The second-guessing is the ‘party’ that deserves suspicion

6/15/07
1051

Hanging in, sometimes better spirited, sometimes not. Sometimes I feel I can be resilient and face the demands of the two boys home for the summer. Lou’s coming today which is not the best timing for me, since the house does need some cleaning, but I’ve already been at house stuff for hours and I’ve been longing to write in here. I was experiencing a really uncomfortable feeling when I couldn’t get to this program, when I had to force-quit a program, and the computer’s been so slow in being responsive that I’m frustrated with it and worried about it. So I plugged in the external drive and it’s not working the way it should either and I’m totally confused. Plus, the preoccupation is costing me time writing in here, at least about other things that I would choose.

OK. Had to get up and do a few things, but I think I can do this for a while now. Which is what I was feeling uncomfortable putting off. I really felt I needed to get to the other things first, and there’s a part of me that wants to question that assumption.

There was a kind of neat dream last night; I like the feeling tone that it left and wish more of it would come back to me. The most important part of it was hopping with abandon from rock to rock across some sort of barrier. I was going in somewhere, and I had to climb on and around and jump from/to these rocks. I was doing it easily, and smiling, feeling good about it. These rocks were just the entryway in to this place I was going. It seemed to be the entryway of a tunnel. Now there are other flashes too about being in someone’s house…maybe Joy is even in it and she’s not liking a boyfriend I have. I think I just feel sort of aimless and helpless, maybe the way a baby or toddler must feel, when events and emotions, other people’s, my own, wash over the top of me and I’m having trouble understanding it; I’m having trouble grasping things, like my dreams suggesting something that feels familiar and like I ought to know it. And the fact that it too just slides out of my grasp because I don’t have the inner wherewithall to reel it in. That’s just it. I just feel kind of stunned inside. I’m not feeling a lot of comfort from my phone call to Becca; I just don’t feel heard, and I’m left with the uncomfortable sense that maybe she’s thinking that because of some of the ways she’s seen Scott with Miles that there is some basis to what Jack is telling his mother. Just as I wouldn’t want to tell this to Ken and Joy because I think they would tuck it right into a category formed for him when Scott hit Jolie. I just feel peculiar, like the community thinks that Scott’s a hitter and I’m in denial. I don’t know for sure if someone that I may confide this story in isn’t silently nodding to themselves and thinking that “it fits a pattern” of something I’ve not observed, but some other parent has.

God, I hope this hasn’t been a miserable year for Scott. I just feel remorse that maybe if I’d been a frequent and regular volunteer that I could have helped his internal self feel better, and I could feel a little more secure in how other parents see him—because I really don’t know.

I guess just the fact of someone dumping such anger over me makes me feel stigmatized, the way someone vomiting on me would make me smell. It’s not MY vomit, but I smell bad anyway. Hopefully at some point I can process and move through something like this quickly because I won’t always have the luxury of a day to decompress.

It’s interesting that I have an expectation of feeling better, that Becca’s a good confidant. I expect to feel soothed in talking to her on deeper levels. I guess it’s because it seems all the potential is there to be able to really trust her,and feel satisfied somehow after talking with her. That deep sort of satisfaction that comes from a deep conversation. But I feel like she and I miss each other. That we’re never quite able to say the right things to each other, though I think we want to. I guess that’s what keeps me thinking of her in the context of close friend and confidante, even though it’s not really working out in practice there’s a sense that it eventually will work out, and that we both want it to.

So I needed to mention that, that part of feeling morose is that I spoke with her hoping to feel better and didn’t really. Part of it was that she said Scott seemed ‘like an angry child’. Is it really unusual for a 6 year old younger brother to sometimes say mean things to younger children about their being ‘too little’ for something, or that they don’t want to play with them because they’re ‘too little’? But we’re not talking about aggression here, physical hurting.

‘Denial’ is a particularly difficult term to deal with…someone in denial about something seems like a revolting figure. Having never had that phrase applied to me before except in jest, I feel that it has insidious effects. For one thing there’s the sort of revolting image of someone in denial. I’m not sure that her image of someone in denial is the same as my image of someone in denial. I’ve never checked that out with anyone before, just kind of assumed everyone shared the same image: Someone in denial is someone who refuses to believe something that is right in front of them and is usually doing it for self-serving reasons. There is something reprehensible about refusing to face facts, and a sort of awesome mental capacity that seems like illness; perhaps that’s why the term seems to be very pejorative. I would never tell someone that they need to raise their children differently, and I would never say straight to them that they were in denial. Now if I were hearing the teachers telling me this was occuring, if it seemed to occur across circumstances and situations, if I were being called by the school all the time because he was hurting other children—if I had that set of facts on the ground—and I was refusing to acknowledge needing to deal with them, now that would be denial.

It’s just how she went from seeming to really like Scott and saying she likes him to seeing him as a child who “is hurting my child”, to the point of implying things about the way we’re raising him and that she knows better and we’re failing because we’re not doing what she would do—to the point that she has to be angry with us, with me, each time Jack comes home and tells her Scott did something.

She revealed quite a bit of herself. She revealed herself in jumping to the conclusion that I was implying that because it was her husband who asked me to come and talk at the school and not the school itself that I thought it didn’t matter. That one really came out of the blue. She’d just said that HER child has never been the cause of being called to the school, at which point I said that Scott never had either. That the school had never called me to come and talk about him misbehaving in aggressive and dangerous ways. She cited that meeting we had with them at the school as a case in point for MY child’s parents having been summoned to the school. At this point it seemed important to me that she be aware that it had not been the school that called me and asked for this meeting, that it was her husband. I wanted to point out that this is not typical of Scott, that this child she was creating before me is not Scott. And that if he were, I’d be hearing about it. But she said, “Are you saying that because it was my husband that called you that this doesn’t matter?” And not in a neutral tone, either, it was angry as if she weren’t asking, but was assuming I was. It was like she was assuming me an adversary and wanted to win.

I guess she’s not really friend material; for some reason I’d thought she might be. But she did these things so easily: assumed that because her son is saying Scott’s hurting him that the parents have to be angry with each other too, told me to parent my child differently, and called me in denial. I approached her with the agenda of continuing a civil dialogue and suggesting that we move it to a less loaded venue. She had a meeting and really all I wanted was a way to send her my message of my part of this conversation. She could have just given me that, but she pulled the car over. Her agenda was that she was mad and she wanted to dump it on me. It never seemed to occur to her that parents being in dialogue over a recurring problem with their children does not amount to condoning it if one boy is hurting the other, or for that matter that one boy is hurting another by saying things about him.

I had no reason to be angry with her before. I think I have cause now. Certainly to be cautious of her because I sort of see what she’s made of. I see that anxiety about her child brings on a pretty intense version of ‘mother bear’. She’s just trying to protect her child. And when her mother bear comes out the wrath can be indiscrimminate. It’s interesting that she seems to pass over another place to blame: I would think a parent who believes that a child is hurting her child & it’s not being observed would conclude that the school’s not doing it’s job in protecting her son. She seems to blow by that piece, and rather than dealing with the principal and teacher she has called me. When logic would inform here that I am not at the school. The teachers there are eyes and ears. So if her son is coming home saying Scott hurt him, then why isn’t the school catching this? That seems like a reasonable question. And I suppose she’s leaving the school out of it because the consistent message from the school is: “We have not observed Scott hitting Jack. We have observed them having fun together and being two peas in a pod. We have seen nothing that would indicate that JackJ is being hurt at school.” Because even if she used that to conclude that Scott is very deviously arranging for all of this to be unseen torture, there would still be the question: “Why is my son still coming home saying Scott is hurting him if you’re supposed to be protecting him? You should be watching them every minute to prevent Scott from doing it on the sly.”

The ‘facts’ on the ground as she laid them out are that her son is coming home hurt, injured and that Scott has done it because Jack says he has. So it’s already a given, an article of faith to not be questioned. It’s odd that she so fiercely maintain that stance, that her boy’s story is not to be questioned. Maybe she was hurt as a child by someone who did it stealthily. Maybe she wasn’t believed.

It would sort of go with the symmetry of my history of having been a child that was accused of something and admitted to it from a very confused unorganized place. And then was severely punished.

I do feel a bit of a break in the clouds right now. I think writing this has helped.

People do a lot of things that don’t seem to make sense. It’s evident all over the world how a sort of ‘logic of irrationality’ can take hold and people think they’re angry at people they have no reason to be angry at. When someone feels angry and frustrated, they may not realize their feeling is looking for expression in a target, and to them it seems that the target that does serve as the lightning rod has ‘caused’ the anger and is worthy of punishment. Again that sort of logic of illogic, like Rick’s 2nd wife assuming that since my boyfriend had just been unfaithful to me that I would seek to seduce her husband away.

It’s the lens, I guess, the gestalt. When items in an object line up a certain way, the mind identifies them with whatever it resembles. So if the background is a certain ground, then figures will tend to reinforce it and the whole of it will look a certain way. Similarly, if you CAN shift your attention away from what anchors you to one view and focus on some other items, the whole picture might shift and look different. I suppose it’s when one is at the point of ‘experiencing their experience’ that one might be able to perceive that what seems like reality might be a distortion of the lens and that a shift might reveal quite another picture. I suppose knowing that it’s possible to have a degree of awareness in an environment to be able to be aware of lenses and the limitations of what they reflect, knowing it’s possible yet feeling unable to pull the mind together into a coherent enough entity to actually do it…that’s disheartening. It’s where I’ve been at these past several weeks that I’ve felt at a standstill, which seems to have been marked by that very intense emotional experience I had. I’ve not liked this eddying about period of just feeling a feeling like a weight on me that’s been very constant. Perhaps it’s presence is meant for me to see something about it, or to learn something about my experience of it. Perhaps I used to feel that way a lot. Perhaps it’s the radiation that’s left over from the explosion of my emotions that day. Kind of like the background ‘noise’ scientists have picked up, which is the radiation from the explosion that created our universe. Ambient. OK. This is akin to those experiences where I was recognizing my soul back when I was a child—because a prevailing emotional tone would be present and my whole being resonated with it. I think I’m living one of those times now, where a part of me is exposed. I’m having a direct experience of my Self. It’s very different from the experiences of Self I was having weeks ago. I suppose this is a sort of emotional part of the soul, maybe the mass under the tip of the iceberg, this emotional body. Perhaps that feeling is one I buried because it was intolerable. Perhaps that’s why it’s been so insistently present in these past few weeks. It sure does seem to correlate with my feeling deeply fatigued, yet having trouble sleeping, and just physically feeling sub-optimal.

Jane was in my dream last night, a smiling comforting Jane in sunlight.

Seems like in a way my question was answered, the question about if what I’m doing with this stuff with Kayla is amounting to wallowing. I realize that it is the question and the smack of judgment in it that is to be questioned, and not this tendency to really absorb and incorporate this thing that happened. That’s the true need, and I’m merely hampering it’s function if I second guess whether I should be doing it. Again, there seems to be a large blank spot if I subtract second-guessing from my mental activies and sensing in the world. The second-guessing is the ‘party’ that deserves suspicion. Not the feeling.

One bit of complaint is wishing that I didn’t have to spend my last day before the boys get out of school for the summer being aware that I’m about to have company and should clean the house. If I had my wish it would be that Lou would come tomorrow, just because I hate having his pending arrival in my mind as I try to go about and enjoy this day.

Which is truly a life issue for me: I have trouble enjoying things. I really do. I went back and italicized that. I have trouble enjoying things when there is any kind of tension surrounding it. I have trouble enjoying things when I’m aware that my time is so very short; I have trouble enjoying things when I live in that world where time is so short and everything is an encroachment on it and the awareness of that diminishes my enjoyment of the time I have. The reality of the difficulties at the cutting-edge level of being around two children at their particular ages and stages—the reality of that has affected my enjoyment of my kids and being a parent. Things affect my enjoyment of things. I don’t think I’ve been aware of it in quite this way before. People having a negative opinion of something I’m doing affect my enjoyment of things. Physical discomfort affects it. Certainly the emotional tenor of Gary and me affects my enjoyment of things. This really does seem like a core issue—a sort of irreducible trait that describes me: “has trouble enjoying things.” (The awareness that I have trouble enjoying things also affects my enjoyment of things).

I would like to include enjoyment to my list of traits I’d like to spend my next 50 years with. I want to enjoy my experience of life. I want to take pleasure in it, not feel like it’s so fraught. So what about that—that default behavior to feel my pleasure diminished by certain discomforts. It’s like a certain set of circumstances have to exist before I can enjoy things:

∑ A sense of unlimited time
∑ No sense of obligation interrupting the experience of unlimited time
∑ Decreased level of anxiety (which I guess is always on alert, scanning the horizons for threats, and so is never really quiet. Because I think it may be set a bit too sensitively, so that it’s not discriminating between threat details and non-threat details. In other words, the criteria for ‘threat’ is too low, and I’m letting in a lot of stuff (‘evidence’ that there’s reason to perceive threat) that maybe could be safely filtered out. Could be filtered out but still leave me with a functional alarm system so that I can be my best in situations where the threat for harm in some way is real. So I suppose that can be another irreducible fact of me: I have a heightened anxiety system that registers the presence or absence of certain conditions as a threat to my happiness. I’ve not been aware of the criteria under which I judge something to be causal in diminishing my happiness, and maybe it can use some renegotiating.

For instance, my happiness is diminished right now by the tightness in the upper part of my neck and body, the unpleasant thing yesterday that’s still reverberating, the awareness that Lou will be here sometime and I don’t know if it’s sooner or later, a sense that this time is not enough—it’s not buffering me against the challenges I know are coming. That I’ve had an expectation that this time will provide me with a sense of assurance that I can cope with the weeks ahead with serenity. And since I’m not aware of getting it, I feel anxious about THAT, especially as I feel sad watching the time go.

The thing is that I prize this time. I really do. And I guess I value it maybe because it’s supposed to immunize me from the distress I’ll be feeling that’s part and parcel of two active boys being home when I’m intensely wanting to be inward. I feel anxious if I’m aware of the prized time getting smaller. I guess I’m comparing time -before -the boys -get -home with time they -are -home. There is the notion of having to call forward a part of me to deal with amusing them, tending to their needs, assisting with their conflicts, dealing with their mistakes, tolerating the loud voices, needing to think-on-my-feet and respond appropriately, and that part of me just feels so depleted. That part of me experiences the demands of children as suffering. I think THAT part is not wanting to step forward because it’s just so damn hard. [remember boys, if you ever read this, remember what I wrote in the earlier 50.1 diary. That applies here too, that I love you with all my heart and would never ever consider second guessing you being in my life. You both are indespensible to me, and to my happiness. Someday you’ll understand that the best of children can be tiring sometimes, and I wish I could have been more present for you. That stuff is sometimes heavy to carry.]

Well, this is interesting stuff. Perhaps worldview-changing stuff. It’s ground-making for me to see myself as an outsider would: that I have trouble enjoying my experience of stuff. And the corollary: that my internal tone of anxiety definitely affects what I consider to be cause for diminished happiness. (I guess I’m using the words ‘happy’ and ‘enjoy’ interchangeably) (Wonder if that’s accurate)

Confrontations from awkward to ugly

6/14/07

Alone at last. Got to observe myself in paralysis mode when Crystal and I lingered to talk after the bus pick-up. I really didn’t want to be standing in the hall talking to her but I didn’t know how to claim my space with awkwardness. It’s really the awkwardness—it’s just so uncomfortable I think that’s why people avoid ‘confrontation’. The feeling is SO awkward to be worse than the confrontation issue itself. Some people have been blessed without feeling constrained by the fear of that feeling-experience. I feared activating that feeling today between Crystal and me, and then feared it influencing my day. I guess those were the comparisons I was making: which will result in me feeling best: Tell-Crystal-I’m-really-needing-my-space-and-I’d- love-to-talk-to-her-later (in my mind I’d been calling that “ask Crystal to leave” which seemed more threatening), risking activating the potential horror of ‘that awkwardness’ vs. the discomfort that was already present of wanting to have an ending so I could get to my dwindling resource of time. On top of that the judgmental voice inside me telling me I’m a coward for not just asking for what I want. Then the aftermath of knowing that I’d just given some time away that I’d felt compelled to give, but hadn’t wanted to. Felt my will was weak in ‘agreeing’ to feel compelled. I really felt I didn’t have an option. How do I claim time gracefully? That would be the solution, rather than rely on the other person to sense it’s time to go. I was at the mercy of Crystal choosing the time to leave. We often are at the mercy of Darlene’s timing, as well, which means we’re at the mercy of her choosing her hunger-to-stay over being able to read the subtler cues that would tell most other people it’s time to leave. I think her desire to stay overrides her experiential systems that would be able to pick up on the restlessness, the sense of unease, the context—like sitting down to dinner—and so she really doesn’t see the cues. Short of being asked to leave; that’s really the only ‘cue’ that she would recognize—being explicitly asked to leave. Or guiding her toward the door. She seems determined to leave only when she’s ready to leave. And there’s a prohibition on limiting that power—to make the choice for her would not be greeted kindly, I don’t think. That’s interesting, because this is like a map. The goal in the situation with Crystal this morning was to be alone, where the goal in the situation with Darlene is too often to have-her-leave. A negative goal, an absence goal. In Crystal’s case there are several paths to that goal: Crystal-get-what-she-came-for-and-leave, me-get-interrupted-by-the-phone-or- something-so-she-has-to-leave, or me-ask-her-to-leave. So in other words, I choose between her having the choice of leaving, circumstances intervening and ‘saving’ me from the discomfort of wanting her to go and feeling uncomfortable with saying it, and me asking her to leave. She does it, chance does it, or I do it, are the choices.

Funny that disengagements can be so fraught. I would be willing to bet that there is actually some anxiety over disengagement that’s common to humans. I suppose that’s why we have the small ‘goodbye’ ceremony with each separation. I think some may be more sensitive to it than most, and may feel that any movement toward disengaging that isn’t within her control just raises anxiety and anger as a first responder. Anxiety says there’s an alarm, and because of being unable to tolerate the anxiety long enough to see its cause, labels it as anger.

Funny how I get more and more convinced of anxiety being an alerting system—it’s not the feeling itself: it’s an alert to the possibility of change on the horizon. We have to be able to tolerate it long enough to be able to identify the thing that caused the alert. Otherwise our ‘first responder’ feelings jump in to fill the void, or to project upon the oncoming event. It feels very natural to do that; I think most humans probably go through that sequence in respond to whatever activates them. Some go through it more intensely than others. I think the event on Darlene’s horizon that sparks her anxiety is a hint that someone is asking her to leave before she’s ready. And I suppose what would account for that may be a fear of rejection. That the only way it can be taken if someone is waiting for you to leave before you want to go is that they don’t want you and are ejecting you. And by extension then, YOU are unwantable, wholly and utterly, without hope of redemption.

I suppose that’s a plausible scenario that drives goodbye with Darlene. That she must be in absolute charge over leavetaking to fend off the terror that not being in control of leavetaking has for her. It seems a good guess in Darlene’s sense. She’s left a lot of clues to that regard, that feeling unwanted has been a core theme for her. It would certainly account for some of her behaviors that really do seem weird.

I don’t think this is so in Crystal’s case.

For ME, the event on the horizon is wanting someone to leave. I am stuck between the fear of the discomfort of asking for that, and the discomfort of wanting this thing and having to let someone else decide for me when. I suppose behind THAT in this situation is the event on the horizon which is the possibility of being the instrument of bringing down all those hurt rejected feelings. That if I claim my space it’s tantamount to telling the other person I don’t like them. That it amounts to me rejecting them. That that seems to be the common coin of perception in most social relationships—that any act that has a resemblance to not liking someone is really really bad. And our culture has taken it further, giving victimhood status to the one being left. (Now wait a minute, I was the one ‘left’ a lot in relationships—where was MY culturally sanctioned victimhood status? More later.) So a person considers themselves entitled to be free of any behaviors that have any resemblance whatsoever to rejection.

I really think I have as much a horror of being a reject*er*, as of being reject*ed*. My anxiety is in response to that, I think—I think that is the anatomy of thought that leads up to paralysis in action. Now why would being a rejecter evoke such a horror in me that I’d put up with a lot to avoid having even the perception of being it? I suppose it might be that basic primal fear of being “bad”. Irredeemably wicked. Now is that primal, or is that one an acquired taste? It just seems a little less necessary to survival—when one perceives his/herself as totally dispensible and worthless, that’s a threat of existence, survival at all. If one perceives his/herself as wicked, that sort of seems a step removed. Except there IS an existential component too—that is of belonging in a group. Where of course, one needed to be at one time in order for humankind to have continued.

Later: I just got back from the school. I took the time away to go see a theater performance where this guy has been working with an after-school club and Conrad’s class in putting together a performance. I wish I had been in a better place. I lost quite a bit of time to that, and frankly it wasn’t worth it to me. I even did the quintessential wrong mom thing and left before it was over.

Well, I wrote a letter to Kayla and just wanted her email address so I could send it so I called her. I’d been fearing that she’d developed some sort of adversarial context for hers and my relationship, but I didn’t know that that was true, and I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt—that maybe even if our kids were having trouble we could keep that separate from our relationship. I have put a lot of energy into this where I think others would have blown it off after getting the teacher/principal’s feedback. Now I see that I bent over backward too far and that I made myself a target for a blast of her wrath. (When Connor was in preschool, he was a target of one boy. This was clear to everyone; me, the school teacher and director, the boy’s mom. She and I were able to maintain a friendship throughout and are still fast friends now. It seemed reasonable to me: it wasn’t her that was hitting my son. And she was not personally responsible for each time her son did get past the safeguards and hit Connor at preschool. I gave Kayla the benefit of the doubt in assuming that it was important that she and I keep talking.

At least from where it looks right now it was a mistake to have called her, because I’m dealing with the after-shocks. Even though I know that I’m not a mother “in denial”, and that the picture she is painting is just not consistent with the feedback I’m getting from the teachers and principal, it’s still difficult to know that there’s a person in our community who believes this totally, and in fact is determined to not see it differently.

Basically in the letter I asked her to consider that since what she ‘knows’ is only on the basis of what Jack is telling her, it has not been corroborated by any of the adults who have been watching these children closely, that maybe a six-year-old’s imagination and magical thinking could account for the picture she’s getting from what Jack is telling her. And, when I called it was with the intention only of getting her e-mail address so I could mail it to her and move this discussion to the safer, cooler world of written communication. My weakness was in not seeing the opportunity where I needed to set the boundary: “I don’t think this is safe for us to discuss ‘live’ because it’s so loaded, and I really think we should move it to e-mail if we want to continue this conversation at all.” So I failed to act before the thing slid into accusation: “You are in denial”, and “You need to do something this summer in your parenting to make sure this doesn’t keep happening”. I guess that’s what seems logical to her, that if she believes that Scott’s hurting Jack, then it must be my lousy parenting that’s causing it, and therefore she’s justified to be angry with me, too.

So she scored some good hits on me and I’m aching, even though like I said I know what she said doesn’t square with the facts. I’m not very good at shrugging this sort of thing off, and I’m just going to have to let time soften the impact. The worst thing is knowing that I walked right into that. And right now the consolation of knowing that I walked into it with honest motives isn’t very big.

I think the worst that can come of this is that she share this vision of Scott with other mothers at the school. She doesn’t seem to see that I have a basis to claim that Jack is “hurting” my child in saying these things. There are to be several kindergarten family playdates over the summer, and I imagine it would be awkward if we both showed up with our kids in tow. Hopefully my feeling of scarlet ‘loser mom’ can be shaken off too. What’s sad is I think that she’s not going to let Jack come to Scott’s birthday party, at least as things look now, and Scott wants Jack most of all to come.

Letter to Kayla:

Hi, Kayla

I hope we can still be friends even though something seems to be going on between our sons. I continue to get feedback though that they really like each other, and I’ve gotten several predictions that they’ll find ways to stay friends even when they’re separated next year.

I talked with Ray (teacher) and Ben (principal) after I got your message Friday. I’m writing this because I just don’t trust myself to have this conversation ‘live’.

Will you forgive me and let me tell a story? When I was 5 or 6 I got to briefly play with a neighbor child’s new toy. Later I was approached by my mother and the child’s mother asking me if I’d taken it. Or perhaps they asked me where it was first, but my 5 year old mind heard them saying I had taken it. I could barely even remember holding the toy; I didn’t remember giving it back, and yes, I had taken it so to speak when she handed it to me, so maybe I HAD taken it. They seemed to think I had. Maybe I had. I had a 5 year old’s version of ‘the truth’, which was to own up to whatever you were accused of. Somewhere I’d missed the subtlety of NOT claiming responsibility in an area I’d had nothing to do with. So I believe I told them I had taken it. Then they wanted to know where it was, and I didn’t know. But because they took me literally when I said I’d ‘taken’ it, it appeared to them I was just being stubborn and refusing to give it back. My mother followed me, swatting me as I wandered around our playfield, trying to find it. Later when it still hadn’t turned up they gave up, and mom told me she was going to call the police and I was going to go to jail. The next day I woke and had nearly forgotten about it. I only remembered when my mother remarked that morning, “You cried and cried and cried last night.” Later the neighbor came over to tell my mother that they’d found the toy, right on the pillow of the bed where the girl had left it. Then they praised me and said they were proud of me. But my 5 year old mind didn’t receive this as you or I might today, as an exoneration. I barely was able to connect that day with the day before, and this seemed to have materialized out of the blue as much as the prior day’s events had.

So, for whatever reason, I can remember my own thought processes as a child, at least in that (traumatic) incident, and so it makes me feel cautious about children’s narratives. Because I think their minds haven’t yet begun to discriminate with certainty the objective ‘truth’ from their fantasies and thoughts. They’re also so malleable that when we ask questions to clarify a situation, they’ll agree to what we’ve asked because they think we want them to. I find it extremely difficult to be able to clarify an event with Scott because my very questioning seems to muddy the water. There is a reason that so many abusers of children this age are not convicted is that their only witness, the child, can be confused and their testimony contaminated by the questions of adults trying to figure out what happened.

So I’m sure Ben told you what he told me, which is that Scott was nowhere near Jack when Jack’s nose got bloody Tuesday. I’m sure that he told you that he, and Ray, and the specials teachers have not seen behavior consistent with Scott targeting Jack. After I talked to you last and found that Scott’s hitting had occurred in the music class I went and talked to Suzanne. She said that yes, Scott had hit Jack in an altercation over crayons, and they had dealt with it in class. She observed that Scott and Jack seem to be people who are drawn to each other, but don’t bring out the best in each other. She added that she sees the hitting and pushing and stuff as reciprocal and a feature of their relationship; that it’s between both of them, not just Scott hitting Jack.

So, to account for the discrepancy between what Jack is telling you and what the school is telling you, either the school staff are negligent or stupid in not seeing these things (especially since we’ve all been on alert since we had our meeting). Or, Scott has made a plan to conceal hitting Jack and is picking moments to do it when he knows no one sees. Could it be also possible that it’s accounted for by the thought processes of a 6 year old mind? Perhaps when he tells you Scott has hit him, he’s referring to them playing and being physical at some point in the day when they had some contact, but later in retelling it becomes ‘hitting’. Words can be so ambiguous, just like when as a 5 year old I didn’t know the difference between “taken” and “had briefly but gave it back.”

Anyway, the feedback I get from the school and what Scott tells me each day is that he and Jack are best friends. Scott really wants Jack to come to his birthday party. I’m still planning Connor’s (June 19) so I’m not able to think about his, but I’ll call you in a couple weeks with the details.

I didn’t call you because I wanted to talk to Ben and Ray first. Then after I talked to them I wasn’t sure if it would be useful to talk to you too, since the school year’s just about done and they’ll be separated next year. In some ways it seemed attractive to just let this blow over and let time prove whether or not Scott becomes a serial hitter as he matures. Honestly, every bit of feedback that I get back from the school about Scott assures me that he is not a behavior problem. I’ve never been called on account of him being aggressive, and we know that the school has been watching them carefully. We are going to know each other for quite a while, and since you’d taken the trouble to reach out to me I didn’t feel right just ignoring you. I took a personal risk in doing this.

Sincerely, D,

email@provider.com

1124

Back from book reading group. Feeling some better. Still sort of aching, and the question for me becomes, at what point is this histrionics on my part. That I would ask a question like that is probably indicative of something. But I do wonder if feeling the weight I’ve been feeling, and thinking about it as I’ve been thinking (and feeling the sadness that comes from it), does that amount to indulging it, milking it? Another way I’ve been suspicious of myself. I’m so tired. I think I’ll just get in the hot tub and then go to bed. Tomorrow’s the last day of school for the kids.

The computer is moving so slowly. That’s scary for me, since the other hard drive did just that very thing before crashing.

Deadbeat mom

6/12/07
Tues 1315

Oh, bitterness. Connor home; says he has pinkeye. Worse, it means he doesn’t go to school until later tomorrow since he has to be under treatment for 24 hours before they’ll let him back at school. I’m not taking it with good grace at all, this impingement on my last week of the boys being in school.

I still feel shitty too, just physically. Worse, the call from the school secretary came when I was soaking in the tub for these itchy allergies, so I ignored it at the time, forgot about it. So, not only is there the sort of weirdness about this being the second time they couldn’t get hold of me to get Connor (making me self-conscious about the ‘bad mom’/’deadbeat mom’ category) (at least I wasn’t stoned), but it also meant an hour delay to getting the medicine started or he’d have been able to go back an hour earlier tomorrow.

I’m tired because I was up a long time last night, til past 3, and then it still took me a while to get to sleep. I’d had 2 long sleep nights the nights before, and so I wonder if I just got saturated. I’d taken a benedryl, too, to minimize any itching.

So I’m just bummed at my interrupted agenda at having this time for me. In the last week before I’m home full time with kids.

Feeling sorry for myself and not very gracious.

I’ve been having dreams but waking up with very little to grasp on to to remember.

Later:

Got a call a while before taking Riser for her grooming. From Kayla, Jack’s mom. She asked me to call her about an ‘incident’ today. I called Scott’s teacher, Ray. He said that he hadn’t seen anything, and that other than recess the two boys hadn’t been out of his sight today and it seemed they’d gotten along really well. I asked if the principal might have been watching them for recess, since they didn’t have any specials today. So it wouldn’t have been in music class, or library, or something. The principal had come into the class while I was talking with Scott; said he’d received a call from Kayla and that he’d call her and then we could talk before I called Kayla.

So that was around 3:30, and it’s almost 7:30 now. I hate to leave Kayla hanging, but I really want to talk with the principal before I call her.

And here’s the confusion for me. I was kind of blindsided when I got the message from Paul that Scott had hit Jack in the nose so hard it had bled and bled. For days, even though no one had seen it at school, it had attracted no attention, and Kayla had not felt compelled to track someone down to find out. It seems that it had only come out later that Jack had told her that Scott had punched him in the nose. The blindsided part was that she said that Scott had been aggressive toward him in more than one incident that she’d witnessed before this thing with the punch in the nose. When I talked with her after the meeting I asked her if she’d not told me about those times because she hadn’t felt she knew me well enough. That was the blind-sided part; that she’d witnessed a couple of incidents where Scott was the aggressor but I’d not known about it, and then this thing happens that no one witnessed and didn’t draw any attention at the time, and on the basis of the aggression she’d seen Scott show Jack she believed him when he said Scott had punched him in the nose. So in a way I implied that I’d like to know about these things, but now I’m not sure it’s appropriate that she keeps calling me about them. Because, it’s not like this is happening, if it is, on MY watch. There is little that I can do beyond what I’ve always done, which is to talk to Scott and stress that he needs to keep his hands to himself with his friends. When he’s at school and out of my sight there really isn’t anything I can do, and I don’t feel right about getting after him on the sayso of another 6 year old. So she’s calling to tell me about this stuff, and there’s nothing I can do since I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what to say when I call her, or what good it will do.

So I feel that on one hand I’’m not being very fair to have implied that she “should” have contacted me when she witnessed these incidents of aggression of Scott toward Jack before it (maybe) culminated in the bloody nose that she wanted discussed before the principal and Ray, then now feel that she shouldn’t be contacting me about it.

6/13/07
Wed 1411

Connor’s home today. He complained mightily about his eye, the other one. Said he couldn’t bear the light of day to open them; moaned and groaned. He’s been fine, even took a walk with me.

I really feel drained from not getting the time out during the days this week, and the fact of next week beginning summer disheartens me further.

There was something interesting in the Happiness book about an analogy between ‘real’ seeing vs imaginary. That is, there is stimulation of visual parts of the brain, either coming from the eye (that’s called visual experience), or from the memory (also called visual experience). There is something analogous in emotion; “feeling” and “prefeeling”. Emotion is felt as an immediate response, and also as a response to something generated in memory. Where we don’t usually mix up our visual experiences, object-generated vs memory-generated, we mix up our emotional experiences all the time. And it seems the same ‘policy’ that guides our visual system, that is that ‘reality’ is given precedence over imagination so we don’t mistake what we’re imagining with something that might be there in fact, or emotions work the same way. So someone who is in a funk now may conclude that the future will bring more of the same. Would that apply to the past? Could memories from the past I’m revisiting contribute to a funk I’m feeling now? In transcribing my diary I’m feeling sadness for myself at age 21/22—feeling THE sadness of being unable to be a full participant in the world of romance and often being at the mercy of the men I chose. Could that be influencing my current feelings of being somewhat down? Could that be influencing my low feelings when I consider what’s going on in my immediate future? Sharon tonight, bookreading group tomorrow: good; Gary’s dad coming on Fri, less good; Gary’s mom coming over Sun, less good. Anxiety about money since we’re looking to run out before the end of next week and have several expensive commitments including Connor’s present and party. So that impacts everything from what we can serve for dinner when she comes over, well, for the whole weekend for that matter when Lou is here. It just adds a patina of anxiety to every commitment that we have that’s going to cost money. Besides facing several boys being over here all night for Connor’s party on the 21st. I don’t feel quite equal to the demands. I’m definitely feeling leaned on by Gary about what I’m spending on counseling. Oh yeah, I was going to bring a list of practitioners to Sharon. Something else to do.

I better write down this dream:

I’m in a store adjoining an RCF. I’m working as a PT, & am called in to a meeting on a man who’d suffered a major stroke. He was a very rich man who owned lots of property in No CA. Beautiful land, rich in many things. I’m requested to sit in on a family meeting, and then do a physical exam & eval. The room is absolutely full. There are 2 social workers, other people & family members. There’s a sense as a family they are very dysfunctional—infighting, jealousy. The old man is paralyzed & unable to speak, but his presence is very powerful & his family cowed. He’s glaring. The meeting goes on forever, long past the time I’d go home, & I still have to eval him, which is also lengthy. I finally get to leave. Make some recommendations for discharge. A year or so later he is dead. Someone has been tryng to kill the MSW. There’s talk he’s in danger. Then we’re looking at photos of this man’s spectacular property—the mountains, land & river, than we’re on a raft with the family seeing this place first hand. We learn of a tragedy between branches of the family of a race of 2 rafts on this river, & one foundered at the mouth of the river at Gold Beach. In a big shallow rocked area. It would have to be run just right to do it because it’s shallow & rocky with weird hydrodynamics. We know there was another person, the old family patriarch who’d been swimming in that race. He survived but sustained the injuries. I had a lot of compassion. I was also impressed by the opulent houses along the river we saw. Beautiful terrain & I’m reminded of Eastern OR. There’s a threat on the social worker’s life. He’s received threats including shredded up pieces & an effigy. Then I notice on my records something odd on my tax return. I call & talk to the acting matriarch of this family, & it turns out I’d received some very expensive calculation & waited a while. After making money. Lovely to live there, I say, that that doesn’t account for this extra charge & then the matron calmly says that she ‘has to be’ honest and that it’s a penalty because I made a false statement on my form about her husband’s recovery chances. He’d not done real well, had gotten more and more insubstantial and diminished toward his end days. But apparently I was being penalized by some sort of flitch. “a false statement!” I was horrified—my reputation. I wanted to know how that could be, on the basis of having formally one style table I can tell she had something to the other place the boys go down to the beach, where the other boys are content to play videogames. A stream runs to the ocean, just like the ? (Rogue?) river comes in much more violently. I am very angry with this family & feel stabbed in the back & have a strong drive to clear my name. There’s also a feeling of attraction for this social worker. He’s living with me because the old man’s place seems to have been raided & the SW is in danger.

Then, another dream last night—I remember rearranging some stuff, hooks or shelves to put thing on . I don’t know if it was part of cleaning up after a disaster or something. Then I’m in a large auditorium that’s dedicated to processing real estate time shares. The kind of place where people come and talk with a representative. It’s a very bright building like an atrium, and it’s obviously for upscale stuff. People are very well dressed, and there are lots of sample condominiums around. I’m walking through one of these, and I think waiting to meet Gary.

Discipline questions

6/11/07

What on earth am I going to do with my kids this summer. Yesterday was a sort of preview, though hopefully I’m not going to be feeling not-quite-right all summer. Still, here it is the last week of school. I don’t really feel panicky like last summer.

1415

I’m going to try to work through a decision here. The problem: Connor was blatantly disrespectful to me this morning and I told him I will confiscate his game cube for that.

His friend Allen is going to be coming over this afternoon, a fact I didn’t know when I told Connor I would be penalizing him.

So: do I follow through on confiscating the game cube? That’s something he and Allen really like to do when Allen is here.

I hear these influencers: ‘I have to be consistent with what I said I was going to do, and if his game isn’t available, that will convince him to see the error of his ways and change his behavior next time.’

Along with: ‘I’ll lose credibility if I don’t follow through’, ‘his behavior will deteriorate if he thinks I don’t mean something I say’

So, some motivators being represented here are: fear that there will be bad consequences if I back down on something I said would happen, fear of losing my credibility; fear of a future where he’s insolent and disrespectful in front of others

He threw the dog’s ball straight into the hedge that borders the road. In earlier days he’s thrown the ball toward the road and frightened me terribly because Riser heedlessly will run after it. I fear that she will be hit by a car. I fear that she will suffer terribly, and that not only will the boys suffer grief, but Connor will suffer from blaming himself for having thrown the ball out there.

I yelled at him. I was angry because he did this despite the number of times I’ve told him to not even throw toward the road.

Then he yelled at me. He called me a fat woman. And told me to shut up.

There’s the part of me that is very aware that a lot of how I’m judged is by my parenting, and my parenting judged by my kids’ behavior. There’s a part of me that cares about this. So for a while I felt myself to be under the influence of the possibility that our neighbors could hear how very disrespectful Connor had been toward me. Especially Steve, across the street who was so quick to be harsh with Scott.

I’m aware that most people see something like the way Connor talked to me as requiring severe penalty, or else the child is ‘spoiled’. {“He even lets his kid call him names!”}

I’m aware of a lazy part of me that doesn’t want to deal with the reaction of the boys when they go down to play and the wires are gone (because I confiscated them). I don’t want to have to deal with them potentially being restless and bothering me. This part of me wants them to have something to do so I can have some more me time for the balance of the afternoon and before evening activities kick in. Scott’s usually engaged too, so they’re occupied and leaving me alone.

I’m aware of a part that sees sense in the idea that punishment really isn’t an effective tool. A voice says that my apprehension of that idea is half-baked and it would be foolish to implement it without understanding fully what I’m doing—otherwise it could back fire.

Connor was angry with me for yelling at him. Perhaps he too was aware of ‘neighbors’. The conventional thought is that he has no right to be angry with me for yelling at him when his behavior was the reason I yelled in the first place.

He seems unable to see that his behavior generated this. He doesn’t seem to have connected the dots that mean he knows he’s responsible for his behavior, and responsible for the consequences.

That would be the goal of punishment, wouldn’t it—to get him to change his behavior and to get him to see that he’s dealing with consequences of HIS behavior. To be aware that had he controlled his behavior the outcome would have been different.

Why isn’t it enough, the prospect that his beloved dog might run into the road and get wounded/killed by a car, to guide his behavior? I think that’s where some of the sharpness in my tone came from: the exasperation that he really didn’t seem able to see the possible consequences of his actions. More than that, it was just the plain irritation of having told him multiple times before. Goddammit, why is he doing it a-fucking-gain! (and I acknowledge here that I have a similar exasperation with Gary—he does the same thing over and over). For me that’s part of the crux—it’s the having repeated something a few times and still not have it sunk in. So I don’t have to repeat it. It’s the repetition that stokes my fury. I get angry with having to repeat it more than once.

Though at least with him we’re in male-child-prefrontal-lobe-connections-not-made. Which would increase the risk-taking behavior, and probably the awareness of potential consequences being minimized. But since those connections aren’t complete until about age 30, he can do a lot of damage while immature.

I can’t have him yelling names at me and telling me to shut up.

I suppose though I can try to use my imagination to see that I’m applying the standards that come with my level of experience and maturity to him. Implied in my anger is the expectation that he is like me in his grasp of behavior and consequences in the world. A person who had the same awarenesses of risk as me would be entitled to such punitive behavior as I gave him this morning. I don’t know if punishing him gets me any closer to him having more aware of the consequences of his behavior.

My dad’s theory was that behavior gets appropriate consequences. Misbehavior gets punishment consequences; good behavior praise. Punishing bad behavior shows that there are bad consequences to misbehavior…and I suppose that’s then supposed to generalize over into moral behavior. That if one learns through punishment that negative behavior gets negative consequences, then so will ‘real life’ give bad consequences for bad behavior.

I think the issue might be that I want Connor to develop a strength in seeing consequences in his behavior.

(so what I really learned in my father’s system was that making people angry was in the same league as ‘bad behavior’: that I would be punished if I ‘made’ people angry.)

(though there is a sort of sense in my dad’s system. In that worldview, a parent actually punishes from moral necessity: because this teaches a child that his behavior can cause negative consequences for himself. Just like in real life, negative behavior causes negative consequences. So by extension this is supposed to teach the child to operate with good behavior only. This is true if the child has a clear awareness of the coupling between his behavior and the consequences that came afterward.)

Gary’s inclined to believe that Connor ‘should’ know better and ‘should’ take responsibility for his behavior and ‘not blame others for your behavior.’ It appears that IS what Connor is doing—it appears he is angry because he got called on his behavior, rather than having remorse for the consequences. Gary treats this as a moral failing, and I suppose it is, in an adult. Perhaps what’s happening in Connor is that he’s startled and scared suddenly by the sharpness of my rebuke and that any feelings that may have gone to remorse instead go to anger and resentment.

Perhaps instead of yelling at Connor when he let the ball fly it would have been best to call sharply to Riser, to make sure she didn’t pursue the ball to the road. I suppose that’s a guideline—put my immediate energy toward preventing the consequence I fear will happen. Do that first. Then work on reinforcing awareness of the consequences with my child.

So why do I get so angry when I have to repeat requests. I suppose part of it is because I was expected to internalize things with only a few repetitions.

Is it realistic to expect a 10 year old boy to do something on the basis of being told only once or twice? Gary doesn’t.

Connor seems very sensitive to the notion that something that he did caused something adverse, that it means that he is worthless as a person. I wonder if that’s behind the intensity of his reaction. It’s tricky, the notion of teaching a child how to be responsible for his/her behavior and choices. ‘Responsible’ meaning claiming ownership—“I did that. Therefore I caused whatever follows from that.”

2338

Shit, what a waste of 2 hours. It took the boys nearly an hour and a half to fall asleep; all of us were restless and I just wanted to scream. Then they were asleep, but I still was anything but. Finally cut bait and came in here.

Shadow of Doubt/not ok to want what you want

6/9/07
Sat 1339

I’m feeling a little weird about a conversation with Kevin, Bob, me, Dad. On the phone, my brothers and I talked, and then brought Dad in. About not going to Colo as we planned for the family reunion because it’s beginning to sound too iffy with the illness of my cousin-in-law and the vagaries of people’s schedules.

My cousins husband came down with Guilliane Barre syndrome in March, was very ill. Is currently in a rehab hospital, and supposed to be discharged Tues. He’d set a goal for himself to ‘walk out of there’, and is probably not going to be able to. At least, from the updates that Kammi sends, it sounds like he’s going to have to settle for quite a bit less than that. It sounds like he’s not even able to feed himself yet. We’re 10 weeks from the planned time of the trip. We’ve been kind of asking among ourselves whether or not we should think of canceling the trip for this year and doing it next. Uncle Dan can’t come because of his job situation, Denise may not be able to go, Shelly’s sons start school the week we’d planned this, and it turns out that Laura’s kids do too. Kevin & Joy’s business that they’re starting has kept being pushed back and pushed back and so they may have to not come on account of it anyway…it just seemed like perhaps next year would be better for all of us. And, since we have so far to travel, we stand to lose the most in terms of effort and money if things fall through later instead of us canceling now. And even if they didn’t fall through later and we came anyway, it seems like it would be less than optimal conditions.

Now I see the dynamic at work that I didn’t really understand until reading “Stumbling…” It’s called ‘the ambiguity of the facts’. Meaning the different meanings and shades of meanings that can be pulled out of the same occurrences. So, I could see the frame shifting as we four talked together on the strange system of phone linking, but where conversation is complicated by the fact that we can’t see each other and so sort of run over each other. So at times I’d feel like we were being selfish, robbing Lou of the thing he has to look forward to and to get well for (he’s the type that’s motivated by goals, and per my dad per Uncle Gordon and Aunt Dorothy, this is a goal he’s set for himself.) It also sounds like if we answer that by saying that we personally would be relieved if in that situation someone else took the onus off of us and also took the pressure off.

Here’s the worst-frame scenario: we’re boging on going because we selfishly think we won’t be able to have a good time there if he’s in a wheelchair. We’re selfishly protecting our own interests in not wanting to take the chance that he may need to cancel at the last minute and we’re all left with the penalty of either having to cancel, or the burden of going anyway, but staying in a place that’s much too big for our reduced group (and so having to pay a larger share than what’s expected). Or, that we’re taking the decision out of Lou’s hands and acting unilaterally.

Basically we’re saying that the time just doesn’t seem to have the wind at its back, or there’s a lot going against it and maybe we’d be better able to maximize our enjoyment if we wait a year. That’s really the bottom line for us. We’re saying I guess that we’d rather put our weight behind a more sure bet that it’ll be more enjoyable to go next year when we can eliminate the problem of school starts, and the uncertainty of Lou’s ability to go or not, and the uncertainties of our own lives, and increase the likelihood that Denise and Dan can be there too. Sort of the fish or cut bait notion and deciding to cut bait for this year but plan it for the next.

Trouble is, as we talked to Dad the fact of us talking to him sometimes seemed to take on the frame of us just rationalizing our selfishness.

Later

That’s curious, and there’s two examples of a sort of ‘tyranny’ of the ambiguity of facts: 1) There’s always a way that the most negative aspects of a set of facts can be perceived and 2) the prospect of the negative possibility calls into doubt one’s motives and the legitimacy of one’s choices.

I don’t think any of us are intending to rob Lou’s right of choice in this to make the decision for him. I don’t think any of us are saying that we don’t want to do it right now because Lou’s having been ill will spoil our fun and waste our money. I think we’re saying that we’d rather go with the probability that next year will be a better year for all of us given the circumstances we face now.

I don’t think we should have to take an action to prove that we are not acting out of our selfish motives.

The shadow of doubt seemed to happen when we were talking to my dad; that somehow we were making excuses, or trying to convince ourselves that we weren’t doing something wrong in making this decision.

It’s as if if your reasons don’t sound good then they’re wrong. Or, if any possibility of a negative implication can be cast on it, then you have to do the opposite in order to prove it. Or if any negative interpretation can be made, then you HAVE to do the other because that means it’s the ‘right’ thing to do. I guess it’s a sort of way of being forced into doing something because of being convinced it’s wrong not to.

Building a center of gravity from scratch

6/8/07 Fri 1200

The morning was spent with some errands and a drs appt.

Glancing at yesterday’s notes, I’m reminded of what Gilbert pointed out about projecting our futures that we tend to project our current feelings onto a future scenario, forgetting we’ll be different people then.

I guess I can just leave it at this: I can see some intriguing ways relationships can go, and different ways of knowing people that can be very satisfying because I’m older, because I’m no longer hopeful for a mate when I enter into a sexual relationship with a man. I’m not looking for that. That seems to make some things more feasible.

Still bone tired. Still a bit fuzzy with the Wellbutrin—I think the Celexa did smooth that side effect. I want to try cutting down the wellbutrin too.

OK, so what was that last bit that Sharon and I were talking about? It had to do with making sure I not be abandoned again, perhaps by her. And that led to an intriguing hint about—the way I talked about it was that there was a part of me that perhaps wanted something, an answer, or something, in her current space. And when I couldn’t get to it right away, maybe later didn’t have the same desire any more. But what about the me who had wanted this ‘thing’ before? Has that person been abandoned? Is there a place inside I’m not conscious of that’s aching with that wish unfulfilled, and abandoned? It really does bother me, that idea that something inside didn’t get her needs met, and time has moved on and erased the awareness of that need. That’s what Sharon and I were talking about when I left. It seemed it could be a significant part of working this puzzle. Perhaps I just need assurance that ALL of me is welcome in this New Life. Including the parts that feel inconvenient feelings. That the whole continuum of feelings is acceptable, such as the one that wanted Sharon to have been different, more nurturing when I called when I was in such a state of despair.

I started to write the story yesterday of what might be if the casual acquaintanceship with the young man in the coffee store did follow the path of my fantasy. I don’t really like the way I wrote. And part of that is that I’m not good at filling the details in the in betweens, that they go blank for me unless I’m living them. In my mind there is not a coherent story, or traditional narrative. It’s little flashes of images, and feelings that correspond. {dream last night—trying again to catch an airplane? Inside an airport atrium, lots of transparency and light? Worried about missing a plane…something about garments, or packing luggage, what to take, how to plan} I guess it’s a part of the ‘blind spot’ I was telling Sharon about, where I feel unable to distinguish something significant from its background. So, detailing a fantasy of what might be, just doesn’t come together into words that are satisfying for me. The words that satisfy me are these words, my own journal. I just could not give the time and sense of detail and authenticity to the details of a fictional character that would make her believable—because I’d basically have to be living that person’s life in order to do it; and I’m living my own.

A little later

After some transcribing where I find myself looking into the thought processes that result from not having that clear center of gravity in myself. I suppose that having been raised the way I was, steeped in middle class 50’s/60’s mores and as a christian, THAT was supposed to have been my center of gravity. When I turned away from that I again have to notice that I was very vulnerable. I really didn’t have a sense of orientation, or of what was driving me. I was very critical of myself for that, whereas now I can see that a new center of gravity doesn’t just spring up fully formed when another one is turned away. I’d had to start later to form my own sense of gravity, and I had to start from scratch. I only knew how to accept a center of gravity, not build one. This is the person I was when I was 21 and just out of physical therapy school. I also want to say that I can see that it took a lot of courage to forsake the ‘known’, the ready-made center of gravity. To do that was to truly go into the unknown, and it was to go into the unknown unarmed. What’s happening in this part of my life with John W. is the way it looks when one’s center of gravity is being formed.

Another thing I see exemplified in that short span of time when JW was a concern is that dynamic of wanting to want to go, but feeling unable. The feeling that something that was promised WILL be there if I only wait long enough. The agony over fishing or cutting bait. That was exemplified in a dream I had with Sharon, too. This paralysis between feeling I should go, but wanting in my heart to stay for what was offered. It being intolerable to leave, but intolerable to stay without gratification.

A little more immediately, I just talked with Gary to get the news that he’s got to work this weekend. So I’m bitter about that; I guess the single-parenting aspect weighs heavy on me. I’m kind of suffering from feeling I’m in this by myself, again. And feeling bitter about the chunk The Company is taking from us as a family. With the lions share of the family load shifted to me. And I guess that the crux of my pain about this is that no one knows what that means on a detail by detail level, how that feels. Especially when I’m just not feeling so well. Shit.

Well, as I read and write further, I see echoes of the child in me that Thursday crying, “I’m sorry” in this situation with a man. The feeling bereft, and where supplication only seems to make it worse. I can see how I blamed my self, how quick I was to blame myself, and how quickly I blamed myself for even the impulse to supplicate. I blamed myself.

Telling the Truth

6/7/07
Thurs 1122

Not sure where to begin. I should have shared with Sharon that I’ve been taking comfort in the thought of seeking an affair again. The thought of it has lifted my mood…or in flashes of small intervals it does.

I think I’m confused inside by the range of feelings within me. In given situations where people would have a different response in the nervous system, or a different experience and response of that, that I kind of resonate across the spectrum. That’s why I’ve often felt uneasy and even dishonest when someone wants to know if I’m feeling positive, and I am, largely, but can’t quite disown the little bit of me that could possibly be dissatisfied.

Today for the first time I thought of this, (writing in my journal) as work. Feeling anxious about ‘not getting to work’, and any delays.

I do feel like I’ve kind of been eddying about; an aimless feel (a flash of last night’s dream. Ambient color seems to be orange. Seems like being on board and below deck on some sort of yacht. But there’s something else I just remembered, and it’s about coming ‘home’—I’m not sure if it’s my home or not—if I’m just going visiting. It’s a round structure, mounted on a single pole. The house is more or less at ground level, perched on this pole which is below ground level. It’s like this is a garage or something, an area where I parked, and I’m looking up at the infrastructure of how the house is anchored to the pole. It looks very solid, and flexible. I see it closely.). I suppose part of it is that I’ve just not been feeling so well. On top of that the treatment lotion I’ve been putting on some precancerous lesions on my face has really ‘eroded’ my skin. Big red blotches that are kind of painful.

Another little break. Took the dog out to throw the ball; checked an e-mail on the desktop.

I’ve been having disrupted sleep too. So I’ve not been getting all of it that I need.

Gary says he wants to see a counselor. Another interruption: it was him. Not much to say, no enthusiasm.

So, things have seemed in a fallow period as far as therapy with Sharon is going. I don’t really like fallow periods because it’s hard to not be taken in by the illusion of remaining in place. As in no progress. Some of what we said yesterday was intriguing though…something again about a part that doesn’t want to let go, or be abandoned. Or wants to make sure it won’t be abandoned. Perhaps that’s the part that I hear in the chorus of emotional notes—the one I feel anxious about because it seems ‘small’. The part of me that felt embarrassed to tell Sharon that among other feelings I’d had when talking to her on the phone after that emotional crisis was the feeling of awareness that she hadn’t been warm and nurturing; hadn’t responded with, “You should come in right now!” Or some version of that. Part of me is embarrassed by that voice, and I was able to tell Sharon about it a little—and I felt kind of empowered after that truth-telling. (I suppose whenever I’m in a slack period like this, that paying close attention to telling the truth would be a good way to spend it). The fact is, that voice was there, and was a little present when Sharon asked me if I’d had any feelings around the phone call. So I told her. That kind of truth telling is scary because of the anxiety that it will trigger the other person’s anxiety about having not been enough, and that anxiety would feel intolerable to me. That kind of resembles the way I feel when I’m contemplating ending a call that the other person doesn’t seem ready to terminate. I feel afraid that my saying so will bring up a defensive response in them (‘does she think something’s wrong with me because she wants to disengage first?’ and then ‘how dare she’), and that their anxiety will magnify mine and reverberate and it will be very uncomfortable , even if we do what is likely: we’ll say nothing about it, just act like everything’s normal. That’s the usual way that social discomfort is handled. For me it’s like something comes up and I feel funny about ignoring it because it feels like disowning it—and it also feels like a lie. And I fear my anxiety over that awareness triggers the other person’s anxiety and it becomes very sticky and painful.

I suppose that’s what chemistry’s about. I think some people just trigger each other’s anxieties and they can’t get past them.

With Sharon I was able to begin to talk about a continuum of emotions about any given situation, from the most childish (‘give me, give me, comfort me”) to the more socialized—of having appreciated her telling me that she fully resonated with what I’d said on the message. I suppose this is what has troubled me all my life—is that I can’t really experience any emotion without feeling within me the whole range, and some of them have felt ‘unacceptable’. Like the child who felt resentful that she didn’t drop everything to come comfort me.

I guess this is about a certain part of me not wanting to be left behind, or ignored, or punished again. I suppose this part wants to make sure she’s on board, and that moving into a new way of Being in the world doesn’t mean abandoning her again.

I did talk with Paul last night. I was the last one left in the coffee shop so we talked a bit about books and writing. I suppose I felt a little constrained because of the knowledge that he didn’t have: that I’d had sexual fantasies about him, and that they’d even begun with me taking a moment like this one to talk to him. But it did seem that certain things I’d have liked to have come to mind as we talked that would have brought some more life to the conversation—didn’t come to mind. I got the feeling of wanting to be able to feel more freedom in conversing that maybe he had a similar experience? We had some silences, but we still stayed in conversation until the phone rang and that was the end of it. He talked about liking to write about people and relationships, because he felt his stories helped him learn new things about himself. There just didn’t seem to be an opening last night that might have made it logical and non-intrusive to ask him more about that. To have words and manner to open that pathway a little further. Still, it was nice to establish what in common we do have about books and good literature is that we get parts of ourselves explained to us. Or articulated—something we’ve been trying to understand maybe gets some light shed on it. There’s something very satisfying about that to me, and apparently to him as well. I mean, in reading literature we separately get that satisfaction—not satisfaction in our talking that night. Not THAT kind of satisfaction anyway.

So I’m imagining writing this as a story, writing it as if it’s a journal entry or series of them, the ideas I had yesterday.

Make a story out of the fantasy; imagine the conversations that could occur.

I guess ideally my mate is supposed to be the one I can talk with on that level. In fact, as a couple of days have passed since I first had this idea for a fantasy and then wondered about using it as a platform from which to launch a series of conversations and then make a book about it…it seems pretty outlandish. Like it’s not even possible. Just so outside the realm of possibility that I should feel foolish for even thinking of it. Yeah, right, like eventually I’m going to approach the young man in the coffee shop and ask him to talk to me about his genitalia, and his relationship to them?

It’s just that I got a glimpse of the conversations that could result if that were done right—the right channels gone through to not arouse defenses, to make it possible and even right? And it seemed possible that two people could cooperate in it as a project to see what would happen? Two people who are not interested in mating—in some ways it seems that would be a more appropriate venue than the purported intimacy of marriage. Just being friends, but with this component added?

I’m probably going to be embarrassed by this someday. See it as a last gasp of fading hormones, predatory matron, young kid half her age.

Funny though how the image, the thought in the back of my mind of making a story of this buoyed me up. After starting to make some effort to write it I just feel kind of deflated and let down. Again, I’ve been feeling pretty flat lately, and to have the one thing that had a sort of optimism to it has deflated some to seeming like a really silly idea.

Still, it’s a gain to have the older, less generative sexual fantasy of forced exposure morph to this one, which is much more celebratory: Instead of imagining my sexual gratification through the aggressive tendencies of some guy forcing a woman to reveal herself, instead it becomes sexual pleasure at the thought of exposure in a way that’s voluntary and not twisted. For one thing, in the new fantasy, I get the direct benefit of the act, not experiencing it vicariously through someone else and the sense of insatiable curiosity and pleasure gets to stay. The idea of finding someone to do that with is a change toward buoyancy. A nudge in that direction. I picture a younger guy, perhaps, who is susceptible to the depth of an older woman who is at home in her sexuality and thus drawn…someone who is not in a monogamous relationship and would like a sexual adventure as part of his history. There must be someone out there.

Funny that I have absolutely no interest in pursuing this with Gary. For one thing I don’t think it’s possible for him; that the same constraints that keep his world-view intact also inhibit his sexuality so that very little of that energy gets through. For another I’m not attracted to him.

meditation about details

6/5/07 1003 Wed

I seem to be involved in a long meditation about details. Listening to an account of the 6 Days War it sounds so clean: Israel swept into the Sinai and routed the Egyptian army; Israel moved forces into the West Bank and took East Jerusalem which had been under Jordanian occupation since 1948. I get this picture of a body, with cells in the middle just doing what they do, and then the cells on the outer boundaries that are involved with the interface with whatever is out there. I’ve been very content to be a cell on the inside—NOT at the cutting edge. The Israeli army was the cutting edge—where the battles were fought and the individual cells were dying and suffering. I also have been having thoughts about symbols, and metaphors, how on one hand they’re very real, but on another when taken to abstraction then they kind of disappear. For instance the segment on the ‘reunification’ of Jerusalem and how the Palestinians and Israelis have remain defacto separated. A dr interviewee said the only time she has contact with Palestinians is at work where she and Arab drs and other medical personel work closely together. “Outside the hospital”, she said, “We are separated”. I imagined the inconsistencies in that—picture them at the boundary of outside and inside—one step out the door: “We’re separated”, step back in “Look we’re together again” back and forth. At the level of boundary it becomes silly. Yet the abstraction of all the weight of resentments and suspicions is very real, once they leave those doors and carry themselves out into their city.

Another more personal example is what I was talking about yesterday just before stopping, about my sexual fantasy morphing into more of an intimacy fantasy. On the one hand we are talking about body parts. Yet if such a thing were possible (see—there’s an example too; on the one hand we’re talking about physical objects, and on the other there’s a sort of prohibition-charged atmosphere about it, where it would be very weird to bring something like this up) I think I could only embark if we’d shared a couple glasses of wine together or something.

It would be a unique thing. Not really a date, no part of a search for a mate, but an experiment to see what happens to two people if they talk at a detailed level about genitalia in general and our own in particular. What our environments did to shape our experience with these small parts of our bodies that are weighted with such significance. What has that weight of significance done to other people? Did they even feel it, were they taught it? Was there a weight of prohibition; were they objects to long for and lust after in and of themselves, or was it just part of a larger impulse toward sexual activity? I really would like to ask someone these things. I’d like to see what having these kind of talks would do to a friendship—would it make it tight?

I’m not feeling so well today. Kind of congested and achy, the skin above my lips and below my nose on fire from a topical treatment I’ve been using to get rid of some basal cell precancerous lesions. I didn’t realize that it would cause such discomfort. It’s very visible too, very red. If a little stray hair brushes across it it’s very uncomfortable. Scott keeps wanting to touch my face and that makes me a little crazy-irritated at him.

Later 1225

Feeling a little poor physically—that kind of dragged-down-low energy feeling, and perhaps a lowgrade fever. That might have been just because I’d just gotten out of the tub.

I’m feeling kind of mournful. A little sad about Scott and glad for him that he has the summer to be a bit more of a free spirit. I think this school year probably required more from him than it did other kindergardeners. I feel sad when I imagine being inside his little body, not really connected to what’s going on, yet wanting to please.

I finished the book. It’s true, that it’s not about finding happiness, but about what goes wrong when we’re on our search for it. In speaking of happiness we’re talking about making decisions that set the course for our futures. Ideally, our past experience helps guide us away from mistakes we’ve made before, and our imagination sets the goal. Whenever we’re making a choice we’re comparing how we feel now to how we’ll feel when we get it. How much value it will have to us. And our imaginations tell us that.

There are so many slippery details to try to get hold of: first of all, a definition of happiness—does it have to be future-based? A lot of this book seems concerned about our efforts for future happiness, and making the choices that steer us there. What about current, present-day happiness. That seems separate and independent of the kind of future happiness which seems to be about how you’ll feel in your setting, job, and companions. That seems ‘outside oriented’. I don’t think this book concerns itself with inner happiness as a background emotional structure.

That said, I can accept the premise of the book which is to demonstrate, with research supporting, that the things we think will make us happy don’t. This is through choices made that are distorted by the ‘limitations of the imagination’ (Realism, ‘the tendency to fill in and leave out details without our knowing’), presentism (projecting the present into the future and not seeing the details we’re missing, or assuming present emotions as a given in the future to fill in those details), and a failure to realize that ‘things will look different once they happen’ (rationalization). Since we are making our choices from such an unstable base (not able to see all the facts, projecting our current feelings into the future, not realizing that things may look different than we’re dreading once we get there, making comparisons based on mistaken thinking) we are bound to miss our target.

His solution is that when you want to do something, find someone who’s already done it or is doing it and observe their happiness level. That this is the best objective way of getting that information on which to base your choice.

Part of the book that I think might be influencing my mood right now is that it seems to strip my illusions of happiness and make them seem pretty mundane, and sort of doomed from the beginning. Here’s the hypothetical, and actually it has been making me feel ‘happy’, or elated: the possibility of an attraction between me and a young server at the coffee shop I go to. (I suppose there’s always a way I’m considering possibilities when I meet men independent of Gary and outside of our normal circle of friends). This on the basis of a certain attentiveness in the way he looked at me last time, an awkward exchange that had a ghost of entendre, and the fact that he’s a writer, and that he writes about people’s relationships. From this my mind fabricates an engaging friendship where we talk very intimately about a topic that is pretty universally uncomfortable. That we continue to like and appreciate each other, and the uniqueness of that kind of relationship—the mismatch in ages, but the purposes of this relationship very different from mate-seeking. A relationship for the sake of friendship’s intimacies, and a corresponding mutual pleasure exploration. Of course this looks really good: I imagine us in his place, and it’s simple but very comfortable with beautiful light. I imagine him being very comfortable in himself and solid in his liking for me, without weird constructs of shame causing ambiguity. In other words, he’s as warm and welcoming as he is now when I come in as he is when we are alone. Perhaps the discussion becomes mutually arousing and we explore sexual avenues. Perhaps it stays in the realm of warm friendship. Of course this is predicated on the theory that warm friendship and intimacy is the result of talking about sex on such a basic cutting-edge level. Talking about what actually happens to us, being unafraid to show it because it’s a project we’re working on together.

It’s a little embarrassing to write that down, but that’s the gist of it. I wonder how he’d feel knowing he was the object of that sort of fantasy.

And there’s no denying it brings me a sense of elation, pleasure at the thought of its possibility, the thought of trying the waters a little and seeing if they open up. I guess the delusion that if I’ve selected him than it’s because there’s already the possibility of something like this between us, and it’s likely to go somewhere.

Time to read back over the last week and record my dreams.

Dream for 6/5/07

I am asked to join some sort of elite magic school, or maybe I become eligible somehow & gain someone’s attention. (This is a magic school like Harry Potter kind of magic, not magician stuff.) When setting up at the school I’m met by a man, a little older than me. He shows me where my locker is. For a while, we both have our heads inside it, talking, & there’s a sense of warmth, attraction, curious intimacy that’s warm. Perhaps he’s driving & I follow him—it seems we’re in 2 cars—his very large & fancy SUV. He mentions it’s to carry all his kids. I ask how many he has, with the context of having that in common with him that I have kids. He doesn’t say specifically, but just says, “Lots. So many it’s like I’ve kidnapped them.” I tell him he’s lucky to have lots of kids.
It’s a setting sort of like orienting at a new job. Then it’s as if this isn’t something about magic school, but more about clandestine, like I’m CIA. But I’m on Willamette BLVD, the east end of it.
Something about how someone has bypassed or sabotaged something like an important source of fuel & I’m trying to find out as part of the job.
I have a mental image of the big sloughs—Bybee Lake, etc, in North Ptd.

Awakened by Connor coughing. At first not completely awake but finally resigned to having to get up & get him something for his cough so he can sleep. I’m getting up, wryly noting that Gary hasn’t initiated it (back to the always on nature of my job—and then he, Gary, says, “Are you getting him some medicine?’ Sigh. “Yes”. “And some water?” “YES” (duh)
It’s irritating that I’m doing the legwork, yet he then contributes to his own feeling of ‘contributing’—his illusion of contributing, by telling me how to do it. Pisses me off, since I know his memory will tell him that this ‘contribution’ made him an equal partner in parenting & I have no right to complain about his lack of support. He can probably count the number of times he’s been up with the boys on one hand.

Later—on waking

Going somewhere by air—Christmas. Spent a lot of time re-packaging a gift for Kaiden Kaden (funny, I wrote it that way on the card in the dream)—it was a gift someone else—maybe Scott hadn’t wanted & I realized it would sound to Joy like re-gifting, so spent a long time working it around to defeat that impression. Then realized on the way to the airport I’d forgotten it & was upset—no time to go get it. I was with a woman who seemed really disgusted with me, like that was just what she’d expect of me.
We go to a store before getting on a plane—in a hurry, but we’re offered a chance to go thru an aviary on the way out. Denise is with us. Part of it is we step up on a block & have our heads next to a bird. Denise was perfectly at home. Dave a little uncomfortable & trying to be funny about it, pulling his windbreaker over his head.
Oh, and then something real curious—something about Denise’s vision—having been doubled by “extreme anxiety”, & THEN that double vision sort of melding into just one, so it appeared she was cured, but it actually represents a worsening, even if the symptoms seem to improve

Last night’s dream:

Not much remaining in memory. Slept hard until waking. Something about a gulch of some kind, and walking on the bottom of it somewhere, and gaining altitude. With a group of people, can’t remember who. A man waiting for me at the end. Is it Jeff? If not, Jeff did appear earlier in the dream. A sense of working to accomplish a purpose together, though not quite the intimate feelings I’ve had with him in dreams before. It was more like that had to be set aside, or maybe doubt if it had been there? Maybe just missing it, behind the feeling of needing to get something done; perhaps wondering if it was still there for him. It seems there was some other dark-haired man in the dream too who was important.

What do we base our choices on?

6/5/07 1112 Tuesday

I didn’t give myself much time to write. And oh shit, I remember I still have to put it off since I haven’t prepared the bread I’m making. Always something delaying…

OK. Back.

Except I left my dream journal in the other room. I’ll get it later.

Last night was the first night of active dreaming (active in the sense of me writing it down) (but they were clearer dreams to remember) I’ve had this week.

Curious to get a glimpse of feeling such despair inside as that experience almost 2 weeks ago, and then not much since. Not much, I mean, in terms of new insights yielded—follow-up I guess is what I mean. That’s fueled by a belief that I ‘should’ have been able to get more mileage out of such an experience like that: that treasures ‘should’ have been yielded. Yeah. I guess having had something like that I had an expectation that there would be something to explain what it all meant/means.

Again, meaning has been a problem for me; in some ways I’ve been like a child in terms of being a passive inert piece of whatever has been going on in the world around. Facts and actions that I should be alert to because they’ll aid me in conducting my life intelligently I haven’t been alert to. I’ve missed their significance; they seem to be merely a backdrop to the life I’ve lead. I certainly was that way as a child; now as an adult I experience a bewildering ‘blindness’ to what deserves attention and what doesn’t. The discriminating sense that pulls something out of a background blur of facts is weak in me. I miss things because of that. Daniel Gilbert talked about ‘exploiting the ambiguity of facts’. True, we don’t relate directly to the world, we relate through the image in our minds that we have of the facts. We take in information, build a representation of it inside, and then relate to that. Therefore, facts are subject to many interpretations, and our minds ‘exploit the ambiguity’ by coming up with the interpretation that is most favorable to us, yet convincing us that we’ve arrived at these conclusions through credible, objective means (so we can believe our facts are real).

At this point in the book, I wonder how one can even function let alone chart a course toward happiness. His contention is that in trying to choose what will make us feel best that we are often going on less than reliable information. And it’s just the limitations of our sense organs that make it so. Ways our information is unreliable is the extent to which we are entrenched in “realism” (‘the belief that things are in reality the way they appear to be in the mind’), “presentism” (‘the tendency for current experience to influence one’s views of the past and the future), and “rationalization” (‘the act of causing something to seem or to be reasonable’). The way we make comparisons in a way to inform ourselves can also be erroneous, or limited to only a few of many possible ways. (what were the two main types of comparisons he was talking about—comparing with the past and comparing with the possible. (I can see how advertising is geared to just that moment of comparison and choice, and relying on positioning their product so one is more likely to make a comparison that will result in the purchase of that product). (contexts affect comparisons) And we’re usually in a trap of making choices based on making comparisons that are appropriate to NOW and not the comparisons we might be making in the future. We make choices based on comparisons that may not apply to conditions just a little later.

In other words, we have to know what our REAL choices are, to make the most accurate comparisons, or that is the comparisons that most accurately reflect future conditions? This is the something new I’m getting from this book: the unit of measurement toward our goal of happiness is comparison, and its companion choice. And frequently we don’t even have awareness of the true basis of the choices we’re making; what comparisons we’re making and from what vantage.

A question that arises from that is in application to my own life. What choices and comparison processes need to be illuminated? What about the moment-by-moment micro-choices?

Another factor that keeps us from making choices that accurately reflect our deepest aspirations is rationalization. Now I just don’t see how anyone can get around that. The way he describes rationalization I get an image of a multitude of people, all walking around sealed into their own experience, which they’ve taken care doesn’t create too many bad feelings for themselves. Everyone has a mind that looks only for the facts that prove its own preferences. How on earth can anything get done? No one has accurate information that way. It’s like people walking around enclosed in their own mirrors, seeing mostly what they want to see, and being with only people who tell them what they want to hear, and seeing ‘facts’ selectively so that contradictory information doesn’t get through. How can any buildings be built, or any of the infrastructures of civilization, when people relate to each other through such a fog?

This, by the way is just what has plagued me most of my life: accusing myself of not being fair, not taking in facts that contradict my wishes (selective fact verification). It’s why I’ve been deeply suspicious of myself my whole life and accused myself of not behaving from ‘good’ motives.

In this situation I can see how in Darlene’s reality I have the appearance of a troubled young girl who because of flaws in me cannot take in her kindness and generosity. And I would be willing to bet that to her, the ‘facts’ support that view. Ugh. In the world she lives in, she’s ‘right’. (Just as I seek to be ‘right’ in the world I live in.) I guess it makes me uncomfortable that there may not be an outside objective standard, which if we are measured against would declare me ‘the right one’. I suppose subconsciously I have looked for this, and I’ve been very distressed by the notion that maybe I’m not.

How, as humans, do we get around these limitations and live effectively? This seems completely unsustainable.

To back up to Darlene, I made a phone call to her today. I’ve reconciled that we will be going as a family to see the exhibit, and somehow doing it with Gary seems a little less unpleasant than doing it as an outing that’s to be a shared experience with just her and me and her friend Kerry. Like I said, I couldn’t remember if she said ‘Kerry” or “Gary” in her message. For some reason I heard the word “Kerry”, and when I heard that my mind was flooded with a picture of Darlene, Kerry, and me on a social outing with all 4 kids—so I didn’t hear her say, ‘and everyone’. At least that’s what I think I remember her saying, but in that mistaken impression I had, I guess I attributed the ‘everyone’ to mean our family and Kerry’s. I guess that’s kind of a case in point about the ambiguity of facts, and how they can shape the present from which I make decisions about the future.

It was when I realized she probably was including GARY, not KERRY that it seemed a more palatable venture. I guess the doing-something-as-a-family model seemed a little more comfortable. Very possibly because Gary can do most of the work of her care and feeding.

All these things I’ve just written reveal the distancing I’m experiencing toward the generosity I had toward her a month or so ago and where I am right now. Again I wonder at that change. I worry it has unpleasant consequences, like she notices the lack of warmth in me now compared with before and so may be ‘selecting facts’ that support me as a hostile (and therefore wrong)? And that that could predispose events toward an unpleasant outcome?

Anyway, back to the conversation. I hung up, and I initiated ending the call. And as usual it’s difficult to make an ending with her without this sense that I’ve cut her off or been rude in some way. It’s because there are no logical endings in the time frame I’m thinking, and so I have to make one. Which means I’m spending part of the call feeling uncomfortable because

a) I’m not really a participant because she doesn’t leave room for participation. Or to put it more kindly, conversation at her scale moves much more slowly than mine, so the timeframe in which I’d feel it’s appropriate for a true participant to respond is far shorter than hers. I guess her pace moves at a glacial rate in comparison to the one I normally operate at. A lot more has to come out of her before the opening shows up for the other person to respond.

b) So I’m bored with the conversation

c) Or I’m frustrated by not being able to say something when it’s pertinent

d) I’m looking for a way to disengage that meets what I imagine are her standards of respectful

e) I’m feeling uncomfortable with mySELF for feeling caught and unable to extricate myself. I feel like I’m a wuss, or my ‘boundaries are weak’ because I’m not taking charge and ending it when I want to.

All of the above means that making a phone call to her involves planning and a bit of ginning myself up. And it comes down to my experience of her as being a demand. As much as the boys. I think that’s what seems to get me the most about parenting, is the demands. And the urgency of them. Well, I suppose a demand has its own built-in urgency; otherwise it might be a request. I suppose that’s the difference; a demand seems mandatory. It drains me.

Demands drain me. Back to the theme I’ve been working; I’ve felt keenly the demands of being a parent to two active sons, and I feel I haven’t had the support from Gary to help sustain me while I meet the demands (including the demand that I teach them to distinguish their needs so that they don’t ALL come out as demands).

So here’s the crux of the conversation with Darlene. Discomfort over it being Connor’s birthday 2 weeks from today. It’s like Gary’s homecoming: the difference between the way it’s ‘spose to be with how it is. In a happy extended family there would be no qualms about grandma coming and sharing the family birthday celebration. I feel a block inside when it comes to that with Darlene; a real stopping when I imagine calling and inviting her to come on Connor’s actual birthDAY. The thought of having her here on the day he turns 10 (like really she should be, if we were that type of family, and maybe a couple weeks ago I might have thought we were and invited her.) really chills me. I think about it in terms of Connor not really liking her, and that it might be a blot on his special day that she be here. Just this funny feeling of wanting to close ranks, which ideally I shouldn’t have. Ideally, it should be happily anticipated that of course grandma’s coming over to be part of the family celebration. I don’t know if that’s an excuse, about Connor. There’s something about him having to share his day with her. Yeah. I honestly do think that she will require a certain something that I’d like to be entirely available for him, and I’d like to not feel conflicted about it as is likely to happen if she’s here this year. Maybe feelings toward her may have shifted by next year that it will feel different and appropriate to invite her.

There’s a part of me that feels guiltily transparent, that if she thought about it maybe she would take it the way most people would: that she’s been excluded from the inner circle of family celebration where she should have a place. And that I did it out of some kind of meanness or ill will.

(In light of the happiness book, how can I understand this. I wonder if I’ve made my comparisons and choices based on a place that might not be the best vantage? [In other words, am I wrong for having made that choice?] Here’s what I’m comparing—I’m comparing Connor’s birthday evening with her presence with Connor’s birthday evening without her presence. I guess that’s a side by side comparison. And I suppose I see there being greater gains likely in not having her here on that particular night. So, that night, what will my comparisons be? I suppose my two-weeks-in-the-future self…will feel the same.

I should just finish reading the damn book, to see if he sees any solutions to the warped view of reality that is our lot in life: can we REALLY see clearly enough to make informed choices, ever?

OK, here’s a thought. This one is about associations, which I’ve been mulling over. {Interesting how a lot of the the dissection of thought processes and analysis of the units of our decision-making resonate with much of my own experience in trying to understand myself all these years. It seems that some of these limitations I’ve been so keenly aware of all my life—difficulty planning, mistaking people’s meanings—have to do with the limitations of the human psyche and nervous system infrastructure that we all have.} So this thing about associations is how our brains can be fooled into erroneous conclusions. We often assume that something comes readily to mind because we’ve had many experiences with it. When it may not be that at all, but instead it’s because our mind works with more ease in retrieving it—it is easiest for the mind to think of it that way. And, when we can access a memory with ease, we assume it is common, happens a lot. It may merely be that our brain happens to work most easily that way, not because of frequency. Then, because events that distinguish themselves are also the ones most likely to be easily accessed by memory, and so those can be associated with a classification of events that happen a lot.

We tend to think of things that come quickly and easily to mind as being things that happen a lot. I guess that’s what I was trying to say in that clumsy paragraph up there.

I suppose this would explain why when Gary comes home from work by 6:30 it’s such a rare occasion that it stands out in his mind and he is fooled into thinking he does it ‘all the time’. I’ve been baffled before when he says things like that.

Later

‘Nother page, for a different topic.

A fantasy:

I approach a man I know to be a writer, and perhaps an artist. I suggest an idea for a book. My idea is that he uses a project of using my vulva as a painting subject, and that he keep a journal, or maybe even a blog of the project from start to finish.

As I was thinking about this I had ideas for all sorts of conversations that I may never have an opportunity for. To be able to ask a friend who is on the other side of the gender, but is truly not in consideration to be a lifelong mate all kinds of questions about what sexuality is like from the point of view of the gender. What was it like as a child. How did boys see themselves in regards to sexuality—I regarded them as somewhat predatory (and maybe that’s what I modeled my fantasies on, identifying with the aggressor. Have I put it this way before? I wanted to see my friend’s vulva. It was fascinating to me and I couldn’t get enough of the feeling that it gave me to look at and to think about It. (Somehow “it”–little i– seems to be the wrong designate. It seems disrespectful. “It” doesn’t seem much better. Deal with that later.)

I wanted to see my friend’s vulva. I wanted to see how it felt (A few moments later: I think what I meant by that is that I liked the feeling that came with looking into my friends’ genitals and wanted to feel that feeling again/some more.) It was supposed to be wrong for me to want to look, for her to want to show me, for us to cooperate in doing that. There was a hard, kind of Bible-belt-like judgment on that which was pretty harsh. My longings found their way into expression by having, through fantasy, through no fault of my own, the experience of looking into her vulva. (In the fantasy I’d be able to look, but not be responsible for having done it) How? By her being forced to expose it, for him (the aggressor in my fantasy) and also for me. Really modest girls brought this out in me. Girls who desperately didn’t want any part of their body that have become sexual fetishes of our society exposed. It was the level of desperation about it, the level to which they cared so intensely, the issue that some sort of permanent stigma and worthlessness at stake—that’s what awakened this in me. Perhaps it was the whole risk life-n-death aspect of it that sharpened the intensity of my desire. I was ashamed of this for years and years and years.

I never have talked with anyone about this, on this level, where it’s a topic of conversation, fully relaxed-into conversation, not a charged and embarrassed subject briefly touched on and shied away from. I’d like to be able to do that, and I’d need a man who was able to do that. I’d just like to know what it was like for him as a male. Did HIS genitals feel like targets to be denied the consumption by a predator? And, in regards to girls’ genitals, WAS he a wolf in search of prey? That looking at it was some sort of objective he felt an impetus toward?

Essentially, I think I could get away with that. Just ask to have such a conversation with someone suitable. I think the payoff I’m imagining is a warm intimacy at having someone that it’s possible to talk about these things with. I’ll bet no one talks about it on the level of their early experiences with just the feeling, what conclusions they drew from them, what it is like and has been like for them.

Now I know that’s a conversation I couldn’t have with any man I’m currently friends with—none of them would be appropriate to talk genitalia with. So why am I imagining Paul, a usual Wednesday night server at The Coffee Shop as a possibility? It was actually him I was imagining in the first incarnation of this fantasy: the painting portraits of vaginal lips. Morphing into writing a book about the experience of a friendship based on that, or keeping a blog that becomes a book. Keeping a journal of such a partnership—me the model, him the artist and author. It seems that some interesting things could come of it and I’ll bet nothing like that has been done before.

But again, I would be happy with it just in the realm of conversation too. As being able to have an open conversation about it without embarrassment, and see what we can learn. Whereas my age would make the first incarnation of this fantasy kind of embarrassing (Paul’s probably old enough to be my son), it might make it safe for having such a conversation.

It actually can be an idea for me. I have this conversation with him and keep a journal about it. I’ll be there’s no genre for THAT (except maybe porn).

Well, THAT was interesting; a full blown idea. And, it can have other applications if it didn’t work out in the particulars: this particular guy.

The “You” that is missing from this marriage

2007.2

6/5/07 Mon 1301

Oh, shit I just spent way too long trying to figure something out if I could recover a few pages that were lost this morning when Word quit. I don’t think I lost that much, thank goodness, but it bothers me to lose any of it.

Still, it was sort of a caution for me that had I not had on autorecover I would have lost everything. That was 400 pages, and would be very difficult for me to lose. So, moral, smaller doc sizes, and don’t keep more than one at a time open.

I wish I could just recover in my mind what I had written though, just to fill the hole that’s left. Perhaps it was about feeling again my lack of ‘generosity’ toward Gary and his mother. I was very hard on Gary yesterday about his not responding to the situation that our relationship creates for the boys.

A curious thing happened when I did. For future note: What I’m saying is real and true. It’s based on observation, especially taking note in a particular moment or series of them of what happens. Just as it was very obvious when Gary read the magazine while the dr. & I discussed eye surgery for Connor, it is obvious to me in less explicit situations that something is missing from him. (Some ingredient which is very difficult to describe, because it’s so obvious. It’s very difficult to spell out who the “You” is that I’m sensing is missing from much of this marriage. ) When I find myself trying to describe what is obvious, I see that my meaning—the significance—of what I’m saying becomes irrelevant. He’s not distinguishing the details from the ground. It’s all ground for him. Which is kind of the same about his conception of what it’s like to be home with children being so very different from my experience of what it is to be home with children. He is not distinguishing the details from the ground. And I sense that he goes into a kind of glazed place when I try to lift the details out for him. Like the cartoon of what the dog owner says, (now, Riser, first we’re going to brush your hair and then…) and what the dog hears (Blah, Riser, blah blah blah-blah blah blah blah blah blah blah). Gary hears ‘blah’, not the details that build it.

So I suppose I was saying something about that; again sort of perceiving it as a failure on my part that I’ve not really been exercising my choice responsibility. I’ve not, I don’t think, been inserting mySelf into the space between action and reaction.

This reminds me of something Sharon and I discussed. I forget the specific context, though the overall context was this new way of being. And it was about this new way of being NOT being just another way of denying my Self. Another way of subjugating myself, or abandoning my self. I guess that’s what I feared, and perhaps it came out in a dream, that being this new way in the world was a way of making it painless for me to continue to ignore my own voice. Maybe that’s some of what this is about. It’s not like being in the world this new way means I’m never irritated, because irritating things happen. Scott’s too noisy or Connor abuses him, or Gary’s moved something and not put it back. So maybe I’m trying to work out this fear. I wonder what context that was in, when Sharon and I talked about it. Maybe I’ll go look a little later.

I was wanting to write about some inspiration I was getting from reading this book, Stumbling on Happiness. I get a psychological parallel with the physical world. Just as we as humans relate to the world from a state of apparency, when we look deeper at the underpinnings, when we get close to them and see the details, things that we understand in the larger scale don’t apply at the smaller scales. Same with psychological experience: we mainly relate at the level of apparency and don’t see the underpinnings that are affected by the limitations of our organs of perception. We are fooled by our brains in so many ways. Daniel Gilbert, the author, has written a book to sum up the bumps in the road in the pursuit of happiness. And in doing so he magnifies those processes at the level of interface where perception meets our experience of what’s perceived. The limitations of our nervous systems, and the way our brains work often influence the choices we make without being aware that we’re being influenced, and by what.

Anyway, I come away from the pages today with a sense that besides the awesome power that comes in the notion of choice is the also-necessary faculty of ‘comparing’. Making comparisons and on what basis they’re made and this being a companion to choice.
It’s pretty obvious really, so obvious I didn’t see it. If I am choosing, I’m comparing options. There is more than one basis on which to make comparisons, but we usually have selected one and use it habitually.

I’ve been comparing how I’ve been mood and behavior (affected by mood) for a couple weeks now. Finding myself lacking when I use the factor of time as my basis of comparison: Being this new way is not as easy for me this week as I’d experienced for a few months. I suppose part of me is trying to come up with a decision about how to get that good feeling back—trying to see the options anyway.

I suppose it’s not been as easy because it’s been harder for me to remember to put my choosing Self in between stimulus and response. That’s what’s been going on. And I’ve felt that I couldn’t help it, that it was too difficult to take a pause to consider rather than vent whatever negative emotion I had. Well, maybe it was. Maybe it requires a certain amount of vitality to be able to maintain staying conscious enough to insert mySelf in between action-reaction, and I certainly have felt kind of low vitality-wise. Perhaps my bank has just been empty in that I’ve felt it more keenly when Gary and I have an atmosphere between us which is like we’ve just had a fight and he has the superior moral ground. Like he’s mentally shaking his head when he’s with me. That’s what we default to whether or not we’ve even had a fight. I sense it as an “I’m hurt but I’m taking pleasure in being right (and you’re morally deficient for not knowing I’m right)” atmosphere.