Can't Sleep

My daughter leaves on big jet plane for Mexico today, she is going to go visit her dad who is !*not*! an addict and has played the holier-than-thou card on me countless times because of my husband and his past (alright, my past too). And because when I left him I was hot for my tattoo teacher man. Yet, the man and his new wife are perpetually socially drunk (as well as being leathery 'tycoon' time share agents).

I haven't slept right in two days.

The husband has extended his weekend stay two extra days now. Did you know he breaths when he sleeps?


It's come to this... that I sneer at his breathing while I try and stress about things beyond my control at 2:30 in the morning.

Mr. Anonymous...? You're comments are ever so slightly gnawing at my brain, too. Not causing sleeplessness, but bouncing the Soulmate thing around my brain.

I've never doubted that my husband was my soul mate, I still think he is. We've always fit like peas and carrots. Anyways. I hate doubting myself and it took me a lot to separate my peas and carrots and to come to terms with the way things are now... soul mates? I don't know. At one point, I did wish dearly that I could fall in love with him again - it would make life so much easier. I know this deeper level of which you speak,  I have been there. In fact, I would go so far as to say... your soul mates deeper love with her husband (if I've gotten the story straight) may not make it like you think.

I think I'm my soulmate. I think your story is intriguing... but I think I've gone beyond that now.

For now, I think I'll just work at traveling the world, enjoy my two girls, and maybe take the ocasional lover and feast for hours on end.

I can say all of that so flippant and easily, because how can I possibly miss my husband if HE WONT GO AWAY.

Ugh.

Why

do I always feel the need to come back and protect him?

Why do I always feel like I have smashed his character against the rocks after writing posts like the one below?

Is it not my truth? It is, but it seems so harsh to hear it out loud. I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression...

whatever. fuck it.

signed,

Forever Codependent

Unwilling

My daughter has a boyfriend. They've been on again/off again for over a year. Now, they're solidly together. She tells me though, how he  treats his mom like shit. I'm always amazed at how other people live (as is she. People get away with that? she wonders). Her boyfriend shouts at his mom... Make me a fuck'n sandwich (are you kidding me? I dont think so), and his mom responds by yelling back Damint, you better watch your f'n language or I wont make you a sandwich whilst she's pulling out the bread with which to make her "Angel"   a s'wich.

He's only fifteen and already he's a grumpy ass little shit head.

Now, not that the husband would have EVER talked to me like that (this kid just hasn't learned the subtleties of passive aggressive grumpiness) - I wondered out loud, while talking with my daughter, if she was drawn to this type of 'manly' behaviour having spent so many years around her step father's more subtle 'manly' nature.

Well, No, she said. She reminded me just how unwilling she was to put up with anyone who acted out so poorly. And I remembered her asking me, after a number of the husband's 'silent inner temper tantrums,' how I let him get away with kind of shit? That she just wanted to throttle him for ruining our day(s) with his inability to cope.

I had said, "it's a marriage, you make compromises." Meaning, he's not so bad the rest of the time. All we have to do is learn to live under the constant threat of him reaching the brink of his mental capacity...

I've mentioned before that my daughter, his step daughter, often received the rough end of the stick with him and this was never supposed to  be a part of the compromise deal for me. However, I let too many things go too many times.

I watch her now, in her home without him here, and although they had a decent relationship (all things considered) she is truly happy now. I see a freedom in her, like she is able to be herself that much more. I see her girl mess laying around and I don't feel the need to protect her from his judgment about how she's going to be a really irresponsible girl when she grows up because she leaves her shit lying around. His constant 'non judgmental' assessments of her character. Ugh.

I see her girl mess around the house now and I know in my heart that she is free from his judgment of her. Se is happy and relaxed. I look back over the years and notice how her place in this family was always a little fractured...

but not anymore, and that is something that I am (perhaps unreasonably so) completely unwilling to give up. There is a place here that is healthy and grounded. I want to respect that.

It's funny, my husband has said many times that he doesn't feel like our house is his because I decorate it. But the truth is, while I may put the furniture in it's place, that man owns every room he walks in with a silent ferocity.

by the way, I do think my daughter is with that grumpy ass little punk because my ways have filtered down to her. I regret that.

However, she is aware. She told the little punk that she really didn't like how he talked to his mom and then turned around all sweet as pie to her. She told him that how you treat your mom is how you will treat your girlfriend.

"Oh, no... baby..." he said. "I would never talk to you like that, please don't ever think that."

Red flags all over the damn place. He's a nice kid with a real big chip. There's not much I can do now but listen and let her learn from her own processes. She has assured me that she is still completely unwilling to put up with crap....

I reminded her: you can't change people, but you can always change your mind (heart and soul).

One Dave Down

I hadn't seen Dave since the last relapse started, about 2 and half, 3 years ago. I caught him up about the Methadone program, about how the husband had somewhat fixed his addiction but not his pig pen of  emotionally charged energy. I told him I was exhausted by his passive aggressive command of the room and the lack of desire he had to move forward in his life, that he was a bit of a sinking ship and was pulling me down with him.

I told him that I wrote a book about a woman who leaves her husband to have an affair just so that she can feel what it feels like to be happy with someone who is happy again. I told him that I always intended the character to go back her somber and fixed husband... but, although the character husband does become  somber and fixed, that I couldn't send her back. She was a changed character. That and the book would have sucked if I did that.

I told Dave that I felt alive, like I woke up to realize just how asleep I had been. I told him that going back into my marriage felt like saying, "ok, I'll go back to sleep," because it's clear, for me, that I can't merge awake and my relationship - (at least, not right now my other brain says).

I told Dave that there were things about this awake me that I was completely (unreasonably and lucidly) unwilling to give up - even if they were slightly crazy ideas. I thought Dave would try and reason some sense into me... but, I guess, because every time I stopped talking about feeling so guilty for leaving and started telling him about how I felt having left: alive, strong, authentic, responsible, happy, happy, and happy... I stopped crying - he didn't try and reason any sense into me at all. In fact, it was the opposite.

It was pretty hard not to see where the strength lie. So, when I told Dave that there were new things I didn't want to give up, Dave said, "and I don't think you should."

Dave agreed with me that 80 to 90% of people are sleep walking (matrimonial drones to an acceptance of an inner death). I told him that a part of me thought I was supposed to follow that crowd - I mean, there is so many of them, maybe they know something I don't?

Or perhaps not. In the end, I think being real and taking giant leaps of faith based on nothing but your gut is not the easy way out - by far.

In the end, we (and by that I think I mean 'me') decided that our future together counseling session was going to be a break up, because as Dave pointed out, I was repeatedly saying 'when' not 'if' when I referred to a possible complete break up.  Ugh. There goes Dave pointing out 'stuff' I'm not entirely ready to see.


I walked away feeling a little lighter but not that much wiser. I felt validated that I had, indeed, worked hard enough in this relationship. It was nice to hear Dave's 'hands down' tone of voice tell me that he didn't think I was giving up. Perhaps, I'm standing up.

I came home, and the husband seemed somewhat eager to hear if the emotional enema had fixed me? But, and to his dismay, talking with Dave didn't change me back to the "Dinner and a Blow Job Wife" he once had. 

I told the husband that I did come to some clearer conclusions as to why I was so unwilling to even think about being emotionally or sexually intimate with him, and when I told him what those conclusions were (resentments around  heroin and porn addictions)... he said "well, those are things you need to work on, because I'm not willing to give up sex. You can't give me one thing for 13 years and then just take it away..."

Huh? Were we having the same conversation?

I let it go. I didn't care to discuss the utter ridiculousness of that statement. I think he's in very fragile ego place and is doing a little bit of deflecting... and I'm not his nurse maid anymore, so I don't care to call him on it.

And that was it, one Dave down. One more to go.

Here's to being painfully and happily alive and awake, and accepting, with naked grace,  whatever that may bring.

Dave

Today is Dave day. I am scared out of my mind and completely relieved at the same time. I'm afraid I'm going to walk into Dave's office and just start crying, then proceed to cry for the entire hour. Or, I'll have a rush of anxiety so bad that I wont be able to tell him a thing. Maybe if you knew me well, you would laugh at that statement.

I wrote something somewhere else about the Queen of the White Elephant, that's me. If I feel something strongly, it is humanly impossible for me not to talk about it, even if it leaves me at the mercy of vulnerability.

Among other things, I asked the husband if he wanted to stay the other night. He had spent the weekend here and was very good about being responsible to his own happiness, respecting boundaries, and not having expectations - so, of course, I took it one step further and told him he could spend an extra night if he wanted. Whether I should or should not have done that is neither here, nor there.

Sometimes, and maybe this is totally normal for a guy in his position, when he touches me with all his desire - it seems... too much. Like, if I could just fuck him everything in his world would be okay. If he could just be in between my legs, it would prove that I love him. But the thing is, I could give him that and not even be there, and he would still get 98% of the satisfaction that he needs to feel accomplished. He would feel somewhat disappointed that I couldn't attend, but meh, he'll get over it.

So, I don't really know if that is sort of normal - his 'uncontrollable desire' when he is near me. I will talk to Dave - ask Dave if I am not just giving my husband a host of problems so I can justify walking away. So I can have a sack full of sorrys.

I will talk to Dave about my absolute refusal to be intimate, even fake intimate, with my husband. No more faking. Wow. I just had my own therapy session and realized I have been trying to fake it until I make it for a really long time. Yikes.

I'm afraid of what Dave will tell me though. I'm afraid that Dave will tell me that we can work this out, that it is possible for us to move past this and for me to be 'in love' with him again - even though sometimes I want that. I want my comfortable life back.

But then, I look at my older daughter who is flourishing in all this clean energy, not feeling passive aggressively harassed, and I don't EVER want to bring that back into my house.

He ceased being a husband sometime ago and became a job that I was forever monitoring. I got too many jobs already. I hope Dave understands that.

I feel like barfing.

Give it to Us Raw...

I guess that fear is just a natural part of it. I remember feeling a hell of a lot of it last March, so much so I lost 15 pounds and got myself some Ativan. Now, it's back. I hate to admit to the Ativan because... well, I fear people will think 1) I'm weak and 2) I'm a closet drug addict - my greatest fear. I hate to ask the doctor for it because I think they will think I'm trying to swindle drugs. I really hate that. I assume rampant judgment.

I have one little .5 tablet left from that bottle in March, and I keep it there just.in.case. I judge the pace at which my heart is pounding and how fast my throat is constricting as to when I might have to take it. So far, so good. I have been able to talk myself down.

Fear is a natural part of big change. Fear is good. Every other time I have felt this fear in my life, I have been on the verge of being strong, of taking that first breath - again (I keep imagining Neo ). This fear is good.

I'll tell you this, it started with that damn car. I have some pretty good ideas as to why this car freaks me out so much... but I am way to bored of all that old drama to go into it. I just want to feel the fear and move on.

In school, I am doing well. I'm learning every thing I wanted to learn. At work... I am accepting and grateful for the paycheck. I've actually booked plane tickets and will be taking myself on a "mini break" soon enough.

Today, my house is clean, my teenage daughter is behaving and having respect for herself and her home, my youngest daughter came home with an excellent report card (even after me telling the teacher to do her job better).

and inside my heart - well, it's swollen, raw, and red; and it will heal.

Just like it did all the other times I grew and changed.


exhale.

Stone Frozen

I gotta plug in. It feels like I've been lamely half plugged in to the lives of my children for the past while, jumping in here and there with two feet and quickly getting out. It's so tempting to just let go of my teenager... say 'fuck it.' She's a good kid, has been on the honour roll in the past, stays in honours English. She's smart. She'd be okay. She's slipping though. Marks are traded in for boyfriend and friends.

Last night she was in our hot tub with her boyfriend, which I allowed because it was, like, 6pm and the hot tub is visible.... Come to find though, the two of them are in there, going at it as if they're filming a scene from The Bachelor - or something. I feel like I'm losing my foothold with her. She's 15 (16 in March).

Where was I when I was 16, you ask? Well, I was having regular sleepovers at my boyfriends and he at mine. We spent hours in the shower with no never mind to anyone else in the house (which was just my mom, really). I thought I was all grown up. I thought my life was mine. I thought this was the most normal thing EVER. No?

Anyways, I'm losing ground everywhere I look. The husband just spent a gazzillion dollars on a muscle car; my throat constricts in fear when I think about this, and I start to panic even though the financial side of it has absolutely nothing to do with me. It terrifies me that it is too big, too much, too good.

It's as if I went from being in control of my surroundings ( at least having a say) to nothing. the bottom of my knowing has dropped from under me and my skin has frozen into thin glass - it feels like once false move, one slight raise your hand in objection, and I will shatter and break.

I think I wouldn't mind if I could find some other stunned people wherein I could bury my head and hide until this passes.

Or, maybe I should hang a sign off me: Gives good head for hugs.