Something's About to Hit the Fan

I've heard and read about the proper protocol when it comes to informing family members of a decision to divorce. The spouse should know before the kids. It makes perfect sense. 

Then yesterday happened.

Todd is home all the time now. We used to get a breather from his moods, but ever since he came home from the hospital following his accident, he is home. all. the. time.

It was one of those moods you could slice with a knife yesterday. The kids hadn't been keeping up with the cleaning like they should, and Todd had had enough. He started on one of his clean-like-a-madman and make-as-much-noise-as-you-possibly-can-so-no-one-misses-out-on-the-fact-that-you're-doing-something-you-shouldn't-have-to-do rampages. 

My son came in and politely and calmly asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?" 

"No. It's too late!" Todd bellowed, continuing to flail about with a broom, crashing it into the walls carelessly as he swept, and scaring the gentle boy out of the room.

Then, instead of just sweeping under my great-grandparents' antique settee like we always do, he hurled the fragile piece of family history away from the wall, causing it's rickety old wheels to squeak, creak, and groan as they slid without spinning.

I've been disconnecting myself from things for some time now. Even more so since Todd came home with his mood swings magnified, and the glass stove was mysteriously cracked from corner to corner (just about the same time I heard him crashing around pots and pans in the kitchen.) I can't care about things and keep my sanity with a near-sighted bull raging about in the china.

My daughter was home, however. And she cared. "That is not acceptable," she said calmly, but emphatically. He didn't listen, so she repeated it. He played ignorant, like he didn't know what she could possibly be talking about. She explained about how that particular piece of furniture had endured many generations, and it had done so by NOT being treating like that.

He muttered something like, "Well, what am I supposed to do?" 

I ignored the biting sarcasm of his tone of voice, and suggested that he might have accepted his son's offer to help... then he wouldn't have to be doing this.

"Oh, is that so?" He flung the words at me like manure being flung onto a pile of more of the same.

"Yes," I replied, "it is so. If you had allowed him to help you'd have half the work and you'd be building positive memories instead of the sort you're building now."

"Well, it's too late," he muttered.

"It's not too late if you're still cleaning." I should have known better than to challenge his thinking in any way.

And so began yet another one of our typical altercations. I resolved myself to not let him get to me, but that resolve waivered. 

He mocked me with his tone of bitter sarcasm for being bothered by his tone of sarcasm, as if he were some sort of a misunderstood saint. "Well, I guess I can't do anything right," he retorted.

Oh boy. I know what those words mean. They indicate the fact that we are speaking from two entirely different realities. No need to continue: Your words will only be twisted.

I retreated to the other room, to find my daughter sitting there. She had heard the whole thing. "It's okay, Mom," she said.

But I could feel the tightening in my chest. I could feel my health being depleted. I knew it wasn't okay. "I can't take this anymore," I let the words escape.

"I know," she replied.

"I know I shouldn't say this to you... not to you first, that is... not before I say it to him," the words just poured out... but I didn't have to say any more.

"I know, Mom," she said. "You don't think I know? You don't think we all know? It's obvious to everyone." And she went on to bring it up. The words I couldn't quite say, she extracted and gave voice to...

SEPARATION

. . . and she wasn't devastated.

. . . and when I said it could be the best thing for everyone -- even Daddy, SHE AGREED. 

So, I admitted that I had been rehearsing the words to say to her daddy, just the night before -- the words to tell him it was over, but that he would be okay.

"Your brothers each went though divorces, and they were okay," I had said as I drove alone in my car the previous night. "Your mother, too. And life went on..."

My daughter and I sat there conversing in hushed tones as the storm continued to rage in the very next room. 

I had let the cat out of the bag. 

She understood. 

Just like a good friend had nearly predicted when he said, "You've got to have a little faith that your friends and family will understand."

It feels like the wheels have been set in motion.

That's a scary feeling. But it feels good, too. 

I can't stop the momentum. That would be heartless. It would be slipping back into apathy, which is the opposite of love. 

The most loving thing I can do for myself, for my children, and for Todd, is to stop standing idly by and enabling him to be whatever sort of jackass he feels like being without any consequences. 

I'm prepared for him to argue. I'm prepared for him to make promises to change. I'm prepared for him to play the persecuted victim. 

And I'm also prepared to answer:

"It's too late."

Blessed are the Peacemakers

So much of my blogging here has been reactionary to pain in my relationships--mainly with Todd. But I feel a new birth coming on. The emergence of a more fully integrated me. The reemergence of joy that has always been there, even if it's been squelched.

As I experience renewed freedom, I am able to be myself... and I realize that

I'm weird.

Like today, after dropping my daughter off at her morning class... I pulled into the driveway and looked up at the splashes of light playing as if the leaves and the branches of the trees were a jungle gym. It made me so happy that I had to just sit there for a spell. I thought about Emily's monologue in Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, in which she declares, "Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you!"

How often I feel that wonder, that awe, and love, too... and then I want to share it with someone, but I realize I'm just being --

weird.

The Emily character felt that frustration when she was allowed a brief visit among the living after her death:

                     EMILY
Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!

But Mama doesn't look. She is in a different dimension. Emily cries out to the Stage Manager (and launches into the part of the monologue most often made fun of for it's melodramatic delivery by high school actresses pretending to understand such depth of emotion just by putting a little quiver in their voices)...

                     EMILY
...I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye. Good-bye world. Good-bye Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?

The dead-pan stage manager replies:

                  STAGE MANAGER
No.
             (pause)
The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

Okay, I've been in with the mockers, parodying Emily's quivering words... but there is something to that sentiment--if you're weird, like me. What makes "the saints and poets" so different? Maybe that's part of what makes me feel like such a misfit. I was raised by poets -- I thought that was normal.

And who are the "saints"?

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

Matthew 5:9

Peacemakers. Hmm, "sons of God" ...sounds pretty saintly to me.

Saints and poets and peacemakers understand the importance of looking--really looking. That is odd in our society of disposable everything (including friendships). I've been chided and told I'm weird (or I'm setting myself up to be hurt) when I try to make peace with the playground bully who used to cause my knees to be skinned. Maybe I'm naive, but I was taught to believe in redemption--to believe that the bully's got to have some pretty deep pain issues to go around tripping little girls in dresses. Kind of like the little girl in the movie Hook said to the big bad pirate: "You need a mommy really bad."

Life has taught me that they are right, though--the naysayers, the critics who try to warn me that I'm going to get burned. They are right. A book I was just reading tells me that such an upbringing produces prime targets for "Dangerous Men." But the naysayers are also wrong--because some people do respond to peace-making. Maybe it's a gamble. Or maybe it's an endeavor that you just have to approach with caution and eyes wide open. Looking. Really looking.

I got to thinking about how normal people are so caught up in forward momentum... always moving in a linear manner. "Don't look back!" they cry in fear. "Forget about it; move on." That wiring doesn't feel right to me. My poet parents were also always good letter-writers. We moved a lot, but they didn't leave people behind, so our lives were rich with people from all different places and phases of life. It seemed that everyone liked my parents, and I grew up wanting everyone to like me. I know that's not possible, but I do think some people give up too easily.

Like so many things in life, I think it boils down to finding the right balance.

"Listen! I am sending you out just like sheep to a pack of wolves. 

You must be as cautious as snakes and as gentle as doves."

Matthew 10:16 (Good News)

I put emphasis on the word "and" because I think an awful lot of people ignore it. They look at this as an either/or proposition.

Caution is good. It can keep me away from dangerous situations. But caution also kept me from going up to the lady at the post office who I saw commit a random act of kindness, and telling her how much her kindness to a stranger blessed me as an observer. The poet in me wanted to celebrate the act, but I didn't want to be too weird.

How many times do I walk past a sad person and catch his or her eyes, and I'm stuck by the extraordinary color or shape that makes that person's eyes like no one else's... yet I don't take even a few seconds to pause and point out the beauty? To boost someone's self image.

Sometimes the beauty in the texture and variety of people around me in a public place makes me want to cry for joy. How can we ignore the splendor? How can these people not know how beautiful they are? Could it be because no on looks long enough to realize and tell them?

I've been on a peacemaking journey this year. I've seen it work, and I've seen it backfire. But I don't ever want to forget those times it works just because it sometimes backfires. And I don't want to let those times it works cause me to become careless around dangerous wolves.

Balance in weirdness. And weirdness in balance.

Camouflaging Beauty

Once upon a time, in a land in the shadows of reality...

a place on the outskirts of time, actually -- 

so not upon time at all, but rather in spite of time --

This is where a sad creature named Camouflaging Beauty

hid.

Leafy Sea Dragon

Photograph by Armand Poblete

Camouflaging Beauty had only a vague recollection of the true reason she had slipped into hiding -- 
only that hiding had become her way of survival, 
her way of life (if one could call it that).

A dark shadow moved across the waters of her home

at irregular intervals, 

leaving her on the edge of herself,

far from her center.

The shadow was the deformed son of Narcissus, 

a goblin-of-sorts named Toadly --

one cursed to never be fully seen 

for the mantle of lies he wore as a cloak.

Toadly had spied Beauty, bathing among the rushes 

on the edge of the dark sea,

trying in vain to hide her tears that made the waters rise

deeper and deeper.

Toadly did not notice her red-rimmed eyes,

nor the deep aching hollow they surrounded --

tunnels to her wounded heart,

pathways intended for healing.

So enamored of her body, Toadly slipped silently to her side,

enveloping her in his shadowy cloak

impregnating her with his seed and pulling her under.

It didn't take long for Beauty to realize that the shadow was holding her captive,

sucking the life out of her.

But as he held her children for ransom,

she did not leave.

She learned that showing herself as anything but the image he idolized

would cause the shadow to rage,

so she hid, and became

Camouflaging Beauty.

Did she, like her sister Sleeping Beauty,

await some awakening from this state 

so unbefitting her possibilities?

Awakening comes,

as it always does,

by varying avenues,

wearing multiple faces...

Sometimes it forces itself

like Basile's Sole, Luna, e Talia,

impregnating with hope,

against the will of the hopeless.

The cloak Toadly had given her as his gift of betrothal

was a cloak of hopelessness.

Within it seeds of hope seemed so out of place

that she hid them,

camouflaged. 

Hope from without 

is stillborn in despair.

It must rise from within

to bring courage

to break through the surface,

burst forth and fill the lungs with sweet, misty air.

Terminology of Love

“Where there is no terminology, there is no consciousness. A poverty-stricken vocabulary for any subject is an immediate admission that the subject is inferior or depreciated in that society. Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty; Greek three; and English simply one. This is indicative of the poverty of awareness or emphasis that we give to that tremendously important realm of feeling.… Of all the Western languages, English may be the most lacking when it comes to feeling” 

~ The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden, Robert A. Johnson

On Scheduling a Breakdown

I should have had a breakdown then
 
28 years ago when my heart was broken, torn to shreds
 
I tried so hard to be strong, to hold it together
 
If I had a breakdown then, I might have taken the time and received the council

to heal
 
But I didn't.
 
Instead

I pretended everything was okay
 
And made life decisions from a very unhealthy place.

guardrail

Staying on track can be tough when the road ahead is long and indefinite. I had that urge again today... I wouldn't say it was a suicidal impulse. Not quite that drastic. But driving along with Todd in the passenger seat, I realized how familiar the feeling of this pressure building in my chest has become.

Waiting for a stoplight to change, I found myself momentarily outside of my body, outside of the vehicle looking in at the middle-aged woman with her head cupped in her left hand as she leaned toward the door in emotional exhaustion. The sight was jarring. Could that be me?

The grip of the tightness in my chest confirmed it. And I welcomed the destruction my emotional state seems to be placing on my body. Maybe that will be my escape, I thought... but to what? An out-patient visit for some stress-induced malady, followed by an even more stressful attempt at recovery in a house that still revolves around Todd? Even a hospital stay could not be long enough. No, I guess I should fight for my health.

Those moments of wanting to give up (no matter how brief) scare me.

I've learned that joy doesn't just happen, though. You have to go after it deliberately. Some people take a short cut and settle for a cheap substitute, but I know you sometimes not only have to wade through some crap to get there... sometimes you have to pause and scrape the crap off your own shoes before you can go on. Denying the existence of the crap will not help you to tread any more lightly.

So, I'm examining my past habits to try to learn where I've gone wrong.

A good friend loaned me a book titled How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved. I can see Todd all over in it... but that's not the troubling thing, that's not the thing to focus on, no, that's not the thing at all.

The perplexing thing is: Why on earth did I make the choices I made to get where I am now? The whole "just make better choices from here on out" approach doesn't cut it, because if I'm honest with myself, I see that just having "been hurt" is no guarantee that I've really learned my lesson -- that I've really broken the patterns that led to hooking up with Todd. 

No one wants to walk through the crap with you. It's something you have to do alone (unless you can afford a therapist.) I'll be okay. I'll even be stronger. Healthier. More complete. I'm just not there yet, and therefore, I'm not fit to be around others. It would be unfair to drain them. 

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have someone to act as a guardrail at those times that frighten me... those times when the lure of non-existence becomes too great. 

I know God is there. His Word is a guardrail. But people's interpretations of it are not... in fact, sometimes they are a gap in the guardrail, complete with a steep incline leading to that gap.

The books I've been reading lately all remind me that it's time for a make-over. I'm sure if I shared what's been going on and what I've been thinking with people in my church, they would be in a hurry to get Todd and me into "couples' counseling." As far as I'm concerned right now, however, my relationship with Todd is a non-issue. I can't change him. I can't make decisions for him. And I definitely can't trust him. We each need to deal with our own issues or "couples' counseling" would be not only a waste of time, but quite possibly one of those gaping holes in the guardrail. 

When I look at how I keep veering toward that darn guardrail, I know that I can't trust myself, either. But I can make decisions for myself. And if I'm willing to critically evaluate my previous decisions and the patterns they follow, I can change. If I can be honest with myself about where I am in that process, I believe I can eventually come to trust myself again. Until then, I'm going to have to be careful who I trust.