ASYD - Day 49 - And the test results are in: Need help ASAP

I joined a divorce support group last week at a local church. I'm not Christian, nor do I believe in a lot of the Christian tenants, but this church seems much more of the "love thy neighbor" type than the "stone the prostitute" type. The group isn't overly religious so far, and regardless, I need the support. I feel like I'm failing at this whole being single thing on my own.

The group bases its meetings on different chapters in a book called "Rebuilding: When Your Relationship Ends". There are issues with this book, for sure, starting and ending with the level of privilege and lack of diversity that's shown in the examples provided. I'm finding this to be a theme with these types of books, mostly because they're nearly all written by older, white men, but that's an argument of a different sort.

Anyway, the group suggests that you take a survey when you first start meeting with them, and then again once you've gone through a full cycle of 15 weeks (i.e. the full 15 chapters in the book). Partly because I love self-assessment tests (only reason to read Cosmopolitan really), I was a good girl and took the test.

Um. Yeah.

There are some results a girl just doesn't want to see.

I think it's important, for context, to understand how I saw myself three years ago:

• Confident and self-assured in my own body
• I knew that I wasn't a svelte, model-type woman, but I also knew my own attractiveness and self-worth even at 50 pounds overweight.
• Confident and self-assured in my personality
• I have known my whole life - thanks, Dad! - that I'm not everyone's cup of tea, and for the most part, I was really okay with that. Not everyone had to like me so long as I knew that I was a good person and there were those who did think I was pretty okay, if not pretty awesome.
• Competent and capable
• Curve balls were a dime a dozen when raising four children, and I felt fully capable of at the very least mitigating their damage, if not outright dealing with them forcefully. 
• Emotionally Capable
• As a heart-on-my-sleeve person, I knew that I would always feel stronger and more obviously than the average person, and I also knew that this gave me a leg up over the more emotionally quiet folks out there because I always, always, always moved through those feelings because I simply wasn't built any other way.

That was three years ago, before The Year of Hell began. Before the death of a dear friend, then the death of my mom, moving away from the house I raised my kids in, the death of my marriage, losing my job, my youngest leaving home, and a full-on health crisis. All in less than 12 months. 

That'll leave a mark.

And it did. I mean... damn... these results... They just freaking hurt to look at.

It's a 66-question test that gauges where you are on your personal path through the loss of your marriage. It breaks it up into six categories: Self Esteem/Self-Worth, Emotional Disentanglement, Anger, Grief, Rebuilding Social Trust, and Social Self-Worth. Each score is 1 out of 100, and a low number indicates "areas for improvement".

None of my scores are over 50%. Not one of them. Only one comes even close, and that's because my friends are amazing and I recognize their love for me.

*sighs* Here we go:

• Self Esteem/Self-Worth - 1%
• Emotional Disentanglement - 17%
• Anger - 20%
• Grief - 9%
• Rebuilding Social Trust - 1%
• Social Self-Worth - 42%

My overall score: 5%

Three years ago I knew who I was. I knew what I wanted, and how to get it. I knew that while not perfect, I was a positive force in this world.

Today, I'm struggling to remember what it feels like to look in the mirror and be happy. Not even bone-deep happy, just not freaking bone-deep sad. The kind of happy that comes from being comfortable in your own skin. I was that once, and now, I'm not comfortable breathing. And this test shows it. It shows how little I value myself, and how little I trust beyond myself.

I do understand that this is an assessment of who I am right now, seven weeks out of a relationship that was never going to work, and two years out of a relationship that was ripped from me. I get that this is a road map for me, a way forward. It still sucks to think about how far I've fallen. I mean, it's not news to me. Not really. But ... you get it. It just sucks.

This is supposed to be a way to see where I should start, and since everything but "my friends freaking rock" is so low, I don't know that it does that. Clearly my trust in self and others is the lowest, so probably start there? If only I knew how.

Because my friends freaking rock, I know I'm going to get a lot of "I love you as you are" comments, which are incredibly sweet. But if those were going to do the trick, I'd be right back where I started because I've gotten hundreds of those comments over the last few years. I appreciate them, and they keep me going on a lot of days, but it's not enough to fix this.

No, this has to come from inside myself, from my own assessments and understandings. I have to see myself differently than I do today, and that's ... jeez, it feels like such an impossible task. I simply can't see what all of you see right now. I'm trying. 

I think need a better road map. 

For those interested in taking this test yourselves, it's here: https://www.afterdivorcesupport.com/self-test/ I get nothing out of sharing it, and I have no idea of its validity. It's just the one my support group recommends. Fair warning, you'll get a call from the guy who created it, Nick, but I didn't answer, and then a couple of days later he sent the results via email anyway, with an offer to talk about it - No Obligation! - if I wanted to call him. I don't, but thanks, Nick. I appreciate your concern. :)

ASYD - Day 47 - Feelings are hard

I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine today. He has the uncanny ability to clarify so many things for me. I vent to him, whine about how I feel, what I'm thinking, how I'm acting, and he distills it down into simple actions. Or he points out that what I think is horribly unhealthy is, in fact, pretty damn healthy.

Today, we talked about how hard it is to just feel feelings. I'm trying to allow myself the sadness of missing S, while also recognizing that how I felt throughout that whole relationship was incredibly unhealthy. I explained it as trying to remember the moments while rewriting how I felt in them.

This is hard to explain. I'll give an example:

Most of the time that S and I were together, I was angsty. I felt that it wasn't right - not for him, nor for me - but I wanted it to be right. I like him. I wanted to love him. I wanted him to love me. In the romantic sense, not in the way that I love all of my friends. We worked well together, and I really wanted to build that into something special for both of us.

Big reveal: That doesn't work.

In fact, it creates situations of stress, anger, hurt, and confusion. All of the emotions that I have now equated to my relationship with S. And honestly? To M, my ex-husband, as well. It's hard to think back on moments - memories - and not immediately feel those things. I get images in my mind about going to play pool, hanging out at the house watching TV, playing with the dogs... and I immediately feel anxious. It's not a warm-fuzzy feeling of being with someone I love doing something I enjoy. It's anxiety over how that person feels about me, how I'm being perceived by that person, and how my actions are affecting all of that. And it drove my self-esteem into the gutter.

See, this whole codependency thing. It's about control. It's a deep-in-your-soul belief that you have the power and strength to control those around you by your actions. So when you can't control things, when people don't do what you want them to do, it digs into that belief. It undermines this concept you have in your own power.

Shockingly, this means that my memories are pretty tainted. Those emotions were valid, of course, but when I try to think back on those memories and instead see it as two friends enjoying a day, it's so incredibly different. If I set aside - not disregard, but actively set aside - those feeling of anxiety, it's a pretty wonderful history of memories. I'm sad that I tainted 18 months of interactions with those anxieties, with my need to control. I want to re-remember everything in the light of what I now accept to be true: that S and I are great companions, but not great partners.

I talked to my friend about this. I had been in a funk, sad and despondent, missing S. I said that I was afraid that I was wallowing instead of just feeling because I didn't know where the line was.

He said, "It seems to me that wallowing is being submerged and not processing."

I replied, "I'm struggling with trying to change the feelings. Like, instead of thinking back and feeling the angst, changing that to acceptance."

He said, "That's the processing part, right?"

Huh? Wait....what?

I've known that I need to process my feelings, that I need to work through them, that ... well you know all the same psycho-babble I do. I needed to do that stuff. But I've never once thought through what "that crap" actually was. Well, now I do. At least, this is my version of what that crap means.

It's okay to feel sad for the loss of a relationship. It's okay to feel loss in the potential for a relationship. It's even okay to feel loss of the person. Those are all valid things. The processing part is looking at those feelings and seeing how they change with the new information in hand. Like, I miss the idea of S and I as a couple. It was never going to be as neither of us really felt that spark. But the idea of it, the potential - that was real. And it was a dream for me for a long time. Now I know, however, the reality of that potential - it was nil. We just don't work that way, the two of us. Blaming him or demanding he do things differently or trying to force him into some mold - all that does is destroy what is actually there. That friendship, that love. And when I think of those anxious feelings, when I think of the sadness of that loss, through the lens of friendship instead of romantic love, it takes on a new life for me.

I don't see his actions as "slights" or uncaring. I don't see the things that he said as unkind or hurtful. Our time together isn't filled with lost potential, but rather comfortable camaraderie. We were always friends, and never really lovers. As such, his actions fit for us. It just didn't fit the dream I had for us.

This isn't to say that there weren't issues even as friends. I'm not taking all of the responsibility on myself of where we are or how we were. He, like me, has issues with relationships. He, like me, was pushing things along for far too long. He has his own path to tread through therapy and self-discovery that has nothing to do with me.

On Sunday, I told him that I needed a break from our friendship. The pain was - and is - still too raw. This is going to be a process, to work through these emotions and relearn how to feel them. It wasn't going to happen while he and I continued down the same road, trying to be friends. I can't try to be around him without the angst until I can get rid of the angst from the past.

This whole thing is so freaking hard. Every day, I wonder how I'm going to find the energy to once again live inside my own head. At what point do I get to just be, and not overthink every single word or deed I've ever done, looking for examples of my deficits and how to fix them? There just doesn't appear to be any kind of relief. I know that's the reason for meditation, and I walk so much that I find room for that as I can. It's still hard.

If you're going through this crap, like I know a lot of my friends are, know that I get it. I understand why getting out of bed hurts sometimes. But what are our options? I'm not going to go back to being that person again. I really want to be someone I want to love, and this is how I get there. And you can get there, too. We'll trudge through this crap together, arm-in-arm. We'll be a tiny army of self-love by the end of this, damnit.

We've got this. Together, we've got this.

ASYD - Day 42 - The woman behind the mask

Yesterday, I touched on something that I feel needs a bit more attention. I said that I am co-dependent because of the fact that my father was an alcoholic - and because I'm afraid that one day you all will see who I "really" am.

I spent the better part of last night thinking about that. Who am I really? Like, if you saw me naked and vulnerable, what would you see? What am I so afraid of you finding?

Honestly? I'm afraid of you finding out that I'm the person that my father always said that I was.

A few short tales of my father, me, and his drinking:

- My earliest memory of my father is when I was three years old. He had passed out in the kitchen chair and toppled onto the floor. My four-year-old brother and I were trying to get him up before Mom saw him because we knew she'd be mad. My dad slapped me and told me to get off him. My brother, on the other hand, was allowed to help him up.

- It's 1:00 am and my brother, sister, and I are sitting at the top of the stairs, listening to my mom and dad fight. He's drunk and angry. My brother is helping my sister get her shoes on, so she would have been three, him eight, and me six or seven. When Dad hits Mom a second time, she calls us down to leave. We head over to my godparents' house and stay there for a week with Mom. Dad goes into rehab. Again.

- When I'm 10 and my sister is seven, we're arguing about doing the dishes. Typical kid stuff, you know? "You wash this time! I did it last time!" My dad, drunk of course, comes raging into the kitchen at us. My sister and I cowered in a corner. My dad took every dish on the counter and smashed them at our feet. Then he opened every cupboard and smashed them at our feet, too. All the while, he's raging about what a worthless little bitch I am, how I need to just learn to shut the fuck up, how I'm one of the worst things to ever happen to him. He then storms out of the house, gets in his truck, and heads to the bar. My mom cleans up the mess while my sister cries and goes to our godmother's house. I sit there at the table, stoic, because really, why cry?

- Thanksgiving Day when I'm 13. Dad, the cook in the house, is drunk (it's almost noon) and angry that the turkey didn't brown the way he wanted it to. All of the other food is sitting on the counter, waiting to go into the oven. Dad pulled the turkey out of the oven and throws it out the kitchen window ... without opening the window. It's Thanksgiving Day, November in Des Moines, IA, and all of the stores are closed, and we now have no turkey and a huge gaping hole in the window. Dad raged for a few minutes then went and passed out while Mom, my brother, my sister, and I cleaned up the mess. For the record, cardboard isn't an effective insulator.

- At 15, my best friend is over at the house. We're getting ready to go out for the night when my dad comes into the kitchen in a full-on rage. I don't even remember what it was about, but I do remember the vitriol and hatred in his face. He grabbed one of his multiple pill bottles and empties the contents into his hand. He holds them up to me, furious, and says, "I'm doing this because of you, you dirty little bitch." And he downs all of the pills. Then he throws the bottle at my feet and goes to lie down on the couch. My mom tells me to call an ambulance while she tries to get him to stand up and walk around. I do, but it took an effort to dial the three necessary numbers.

- It's a Saturday when I'm 17, getting ready to leave the house. Dad and I are the only two home since my mom and brother are both at work and my sister is out at a friend's. He gets pissed at me for God-only-knows what, again. I finally snap. I'd had enough of this bullshit, the constant belittling, the never-ending complaints about what a horrible human being I am. I yell at him, tell him to just shut the fuck up and go sleep it off. He hauls off and slaps me. I slap him back. He looks stunned, then he screws up his fist and punches me in the face. I leave and go to a friend's house. I'm there for two weeks before my mom convinces me to come home. He never apologizes, and in fact, doesn't acknowledge my existence for another couple of weeks.

- Another Saturday, when I'm 23, single, pregnant with twins. I'd just had a conversation with my baby-daddy about marriage, to which he said that he didn't think he was ready. I was devastated because I was very much in love with him. My dad, drunk per the norm, and I are in the kitchen, and he asks me when I'm going to get married. I tell him that we'd decided to wait to make sure it was the right thing for us. He then spend 15 minutes telling me what a whore I am, how I'm bringing two little bastards into the world. That he's ashamed of me, of what I've done. He can't even look at me, he says, and he leaves the room.

He died when I was 37 years old. That kind of shit? Never stopped. When he was drunk, I was "thunder thighs", "that little bitch", "that whore", etc. I don't remember a single time that my father told me he was proud of me. Not when I graduated from college. Not when I produced amazing grandchildren for him to dote on. Not when I was a fantastic single mother to those children.

When he was sober? Mostly, he just kind of ignored me, which was preferred. Sometimes he was kind, like when my friend committed suicide when we were 14. We watched a lot of old TV together, quietly sitting in the living room together, just the two of us. When he was sober, he wasn't a good dad, but he wasn't a bad one, either.

But yeah... drunk? Heh.

Despite all of this, I don't hate my dad. He started drinking when he was nine years old. He was beaten and abused by his parents his entire childhood. He was remarkably intelligent, and only had a ninth-grade education. He loved my mom more than anything, despite the way he treated her. And when I really needed him - like when my friend died - he was the one who sunk on the kitchen floor and cried with me while my mom stood at the sink completely at a loss of what to do.

In my family, we regularly say that Dad was an awful father and a worse husband, but he was a good man and a great grandfather. He, like most of us, failed in very fundamental ways while succeeding in others.

My fear, however, is that one day, someone will look inside me and see the ugly, horrible person that my father saw. They'll see a monster where my soul lives, and they'll find me as repugnant as my dad did. I am co-dependent so that I can protect all of you from the person I believed myself to be for a very, very long time.

A college friend posted yesterday that she'd seen a small bit of my life then, and she totally understood why I was co-dependent. I had to be to survive. I responded that I no longer get to hide behind my childhood for my issues. I've been an adult longer than I was a child, and it's time to take responsibility for who I am.

This includes how I see myself.

My dad was wrong. He is the one who never really saw me. He is the one who saw a monster instead of a good soul with a strong sense of right and wrong.

The true irony is that the person that I am today is who he would have been had he not been an alcoholic. I believe firmly in supporting the weak, just like he did. I believe that everyone has a right to be whomever they want, just like he did (except that I include women). I would give my last dollar to help someone else, going hungry so someone else won't. My dad was the same, and I saw that happen more than once. I love with all of my heart, just like he did. I can empathize with most anyone, as he did.

The monster my father raged against in me wasn't a monster at all. It was a reflection of what he could never be. 

ASYD - Day 41 - Epiphanies sometimes suck

Years ago, I spent a lot of time in 12-step programs for both Adult Children of Alcoholics and Codependency. Like a lot a lot of time, at least one meeting a week, sometimes more. I wanted to learn how to not be broken like my parents had been, and I learned a lot. I made real changes in my life and in my coping mechanisms. In a lot of ways, I felt like I had grown up because of those meetings.

Flash forward 20 years to today. I'm sitting here trying to figure out why I'm reacting the way that I am to so many things. What has caused these emotions, these responses? I'm practically obsessing about.... wait. What? Obsessing? About my feelings toward someone else? About my feelings toward myself? Where have I...?

CODA. ACOA. Al-Anon. 

That's where. That's where I remember these feelings from. That's where I remember those words, those phrases. This feeling of spiraling out of control, of losing oneself in worry about another. This feeling of codependency.

For my friends who are blissfully unaware of what codependency is, allow me a moment. There are all kinds of definitions that you can find on the the web, but on a very personal level, for me, it means:

Coping with a loss of control in one's life by trying to control the feelings and actions of another using manipulation and emotional warfare. 

Jeez, that was painful to write. It's even more painful to acknowledge as true. It's what I've spent the better half of the last decade doing, trying to control the uncontrollable using nefarious and horrible methods. This goes back a lot further than moving to Portland. 

My father was an alcoholic, and therefore, by default, everyone in the house became codependent. It was the only way to cope with his erratic and violent behavior. The only coping mechanism we had to control the uncontrollable, or at least to feel like we could. It's shown itself differently in each of us, but I think it's pretty safe to say that my siblings and I all deal with it in one way or another. They're just more functional than I am, I think.

My recent ex-husband is an addict. His addiction is his own affair and isn't important in this context. It is, however, important in helping you understand what I've been doing, and why. I didn't know that he was an addict until the end of our marriage, but that's also immaterial. Addicts have certain ways of living life, regardless of their triggers, and he lived the life of an addict. In turn, I became codependent again. It was a rut - a comfortable, easy path - for me to fall into. So much so that I didn't even realize that I'd done so. I didn't see his reactions and attitudes for what they were, and I certainly didn't see my own responses for what they were. 

So I've fallen back into old patterns, being manipulative and controlling - or trying to be. Convinced of my own powers of observation and drive to do to be able to make people like me, want me around, and believe that I'm worthwhile. Because if I didn't do those things, you see, people would hate me. All of the things that my hateful, drunken father said about me would come to light, and I would be alone, despised and forgotten. 

Look, I can rationally know that that's bullshit. I have so many amazing friends who love me as I am that logically, I know that's crap. But here's the beauty of your formative years - they dig deep, unforgiving ruts into your psyche. They burrow in, and no amount of excavation will smooth them over. They're like the foundations of castles past with a thousand years of silt and dust and traffic over them, and then one day, poof! We know where King Richard III is buried under a car park. 

The worst part of all of this is what that means for my entire relationship with S. I was in full-on codependent coping spiral throughout the whole thing. 

• Controlling - being whatever and whomever I thought he wanted me to be to make him like me. 
• Manipulative - trying to convince him that he cared for me more than he did so that I wouldn't be alone. 
• Emotionally abusive - making him feel like it was his fault when things didn't go the way that I wanted/needed/expected them to go.

W. T. F. 

Who does that?? Who does that to someone they claim to love?? Jesus. What an awful, horrible thing to do to someone. It wasn't intentional. I didn't realize that I was doing it. I rationalized it away as being a "chameleon" and somehow making it his fault. But let's be clear about this: I did this to him. I acted this way to him. I treated him that way. This wasn't any fault of his own; this was my default factory settings being reset and him bearing the brunt of that error. 

I've never felt more ashamed of myself in my life. I knew that I did these things. At least, I knew that I've done these things in the past. This, again, is my default factory setting. I have to actively work to reprogram myself. And I forgot. 

The problem is that people with these coping skills? We don't get to forget. When we forget, we hurt not only ourselves, but the people we love. It is my responsibility to never forget because I am self-aware enough to know that this happens. And I got lax. I failed my friends and family in doing so.

One of the most important steps that I learned in CODA and ACOA is to make amends when doing so won't harm the other person. So I'm going to work really hard to make amends to S, as his friend, asking nothing from him but forgiveness. And I'm going to take a long hard look at the last five to ten years of my life and see where and if I have other people that I need to apologize to, because while I can't take back how I was, I can own my mistake. And yes, I will include myself in that, I promise.

I'll be hitting up the local CODA meeting tonight. There's also another group for dealing with divorce that I'll be going to another night. I don't get to ignore this. That's simply not an option.

Life is a process, and it's not an easy one. So many things going on all the time, so much stress, so many burning sticks in the air. This is a journey of a million steps, sometimes forward, and sometimes back. Today I realized that I've been going backwards for a while. It's time to turn things back around, starting with a single step.

ASYD - Day 39 - Finding Peace

A friend of mine regularly wishes peace for me. Not happiness, not unbridled joy. Just peace. He hopes that I find peace.

It's probably one of the kindest things anyone has ever wished for me. It's a promise of finding pleasure in the moments, and of learning to accept the life I have instead of wishing for something that may never be. It's a wish for a calm mind filled with reason over drive; a warm heart, not a burning passion. 

Today started rough. My uncle died. I wasn't close to him; in fact, barely knew him at all. What I did know, however, was that he was a kind man with a good heart, and his passing at 76 will hurt all of his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and most of all, his wife. He, like his older two siblings - my mom included - died far too young. They all died around 75-ish, my grandfather lasting to 78. Most of you have heard me say that we are not long-lived people, and now you know why I say that. 

This means that all things being equal, I may only have 25 years left, give or take a bit. (Yes, I know that I'm not my parents' generation and medicine has come a long way and and and... hush, please, and just listen to where my mind is.) 

I'm already suffering from all of the ailments my mom had when she died, shy of the lung cancer that killed her. I don't smoke, and never have. I rarely drink anymore - that which killed my father. I exercise regularly, and try to eat healthy. But I'm overweight, and I'm apple-shaped, and so I'm a ticking time-bomb by nearly every CDC standard. My only option is to drop weight... all of the excess weight that I carry, because nothing short of that will help my hip-to-waist ratio, my magic number. That sounds so awfully daunting.

I'm scared, so I'm working hard to get there anyway. 

It's not just the weight that scares me, though. Twenty-five years isn't a very long time anymore. I have a long list of things that I want to do, and only a handful of years to do them. Travel comes first for me, always. I waited a very long time to be able to see the world, and now it's where I will spend my time and money whenever possible. My kids come a very close second, though they've got their own lives to live without a weird old mom in the way. And third, I'd like to find someone that will cherish me - and all of my foibles - while allowing me to be cheesy and cherish them back. Because before I die I want to know what it's like to be truly loved, passionately and openly and shamelessly. 

The morning started with news of my uncle's passing, which led me down this dark tunnel of knowing how short time is now. I took stock of my life - specifically my past loves - and then I went into the office bathroom and cried for a solid 10 minutes. So much pain in those relationships. So many questions about whether the men I dedicated so much of my time and heart to actually reciprocated it. None of them had to work for my love; I gave it freely and with abandon. Yet, I now look back and see all of the work that I did to gain their love. I have no idea if they would have loved me if I hadn't. That wasn't the point. 

The point was that I worked at it because I believed - and still believe probably - that it was the only way that I would be found lovable. If I did the things, said the stuff, felt enough for both of us, then it would be enough and they would love me. They would share that love freely, openly, shamelessly. They would envelope me in their love, their lives, their hearts as I did them. I would be found valuable. Not because of who I am, but because of all that I did for our relationship.

Only that's not how it's ever worked. I've done so much freaking work, and at the end of the day, it wasn't enough. I'm still single at 49, wondering what I could have done differently.

Now the clock is ticking, and I find myself just not caring. Like, Mr. Perfect could walk up to me tomorrow and my response would be, "Yeah. Okay." Because I really don't have the energy nor the drive to be Ms. Perfect again. I've tried it multiple times and all I've gotten is a hell of a lot of heart-ache. I don't want to go there again. I'm 39 days into my self-prescribed celibacy (just over 10% done) and for the first time, I'm grateful that I'm not allowed to even bother. 

It's not that the guys that I dated/married were jerks. They weren't, for the most part. With one notable exception, they were pretty decent guys. Both of my husbands were kind, caring, and good dads to my kids. Nearly all of the guys that I spent any length of time with since college were decent guys, just trying to figure crap out like I was. They weren't the problem; I was. I mean, why work when it's given so easily? Why put in the emotional effort when your partner is willing to do it all? That's a natural response. It's not to say that they didn't care or put in effort. It's to say that I didn't step back and allow them the opportunity to really show me how much I mattered. Because my thinking was that if I did that I might find out that... I didn't matter at all. 

So these things are swirling around my head while I'm trying to navigate my work, and I'm realizing that I'm not going to find chaos out of order the way things are going. Even after the cry - and a good conversation with a dear friend - my mind spun in all the wrong directions. So I gave myself a time-out from thinking, and I spent my lunch hour walking in the sun along the Willamette River. 

The path was packed with people, as it should have been, but I had my little personal-space bubble. For once, I wasn't looking at the men, wondering who was single. I wasn't stressing about the zit on my chin or my frizzy hair. I just walked, alone. The sun felt amazing on my face and shoulders. The wind off the water kept me cool while I exercised. The sound of the river lapping against the concrete walls overwhelmed the chatter of the people around me. I focused on the seagulls flying overhead, on the bridges that spanned above and across from me. I watched the bobbing kayaks paddling down river, and the swollen sails on sleek white vessels with names like "Merry Me" and "Dame Judy". I breathed in and out, as I've done for decades when the chaos tried to overwhelm me. 

For a mile, I ignored everyone around me and focused instead on the natural world and my breathing. Then I turned around and headed back, this time, listening to the chatter, watching the faces, seeing the bodies around me, all shapes, sizes, and colors in varying degrees of motion. I was part of them, but separate, and I reveled in that feeling of individual unity. The mile back went quicker, seemed like less effort, and erased the noise in my mind completely. 

There was peace for me. Not the peace that my friend wishes me - his offer is one of unending peace and this was ephemeral - but peace, still. I was able to work freely and easily. I left with the feeling of successes, small though they were. To build on this feeling, I met my ex - let's call him S for the sake of these blogs - at a preserve with the dogs, and we walked another three miles, mostly joking and just being at ease with someone we love and care about, no strings attached. He's not my soulmate, if that's even a thing, but he is a dear friend, and if nothing else I'm eternally grateful that we salvaged that from our doomed courtship. 

Home now, I'm relaxed, at peace still, I guess. Joyful in the moment; finding pleasure in the mundane tasks of doing dishes and folding the laundry. This is closer to the peace my friend offers. Still ephemeral, but closer. Oh so much closer.

ASYD - Day 31 - Things to learn about myself

I talked to a couple of my friends today, and they each gave me some things to think about. It seems fitting to put them down here.

First, I had a conversation about how much we devalue ourselves. How we will bend over backwards for the people in our lives, and yet feel selfish when we tell someone what our needs are. Because it is selfish. The problem is that not all selfishness is equal. Sometimes selfish is good. It's selfish to make sure that you get downtime when you need it, but that's also self-care. It's selfish to focus on your own goals, but again, that's also self-care. Those are necessary bits of selfishness, as is telling someone what we need from them. It's a necessary bit of selfishness. It's self-care.

Intellectually, I can know this. At one time, I even believed it whole-heartedly. I did a really good job of being clear and concise in what I needed from my husband. Then my world was shattered, and that piece of me got lost. My friend reminded me that it's something that I need to find again, because I will never be whole until I do. She's not wrong.

It comes from confidence. From knowing that I value myself enough to say, "This is the least that I will accept from you." So that's where I have to start: finding my personal value again. I'm not perfect, but I'm a good person with a good heart. I am kind. I am generous to a fault. I may talk too much, but I'm not stupid or silly. Most of the time what I say makes sense, it's occasionally funny, and even on the rare occasion poignant.

These are the things that I have to focus on. Not that my hair is too frizzy, that I have more wrinkles, or that I'm still 30 pounds overweight. Not that I haven't been lucky enough to find a guy who respects me and loves me and is in love with me. (It is all luck, by the way. Sheer dumb luck. Revel in it if you've happened to fall into a good relationship with a great person.)

The second conversation focused on how little we know what we want or even who we are. She was filling out a dating site form and it asked what her passion was, and she stalled out. She didn't know anymore, though she once did. So we talked about that, how we lost ourselves, why, and how to find her again.

She's been finding inspiration in places like that, and then meditating on it. Learning about herself one question at a time, one bit of inspiration at a time. It was my goal when I started this blog, too, but I started getting too caught up in trying to be friends with my ex so that he'd like me again. Because that was easier. (Dude, seriously? It was easier to have anxiety over a guy who's made it clear that I'm just not his type than it was to learn about myself. What the hell is wrong with me??)

So I started thinking about what I need to learn about myself. I couldn't think of anything, but it occurred to me that what I really needed to do was to date myself. Hang with me here. When you start dating someone, you're hungry to learn all that you can about them. Who are they now, who were they as children, as teenagers, before you knew them? Who do they want to be next year, in five years, in 20 years? What drives them? What makes them happy, sad, upset? How do they handle those emotions? Can they share them? If not, why not?

You want to hear from them often, to get that little thrill from knowing they cared enough to reach out to you. You want to embrace them, make them feel happy in your presence. You want to make their life better, joyful, fun.

And these are all of the things that I want to do for myself. I want to learn to love myself the same way that I have learned to love so many other people. Not one of them were perfect, and some were far from it, yet I found a way to love them. Why has it been so hard to do the same for me?

My heart is still broken, and I'm still feeling the roadrash of my last two relationships, but I still think that I can figure this out. It's going to require a lot of kindness, patience, and a gentle hand, but I've gentled more tortured souls. And honestly, I'm so sick of feeling so fragile and weak. It's not who I've ever been, and it's time that I step over those feelings for the more important ones.

Nowhere to go but up, right?

ASYD - Day 31 - A Really Bad Day

I've had a dozen blogs written in my head over the last couple of weeks, but in truth, they were the same as the ones before. I'm sad. I'm hurting. I feel rejected. I feel lost. None of that has changed. I don't feel any less of any of it, either. 

Maybe I'm just not ever going to be very good at this whole being alone thing. Maybe - now hear me out - I'm happier in a partnership so I really should be in one. That's why I stick it out longer than I should with the wrong guy. Because I'm happier with someone who can't/won't love me the way that I need than I am on my own. 

It's a possibility. I don't know. I just know that I don't feel any better today than I did a month ago when I suddenly became single. And get this, while I love him, I certainly wasn't "in love" with him. There weren't fireworks. There weren't sparks, and there certainly wasn't mind-blowing sex. Hell, at best it was meh sex, if we had it at all. But we were comfortable together. We laughed a lot together. He was someone to make dinner for, to cuddle with. It was enough for me; why wasn't it enough for him?

Why wasn't I enough for him?

Yes, I know. I reread that paragraph again, too, after I typed that last sentence. The answer is there, plain and simple. He wanted more than meh sex and someone to make him dinner. He wanted - wants - fireworks. At the very least, sparks. Me? I'm so afraid of getting burned that I'm like an Oregon forest in mid-August: NO FIRE, NO SPARKS. What I had with him gave me enough of what I needed to help me get by without any of the rush of an infatuation to scare me. 

We've been trying the friends thing. We have been seeing each other a couple of times a week, talking daily, etc. I can't do it. I wanted to. I wanted to keep that connection just in case he changed his mind. (Again, yes, I am well aware of how stupid that is. Hush.) He's not going to change his mind, though, in part because I am so weird around him. I'm still not myself when we hang out. I'm still trying to impress him, be the person I think he wants me to be. And until I can just be me around him, I really shouldn't be around him at all. If I really want to maintain a friendship with him, I need to step the hell away until I'm no longer thinking of him as someone to convince to love me.

That phrase: someone to convince to love me. 

I think I've mentioned that my whole life, I've done that. I've played the chameleon to be whom I think the guy I like wants me to be. And I used to be really good at it. Then I met my second husband, and for the first time, I was truly myself. I compromised, of course, but overall, I was just me, and it was enough. He loved me, or so he said. I was wonderful... until I wasn't. Until he decided to destroy me. 

That's a part of it, you know? I was me and it was enough... until it wasn't. And then, in spectacular fashion, it so wasn't. Two years down the line and I'm still trying to understand what went wrong. Two years down the line and I'm still trying to pick up the pieces that he broke me into. 

Intellectually, I know that it wasn't about me. Intellectually, I know that he made his choices because he's broken, not because I did or didn't do something. The little girl in me that's only ever wanted someone to love her just as she is, however, struggles to understand that. 

This hurts. It all hurts so damn much, and I just can't see it getting better. I feel weak, which I hate. I feel tired. I feel defeated. 

I just want a guy to wrap his arms around me in bed and whisper to me that I'm perfect for him, that I'm what he wants in his life. I want someone to love me with abandon just like I've loved, so that he can teach me to do it again. To be perfectly honest, I truly cannot see that ever happening for me. I look at my future, and I test my heart, and I know that I'm damaged beyond repair. 

It's a bad day. I'm sorry. It's just... yeah...