No Such Thing

“Welcome to the real world”, she said to me
Condescendingly
Take a seat
Take your life
Plot it out in black and white
Well I never lived the dreams of the prom kings
And the drama queens
I’d like to think the best of me
Is still hiding
Up my sleeve…”
-John Mayer

As I sit here watching the same episode of “Kourtney & Khloe” that I’ve already seen two other times. I am not sure where this downtime came from, but I’m loving it. Life has been chaotic lately, busy – and I keep seeming to run out of time for things. That may be partially due to poor time management skills, and partially because… hell, I don’t know.

The counselor has let us off the hook for weekly visits. We’re now able to go a few weeks in between appointments – that’s PROGRESS, baby. There’s nothing like progress to make you realize how uptight, sad, mad, pissed off, on edge you’ve been for the past few… years?

The past several months prior to counseling started were the worst – and I was noticing effects in my body – my hair was graying (more than usual), my girly girly cycle was a mess (seriously, like every THREE weeks goddammit), and despite my maintaining my exercise and eating habits as always, I was gaining weight (fuck you, cortisol). And now that the fog is lifting, I haven’t had to color my hair (and I’m over a month past due for the “touch up the gray” colorfest), my cycle is now at about 30 days (hellsyeah… also… sorry guys for mentioning my period twice in one paragraph), and my body is starting to look like my body again.

If anyone wants to argue whether or not stress has a visible effect on the body – pick a different sparring partner, because holy crap. Wow.

I’m sure he didn’t realize how bad it was until I said in our appointment, “Do you know how often I was so mad at you? That I felt like I wanted to hit you in the face?”

*crickets*

He didn’t know.

Progress is a good thing. It’s a slow thing, but it’s a good thing.

You Are the Best Thing

“And baby,
The way you move me, it’s crazy
It’s like you see right through me and make it easier
Believe me, you don’t even have to try…”
-Ray LaMontagne

And then there were two newly married people in the world and I didn’t have to punch anyone in the face or throw any elbows or get too crazy or nasty. And it was good.

***

Last night, Husband and I had a long talk. He said he didn’t feel like things were getting better – which shocked me, because as I mentioned here, I feel like things have improved quite a bit. We have been so mired in our lives: for both of us, work is chaotic and there has been kid stuff and special events and oddball things and we’re swamped from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep and yeah, we still kind of work around each other sometime.

He said he felt things weren’t improving. When I said I felt they WERE, he seemed surprised, but glad. And I guess I need to be better at saying things like that – at communicating to him and saying the good stuff to reassure him. The amount of reassurance he needs is different than what I need, so I have to be better at that because he truly needs me to say to him that things feel better. Knowing that I felt better made him feel better.

I said to him, “I don’t think you realize how many days I felt like I was going to scream at you – how frustrated with you I felt some days. I am not walking around with that anger anymore.”

Though we have a ways to go yet, not having that anger sitting on my shoulder has been a huge thing. But, we clearly still need to figure something out about spending time together. He suggested a dance class – which doesn’t really appeal to me as much as I love dance (I can’t stand watching ballroom dance – and I don’t want to do it. Stubborn? Yeah.). Maybe a weekly date night – I’m not sure how that will work – but we need to get creative and make things work otherwise they won’t.

ANYWAYS.

How are all of you beautiful people?

Chapel of Love

“Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married…”
-Too lazy to google it.

My sister is getting married soon and holy fuck I am so stressed out. The groom’s mother is a controlling freak, the groom’s sister is a passive aggressive crybaby, and the groom (who I really truly adore?) seems to not want to stand up to his mother, his sister, when they aren’t nice to his future wife.

So this leaves me stressed out.

My sister talks to me about her stress.

My mom talks to me about her stress.

And me? I am having GRUESOME dreams like showing up nine months pregnant the day of the wedding (an impossibility, I assure you!) and delivering a stillborn baby the day of the wedding. What the hell, right?

It’s funny – things in my “REAL LIFE” have gotten so much better lately – not perfect, mind you – but better… And yet, here’s this wedding.

Thank god it’s an open bar.

No song. No witty title. Just this.

Counseling went very well today.

We had a very low key week together (despite the chaos in other areas of our lives) – and our appointment today reflected that.

I am always Negative Nancy, but today was alright.

I wanted to share before I forgot to share. I’ll post more later, I promise.

Volcano

“No no just another phase of finding what I really need
Is what makes me bleed…”
-Damien Rice

It’s been awhile. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. I’ve been here. I haven’t been here.

Counseling is very difficult.

Soemtimes I wonder if I’m strong enough for it – We leave these appointments ragged, torn, beat down and distanced from each other. I ate a lot of my words rather than speak my mind – for a lot of years. By not speaking the words, there’s been this mangled precendent of me stuffing my feelings. And now, now that I have to say what is on my mind – at least 50 minutes a week, I do – I find that look on my husband’s face, the one that shows he’s gobsmacked, hurt, pissed off, frustrated, torn, angry… that look tells me why I spent so many years trying to avoid that look on his face. Not saying the words that would make him feel like that.

And I grumbled about how after our last session he approached me at a bad time about something, and I said in our appointment this week, “You DO realize that at that point, I was still reeling over finding out that you hadn’t been honest with me twelve years ago? I was HURT. I was VERY. VERY. HURT.” The counselor asked if I had verbalized that to my husband. I told him that no I hadn’t. Why not? “Because part of me felt like why should I be upset all these years and all this STUFF later? And part of me KNEW that that is what he’d say – to get over it because he was with ME not HER, and that it was a long long time ago.”

And my husband said, “Yeah. That’s probably what I would have said.”

Hm. Why don’t I tell him when I’m hurt?

Because he tells me I shouldn’t be.

Clearly, though, that’s not working for us either. So, we have to relearn some stuff and unlearn the old patterns and you probably know this but holy shit, it’s not easy.

Slow slow slow process… but I’m not giving up.

La Cienega Just Smiled

“How’d i end up feeling so bad for such a little girl?”
-Ryan Adams

Hey, it’s Sunday – but it doesn’t feel like Sunday. Also, I’m all slow pokey in writing because my day has been one that has been like a non-day. One of my kids was feelin’ kind of shrewish and holy hell, that wreaks havoc on the volume level and my mood.

I seem to be alright now.

Actually, I’m a little queasy. Just got done playing the “what smells so bad and where the fuck is it?” game. Still don’t know. BLEH. KIDS. If I find something gross somewhere, you’ll know. You’ll hear me. Even you folks on the west coast and in Canada.

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH.

But seriously.

We have the week off from counseling this week given tomorrow’s holiday. I guess I don’t entirely mind. Do I think
it’s helping us to go to counseling? Yes. I definitely think there have been improvements in small small steps. I am one of those people who life always came easily to. School was easy, and even the things that were roadblocks or were tough… well… even those things weren’t BAD. Or my coping skills were just better then. Who knows.

So, y’know, I’m not attending these sessions without having my heart in it – I’m not half assing it. It is TRULY difficult. It’s hard and it hurts and it’s frustrating and I want like hell for everything to be fixed already, except… Except life doesn’t fix itself that fast. And the things I want to just fall into place just can’t. So… Work. It’s taking work.

It’s a new thing.

I wish I could see the future and know when things would be better and how and how much longer I have to wait for that… but I can’t. Just gotta ride it out. And y’all know I have no patience.

As Is

what scares me
is that while you’re telling me stories
you actually
believe that they are real
-Ani DiFranco

It’s just stuck in my head tonight.

By the way, lame ass video… so press play and then do something else while it’s playing because otherwise you’ll be bored.

Soulmate

“Who doesn’t long for someone to hold
Who knows how to love you without being told?”
-Natasha Bedingfield

Counseling is fucking hard.

And I keep waiting for the revelation – the moment – when it all snaps into place and I feel progress versus just feeling like I’m peeling my skin off leaving my insides exposed to the elements.

We spent the weekend at a marriage and family retreat via my husband’s work and the whole time we’re sitting there in hour after countless fucking hour of seminars and I’m looking at these other couples and they are wrapped around each other like pretzels and I look at him leaning towards me and me leaning away and I think to myself, I just don’t know how we’ll ever be THEM.

Following that hardcore weekend of togetherness, we had an appointment yesterday in which somehow, my husband made a comment about how in the beginning of our relationship, he was “keeping his options open” and wasn’t “super committed” (it was relevant to the topic we were discussing at that point).

A little known fact that I don’t share with anyone is that at the beginning of our relationship, his ex came storming over one evening to say, “He slept with me less than 24 hours after he slept with YOU!” When the story spilled out, it turns out when I was out of town with girlfriends, he went to her house drunk after a party.

I thought it was a one time thing.

It was not. (And it might not have just been her – I didn’t ask for specifics – I don’t know how far I want to dredge into shit that happened 12 years ago).

What infuriates me is that his ex for YEARS has called me a home-wrecker. The reality? She probably WAS under the impression she had a shot to win him back. And that’s HIS fault. Granted, he didn’t make her the psychotic wench that she is — but her hatred for me? Well, I have a better idea now where that comes from. I’m mad as hell about that – because she’s made our lives MISERABLE all along. Not that I’m justifying her crazy – she was crazy all on her own, but… damn.

Not only that but – when she stormed over twelve years ago, he said it was just once. I was SO CLOSE to walking out the door. At that point, there was nothing tying me to him. I had no reason to stay. Lies made me stay. I’m mad about that. I don’t regret it – because I have felt that anything I’ve experienced is because I was meant to have my daughters… but… I went through all these years not knowing. Wish I didn’t know now.

We left the appointment yesterday and then he made some comment about something totally different that made me feel that perhaps he’s not really paying attention to what our core problem is, and that perhaps I should be allowed to slap him upside the head with a spatula once or twice. Instantly, I shrank in my seat in the car. I said, “I’m not sure you really get the point?” Stumble over words, justify justify justify.

You know, I accept and acknowledge that I am a flawed person. That I am just as much a fault for the reason why things are the way they are. I am actually going to go out on a limb and say I don’t believe the fault is 50/50, and that yes, I let things go unsaid. Now, it’s a big ol’ wound up ball of yarn that needs to be unraveled and rather than be wound up, needs to be knitted into something useful… like an afghan.

It seems asinine when you have just heard your wife say that she doesn’t find your touch to be comforting and it doesn’t make her feel safe, that you would say in the car on the drive home that perhaps the two of you “should come up with some sort of schedule for sex” because… REALLY? Heaven forbid you have a need go unmet.

I’m not sure how it’s SUPPOSED to make me feel, because I can tell you how it really makes me feel.

Not good. Not good at all.

Anniversary

“(Do you know what today is?)
It’s our anniversary…”
-Tony Toni Tone

Well, no. Not today. Earlier in the week. We’ve been married nine years now.

I could do the math and tell you how many days that is, but that would be stupid. Also, pointless.

Our anniversary was probably better than I could have imagined. I felt that he took to heart when I said, “I don’t need big gifts – lots of jewelry – I need to know you pay attention to me.” My gifts were all little things, delivered throughout the day by various friends and family members – things like: a pair of socks, a gift card to a bookstore, Starbucks gift certificate, a pair of underwear (a fairly neutral pair – one purchased while our children were present, so… rated PG-13 ish). Each gift also included a piece of a letter – that would only make sense when all put together when all the gifts (there were 9 – yes, one for each year) were received).

Our 9th anniversary is one I’ll never forget
As it marks the start of our new life together
—- (Some things have to remain personal, y’all) —-
And although I’m no writer or poet
Let these words comfort you

And I appreciated the effort he extended to make the day special for me, to show me I am loved. My mom said to me, “He’s SO ROMANTIC. Isn’t he romantic?  Don’t you think that is totally romantic?”

I’ve restrained myself from saying: “Back off, mom!” No, she doesn’t know we’re in counseling. She doesn’t know we’re struggling.  Right now, it’s not really about romance, but rebuilding.

Our counselor recommended a book. I ordered it. It’s pretty religiously-focused and there’s a lot of words in it. I’m letting my husband read it first. He was intent on following through with the recommendation to read this book. Myself? I almost never take anyone’s book advice unless I know what else they’ve really enjoyed and how it meshes with my taste. I suppose this is kinda sorta different, since our counselor recommended it.  I should have ordered two copies so we could read in tandem.

Yeah. Not happening.

So, that’s how it goes lately. It’s moving slowly. I’m such an impatient person. I wish things happened faster, sooner, easier.

But hey, life’s a big bitch that way, huh?

The Chain

“I’ll never say I’ll never love
But I don’t say a lot of things.”
-Ingrid Michaelson

This gets stuck in my head a lot.

I love this song. I love the line “glide away on soapy heels”.