You know those scenes in movies where the mad scientist or other generally insane character lets loose with that crazy cackling as they go over the edge into whatever act of insanity they are committing?
I no longer think that kind of behavior is fictional.
Because I can feel it knocking at the door, and only by an active effort of self-restraint am I keeping it at bay.
at the precipice of crazy…
My brain is full. Sometimes it’s too full and the thoughts spin round and round. I need to process these thoughts, but I can barely get a grasp. I’m hiding out at the blog, because I can’t talk to anybody. I just have to write. I have this desperate and consuming need to be alone. I need it in order to process things. I have kids, a full time job, a boyfriend. When can I be alone? Answer: almost never.
Today I dropped off the kids with their dad. He complimented me for my hair. (It does look amazing. My sister just gave me a new do and it’s totally rock chick hot.) And then he approached me and said that he wanted to thank me for everything I’ve done for them, and he embraced me. Our relationship has been cool and cordial at best, so these things are WAY out of character. I am struggling. It’s hard for the feelings of suspicion and compassion to vie for the same head space. I said to him, “So you’ve decided to make friends after all these years?” And, “I never wanted to be enemies. I want you to have a good life.” My compassionate side chokes up with emotion. My nature is to want to love and trust everyone.
Back story. I loaned his new wife $2000 to pay for a lawyer’s retainer so that she could try to gain full custody of her four children. She suspects her ex is abusive. Fast forward to the here and now. He then proceeds to tell me that her lawyer has billed them $6000 and is irate that they haven’t paid him. He says his wife never signed a contract, and they are surprised that he is billing them that amount. He says she has nothing at all. No bank account. Nothing. Can the lawyer come after her or them? I don’t know, I tell him. I said that my lawyer would itemize everything, bill me monthly, deduct it from the retainer and when it got low, I had to refill it before he’d do any more work on my case. (This being the case in which my ex took me to court to object to me moving to another school district. Ho hum.) I said it is surprising that they would have racked up $6000 in fees without knowing about it.
The suspicious side surfaces to say, “Oh that figures. The only time he is ever nice is just an opener to a discussion about money, which usually ends in a request to borrow some.” He didn’t ask to borrow anything. Not today, anyway. I don’t want to send any more money their way. I just don’t. I don’t like to be in a position where stating what I want is in opposition to what the other wants. It’s uncomfortable for me. What is that called? Oh. Fear of confrontation. Text book.
DON’T ASK ME A QUESTION THAT I DON’T WANT TO ANSWER, I scream inside my head. Why don’t I instead scream, DON’T ASK THE QUESTION IF YOU DON’T WANT THE ANSWER. Put it back in their court. And if they ask me the question, give them the answer that I want to give, not that they want to hear.
It’s the very same twist of emotions I struggle with when I spend the day by myself, when I know my boyfriend wants to be here. He doesn’t want to be alone. He can’t fathom quiet time. Alone time. Solitude. Those things are anathema to him. It’s hard for me to tell him that I want, need to be alone. The difference between us. I said good night and I hoped he had a good day. He said, “Thanks, but I just hung out.”
So just hanging out, being alone, is not a good night for him. But for me? Bliss! Oh how I ache for some solitude so that I can decompress and sort through the things that need to be sorted and file them somewhere safely and neatly in my mind so that I can relax and be at peace. But the guilt! Oh, the guilt! Why is it so hard for me to stand up for myself and shout to my boyfriend, I NEED TO BE ALONE! Or to my ex, I DON’T WANT TO LEND YOU ANY MORE MONEY!
In a perfect world, my ex and I would be amicable. He would want to spend more time with our kids. He would be a role model for them. They would admire him. He wouldn’t ask me for money. He would be where he needed to be when he needed to be there.
In a perfect world, my boyfriend and I would be great friends, confidantes. We would spend quality time together. We would laugh. We would have fun. He would respect my kids. Our time together would be relaxed. He wouldn’t expect more from me than I am able to give. Maybe he wouldn’t expect anything from me.
I wonder if, in a perfect world, I wouldn’t crave so much solitude? How does one balance one’s life? How I wish I knew.
The other day I had a general anesthesia for an upper endoscopy. When I came to, I had this wonderful sense of freedom, where my drama buffer was gone. I’m not sure what else to call it. It’s that thing that keeps me from expressing myself freely. That thing that takes into account how others might react, sort of like assessing maneuvers in a chess game, where you look ahead several possible combinations of moves to try to decide what might be the most favorable move to make at this moment, based on some sort of judgment of how the other will respond to the move. (I’m the worst chess companion. I don’t play the game. There are just too many possibilities for me to feel comfortable, therefore it’s not much fun for me.) Anyhow, that’s sort of what the act of expressing my feelings is like. Maybe a better word for that is simply ‘fear’. Fear of speaking freely. But at that moment, all of that was gone. I felt good. I felt innocent. I felt like it was okay to be me. To just be.
The very first thing I thought, when I came to, was thank you God, I’m still alive. I made it through the general. They say there’s always a risk that you won’t return, you know. I wonder how often that happens, that someone falls into a coma and can’t be brought back. I think I’ve had it about seven times so far in my life. I hope I’m not pressing my luck.
My thoughts were spinning quickly. I felt like I could suddenly understand why people do drugs, if that is the effect they get. It was nice not to feel the weight of the world. It was nice to just feel positive, upbeat, fearless, and unrestrained. It was momentary freedom. I realized that, with no suppression in place, I am still a nice person. I was happy to observe that. Amidst the whirring thoughts, there was one that popped out rather markedly. “Rock isn’t good for you.” I recalled the literature advising not to drive, operate heavy machinery, or make critical decisions after anesthesia, and decided to file this little tidbit away for further consideration, when I have some time to process more thoroughly. Still, part of me wonders, if in my most honest state (unrestrained in my mind), that is the second most thought that surfaced, thankfulness to God for my life being the first, it must be important. Critical, even.
I wish that I could have taken some time to just drift through the diminishing effects of the sedation, and float gently along, but I had to use mind over matter and force myself to power past it all, and collect my head and get myself going. It was very frustrating, annoying, and uncomfortable. One thing after another stacked up, forcing me to focus on the immediate. In the end, I was an irritable, exhausted mess. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to process all the thoughts and feelings of the day. Important thoughts and feelings. So much to work through, and not a moment available.
Back to jail.
My brain again on lock-down.
All tied up.
Hostage.
I want to be free. I want to find myself again, and release her. I don’t want to be stuck inside my own head forever.
I suppose I ought to fill in the blanks a bit, regarding the state of my relationship. Shortly after permission to scream, I had a personal crisis in which my home was burglarized. It was definitely a low point. I was out with my kids, and it was late at night when the police contacted me to let me know that a lock box with some of my papers had been turned in. I didn’t want to go home and expose my kids to who knows what kind of a scene, so decided to stop by his house and ask him to come stay. He wasn’t home. Nor did he return messages or calls. His phone was off. It was a sinking feeling, really. The one time that I really needed him, and he wasn’t there for me. He had told me that he would always be there for me, no matter what. I had the police meet me at my home, and they made sure everything was fine before I went in with my kids. The next day, I went about my business, making arrangements to install a new door and lock, placing freezes on my credit with the big three bureaus, calling my insurance office, etc. He called mid-morning, and I told him what had happened. He insisted on coming over and helping with the door. He pretty much bull-dozed back into my life at that point.
I was weary, and we just started talking. I let my defenses, my walls down. I asked him about what he’s been doing, who he’s been seeing, etc. We talked and talked. He acknowledged that he could see why I broke off our relationship, and that his behavior was the root of it. I felt like we were actually communicating, and told him that I never stopped loving him, but I just couldn’t be with him. He said he understood, and that he’d never hurt me again. He asked me to let him back in. I was torn. So exhausted. So hungry for physical companionship. So not wanting to try to have a relationship with anybody new. I let go of my reservations and told him we would have to tread softly, so that we could keep communicating. We had a blissful week, like a honeymoon, really. It was lovely. I had what I thought was an epiphany, that love was a choice. I wanted to store that thought away and explore it when I had some time. I wanted to keep that choice alive, keep that fire burning. But it only lasted a week or so.
Bit by bit, our personalities re-emerged. It’s very hard to overcome Pavlovian responses. We speak different languages. Our words, thoughts, intents are lost in translation. Once again, I find myself suppressing myself more and more. We are together, but it is strained. Once again, it feels as though he wants more of me or from me than I have to give. He doesn’t feel respected or honored, and neither do I.
He says I hurt him, and I don’t know how that can be. He hurts me, and he doesn’t see it. We seem to make each other crazy. He says that nobody has ever made him as crazy as I do. Certainly, nobody has ever made me as crazy as he does. So crazy I could scream crazy.
So we are hobbling along. If I call it off, he says he will disappear forever and I will never see him again. That’s not what I want. If we simply can’t fit as a relationship, I still want a friendship. Right now, we hardly even have a friendship. But I don’t want him to disappear. I know for certain that I don’t want another relationship. What I want is to find myself. I’m so locked up that I don’t know who I am anymore. I can hear her screaming, far away, sobbing, somewhere in my head, let me out, I’m here, I need to be free. I want to find her. I want to get to know her. I want to be her.
Can I do that, and preserve a relationship? I don’t know. I’m taking steps. I’m making life changes for my health. One step at a time. One foot in front of the other. I don’t know what else to do right now.
During a recent visit with my doctor, she inquired about my general stress levels, and we spoke a little about relationship related woes. I mentioned that Rock doesn’t make contact very much anymore, but he does seem to surface every couple of weeks or so. He’s struggling. He wants to rewind time and have (another) do-over. I told her that I’ve chosen to remain friends and be kind. She says that it’s not my job to help him, and that any counselor or therapist would say the same. She also says that sometimes it’s just too difficult to remain friends. I understand this.
Most recently he’s acknowledged that he has too much time on his hands and left to his own devices, he hasn’t been making the best choices with regard to filling his time, so he asked if he can come over and work on the property. He wants to hack away at the brush and brambles and make paths through the forested areas. It gives him something to do that gives him a physical outlet, it makes him feel good for doing a good deed for another, and it gives him a sense of accomplishment when he sees the results of his labor. I don’t mind, in general, but I take this with a grain of salt. Invariably, he will want to interact more, and if I don’t respond in accordance with his hopes, he will get upset and leave. I may or may not hear from him again. For a couple of weeks, anyway. This seems to be the pattern so far, from the beginning of the first breakup last September. A line is drawn, the line gets blurred. The line is re-established, and again erodes.
So he’s come over a few days this week, and has indeed hacked down a terrific amount of brush and brambles. I invited him to stay for dinner one night, and he was very cordial. Today he called and asked if I wanted him to bring burgers for the kids, but I declined — we had errands and wouldn’t be home right away. When we got home, he was out back with the machete, hacking away. He stopped and we talked for a few minutes and he asked about weekend plans. I said that I’m working on plans, but don’t have anything solidified. He said he didn’t have anything to do and would like to go to the movies or hang out or do something, if we had time and if we wanted to be with him. I don’t remember how he worded it, but it felt like one of those word traps in which the only answer that wouldn’t result in hurt feelings would be if I agreed and committed to do something, but I couldn’t rummage through the possible kind and non-committal phrases quickly enough and ended up saying that likely we’ll be doing something Saturday, but I don’t know about the rest of the weekend. I don’t remember what he said after that, but he walked off, presumably into the trees, and the next thing I heard was the sound of his car driving away.
And that was the moment when I wanted to scream. Because this is what he does. He gets upset, feels hurt, angry, or who knows precisely what, but the response is the same. He leaves in a spin. Literally. Not to mention, my 4 year old heard the car and went running toward it, so I had to shout and restrain him, which only added to the burst of cortisol that was already flooding my bloodstream.
I don’t mean to hurt him and I don’t want him to hurt.
I don’t want to make plans with him. I’m not ready. I don’t have the emotional energy to maintain the necessary vigilance with him and my children, concurrently. Whatever emotional energy I do have, I have to focus on my children. I also don’t want the line to become blurry again. So I have no choice. If he were able to stand up emotionally and honor the boundary, it would be another story, but it’s not.
My immediate reaction is visceral, and I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to sob and shout and scream and weep. But I can’t. My kids are here. I have to swallow it all and hope that they don’t see or feel any of this.
Will he be back? I don’t know. Like my doctor says, I should just let it go. Let it all go. He’s a big boy. He needs to find his own way. I have to take care of myself and I have to take care of my kids.
But I still want to scream.
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Updated. Lest I forget. Which I always do. He is an emotional vampire and I am an emotional sponge, the combination of which is toxic (to me).
Just when I’ve thought I must have learned all there is to learn about love and relationship, I find that I know less than ever. I mean, come on. I’m forty eight. But age is just a number and it means nothing. All I know is that I’m always learning, and that’s a good thing.
The latest discovery I’ve made during this journey of learning who I am (so that I can finally get over myself) is that I don’t think I’ve every truly been in love. It’s a shocker to admit, considering how many I’ve loved in my life. This isn’t to say that I’ve never loved. I love everyone (almost). I’ve loved all the men with whom I’ve been involved. And I still do. I don’t stop loving. What I’ve realized is that I’ve been infatuated, time and again. I’ve been excited about the thought of what might be, rather than what is. I’ve allowed myself to be duped by this time and again, and it’s caused no shortage of anguish in my life, and by extension, in the lives of those around me.
At the core of my very soul, the essence of me cries out, “Do no harm!” Yet time and again, I find myself bruised and battered by the emotional fallout caused by my own inability to understand myself. And by extension, I’ve hurt others in the crossfire.
When I’ve fallen in love (or rather, gone head over heels with infatuation), I’ve jumped in. All in. With every ounce of my being I exuded love.
The thing is, the honeymoon doesn’t last forever. Or very long. At all. So when the honeymoon is over, I start to see the reality of things, and pay closer attention. Maybe it’s safe to say that I started to pay attention at all, because during the honeymoon I was too caught up in the magical feelings of hope that I’d projected on another – hope that he understood me, that he heard me, that he got me. All too often it turns out that during all this time, I was listening to him, paying attention to him, trying to get him. I jumped in to him. But not vice versa. And how can I fault someone for not reciprocating my projections?
So it’s been with Rock. I met him in September (2011), and broke up with him in September (2012). It took me several months to muster the courage and strength to break up with him –I remember thinking, if I can just make it to July… …I had a trip planned and my mother was coming to watch my boys while I was away, and all these wheels were in motion and I just didn’t think I could handle the logistics of things if I were to pull the plug before the trip. I know, it sounds horrible to say it like that, but that’s the way it was. Sometimes it feels crippling to be a single working mom with no nearby social network. It’s funny (not really), I can’t even count how many times he left me before that. That’s how it was with him. So much drama. I got caught up in it – he spins an amazing tale. He’s a very gifted orator. He really can spin a captivating tale. I hope that he finds a positive way to channel that, because it truly is a gift.
He would break up with me — well, he wouldn’t break up, he’d just leave. Take off with all his things, stop answering his phone… And I’d track him down, demand an explanation, assure him that I love him, and bring him back. Over and again. All because I was so caught up in that storm that I couldn’t catch a moment to get a realistic perspective of what was going on. In retrospect, the suffering that we’d have avoided had I just let him go when he tried to go the first time. But I didn’t know. I figured it was just a challenge, and I’m not one to give up easily.
I will say this. In my entire life, nobody has treated me worse than he did. It’s appalling to even admit. I suppose in a way it helps me to glimpse a little into the world of abuse and battery and understand why and how some women get caught up in it. He was never physically abusive, but verbally? Oh, the venom he could spew. I’ve never told him how horrible he was, and I’ve never told him that nobody’s treated me worse, ever, and that includes Snake (that is a confusing chapter about rape, theft and mind control, but it’s another chapter for another day).
Relationship is all about perspective, and I write only about my own. It’s always bewildered me that he perceives that I was abusive to him. I can’t even fathom it. I am such a gentle soul. I tread so softly in life, wanting to do no harm, leave no room for anybody’s disappointment (in me). So it baffles me that he would consider me abusive. Mean. He would say that I’m mean to him. Okay, I have been told that I’m brutally honest. I can see that — I am honest. But I’m not mean. And I’m not vindictive. And I am gentle and kind. Those who truly know me know this.
So, it was September when I told him he had to go. He didn’t move out until mid November. Now it’s late April, and only these past few weeks he’s starting to understand and finally accept that it’s over. This has been the longest and strangest breakup of my life. In times past, when I’ve realized the shoe didn’t fit, I ended things and that was that. No looking back. I love you, and will always love you. But we don’t fit, and we must move on.
He’s a very strong man, is Rock. Alpha male, through and through. I wish him well. I do. I love him dearly. I do. We don’t fit. I know this. He doesn’t agree. But this isn’t about what he thinks. This is about me learning about me. I would rather go through life without hurting anybody, and without anybody feeling hurt because of me or anything to do with me, but the fact of the matter is that hurt is always a risk when relating with others. I’m sorry for the pain and anguish and sorrow and tears. But I have no regrets. There is much to learn from all things, and from this relationship I have learned a lot. A. Lot.
I’ve learned about vigilance and more keenly honed my boundaries. And I’ve learned that I’ve mistaken infatuation for love. I realize that I’m not in love with him, and more importantly, that I probably never was. It sounds so callous, but it was in my own ignorance of my own self. I realize that I don’t actually know what it is to be in love. Apart from the love I have for my children, that is. Oh dear God in heaven, how I love my children! I am in love with my children! I love them beyond the edges of the universe and back again. But love with a man, a partner? No. I haven’t experienced that. Only the hope of love. The glimmer of love. The projection of love. But not love.
Love is so complicated, and yet so simple. It’s one of those eternal paradoxes.
I don’t know if I will ever be in love. I don’t even know if I ever want to be in love. I already love everybody. And I in turn am loved by many. Many! But I don’t know if or how I can be a partner with someone.
That’s another thing that Rock doesn’t understand. I told him that I’ve lost track of who I am, and I need to be alone. I yearn to be alone, to have a few moments to at least try to capture my thoughts and ground myself in a safe place where I can catch my breath and rest. And to find myself again. Or find myself at all. He can’t stand to be alone. He wants or even needs to be in contact with someone, nearly every waking moment. He will leave the television on, just to have voices fill the space. When he’s driving, he calls to chat. Not a moment of solitude for him. And how I yearn for just that! We are fundamentally different. A day goes by and I don’t contact him, and he feels so hurt by it. Are you mad at me, he asks? No, I say. Not at all. But why don’t you call? Because I don’t feel like talking. (To you, or to anyone, I say in my head.) He just can’t grasp it. You used to like to talk, he says. Actually, I’ve never liked to talk on the phone, I finally said the other day. All this time, he’s been the one talking, I’ve been the one listening, and wishing that I could just hang up and be alone with my thoughts, or with the sweet nothingness of silence and the peace it brings my soul. Is there someone else, he asks. No, I say. He could understand it if there were someone else, but to want to be alone? That he just can’t grasp.
You used to love me so much, he’ll say. He longs for the early days when I’d do anything for him. Bend over backwards and move heaven and earth. It was like that. Then. In the beginning. During the honeymoon. But what can I say to him now? I’m not that person any more. I don’t have the strength to try to move heaven and earth. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.
I was good for him. He grew up a little, during the time he was with me. He learned some things about himself. He changed in some very good ways, and let much of his anger and venom go. He’s learned to have a little more patience. He’s a good man, and I will always love him. He wants a wife and family, but we don’t fit. I know this. Deep down in his heart, I think he knows it too. But he hasn’t admitted it or fully accepted it yet, even though I’ve told him so, time and again.
I don’t like that he’s hurting. I don’t want him to hurt. I need to find myself and get over myself so that I can be the best mother that I can possibly be. My children are my priority. It’s as simple as that. They need me. I need them. I absolutely need to take this time for them and with them. I need this for them. I need this for me.
It doesn’t mean I love him less than I did before. It only means that I recognize now that far too often in the past year I’ve shuffled them aside in my endeavor to be a couple, and that is something that I should never have allowed myself to do, and something that I want to ensure does not happen again.
And as for love and relationship? I have absolutely no idea. Only that I now know that I know nothing at all.
I turned 48 yesterday, and for the past few days I have been in a sort of a nebulous funk. I decided that I must be going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. (A good friend reminded me that I say that every year, around my birthday… …I do? was my reply. Yes. You do. ….and so I chuckled and shrugged it off somewhat.)
Dear Lord In Heaven, THANK YOU for friends!!!!
All that aside, I was driving home, contemplating being 48, thinking about how many more things I want to do in life. Oh, there were so many more thoughts than that — my company is going through some restructuring which has deep and painful ramifications for many people near and dear to me, and may even affect me personally, GOD FORBID — so I’ve been calculating retirement possibility scenarios, lifestyle change scenarios, and so on and so forth. So many thoughts milling about, with the general theme that there are so many things I want and need to do, OH DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN PLEASE LET ME LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO RAISE MY CHILDREN (at the very least), and a little longer if possible, please. And my thoughts turned to my brother, now departed eight years, having ended his own life. Tears streamed down my face, wondering how he could possibly have been duped into thinking there was nothing worth living for. Why didn’t anybody tell him that whatever it was that his present life appeared to be, and all prospects related thereto, were only shaded and the clouds would at some point pass, that THE SUN IS ALWAYS SHINING, and we WILL SEE IT AGAIN, once the clouds part. The clouds come and go. Troubles come and go. Sadness comes and goes. But the SUN IS ALWAYS SHINING. We just can’t always see it. It doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Life is always worth living.
LIFE IS ALWAYS WORTH LIVING!
It’s a journey, this getting over oneself.