They’d rather be “right” than True
11/13/06 Monday
sigh indeed. I feel very bone tired. My neck has been hurting, just a deep muscle pain as if it’s been held for a prolonged time in an unnatural position. I’m feeling kind of down, too. I’m acknowledging to myself that I’m drinking quite a lot more lately; in 3 weeks I’ve been through the bottle of tequila and most of the margarita mx that Steve & Monica gave me. Furthermore, I’ve been concealing the bottles so that Gary won’t see. I have to acknowledge that it’s possible that this is a rationalization to keep me from seeing that this is classic alcoholic behavior, and I believe I’m doing it to avoid comment from Gary. I don’t trust that he’s going to approach me about it in any kind of spirit of empathy and kindness. Any indications of his feelings toward me seem to be about ‘winning’, and this one is just too ripe to be hit out of the ballpark. I don’t want to add that complication; just want to see if I can work it through on my own.
That’s definitely a trend, though. I have been trending toward sadness. It seems reasonable that it may be part of the cyclical winding down of the year, darker earlier, besides the time of year for more enforced family togetherness, as well as the prospect of several weeks ahead that are going to involve kids being constantly home. They were home Thurs/Fri last week. Sunday Gary took them to a movie, but brought them back and went to his mom’s to fix some shingles on her roof. He was gone about 4 hours. So there has been a lot of kidness with more on the horizon (and lots) without much break. Then he was here this morning until 12:30 working from here. So I felt as if my long-awaited drink of water had been contaminated. So perhaps that’s contributing to the sadness, as well as this response to Darlene I have pending. I have 3 things pending, which are weighing on me; doing my soul-search on Darlene, contacting Sherron’s friend to see if he can get any of the stuff off my appleworks that was deleted, Tim, my brothers’ friend who said he thought he could retrieve my data from the old hard drive. For some reason I procrastinate those things.
I’m wondering if it would be helpful to fast-forward my diaries and go back to the early days with Gary and read forward. I wonder if that would shed any light on these complicated feelings. And I guess at its most basic the question is, ‘do I trust myself and keep my distance’ or ‘staying distant is a selfish indulgence of an illegitimate desire’
I think I’ve long labored under the belief that there is some objective standard out there that my actions can be lined up against to see if I’m meeting or lacking. The ‘highest’ standard seems to require overruling feelings to the benefit of someone else…otherwise you are being selfish.
When I see Gary acting as if it’s being deliberately mean and dishonest to not answer the phone when it rings, that gives me the impression that he is a champion of that standard. To have the kind of relationship with Darlene that she’s asking for is to accept that I’ll be overruling my feelings a lot; face the spectre of being called selfish if I’m not. Though that’s interesting. Why should I care if Darlene and Gary hold me to ‘That Standard’ if I don’t believe it myself. Why should the prospect of being held to that standard and found lacking cause me to quail?
I think I’ve spent much of my life perched on the fence between buying “That Standard” and tipping toward my own untainted—so far as that’s possible—evaluation. What’s kept me from committing to my own standard is the awareness that I could be delusional. That detaching my moral compass from That One might be ‘the first step’ toward, what, total anarchy? It just seems to me that Gary and his mom are operating far, far on the perimeters of their core selves from which they’ve erected barricades. They’re afraid, and would rather be ‘right’ than True. I am not immune from the sting of being judged by “That Standard”; I think that’s why I’d rather just avoid her than be in proximity with her where there’s more chance I’ll be faced with the choice of offending her and remaining true to myself, or not offending her but not staying true. I don’t like the feeling of having to ‘shake off’ the doubts that are the tentacles of “That Standard”.
Again, as I continue to transcribe my early journals, I see how very rigorously I tried to stay true, and truthful with myself. This helps me trust my intuition in thinking about this matter with Darlene.
Basically I’m leaning toward telling her that tho I appreciate her overture that for now seeing each other about this much is the most comfortable for me. I can assure her that she doesn’t need me to be any more available in order for her to have more connection with Connor & Scott. (Fear: that she’ll do just this and I will feel jealous and threatened. That the boys’ allegiance might shift over to her—and boy do I feel unworthy for having that as a motivation. But it’s true. That if I refuse her overture that I’ll then be ‘cut off’ in a vindictive way. I guess this doubt kind of speaks to this strange “What’s behind door #3” cast to making choices. It seems early on I learned I couldn’t trust my choices; that if I chose one thing then I’d either be sorry I hadn’t chosen the other or I’d be sorry I’d chosen the one. As if someone had really ground that home to me once in my life. I’ve always been bewildered by choices, and often am very passive about them. I let others, or circumstances make them for me. I’ve disliked this about myself. But there IS a ghost of a feeling that if I don’t choose the way Someone wants me to, then I’ll be made to be sorry.)
Hi! Great news about you and Bill. Did I tell you I’ve been reading a book called “Nonviolent Communication”? It’s very much about reaching behind the anger to the place where a need isn’t being met, and being able to connect there with compassion. Sounds like that’s what you and Bill did, and look at the reward you got. It’s a little tougher in the face of active conflict, or fear, setting limits when you want things from each other. Anyway, again, now you KNOW it’s possible, you guys can do it.
I’ve been devoting these days since last Monday (interrupted because the kids being home Thurs/Fri and now GARY is going into work late today and hasn’t left yet. I feel like his presence is really distracting and cuts in to my much-cherished solitary time. Yes, yes, I realize it’s his work that provides me with this solitary time; but I hold up my end.)–anyway I’ve been devoting what time I can to trying to examine the strands of this complicated relationship with Darlene, and what is my most honest and true response to her overture. I can definitely see the advantages of having the extended-family model of relationship, and I do have fleeting moments of warmth for her.
Back in the early days of Gary-and-me I had some unease about her. I could feel a sense of territoriality rise in myself in connection with her and her relationship to Gary. I’d not had these kind of feelings in connection with other boyfriends’ mothers before. The early family roots you mentioned–I wondered if it had to do with early family dynamics. I’m first-born and then my sister comes when I’m 2.5. Then a few years later she comes down with sugar diabetes and was a source of great anxiety for my parents and my mom in particular. I think there was something in the dynamic of my needs being sublimated to Karen’s more urgent ones that I was reminded of: it seemed that Darlene was fragile in some way that was intrusive to our relationship (Garys and mine). Weakness would win out in terms of prioritizing. All of this not overt.
We even had counseling together, her and me. For a few months just before we left for St. Louis. It was someone she’d already had a history with in counseling, so I felt a little strange about that and still do. She made it very clear that she had no wish to go deeper in exploring the curious energy that exists between us.
Gary’s role in this has been that of passive detachment. In any given moment if there’s a choice between a wish of mine and the risk of hurting her feelings by not giving her what she wants, he chooses to do what she wants. He’s unable to set boundaries with her. I know that this is reality, because he can’t come close to the kind of self introspection that would be required for him to see what he does. So I don’t see the situation or the dynamics changing. She can “have” him.
Saturday he was outside on a ladder working on the gutters of the house. It’s an adjusting ladder and he was in the front part of the house. I was downstairs in the opposite corner of the house, helping the boys pick up there toys as he’d requested I do. The deck guy was putting the finishing touches on the deck. So the TV was on, we were making noise with the toys and talking, and there were power tools. I went upstairs to fix Scott some noodles and as I walked by the kitchen window I noticed some of the neighborhood men standing outside with Gary and talking to him. I fixed Scott his noodles and saw that Gary was on the ladder outside the window. I smiled at him and he yelled, “GET OUT HERE!” I was shocked, and said, “not a chance”. He yelled, “Did you see what happened???” I said no. A little later he came in, still angry, saying his foot had been caught between 2 rungs of the telescoping ladder and he hadn’t been able to extricate it and he had been yelling for me and finally the neighbors came. He actually thought I’d been sitting there the whole time with headphones on. He later said that when he saw me in the window he assumed I’d been there. I told him where I’d been in the house, and he just could not believe I hadn’t heard him. He never did apologize for having directed his frustration at me by yelling like that; he seemed to feel justified by the fact that he “couldn’t believe you didn’t hear me”.
This experience was emblematic to me. He’s ready to assume I’d be so callous as to sit and do nothing while he’s in trouble. He’s ready to be angry. He can’t see the reason of my having not heard him; he even seems to doubt if that’s true. He seems to be holding me responsible for having NOT heard him, as if it were a willful act of mine.
This tells me that he has a very live current of resentment toward me that he tries to ignore, but it surfaces easily. And I think I sense that in his mother as well, the last time the resentment came to light was when she was angry with not getting a refund on her plane ticket and segued the conversation into wondering if it weren’t abnormal to want to have a break from my kids. It was right there…that could have been a fight. The whole “fight” context with the atmosphere and pretext were right there. I think that is what makes me want to run. It’s spooky to me to be among people who have but try to ignore active resentment. It just doesn’t feel clean, and it’s not comfortable for me to be acting like everything’s fine when I can sense its presence…
Sorry to go on about this. In fact, I should probably get to journaling some more to get a clearer idea of where I’m at on this.
Love you, Valerie
D
I think that’s all I’ll write for today, or at least now. My arms and shoulders feel shaky and my neck is hurting.
Leave a Reply