04/05/06

My parents left this morning. It was a relief to have a good visit with them. It was a relief that at last they could see my boys in their better light; we’d had several times in a row when they were definitely not at their best.

It seems that that day they took Scott really affects how I feel about this visit; maybe because they had a good time with him and they got to spend some one-on-one with him—and that that outing made a huge difference: had he not gone and had been home all day with Connor sick, I think he would have started some misbehavior, and the tone would have been soured by my response (irritated) to it. That period with him gone with my parents came at a strategic point that made a big difference in the feel of things.

04/09/06

Gary gone with the boys. I’ve been reading quickly to finish a library book that is due Wed; “I, Wabenzi” by Rafi Zabor. I get impatient with him and have stretches where his story gets tiresome, but then he’ll turn a phrase in a way, in a description of some inner process of his that resonates with me. And that he is better than most at articulating and communicating the unseen structure of meaning. That’s how it feels, and I get that corresponding feeling of orientation and expansion. So it keeps me reading. I keep wanting to stop and put some quotes in here, but then it slows me down. I also want to stop and explore some of the thought-streams that reading it inspires.

A brief sketch of who I am right now finds me a person who has two children that I’m often exhausted and a little overwhelmed by, often irritable with especially the younger one, and then filled with remorse that so much of these early years of his have my irritation as a backdrop. I remember how my dad’s moods seemed to set the family’s tone: now it occurs to me that maybe all of us were cooperating and colluding in creating it. And it makes me wonder about me and if I’m doing that in this family.

Lately I’ve been aware of fear: it was kind of awakened in reading that book “Thread of Grace”. There was something in her vision of it and description that made me get on a visceral level first the horror of war and the horror of living in it—and then it sketched the outlines of my fear about FEEL is part of the vulnerability. The fear manifests as fear of physical pain and the awareness that there is always the potential of having to live with it deep in your cells. And the thought that people have deliberately tortured people and took pleasure in it and that people have had to live with that all-consuming pain until they died. I’m interjecting my current voice here. I realized that I can’t bring myself to put the particulars of the pain I fear out into the world. It really frightens me to consider doing that.>—it makes me feel sick inside, and the horror of that is starting to overwhelm me with its presence as I write here. imagining that feeling

The shadow of that has been in my mind since reading that book. A fear of being subject to that kind of pain, or having to witness it, or And there are people who are being subjected to that at this very moment in other parts of the world. I’ve just been kind of haunted by it, a fear of pain, though it has been relegated largely to background unless I bring it to the foreground like now. Really, this has been with me for a couple months.

Listening to the death penalty phase of Moussaui, someone who was peripheral to the 9/11 plot, has brought forward in my mind the thoughts and images of people who were in those planes and in those towers. It has brought to mind an awareness that these people were forced precipitously, to consider the reality of their own violent death. To be right up against that moment and know they were going to die—and for some to have to choose to die by jumping from the window, or burning to death in the fire. What came out is that some of the jumpers “organized” their jumps—and some jumped hand-in-hand.

I suppose this is all a manifestation of a newer, bolder awareness of my own mortality and the fragility of our lives against some forces that are in motion that are much larger than an individual can withstand.

Later

A sick feeling inside. Even NPR, not just left-wing fringe news media is reporting that it appears that the United States may well be preparing to strike Iran. There’s been talk about using the nuclear bunker-busters.

04/10/06

I had to pick up the boys last night from Gary’s mom’s house, since he still had work to do on her fence and they’d really been there long enough. She gave me a note that she said she’d written for me, before she knew that I was coming over. I read it at home, and it was to tell me about a lecture she’d gone to and found very interesting; thought I’d find it interesting and had wished I were there. She signed it, “Darlene.”

Aside from noting that she could have called, and that she didn’t, as usual, sign “love” I have to concede that that was a nice gesture, and definitely a reaching out. So I feel a little pressure inside to acknowledge that with a phone call. A part of the pressure says to do it now, before getting Scott. Part of me says, no, this is MY time and I don’t want to spend it on the phone—with ANYONE. But I do feel a softening to my aversion to her, which is welcome, because it makes things easier—as well as a little confusing.

So, there’s a part of me that urges caution about calling her; says, “Let’s think about this a bit.” So that’s why I’m writing now.

I guess what seems appropriate to me is to respond to what’s needed, and in that case a reaching out like that needs some acknowledgment. What happens is I get a picture in my head of us being friends, and doing things socially together and that feels a little weird. Maybe because it really is jumping too far ahead. I suppose the way to that would start with this acknowledgment, or even to her reaching out to me. But in this case it’s best to just think of the next step. The Next Step.

Because certainly, it would be nice to be free of the burden of dreading her presence, having it feel like a cloud on my day at the prospect of seeing her—even being able to ask favors now and then, like the use of the beach house, or to watch the boys now and then. An easing of my dislike would make the prospects for those things more likely. Those feel like good things, although it’s different from the momentum of dislike so it’s confusing—like a river current reversing itself and the riffles it causes.

Got to go get Scott.

I feel a sense of resolve that I need to return to Dr. Wright and discuss this medication with her. I don’t know that it’s helping my irritability, and it may be making the trigger a little more sensitive.

2/22/06

Survived the trip, can’t say well. Some bright spots in the midst of a lot of drudgery. Things were very bad with Gary and me at the beginning—it seemed like the tension was so thick it must have been noticed by Steve and Monica. There were a few times I felt like apologizing for the black cloud our relationship places over people who are not involved, and I felt it was a mistake to take a family trip with another family when we are doing so poorly. It seems to suck the air out of a room. It did get a little better, though, on the second day where Gary and I could at least be nice enough to each other that I don’t think we were so much a weight on the whole group. I don’t even know where and when the bad stuff started, what initiated a fresh feeling of dislike for him, but it seems like it was at the beginning of the trip before we were even loaded up. Because it was at some point on the drive over that it seemed like a viable option and a relief that we separate…get an apartment somewhere close and then Gary and I switch using it so the boys stay in the house (and we keep it) and stay in the school district. I would have to go back to work to do that. I want to take next year
off—the first year that both boys are in school full time. I feel I deserve it after this many years of being home with children. I don’t know if I even feel like volunteering, we’ll see. I’d like to have that and I guess I’m willing to put up with the atmosphere around here in order to get it, for another year. It’s clear to me that my impassioned letters to Gary, where I try to reasonably shed light on what’s going on and how I see his behavior as a factor—and he often responds positively to it—saying
I explain it very clearly and that to him it seems true—that I’m representing it truly and fairly (but nothing changes)—are not going to make a difference in the situation. I think I’ve been acting from this belief that if I can just explain everything right he will understand that he is often unreasonable and even hostile, or that passive aggressive behavior is not benefiting either him, or US—I’ve had a belief that if I can just lay it out right he will understand and if he understands he’ll change the unreasonable behavior. I suppose that’s another version of the folly of “trying to change somebody”.

So these are my options as I see them:

1) Learn to live with him being unreasonable, with him being resentful
2) with him not keeping his agreements, doing things that increase the load on me without acknowledgement or apology, with him not saying what he wants but being angry that he’s not getting it and letting me know it with barbs.

a) subtext of that, figure out how to quit feeling stung when he does act out his resentment—figure out how to CHOOSE to not be resentful in turn, and not have that feeling of anger at him that feels like it pulls the air out of the room.

3) Learn to live with the above and learn to live with the resentment that goes with it.

4) Leave

a) leave now
b) wait another year

Getting an apartment seems like the way to leave that would be the easiest on the boys. It would just mean that they don’t live with us at the same time, and it means the least disruption in their lives.

I just remember so clearly this sort of feeling in the atmosphere in the home I grew up in that was the air we breathed. It was a very familiar feeling, or at least it became such, sort of a sinking into a kind of despair or hopelessness. An “I KNEW it” sort of feeling—definitely a sinking down, and a lid pressing down—of some sort of unstated disappointment and free-floating unhappiness. I think some of it at least was the atmosphere that existed between my mom and dad—their mutual disappointment or un-dealt-with resentment. It made the air thick and did not feel good to be in. (3/03/06—reading over this. I realize the feeling was like giving up, and giving in.) I’d like to spare the boys that.

I suppose what is true is that I feel that
ME initiating counseling again is not going to accomplish any more than the counseling we’ve had already. And I think it’s because I’ve initiated it because I’ve been in the pain it takes for me to reach out for help. So my theory is this time to wait for GARY to be in enough pain that he will reach out, but it’s beginning to appear that there is no such time, because his numbing system works so well. I talked about it—it really is a remarkable thing to be so passive in the face of this. I can’t believe he can let this go like this.

A little later:

They just left a few minutes ago, Gary, Connor, and a friend of Connor’s from school. This means that I’m having the first moment alone since Friday afternoon. Big sigh, such a relief. Funny to think of being around people, even people I like, as being another event I have to recover from.

Referring to the stuff I’ve said above, thoughts like that, that put primary
responsibility for the state of our marriage on Gary, does bring out the devil’s advocate voice, which asks me if it’s a matter of perception, if I’m being selective in seeing the extent of MY contribution to our deteriorating marriage. And in being selective, if I’m being too kind to myself and too hard on Gary.

It’s not been especially comfortable, having him around today. He’d taken today off too, thinking both boys were out of school. Only Connor is though. That’s why I went and got Connor’s friend. So like I said, having Gary around has been uncomfortable in that I do feel the atmosphere of being around someone who doesn’t like me, and someone who is angry with me for something. That’s the way the atmosphere feels when I interact with him. That’s what we wake up with in the mornings, and what we say goodnight with at night. It’s pretty brief in the mornings, though, and expected in the evenings. I suppose living it in the middle of the day, which is supposed to be one of my “days off”, is uncomfortable enough to remark on. Though it seemed a little friendlier when he left, and he DID take the boys, with plans of picking up Scott to boot. It was a nice thing to do, because I was fully prepared that today probably wasn’t going to have any alone moments and I’d have to wait for tomorrow when the boys are back in school. So this is an unexpected gift, to have this. Thank you, Gary.

For example, am I choosing unhappiness, to feel unhappy when I remember something like this morning, when I was taking the empty bottles and cans which had been piling up for a long time out to the car, as well as getting Scott’s stuff out there and I asked him if he would either wipe Scott who was finished having a bowel movement, or load the empties into the car. He said, “I guess I’ll wipe” but in a tone that was at best grudging, and at worst resentful. I asked him about it, saying that when there are two jobs to do, and two people, that it makes sense for each person to do one job, then for one person to do one job, and then the other. This was something that could not be done simultaneously—concurrently as opposed to consecutively. His manner said to me that he was resentful, that making this request was onerous to him and he feels that he’s entitled for me to just do it and not ask
him to share the load. He copped to having been resentful and said, “I just didn’t feel like it.”

That’s the second incidence of an “I-don’t-feel-like-it”. I’m trying to put my finger on the feeling that I have in response to that: He Doesn’t Feel Like It. I guess it’s because it seems to me to indicate someone who feels entitled to not do something they don’t “feel like doing”—when there’s someone else around who doesn’t “feel like it” who is doing “it” all the time—I guess it feels like HE feels like he has no obligation in this. It seems very indifferent and self-centered to me, too. The fact that he doesn’t go from I-don’t-feel-like-it to how-does-[she]-do-it(?) (if it’s something HE doesn’t want to do, why would he think I’D want to do it either? And why should HIS desire to not do it apparently have more weight than MY desire? My asking him to wipe his son’s butt is only asking him to do one thing, whereas his manner was “asking” me to do TWO things that I couldn’t do simultaneously and so it would take longer before I could get Scott out the door—how can he justify thinking that’s OK?) does something to the inside of me—makes it feel pushed, a pressure inside that’s not pleasurable. It
epitomizes to me the fact that I’ve felt unsupported and un-empathized with in this unexpectedly difficult phase of parenting 2 boys. That’s what makes me feel that he doesn’t “get” at all how excruciating it can be at times, and therefore how painful it is when he’s so late getting home from work. And that makes me feel very lonely. Like being in pain and nobody sees it and offers encouragement, except maybe other mothers. Not only does he not see it, he adds to it—first with his indifference, and second by exacerbating it, either through minimizing it, dismissing it, or actively rubbing salt in it. When he sits by in comfort while I get up to do something for one of the boys, or acts put-upon when I ask him to do something regarding one of his own kids—THAT rubs salt in it and makes my work and efforts seem invisible and not respected.

I think that’s one of the things I’ve been trying to get at, is the pain of feeling like I have no moral support from him in this demanding period of the boys’ lives. I feel like he thinks I shouldn’t feel it so acutely, and it shouldn’t feel like such a weight to me. (I hope if my boys ever read this they don’t take from it that I feel that THEY are a weight—it’s the nature of
parenting young children at this particular phase of development and the particular ways their individual phases interact with each other—it’s the nature of THAT—the physical effort it involves, and some of the mentally taxing rigors of dealing with people whose sense of reasoning and perspective are undeveloped still. People who just require a lot of maintenance by virtue of their immaturity. They are precious to me, these boys, absolutely precious (I cannot imagine life without them)—and this difficult period in parenting is part of the bargain I agreed to when I had them. I sometimes feel overwhelmed enough though to complain about the hard parts.) I think part of it is that he doesn’t volunteer to share some of the practical aspects of the load: cleaning up their spills, for instance. In fact, it felt like a hostile act at the Rock Creek house when Scott spilled nearly an entire glass of apple juice on a little folding table we had set up for kids—so there was a hole in it and therefore a puddle under the table too. It took me three trips to get it adequately cleaned up, while my breakfast sat there getting cold and Gary sat there eating his. It caused me to feel perplexity and
pain inside. Even Steve remarked: “Debora!” in sympathy for the work I was doing. He said, “These trips aren’t vacations for mothers, are they”. It really blew me away that Gary just sat there.

So I suppose on one hand that remembering these things amounts to choosing to be unhappy. On the other hand there is some function in remembering—because there is a poison atmosphere between us, and incidents like this help me to have concrete examples when I’m talking to Gary about it. He frequently does ask for examples, as if if I can’t give one that means my feelings aren’t valid (and sometimes I DO forget and feel like I’m not being credible). However if I give examples he’ll often say that he’s “not keeping track”—the underlying tone being that there’s something morally superior in not keeping track—that keeping track is being mean-
spirited and bitter.

I think for me that remembering them helps me peg the free floating atmosphere of tension to an event. It helps me to know where the feeling came from, what it is a result of. It helps me to track it down, instead of just feel it—a sort of ongoing feeling of distress. Which really has been the function of my writing since I was 14. To name that background feeling of distress.

Now what comes to mind is that that is where the element of choice is. To be INSIDE of feeling distressed, or to be the person witnessing it. Or Person. Inside of it, it’s totally encompassing and has its own glass ceiling. As a witness I can see it as a phenomenon.

Then what? I really don’t know. What if I COULD somehow take note of distress that comes from these situations with Gary, but as an Observer taking notes, instead of being sunk into the vortex of that distress? What would that look like, and how would it affect my life? And doesn’t just
observe and take notes, but does something to help? See it as information gathering, but knowing it’s not just idle information-gathering but information-gathering for a purpose—to take action if needed; to take action WHEN needed: to take action based on understanding. Or would it help just to be that Observer? I’ve not had a whole lot of success with that in the past–that being so very Aware and Conscious of my feelings as opposed to becoming them.

Feelings prevalent in my life right now are:

Just a tiredness and a lack of pleasure in things—I suppose that’s depression.

Regret—that I’m feeling so acutely the drudgery of this phase of parenting instead of taking more delight in my boys. That I’m paralyzed at doing stuff that engages them and is better than TV and video games—that my prevailing feeling is wanting to be left alone—have them occupied somewhere so I can think straight. That’s no way to spend this phase of their lives, and I feel terrible regret that they’ve had this as a background tone for so long—at least 2.5 years. I think the worst of it, though, what weighs on me the most is that Gary doesn’t see it. (At least he gives every indication that he doesn’t see it.) Therefore I feel very alone in it. He doesn’t get that on an intimate level, a moment-by-moment level, that being with small children can be excruciating.

They really are delightful. Scott still has some of the baby plumpness in his cheeks and belly, and I love to just look at his little body. He’s very sweet and has a sweet self-sustaining aspect to himself—he can keep equanimity in strange situations. He can sustain himself through discomforts that others might get hung up on—he can smooth his own way. Connor is incredibly bright—and his spirit is bright. He really is shiny. He is at an age where he’s making some intellectual leaps and getting more sophisticated in his sense of humor—so he’s engaging in his own right—not just because he’s my son. He’s very forthcoming, genuous might be a word (as opposed to disingenuous). He’s very open and he’s honest emotionally. He’s affectionate, they’re both very affectionate. So there are many sources of pleasure in my life through these boys, and I feel badly that the hard parts seem to be what’s standing out the most.

OK, I had a very clear feeling as I was reading this that Gary is very angry with me. It just seems you don’t do the things he does, or withhold the way he does, without being angry with someone. I think he is very angry with me, and his failure or refusal to deal with it with me is making it impossible for us to live together. Or to have any kind of functional relationship, that’s nurturing for our boys. Right now we’re doing parenting separately together.