hear yourself?” I said it, firmly but calmly, without judgment but rather as if pleading for an answer, an answer that was not to be had.

“Do you hear yourself?” he mocked back at me. What, I thought, did we just time warp back to junior high?

When I mentioned that I didn’t always “have the time” to smooth out his shirts, but I did it because it’s the decent thing to do, he retorted in the most sarcastic, and even venomous, tone I’d heard in a long time: “Well, aren’t you wonderful? I guess I’m just not as wonderful as you are.”

I can’t remember all he said after that, but he kept drilling it in like a knife, without mercy.

The emotional torture has never felt so much like a physical beating. I wasn’t going to be the doormat, though... I was thinking about what some of you have been telling me: Call it out. Let him know when his behavior is not acceptable. Make sure he knows so he has the opportunity to make a right choice.

He insisted that he didn’t have time for such things, to which I replied with something about how if he didn’t have time for such simple consideration then maybe he didn’t have time to live with other people at all. That really set him off, but I don’t regret saying it.

I could have said, “I can’t talk to you,” as he has said so often, but I knew that never went anywhere--that did nothing but encourage him to go on a faux pity party (I call it faux because if he really believed the self depreciating things he would say at such times, he would do something to change, but rather his words dripped with sarcastic mockery that really said, “You’re wrong. My time is worth more than yours. My opinion is worth more than yours.”) All he could utter was justification for him protecting his time from inconvenience.

“I’m sorry that the children and I are such an inconvenience,” I said.

Did he answer with, “No, you’re not an inconvenience, Sweetheart. I love you”? Of course not. Instead he just repeated my words in a mocking tone.

I walked away. I just walked away pondering the words, irreconcilable differences. My chest hurt. Hours later, when we were in the car together, going to our daughter’s show (and I was only going with him because I had already ordered the tickets--otherwise I would have made an excuse to go to a different showing than him), my chest still hurt. This is going to kill me, I thought. This is really going to kill me. And he acted like nothing was wrong in the world--like his venomous words had just evaporated into thin air instead of drilling deep into my chest.

Studies have shown that men who are married live longer than their unmarried peers, while the opposite is true of women who are married. If other marriages are like ours, that makes sense.

Kate Middleton married her prince last week. I’m not a huge Royal Wedding fanatic, but I do hope that it will work out better for them than it did for Princess Di and Prince Charles. I know that fairytales are not true--that we have to work for our happy endings... There comes a point, however, when one has to acknowledge that the work is getting them nowhere. I’m thinking when every argument is a déjà vu, it’s time to stop the cycle and deal with the laundry.

Fight and Flight

The truth just burns to be told. It irritates and irritates, gasping toward the light of day.

I am literally physically sickened by the truths I can not tell (or will not tell--probably due to my codependency with someone I know cannot handle the truth).

We argued again this morning. I'm able to avoid it much of the time by just leaving him alone. But he had asked for my help. I offered it, but refusing to give it in a way that would feed the codependency, I offered it on my terms. That sent him through the roof.

You see, Todd has finally decided to follow through on his desire to write. He's still deluded enough to act like if you love an idea and write the script, it will get produced and you'll make money, and everything will be Easy Street from there on out, so he's writing during the times most people would either go to work or go looking for work (instead of doing it on the side like most aspiring writers do). I do respect the fact that he's actually sitting down to do the writing, instead of just talking about it. However, he is a beginner... and although he asks for help, he's very resistant to guidance.

Given our history of not working well together, as I watched him plug away on this script, my respect for his effort was tempered by my dread of the inevitable demand for help. It's hard enough to offer feedback to a person to whom you are not intimately related, but when you live with that person and that person approaches the people he asks for help as non-persons--like some technical gadget that should work and needs to be cursed at and bopped (I'm being metaphorical, here--no need to call the police) if it doesn't respond as you want it to (even though you've never even bothered to consult the manual... you get the point)...

So, I've already made it through the first draft of the script and offered a little feedback (being very careful to qualify the fact that this "just might not be my kind of story in the first place.") I also made it clear that format and proofreading for distracting spelling and punctuation errors would be a necessity before asking anyone else to read it. (The script was a mess in this sense.) He did a few revisions on it (content-wise only), and has been prodding me to read it again over the weekend. Mind you, I had things I had planned to do which really need to be done, but I sacrificed and took the many hours required to read the script and make notes of my response. It was still a mess--very hard for someone like me who struggles with A.D.D. (and possibly O.C.D.) to handle.

As I was fighting my way through a story that wasn't holding me, and a visual mess that was distracting me, he sat around watching sports on T.V. I tried to be gracious, but the fact that he once again had time for recreation, but couldn't put forth the effort to fix some of his sloppy errors before asking me for feedback really started to bug me. I prayed for a better attitude and labored my way through the script. Working late into the night, long after he had gone to bed, I finally finished and emailed him the attachment with my comments.

In the morning, he had checked his email before I got up, but he hadn't figured out how to open the attachment (and we've been through this before). So I once again walked him through how to open an attachment, and while we were at the computer, I thought I'd show him a few formatting tips (since I had included notes on that & realized that it might be hard for him to understand what I was talking about just from the notes.)

Big mistake!

This didn't fit his template for how and when he wanted what from me (me, the machine; me, the object; me, the one to be used for his own convenience). I knew that he would be asking me to help him format this later, and that if he just understood a few simple operations he wouldn't continue to make such a colossal time-consuming mess. The problem was, in his mind fixing the mess later on would be no problem--like always, he would just dump it on me, go watch his game, and when the game was over the script would magically be beautiful. (I've come to realize that was how he was raised. His mom created this monster. I guess it's hard for a person to learn to endure the strain and toil of working toward a goal when he has people in his life willing to just do it for him.)

I refused to be the complete push-over, and his inability to put me on auto-pilot to do his work for him sent him into an angry place. By the time I left the room, I was trembling all over and sick to my stomach. He, on the other hand, was tapping on the bathroom door within a few minutes, as if no altercation had even occurred, saying he had read some of my notes and was ready to bat around story ideas--as if we were collaborating on this story I don't even like. I was still shaking, and trying to get ready for church, even though I now wouldn't have time for breakfast. (That didn't seem to bother him).

I guess he can't see any irony in the fact that in the past, even when I've been working on strict deadlines, he has put me off and put me off when I've simply asked him to read a page or two (already polished and proof-read for spelling, grammar, punctuation & format, mind you.) It's like this huge disconnect. He can't see how he uses others, and then ignores them when they aren't of use to him. (By the way, his script is 100 pages)

I hope this script does work out for him, but I also fear what it might do to us. Perhaps this will be the thing that will end up squeezing the truth out of me--whether he can handle it or not. That may be painful, but I really should welcome it nonetheless. I do long to be in that place where the truth is out and I no longer feel the need to tip-toe on eggshells.

A friend told me she kind of felt like I was using Todd, staying with him until the kids are grown, while in a sense working toward an escape plan if things don't work out. I've not given up on the relationship, however. I'm just not deluded by unfounded hope.

Todd's lack of ambition--or at least carrying through on his ambition--has been a major turn-off to me. Now he's at least making some effort (even if it is a bit misguided--and I can't hold that against him, as I have made more than my share of misguided mistakes). As I see it, the self-empowerment moves I am making are not an escape plan as much as they are a grow-up plan--a plan that both Todd and I need.

If he will come along with me, we might survive, but if he insists on remaining the child and forcing me to parent him, then the empty nest just might trigger me to fly away. I'm not denying that. I don't want Todd to stay nest-bound forever, but if he chooses to do so, I will NOT be the enabler. It's for his own good, too. Right now, he lives in shackles. How he can even breathe is beyond me. The truth will set you free.