Not knowing is hard
But maybe not as hard as the knowing?
If I don’t have the answer yet,
then the possibilities still live,
Right?
To stay in gratitude for what is,
at the moment.
The cool clean air
the early morning sun streaking golden across the sky.
The blanket wrapped around me
And the happy memories filling my head this morning.
What is, is all there is
Until there’s something else.
Moment to moment
forgive yourself and others
and be free.
This morning I was struggling. The aftermath of my outburst last week was wreaking havoc with my emotions. I was at work, thankfully busy, but every minute I was alone, I was in tears. This afternoon, I became kind of numb to it. Mostly because I have no control over the outcome, and my brain on overload just shut the emotions down. I made it through the day numb. Comfortably numb.
I worked late, on purpose, so that I wouldn’t sit home thinking about it. On the way home, after a 10 hr day, I began to think about it again. I said to myself, “So, if the worst happens, will it be the worst thing you have ever lived through?”
The answer is no…absolutely not. I began to remember, in full living color, the darkest days of my life. I got through them. Successfully. I triumphed. I decided to write about it, I am ready now, to see it in perspective, and to recognize my own strength, my own intuition, my own gut instinct.
It begins with my son.
I moved out of my old house in March 2007, after 30 years of marriage. I didn’t file for divorce until the beginning of August that year. The reasons, the singular event that made me realize I HAD to file, for me but even moreso for my son, is another whole blog. Just let me say, I had my reasons and they were compelling.
My son lived with his father. My son played hockey, for over a decade I knew myself as a “hockeymom”. His father controlled his hockey career. Was his coach, his advisor, and his biggest and most cruel critic. It was a control mechanism for his father. His father used hockey to control my son, and he used my son to control me.
Example: One day my son and I were going to go to the mall. My ex normally hated shopping trips, hated the mall, had a bad back so hated walking around the mall. But this day, he decided he wanted to go. He didn’t want my son and I alone without him. Control. We had been at each other’s throats for days, I did NOT want to sit in a car with him to the mall, and have to deal with him all day. My son and I loved going together. We would go to Dunkin Donuts, and fast food, and do all the things that his father didn’t allow. Before we got home we’d have to empty the car of all the wrappers and bags, but we’d always be laughing. So this day, his dad decided to go, and I couldn’t cope with his dad. Simple. I told his father he could go and I’d stay home and get some work done. He insisted we all go together. I thought I would lose my mind if I went, so I kept saying no. He got my son on the phone and told him, that he was sorry, but he wouldn’t be able to coach him anymore, or go to his games, or practices, and that they wouldn’t be able to spend much time together because his mother, me, wouldn’t do what he wanted.
Those were his words, exactly. My son became hysterical, he was maybe 11, and screamed at me, “Mom, what are you doing? You HAVE to go, I’m going to lose my father….”
Needless to say I went. I drove. My son and I sat in the car, waiting for his father to come to the car so we could leave. His dad finally came out, beer in his hand, got in the car, and said to my son, ” See what a little pressure can do?” He was PROUD of his behavior.
So there you have it…the control factor.
When I moved out, my son lived with my ex, due to the hockey factor. It was the main event of our lives. My son refused to spend a night with me, or come over unless his father insisted. He was terrified of angering his father, whose temper was volatile and scary. He was 6’2″, about 250 lbs. He had arms as big as most men’s legs and was strong as an ox. When I filed for divorce, my ex kept trying to talk me out of it. As I said, my reasons were compelling for any sane woman, and I refused to “pause” it as he asked. My court date wasn’t for 2 months. I had to get through those 2 months and then I would have some rights to see my son. I could not help my son if I had no access to him.
I had been paying for all 3 cell phones. After all, I was the one, only one, bringing money into the household. We lived off my check. I had continued to pay for them, because additional phones were only $10 a month or something. When I refused to stop the divorce proceeding, my ex bought he and my son new cell phones, and they refused to give me the numbers. I know my son refused because his father told him to, we have discussed it since. My son was 15, and trying to survive.
But this meant, that I couldn’t call my son. I called the house phone, they shut the ringers off. I had no way to contact my son, and see if he was ok. If you can imagine, he was living with a man who thought nothing of hurting him, in order to get to me. And I was unable to even check on him. So, about 3 times a week, I would go over to my old house and bang on the door, and beg my son to come out, and just give me a hug. I was generally sobbing hysterically. He would hug me until I calmed. We might have a brief conversation, but mostly I just wanted to see he was ok. To see him. To hold him, my only child. I knew that his father was on the other side of the door, listening to every word we said.
But I knew, instinctively, that my son needed to know that I loved him, that I was still standing, no matter what he threw at me. He needed to know that I knew what was going on, and that I would never stop loving him. Ever. For two months, I stood there crying, telling him I loved him. I asked nothing of him, except once in awhile, his phone number when the pain became too strong. He would always say, “soon Mom, I’ll give it to you soon….”
Fast forward to a court date, where I got visitation, court ordered. And the phone numbers, court ordered. And it still took another month before my ex would abide by the orders. He continued to play games with the phones. But, I had 4 hours minimum with my son every week. Dinner twice a week, and supposedly every other weekend. I still was not allowed to drive him to hockey games, or practice or home. Since he played both days of every weekend, my time with him was limited.
But…it was enough. I showed him a different way to live. He became glad to come over. He still struggled with his father’s control, but eventually, he was riding his bike over to my house when it wasn’t my time, hiding his bike inside my house, just to have some “free” time.
Eventually, a year and 2 months after I filed for divorce, he left for school from his father’s house, and came home to my house. He never went back. He left EVERYHING, he came with the clothes on his back. I had bought him a pair of jeans and a few shirts, long before, on the off chance he wanted to stay with me unexpectedly. But I had to take him out and buy him a new wardrobe for school. He didn’t want to even look at his father.
That was his freedom day, Sept. 29, 2008. I got him counseling, I talked with him, we worked through a lot of really hard stuff. It was not easy. But today, I am so proud of the young man he’s become. Just so proud.
Now, I’ve been known to say there is always a lesson. We don’t always know what the lesson is. Sometimes it comes years later, sometimes we never recognize it. But the lesson here, for me, was simple, and is the core of my spiritual beliefs now.
Simply….the power of unconditional love is greater than any other power in the universe. Nothing that evil can do can hold a candle to the light of unconditional love. Fear, and anger, and hate…..have no power when faced with unconditional love. I don’t know why I was so blessed to know this, instinctively. Back then I had not one spiritual thought in my head. But I loved my son, unconditionally and always. This love gave him a place to go, a path out of the dark chaos that his father would have us in forever. I take no credit for this. I was the conduit for a source, an energy, much greater than me. It came from somewhere, flowed through me, to my son. And saved both our lives.
Back to this morning….I hope the power in unconditional love brings a happy ending to my struggle. Is it a difficult struggle, yes. But the worst of my life…No. I am strong. I triumphed over the ugly, the cruel, the mean, and so did my son. I will get through it, however it turns out. I am strong, stronger than I ever knew. I’d been forgetting that lately. I make mistakes, I am good, bad, imperfect, loving, kind, mean, and crazy, at any given moment. I’m working on it all. But I am strong, all the time. I’ll grow, I’ll get better. Because I am strong. And I know where real power comes from.
My little boat is ill equipped for this wind.
Confused seas,
First on my beam
Then following behind me
Threatening.
A header sea,
Challenges my heart.
Wind from the north, blustery
Then comes around
Southerly, balmy.
I feel safe momentarily.
Then it goes cold and damp
As it foretells an eastern gale.
Seas are raucous,
They laugh as I hold my stomach,
Staving off waves of nausea.
Home port seems so far,
Because I cannot maintain speed in any direction.
Longing for the comfort of an easy berth
Safely laying in my slip.
But first, I need a steady wind.
I cannot move, yet,
floundering this way then that.
Just when the wind seems steady,
a gust blows me backwards.
And so, I am hove to,
I take down the sails
And let the wind and sea
Direct my journey.
Hands off the wheel,
I surrender to the powers greater
Than mine.
And my little boat.
I’ve been leaning in and fighting. It’s exhausting. It gets me nowhere, but unhappy. And the same for the people I love. Change has to happen, within.
Learning hard lessons. How to let go of a burning desire when someone says no, not now. Learning that it only means what it means. Not more, not less. Just, not at the moment.
Why is that so hard for me? God, I want what I want. Geezus. Does that mean I’m unlovable, because the answer was no? Duh. Does that mean I’m undesirable, because the answer was no? Duh.
Does that mean, that since I can’t have what I wanted that I have to waste the day away? No. Duh. I had some other pretty important stuff to do. And got it done. And feel good about it.
God, I can be so pushy…instead of going with the flow. I dislike this about me immensely. Why do I choose the path of most resistance, so often?
Change is in the wind.
Again. Still. Forever.
Outside again before the sun was up today. Everything still wet from last night’s much needed rain, the sky was streaked with gray clouds in the darkness. One tiny crack in the gray gave way to dawn’s first light. It is still, except for the faintest breeze. The air is chill, I sit, wrapped in a blanket.
I closed my eyes in the dark, choosing a meditation on Acceptance. Because things are not as I want them, but they are ok, I need to shut down the incessant chatter of my monkey mind, and allow myself to see and accept and find joy in what is.
Oddly, though it was not my intention, choosing to focus on acceptance, to think about my ex-husband. He is rarely in my thoughts anymore. But, as it does in it’s own inimitable way, the universe reminded me that today is his last day in our old house. The house was foreclosed on and he fought a crazy misdirected fight to remain in it once it was sold, which lasted about 6 months. He has lived there since 1978. It was a small cape cod style home, exterior of stucco, roof of slate. It sat on a rise, overlooking 125′ of lake front, on 3/4 of an acre of land. The tallest tree on the lake is on that property, a tulip tree maybe 100′ or even 150′ tall. The trunk so big that you couldn’t even put your arms 1/2, maybe not even 1/4 of the way around it. I loved the orange tulips that grew on it every year. You could see it from anywhere on the lake. A yard full of mountain laurel, and huge old rhododendrons. It was once a beautiful place, but has fallen into complete disrepair.
But I digress.
In his belief that there was only lack in the world, he never had enough. In his belief that he was not worthy of love and belonging, he was unable to accept or give love to anyone, in the end. I spoke to him earlier this week. He called me and left a voice mail, the night S was here. Oddly, I had driven by his business, of which I was an integral part for 30 years, earlier in the day, (after I found my car in the parking garage….) and seen a for sale sign on it, and it was closed. I assumed that had something to do with his call. He had sounded urgent, when he called, as if it was very important to both of us. I know better.
But I called him. He was calling because in the basement he said there was a box of stuff that was really mine, that was really water damaged. Things like my high school diploma, books, pictures…. Did I want it? It was so badly damaged that he didn’t know how I would salvage anything. I told him, no, throw it out. I haven’t looked at it in 30 years, at least, I won’t miss it.
This was not urgent. I am surprised he would even ask. I think the urgency in his voice mail came from somewhere else. Perhaps, he just wanted my attention. Perhaps, he wanted me to know that he’d finally given up the fight.
I asked him how he was doing, knowing that he is not equipped to deal with this move on any emotional level. His things are how he identifies himself. To say he had a house on the lake, was who he was. To say he owned his own business, was who he was. Now he has neither. I am sure he has no idea who he is anymore. He told me he’s taking it one day at a time. I offered my assistance this weekend, to help him pack it up, to move it, to store things for him. He politely declined my help, as I knew he would.
My son asked me to see if I could get his hockey stuff. Hockey was a HUGE part of son’s life, the main focus, as he grew up. He played from age 5 or 6 to 16. He was pretty good. He quit, to be free of his father’s control. He gave up a lot, something he really loved, for that freedom. It was not until years after that he understood what his motivating force was. But 3 weeks after he quit, he was living with me, having gone to school one day from his father’s and come home to my house. He has been back one time for dinner in the 6 years since.
But he wanted his trophies, his jerseys, his autographs and any other memorabilia he has. His father told me he could have them. I offered to come over and pick them up. His response was that it was all packed to go to his new place, and to get at it, he would have to unpack everything else.
Meaning, no…son can’t have it unless he asks his father himself, and comes to get it himself. His last little string of control on my son. My son has no relationship with his father at the moment, for a few years now. Because his father, is his father. He has made a small effort, at times, to make my son believe he has changed, and the minute my son felt comfortable with him, he would go back to being the controlling manipulative man he is. He brings chaos to everyone’s life that he encounters. It is mainly the chaos we both left, the never knowing what any day would bring us, never knowing if the earth might shift on its axis while we slept.
I asked him where he was going. Since things were packed up to go to his “new” place. He said, “Oh I’m not sure, I’m hoping for confirmation today.” I wanted to say, “Really? You have to be out of the house in 4 days and you don’t know where you are going?” But I know better. He doesn’t want me to know, and to question him will only bring me a whole huge circular conversation at the end of which the answer will still be that he doesn’t know.
So…today. He will pack up the final load. He will drive out of the driveway, to parts unknown. My son and I will have no way to contact him (he hasn’t had a cell phone in years) or know where he is. It is the way he likes it to be, so no one can find him, or know what he’s doing, or hold him accountable.
It just seems so strange, so odd, so unsettling I guess, to not know where he is. I have known every day for the last 50 years almost, since we were 18, where he was, what he was up to, basically. It’s not that I need to know, really, my emotion for him is only sadness. But now, he is really on his own, really by himself. I have serious doubts that he has even told his sister, the only family he has outside of us, where he will be.
I can’t imagine living so solitary a life. Isolating yourself so much from the world at large. But I accept it, it is his journey to make, perhaps he needs to do this to find his true center. I prefer to believe that. I prefer to believe that he will, at some point, have the epiphany of all epiphanies, and find a glimmer of light. I prefer not to think of him as living his life out separated from the world.
Acceptance. This was not where I thought I was going to go with this. I was looking to accept that I wasn’t seeing S this weekend, because he’s busy with his house, and perhaps still uneasy with me, and I was looking to make good use of the time, even though I’d rather have spent some time with him, trying to bridge the gap that I so stupidly put between us last week. To be honest, even before that, although we talked regularly and intimately, we hadn’t seen much of each other. Maybe because I was always jumping the gun with him, always demanding more than he was able, or wanting, or free to give. Kind of acting like a petulant child, I guess, not getting what they want.
Today, I may see some friends, maybe take a walk, maybe go to a farmer’s market. Maybe not. Maybe just stay home, work on my house, make some jewelry since I have use of my right hand again. The day usually brings it’s own destiny, and I will practice accepting whatever it brings my way.
I guess the only way to make sense of chaos, is acceptance. To let be what is. Even if the path is strewn with obstacles, and difficult to see at times. It is what it is. To live like water is to find a way, to go with the flow. There is only acceptance.
Wishing for more,
Happy with what is.
The way is unmarked,
Therefore awareness is vital.
But “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
With it for the long haul
To the conclusion that is perhaps already written,
But invisible.
The connection showed itself
Again
Today.
Took my breath away for an instant,
Then gave it back to me.
Lessons in grace.
The day turned out better than expected. Spent the morning with my BFF at Kohl’s, armed with a 30% off coupon. Spent $260, probably saved at least that much, lol. It’s the first clothes shopping I’ve done in at least 6 months, and I really needed some stuff for fall. Got a nice dress for my niece’s wedding next month. Royal blue, my favorite color. Very simple, above the knee! It was fun. Just fun. It will still fit if I lose a little more weight.
Tonight is the first time I have felt like cooking in well over a week. Maybe two. Well probably 2, it was two weeks ago yesterday I had the carpal tunnel surgery, so it’s probably been 3 weeks. Last weekend I pretended to make chili, and it’s usually a standby of mine, one of those things that always comes out good. But ha ha, it didn’t. No surprise, considering how out of balance I was. Son wanted to take some to a friends house, I said, well you can, but it’s not very good. He looked at me like, really??? Yeah, really. Tonight I made mandarin orange marinated chicken breasts on skewers, and roasted butternut squash with cranberries and onions. It’s cooking. Smells good. I still don’t have a big appetite, but that’s a good thing, I’d like to drop another 20 lbs, at least. So, we’ll see how much I can eat, but wanting to cook a good meal is a good start.
While it cooks, I’m having a glass of wine, writing, and listening to an old CD from the 60’s, Jethro Tull’s Stand Up. One of my old favorite albums. Reminds me of being 19 or 20, walking around the campus of University of Iowa, having a ball for myself. First feelings of adulthood, freedom…I’m an aging hippie, and we were gonna change the world back then. And who knows…maybe we did, in a way. Change comes slow, and often hard, But I see a spiritual awakening among my generation, and it has the flavor of the 60’s….The 60’s and early 70’s are just hanging there in the background, giving depth and perception to it.
Feeling a bit more myself today. A bit more like the happy, REASONABLE, loving person I usually perceive myself as. Won’t see S this weekend, I don’t think (could be subject to change but not likely) but I’m good anyway. We are talking, and that’s more important than anything. Kind of sweet and flirty, our old default setting. Makes me happy, along with my music, and some real food.
Above is a link to my favorite Jethro Tull Song, “Reason for Waiting”. These are the lyrics
Shrouded by the fog
Tears stuck in my throat,
Unwilling to make themselves known to the world.
Embarrassed to be seen
Because the reasons lay behind them, not in front of them.
Sleep is such a welcome guest
But even sleep asks,
Who are you?
Should I be here?
Solitude,
making me look inward
and see what others see.
Necessary.
Chaotic.
Like the head of Methusala
With a thousand tendrils pointing in different directions
Each one squirming to be heard, to be seen,
Which is real, which is not?
The fog narrows the world
To my small circle of vision.
I lean back, and dream
The path appears,
there, in the corner of my eye.
But I have to walk it alone, I fear.
Fear.
Paying the price.
Loss comes to me with the fog.
Suddenly all the tendrils lay together,
And weep.
Wednesday I went to my endocrinologist, for a routine checkup for diabetes. She is in a huge medical building, with an attached garage that has about a dozen parking levels. I parked on level H, and walked down the ramp to the elevator. When I came back, I went back to level H and my car was not there. I walked around and around, and couldn’t find it. I was sure it was stolen, the parking place I was in was empty. I was freaking out, silently. I went to the attendant, and she called security, who drove me through the garage til I found my car on level F.
God, I was SURE it was level H. Positive. Which just goes to show how my mind works. Not only was I sure it was level H, I was sure it was stolen.
But there in lies a microcosm of how I have been living my life. Very wrong about so many things, and making up stories in my head, which I fully believe to be true, until, oh there’s the car in front of my face, right where I left it.
By the time that was done, and I was safely in my car, on the way back to work, I texted S to tell him, it wasn’t stolen, it was on level F. And then I said, “I need you to come see me, before I lose my mind. Will you come see e tonight?”
After he realized I wasn’t kidding, he indicated he would come.
And there was S, willing to drive an hour see me, with back pain so much he could barely walk, when I had done the same to him, making up a story I fully believed to be true.
I can’t get over how allowed my egoic mind to just take over for the last 10 days. This man I care so much for….maybe he didn’t communicate to me exactly the way things were, maybe he is imperfect. But he expected the best from me, not the worst, and that is worth so much.
All I needed to do when he said she is back in my life is ask what that meant. And I would have found out it meant, they could talk, they were friends of a sort. And if I could have calmly said, why should I be happy, I would have found out it was because he had so many unanswered questions about the ending of their long term relationship, questions that kept popping up and preventing him from healing from it. That maybe now he can move past it, and free his heart up? (That’s just a guess on my part….) To be honest, we didn’t talk that much about his break-up with her, almost 2 yers ago. I thought his questions had been answered, when he met with her over a year ago and found out she was married. I also felt it was not my business why they broke up, it was his. But still, now…it kind of overflowed into my business, and if I’d have asked why I should be happy, calmly, not accusingly, I would have saved a whole lot of pain. If I had been listening, with my heart and not my stupid fearful mind, I would have heard him when he said “I want you to be happy, you know it’s all I’ve ever wanted” meaning, all I ever wanted was for you to be happy. Me.
When I understood that Wednesday night, I stopped dead in my tracks. As the realization came to me, how absolutely asinine I’d behaved, I just cried. I could name all the reasons I was fearful, but the point is, you can’t just be loving and soulful when it’s easy. To remain loving, when it’s hard, is the true measure of how deep your convictions run.
I hate, absolutely hate, that I sent all that negative emotion, all those untruths about him into the universe. I hope the universe can work it’s wonders and perform some alchemy and turn lead into gold, and let that stuff come back in it’s new form to him.
I still have a ball in the pit of my stomach. I feel like I don’t know who I am. Everything I believe in my heart is the opposite of who I became over the last 10 days. Jumping to conclusions, wrong conclusions, not asking questions, cutting off communication, just so my ego could feel big and inflated and powerful.
It is so difficult to look at yourself, and not like what you see. Sure there were a lot of things that added up to making me believe what wasn’t true, but the fact is, I was expecting the worst from him, while he expected the best from me. And he gave me the best of him, and I gave him the worst of me.
I can’t undo what was done, but I can rethink the way I behave. I am so grateful that the universe helped me to lose my car in the parking garage, so I would find it and see how I make up a story, and don’t question it at all, and believe it to be true.
S was right where I left him too….not with her. With me as much as he ever has been, and willing to put the effort in to get through the mess that was created.
I had a gong bath last night. An hour long vibrational healing meditation. Boy did I need it. S used to say to me, the day after a gong bath, “You should do that every night.” Because it helps me so much, in regaining center. Wednesday night he was my gong bath. He helped me regain center, and see who I was and who he thought I was. I liked who he thought I was better than who I was. I will try to deserve his belief in me.
I got some clarity today, not writing all day. This will be short….because it’s not all sorted out in my head yet. But I saw S. I saw him because I needed to, and he responded by driving the hour to my house with a very pained back. We talked, and honestly, I am ashamed of many of the things I wrote here in anger. Many of them were me, taking things in a 180% different way than they were meant. It is both of us….but I am taking ownership of my issues.
I have had so much fear of his ex girlfriend, that I freaked out. Perhaps they were understandable fears, whatever,. But I let them override my ability to reason, and logic, and my trust and love for S. Poor communication on both our sides, maybe mainly mine….but both of us.
Things as not as I feared. He is not with her. He has not been. I don’t think he will be. I don’t think that is actually in the equation. I have some serious trust and anger issues to work out, from a lifetime of abuse. So that is going to be my focus, for awhile. Not going to be writing so much, especially not writing and venting my own pain here, which I hadn’t really vetted.
I am sorry, even though he tells me not to be. He’s not angry, but he doesn’t know why I jump to the wrong conclusions so much of the time. And I did…because of my fear of losing him to her. He understands that now….a little bit, anyway. He says it’s unnecessary, and foolish, but he knows where it comes from , I think. At least, somewhat.
I love this outside-the-box, funny (OMG, he made me laugh so hard tonight) smart, intelligent man. I want him in my life. I don’t think I f’d it up irreparably.
Can I say, please disregard every ugly thing I said, because it was mostly projection of my ego. Can I say, he’s a good man, and the blog I wrote called The Story in His Eyes, is much more accurate than anything I’ve said over the last 10 days. The happiness that was all he ever wanted was mine.
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