There aren't any.
My therapist said last week that she thought that I should be trying harder to remember the happy things.
She was wrong.
And it's not that there weren't happy things. It's just that there are two deep and terrible ways in which she was so, so wrong.
First, knowing that I had the happy things but do not have them now does not make me feel in any way better. It intensifies and deepens the sense of loss, beyond all measure. Stacy, who lost her husband, too, understands that perfectly.
But the other thing is that there are no memories that are free of bad things. Ironically, Michael said this to me about his childhood, too... I'd forgotten that until just now.
What am I supposed to think about? The trip to Chincoteague, in which we had to drive around endlessly because there was nowhere that we could figure out that he could eat? And then, we went to Baltimore to see my dying mother, and he got furiously angry because I wasn't paying attention to him? Was that the trip that we got stuck in the elevator, because I begged him to come up to the apartment with me, because I couldn't bear to be alone? And then we got stuck in the elevator, and he was furious with me, and the only thing that saved any of it was that there was someone else there, so he had to be civil?
Or maybe our wedding day, when I had to coax him out of the house, take him to McDonald's to eat something so that he would be able to go on with the rest of the day?
Or the trips to Maine, when he spent the whole time sulking and bitching about how things were? (in all fairness, the last one... the last good trip... that was ok. But it was the beginning of the end.
Should I remember his gratitude when he was so ill, in the beginning? Or him blaming me because he couldn't remember the things that had happened? How wonderful and supportive I was? Until I couldn't be, when everything became my fault? How can I remember the good things when I find the shards of writing on my computer, and they are all about how miserable I was? And they date back a decade, to before we were ever married, ever living together.
Yes, it was my fault, too. I walked into it. I should have known. I should have walked away, although I still don't know how I could have. Although I suppose, in a way, I did at the end. And it is tragic. And yes, he was a lovely, charming, loving man, who tried extraordinarily hard... except when he didn't. Except when he was bitter and cruel and childish and petty and suspicious and jealous of everyone who wasn't me, and controlling, and unsympathetic... and ill. The knife at the end, the knife that twists it all around and makes it impossible to see clearly.
There will never be a way to understand him, to understand the reasons why I did this, why he did this, or anything.
I just want to forget. I want it all to be over. I want a new life, and I want the old one whitewashed away. I don't think that's wrong.
This week, I've been slipping his ring on my finger, and saying the things that I would say to him. And then I feel heavy and sick and weighed down with it all. I am not going to do that any more. I am putting all the rings away, and I am forgetting.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Love
It's hard not to be cynical, when you look back.
It's hard to believe that love exists. Love between partners, that is. Love between parent and child, between friend; that's a different thing.
Back a million years ago, on a usenet board that I used to frequent, people talked about unconditional love and debated whether such a thing existed. Everyone was pretty firm in agreeing that there are always boundaries in love, and that there should be. That there is some limit to love. And I guess that I agree with that, really. But it seems to me that my limits have always come when I've been pushed right over the edge, and that everyone else who has loved me had meant it in a much more finite way.
My first husband, who loved me, but not enough to change anything about the way that he wanted to live. Not enough to talk to me. Not enough to try to keep me, if it meant moving at all out of his comfort zone.
The man I loved more than anyone, who left me without explanation because... I don't know. There is no because, since I never knew the answer. Except that ultimately, whatever the reason, he didn't care enough to tell me the truth. Or even to be decent enough to tell me the truth.
Michael. Who loved me more than anyone, and who I loved with all my heart, even if not perhaps in the way he wanted. And in all fairness, he tried. But he never took the idea of suicide off the table, never. And you can't live if dying is always an option, just over the next hill. He said that he would not do this, for me. But he did. And tried to rip my heart out in every way that he could along the way. I blame him least of all in a way, because so much was about illness. I will never be able to separate the threads of illness versus... whatever the alternative is. But still. Never off the table.
And the man who says he loves me now. The least of all of them. Because those are just words that he says as part of the image that he has of me, the game that he wants to play because it suits him. I know it's a lie, and sometimes I think that even he knows it. And I'm willing to pretend to believe the lie, because that little bit of warmth staves off some darkness. He will walk away, probably sooner rather than later, when it becomes inconvenient enough for him. And I won't be sorry.
It's hard not to think that the whole idea of love isn't a pretty fantasy that we create for ourselves. It's hard not to believe that I would be a thousand times better off if I could figure out know not to wish and long for someone.
It's very hard, on a night like this, not to be completely bitter.
It's hard to believe that love exists. Love between partners, that is. Love between parent and child, between friend; that's a different thing.
Back a million years ago, on a usenet board that I used to frequent, people talked about unconditional love and debated whether such a thing existed. Everyone was pretty firm in agreeing that there are always boundaries in love, and that there should be. That there is some limit to love. And I guess that I agree with that, really. But it seems to me that my limits have always come when I've been pushed right over the edge, and that everyone else who has loved me had meant it in a much more finite way.
My first husband, who loved me, but not enough to change anything about the way that he wanted to live. Not enough to talk to me. Not enough to try to keep me, if it meant moving at all out of his comfort zone.
The man I loved more than anyone, who left me without explanation because... I don't know. There is no because, since I never knew the answer. Except that ultimately, whatever the reason, he didn't care enough to tell me the truth. Or even to be decent enough to tell me the truth.
Michael. Who loved me more than anyone, and who I loved with all my heart, even if not perhaps in the way he wanted. And in all fairness, he tried. But he never took the idea of suicide off the table, never. And you can't live if dying is always an option, just over the next hill. He said that he would not do this, for me. But he did. And tried to rip my heart out in every way that he could along the way. I blame him least of all in a way, because so much was about illness. I will never be able to separate the threads of illness versus... whatever the alternative is. But still. Never off the table.
And the man who says he loves me now. The least of all of them. Because those are just words that he says as part of the image that he has of me, the game that he wants to play because it suits him. I know it's a lie, and sometimes I think that even he knows it. And I'm willing to pretend to believe the lie, because that little bit of warmth staves off some darkness. He will walk away, probably sooner rather than later, when it becomes inconvenient enough for him. And I won't be sorry.
It's hard not to think that the whole idea of love isn't a pretty fantasy that we create for ourselves. It's hard not to believe that I would be a thousand times better off if I could figure out know not to wish and long for someone.
It's very hard, on a night like this, not to be completely bitter.
Friday, November 2, 2012
May you be sound
I found a lovely comment on an old post today. I have no idea how long it's been there; apparently I didn't have this set right to notify me when comments appear. Because mostly I figure that I'm musing to the cosmos, or something.
Anyway, it said, among other things, that what you say in Turkish when someone dies is basically, "may you be sound." I like that. I am trying to be sound. I am trying to be whole. I am not so sure that it's working, some days... because some days, it still seems so hard to even breathe.
Today was like that in patches. I woke up very early and anxious and lay in bed for hours listening to podcasts and just worrying about all the things that I haven't done. Then I fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed of some bizarre vision of the island and the ocean and fear and surreal people.
I set out to really get some things done today. It's late afternoon now, and I haven't exactly gotten a lot checked off my list. But I did a few things, and some odds and ends.
And I listed some eBay things. For the first time since Michael died. And it was hard.
This is the business that I built, that I worked at all the time for years, back in the real heyday of eBay. And then I basically gave it to Michael, so that he would have a focus, something to do. Because he wanted to. Because it made sense. Except that in a way, it never did. It gave him something to do, but it also gave him something to obsess over. And that's what he did, obsessed over better way to do things, to organize, to photograph... everything except actually listing things and selling things.
Part of that, in all fairness, is that the market has changed over the 12 years that I've done this. But more than that... it's funny; I look at these photographs and listings, and I realize that he never really had the eye for this. Strange in someone who was so good at things like this in general, and great at writing stories and funny listings and so on. But the photographs are glaring and not beautiful. The listings... there are things that catch your eye, but not things that draw you in. He didn't love the charms, and it shows. That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but it's a thing. It helps if you love what you do. But he didn't. He just did it.... if there was a part that he loved, it perhaps was the organizing and the obsessing.
But as he got sicker and sicker, both physically and mentally, the obsessions got crazier and deeper. The buying of things and more things... oh, just so much. I don't even want to think it out.
So now, I need to do something to reconstruct my business, I guess... I could let it go, I suppose, but I have thousands of charms, and what would I do with them? But it hurt today to put together the listings. So much memory. So much memory of Michael, and that combination of sadness and anger that tears me apart every time.
And so I sit here in my quiet house, and try to figure out what to do. How to be sound. How to keep putting my feet ahead of each other. How to stop with my own obsessions... love and death and my inability to stagger out from under the weight of it all. The weight of the past and the present combined.
Some days I think that I can do this, that things are starting to seem lighter and more possible. And then some days, I can't breathe, all over again.
Anyway, it said, among other things, that what you say in Turkish when someone dies is basically, "may you be sound." I like that. I am trying to be sound. I am trying to be whole. I am not so sure that it's working, some days... because some days, it still seems so hard to even breathe.
Today was like that in patches. I woke up very early and anxious and lay in bed for hours listening to podcasts and just worrying about all the things that I haven't done. Then I fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed of some bizarre vision of the island and the ocean and fear and surreal people.
I set out to really get some things done today. It's late afternoon now, and I haven't exactly gotten a lot checked off my list. But I did a few things, and some odds and ends.
And I listed some eBay things. For the first time since Michael died. And it was hard.
This is the business that I built, that I worked at all the time for years, back in the real heyday of eBay. And then I basically gave it to Michael, so that he would have a focus, something to do. Because he wanted to. Because it made sense. Except that in a way, it never did. It gave him something to do, but it also gave him something to obsess over. And that's what he did, obsessed over better way to do things, to organize, to photograph... everything except actually listing things and selling things.
Part of that, in all fairness, is that the market has changed over the 12 years that I've done this. But more than that... it's funny; I look at these photographs and listings, and I realize that he never really had the eye for this. Strange in someone who was so good at things like this in general, and great at writing stories and funny listings and so on. But the photographs are glaring and not beautiful. The listings... there are things that catch your eye, but not things that draw you in. He didn't love the charms, and it shows. That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but it's a thing. It helps if you love what you do. But he didn't. He just did it.... if there was a part that he loved, it perhaps was the organizing and the obsessing.
But as he got sicker and sicker, both physically and mentally, the obsessions got crazier and deeper. The buying of things and more things... oh, just so much. I don't even want to think it out.
So now, I need to do something to reconstruct my business, I guess... I could let it go, I suppose, but I have thousands of charms, and what would I do with them? But it hurt today to put together the listings. So much memory. So much memory of Michael, and that combination of sadness and anger that tears me apart every time.
And so I sit here in my quiet house, and try to figure out what to do. How to be sound. How to keep putting my feet ahead of each other. How to stop with my own obsessions... love and death and my inability to stagger out from under the weight of it all. The weight of the past and the present combined.
Some days I think that I can do this, that things are starting to seem lighter and more possible. And then some days, I can't breathe, all over again.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Clouds
I saw Cloud Atlas tonight. It probably wasn't the right movie to see at this moment. Themes of love and death and the continuity of personas over time... it's not something that I can take comfort from or even be enchanted by the magic of it all. Although it was an amazing movie.
Throughout the movie I had one panic attack after another... just the mini-things that I've been having with some regularity, feeling like I have to leap up, to get free. Feeling like I can't breathe. The trouble is that I feel trapped in my own body as much as anything else, and I see no way of freeing myself of that. It's hideous.
I thought I'd gotten past that, but I think that too much caffeine today plus a bunch of other things tipped that biochemical balance over. I'm pretty sure that chemistry is the catalyst for these things, because the worst times have always been related to other stuff. But it doesn't matter that much, except that maybe I can prevent them. I hadn't been feeling so much this way since I started meditating and yoga... and deep breathing was the thing that kept me from screaming tonight.
But it's all larger than that. Love and death and despair, and my anger with pretty much all the men of my life... and myself, too. That I keep hooking myself into things that bring me heartbreak, tying myself into love, or what passes for it, and then the bonds smother me and close me in. I'm torn, all the time, between wanting arms around me and wanting to be free, to breathe, to not want those things at all.
I don't know how to find any peace with this. I feel like a victim of the legacies of Michael's family and mine... trapped in the cycle of damage that all the previous generations created. And at the same time, the one complete and perfect thing is my son. The one thing that I haven't screwed up... although that's more of a tribute to him than to me.
Phillip Larkin was so right and so wrong, all at once.
I don't have any idea where to go from here. All the paths that I can see from here, including the one on which I have my feet firmly planted, feel wrong and alien.
Throughout the movie I had one panic attack after another... just the mini-things that I've been having with some regularity, feeling like I have to leap up, to get free. Feeling like I can't breathe. The trouble is that I feel trapped in my own body as much as anything else, and I see no way of freeing myself of that. It's hideous.
I thought I'd gotten past that, but I think that too much caffeine today plus a bunch of other things tipped that biochemical balance over. I'm pretty sure that chemistry is the catalyst for these things, because the worst times have always been related to other stuff. But it doesn't matter that much, except that maybe I can prevent them. I hadn't been feeling so much this way since I started meditating and yoga... and deep breathing was the thing that kept me from screaming tonight.
But it's all larger than that. Love and death and despair, and my anger with pretty much all the men of my life... and myself, too. That I keep hooking myself into things that bring me heartbreak, tying myself into love, or what passes for it, and then the bonds smother me and close me in. I'm torn, all the time, between wanting arms around me and wanting to be free, to breathe, to not want those things at all.
I don't know how to find any peace with this. I feel like a victim of the legacies of Michael's family and mine... trapped in the cycle of damage that all the previous generations created. And at the same time, the one complete and perfect thing is my son. The one thing that I haven't screwed up... although that's more of a tribute to him than to me.
Phillip Larkin was so right and so wrong, all at once.
I don't have any idea where to go from here. All the paths that I can see from here, including the one on which I have my feet firmly planted, feel wrong and alien.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Anhedonia
I realized today that a lot of the problem is that there is nothing that look forward to anymore.
It's not that I don't enjoy some things when they happen. For a while anyway. Some small things... lying warm and peaceful in bed, a beautiful fall day, my son, moments when the music sweeps me away and I dance. But there is nothing that I look forward to. It's like my heart stopped when Michael died. I stopped believing in a future.
And I say that, and it sounds all melodramatic and like love in the grave or something like that. But it's not like that. I think I just had too much. Michael used to say that if he even let all the pain out, it would kill him. (The truth of that, I think, is that not letting it out did in the end kill him.) But I understand a little better now what he meant. I'm not so numb as I was for a while, but that's worse, and I feel like I have to hold myself encased in armor to keep all the painful things at bay.
I've been watching The West Wing again. And I can't help remembering now and then how much we enjoyed it the first time. It was earlier on, when Michael was still more well, and things were on the whole better, and we loved it so much, were so caught up in it. It's hard not to flash back to those times.
I sit here by myself. I can't focus, I'm not working well, and I have no idea how I'm going to get done all the things that I need to do. My hip hurts all the time when I move, and I wonder sometimes if I need to accept that this will never be any better. I wonder if I'll ever feel like a normal person again, and I wonder if I'll ever feel less desperate for something more than this.
Tomorrow night I'll have a few precious hours with someone who will make me feel better when he's here, and I'll take those few hours, because that's the only time all week that I'll feel like a real person. Even though this path is nothing but wrong.
I need this to be different. I need to feel different. I need it all to turn around, and I need for that to happen now, soon, because I can't bear a lot more of this. It's like skating on the surface all the time, and every now and again you fall through, into something that is sometimes white-hot, but mostly icy cold and razor sharp and painful beyond words.
It's not that I don't enjoy some things when they happen. For a while anyway. Some small things... lying warm and peaceful in bed, a beautiful fall day, my son, moments when the music sweeps me away and I dance. But there is nothing that I look forward to. It's like my heart stopped when Michael died. I stopped believing in a future.
And I say that, and it sounds all melodramatic and like love in the grave or something like that. But it's not like that. I think I just had too much. Michael used to say that if he even let all the pain out, it would kill him. (The truth of that, I think, is that not letting it out did in the end kill him.) But I understand a little better now what he meant. I'm not so numb as I was for a while, but that's worse, and I feel like I have to hold myself encased in armor to keep all the painful things at bay.
I've been watching The West Wing again. And I can't help remembering now and then how much we enjoyed it the first time. It was earlier on, when Michael was still more well, and things were on the whole better, and we loved it so much, were so caught up in it. It's hard not to flash back to those times.
I sit here by myself. I can't focus, I'm not working well, and I have no idea how I'm going to get done all the things that I need to do. My hip hurts all the time when I move, and I wonder sometimes if I need to accept that this will never be any better. I wonder if I'll ever feel like a normal person again, and I wonder if I'll ever feel less desperate for something more than this.
Tomorrow night I'll have a few precious hours with someone who will make me feel better when he's here, and I'll take those few hours, because that's the only time all week that I'll feel like a real person. Even though this path is nothing but wrong.
I need this to be different. I need to feel different. I need it all to turn around, and I need for that to happen now, soon, because I can't bear a lot more of this. It's like skating on the surface all the time, and every now and again you fall through, into something that is sometimes white-hot, but mostly icy cold and razor sharp and painful beyond words.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Another year
Happy birthday to me.
One year later.
Michael is dead.
Jonathan is in college.
Caitlin is in college and really out of my problem radar.
I am 50 lbs. lighter.
My life is so different from what it was a year ago that I cannot recognize it.
The people are different.
Even the cats are different.
I don't even know how to begin to make sense of what has happened to me. I sat in a committee meeting today, and talked to other professors, and it was like a different species. I stopped my career a decade ago, and they went on. And I have no idea how to be those people.
I don't know where my life is going, what is happening. I get sucked into this longing to be with someone else and fear that I will never again have that. And I get so, so afraid about that, and it's the fear that is the worst thing. I went around and around on this today. I almost went out tonight just to see if I could find someone to take home. Because I feel like no one sees me; that I am more confident and attractive than I have ever been in my life. But I am... old? And no one sees me, and no one will want to make the rest of his life with me.
And I don't want to be alone. That's the truth.
But I need to learn how to be alone. Not as a step to not being alone, but because it's the right thing to do. Because it's the path to happiness. But I can't seem to find my way to that. It's like a stepping stone in my head... like a way to get to what I really want. As if doing that is grabbing the ring, and then I can have what I really want.
I hate it. I hate feeling that way. I just want to be happy. The kind of happy that I feel when I'm with the man who I should stay the hell away from. The man who cannot give me what I want. The man who is probably going to bring nothing but trouble to either one of us. But when I'm with him, I feel like a real person again. And that is all wrong.
One year later.
Michael is dead.
Jonathan is in college.
Caitlin is in college and really out of my problem radar.
I am 50 lbs. lighter.
My life is so different from what it was a year ago that I cannot recognize it.
The people are different.
Even the cats are different.
I don't even know how to begin to make sense of what has happened to me. I sat in a committee meeting today, and talked to other professors, and it was like a different species. I stopped my career a decade ago, and they went on. And I have no idea how to be those people.
I don't know where my life is going, what is happening. I get sucked into this longing to be with someone else and fear that I will never again have that. And I get so, so afraid about that, and it's the fear that is the worst thing. I went around and around on this today. I almost went out tonight just to see if I could find someone to take home. Because I feel like no one sees me; that I am more confident and attractive than I have ever been in my life. But I am... old? And no one sees me, and no one will want to make the rest of his life with me.
And I don't want to be alone. That's the truth.
But I need to learn how to be alone. Not as a step to not being alone, but because it's the right thing to do. Because it's the path to happiness. But I can't seem to find my way to that. It's like a stepping stone in my head... like a way to get to what I really want. As if doing that is grabbing the ring, and then I can have what I really want.
I hate it. I hate feeling that way. I just want to be happy. The kind of happy that I feel when I'm with the man who I should stay the hell away from. The man who cannot give me what I want. The man who is probably going to bring nothing but trouble to either one of us. But when I'm with him, I feel like a real person again. And that is all wrong.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Spiderweb connections
The trouble is that the only person who really cares about your life is you, and people to whom you are intimately tied... partners, parents, children at little bit.
I miss that connection.
I don't mind my own company. Sometimes I quite like it. I have things to do, if I would just do them. I have a sex life of sorts, and someone who gives me affection, though not nearly often enough. But I want to come home and share the crappy things that happened in my day. The car key that didn't work and freaked me the hell out. The fact that I saw knitting guy at the store, the shawl he was making, and that I thought about asking him about piano. What happened in classes. The econ review that's upcoming. My annoyance with my honors students. And please, someone, kick my ass about the tax stuff, and what are we going to do about the apartment roof?
No one wants to hear that. I mean, it's not like they wouldn't listen, but it's minutiae, things that don't matter, the spider-silk connections of day-to-day life. My son has his own life, my lover doesn't care, not really, my friends have lives of their own. That sounds pathetic, and that's not what I mean, not the narrative that I'm telling. It's just true, and it's the thing that I lack, the thing that is making me the most crazy, and the thing that I don't know how to replace.
I have to change the story. I have to change what I'm doing and how I'm thinking about it. I have to put actions in here to make this different and better.
I miss that connection.
I don't mind my own company. Sometimes I quite like it. I have things to do, if I would just do them. I have a sex life of sorts, and someone who gives me affection, though not nearly often enough. But I want to come home and share the crappy things that happened in my day. The car key that didn't work and freaked me the hell out. The fact that I saw knitting guy at the store, the shawl he was making, and that I thought about asking him about piano. What happened in classes. The econ review that's upcoming. My annoyance with my honors students. And please, someone, kick my ass about the tax stuff, and what are we going to do about the apartment roof?
No one wants to hear that. I mean, it's not like they wouldn't listen, but it's minutiae, things that don't matter, the spider-silk connections of day-to-day life. My son has his own life, my lover doesn't care, not really, my friends have lives of their own. That sounds pathetic, and that's not what I mean, not the narrative that I'm telling. It's just true, and it's the thing that I lack, the thing that is making me the most crazy, and the thing that I don't know how to replace.
I have to change the story. I have to change what I'm doing and how I'm thinking about it. I have to put actions in here to make this different and better.
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