05/14/06

Awwww, geee. Just reading my fourth diary. Feeling compassion for that poor little girl who was trying so hard to be honest with herself, but just didn’t have the experience to see herself clearly; who’d had such expectations of love and didn’t realize that uncertainty is a feature of love too—thought that somehow meant she wasn’t being genuine. Awwww.

05/16/06

FuckinA. Another 8:00 night before Gary gets home. Years of this…I hate it so much, and what I hate most is that I don’t get a feeling from him that he has any idea how awful this feels. I’m actually yelling at Scott. I’ll tell him to stop doing something, and he keeps on doing it. THAT’S when I yell. I get wild when I tell him to do something or to not do something and he either doesn’t do it, or keeps on doing whatever it was he was doing. I hate this; I hate being a mother who yells at her kid. And I can’t help but feel that part of it is this horrible unbalanced life of Gary contributing to his company’s bottom line and therefore the rest of us are contributing to the company’s bottom line.

I wish he could feel the way that I feel inside for a prolonged period of time, and THEN feel that I don’t get it—make his isolation complete.

Tomorrow’s going to see my time away from Scott shortened, since I’m going to have to take a fucking bunch of kids from the preschool over to the teacher’s house, further away from where we live. We’ll have to wait around til everybody’s at the school, pack everything up; get them over there. THEN and only then can I come home, and then I have to leave early to get over to the teacher’s house to take them fucking back to the school. Then I can go home again. So the margins are going to be cut way in tomorrow, and this week and next were going to be the last two full weeks of school; after that is memorial holiday, then the week after that is cut short because the preschool is going to take a family camping trip.

Poor Scott. I remember all the stuff I’ve read about how we’ve grown up with “drivers”—“hurry up”, “be perfect”, “don’t be”. I’m giving him all those messages in spades. In my tone of voice, when he does something I can’t fathom, like suddenly step into some plants when we were walking past a landscaped area at Nike. It sends my irritation level into an exquisite pitch that’s reflected in the timbre of my voice.

But there are things about Scott’s behavior that I just HATE. The fact that he keeps returning again and again to the fan after I tell him over and over to stay away from it. The fact that I have to say over and over again to close the door. The fact that I have to keep telling him to stop standing on the sofa and climbing over the back of it. The fact that he fucking keeps drifting in front of me just where I need to go, in cooking. I want to PUSH him!!! Get him out of my fucking way.

I just want to be left alone.

I just want to have enough support that I don’t feel this way, that I can be a more patient and gentle mother with Scott—not only able to recognize that this is developmentally correct (which I do), but to be able to be flexible about it in my mood and manner. I used to be able to.

I’m sure that to Gary I’m just feeling sorry for myself. He’s never really gotten it anyway, and my efforts over these last several years to get him to understand have only thickened his skin and hardened his heart. To him it just sounds like the same old thing, and to me it’s even more raw than it used to be. I don’t just get used to this. To me it’s not the same old thing. It’s freshly painful every day. And it’s even more painful in that I see that my effectiveness in articulating it to him is diminishing, and that he doesn’t get it and never will.

It’s an extreme overstatement of an analogy, but I feel like it’s the difference between the bombardier in the air, and the recipients of the bombs on the ground. The bombardier drops his ordinance and may never learn the casualty number—just interested in the uber-picture of whether or not strategic goals were served in the act. The people on the ground endure the agony. They’re just the egg that must be cracked to make an omelet, the log that must be sawed to make firewood. I can’t seem to gloss over these details, the way the bombardier does. And I don’t get numbed to the details.

I don’t think that this was ever driven home to me the way it is since becoming a parent. An example: Connor was 8 months old when Gary’s grandmother was sick at the beach. We went down to see her to find out what the prognosis was and what she would need. Gary suggested he stay that night at the beach with his mother, while I took Connor home. She was on board with that, and it was me who objected and vetoed it. To her it was just a matter of getting someone to watch Connor, and arrange for someone to pick him up at daycare. But I had a new job the next morning where I had to be south of Salem—an hour’s drive on a freeway that’s routinely jammed with stop and go traffic. We had an agreement with daycare that we be no more than 10 minutes late and beyond that we start paying a dollar a minute penalty. With Gary at the beach and me south of Salem there wouldn’t be any family in Portland—we’d each be over an hour away. I wasn’t comfortable with the chance of not being able to get back on time to pick him up, especially since I’d never worked at this facility or for this agency. And, who would take him to daycare in the morning, since I would be having to leave early in order to get to south of Salem by 8:30? And how would I be making arrangements for someone else to pick him up: we wouldn’t be getting back into town until after 8:00, which is late to be calling people; I’d have to be juggling doing that and meeting Connor’s needs since Gary
would be with her…and I knew what I would be asking one of these other mothers to do, with extremely little notice: They would have to bring their infant with them to the daycare, carry them in in their carseats, somehow get the carseat that I would have had to leave at the daycare installed in their car…carrying their baby back and forth because it would mean walking into the daycare first with their baby, carrying the car seat out with their baby and having their baby on the sidewalk while they installed Connor’s seat, carrying their baby back inside to get Connor and carrying Connor and their baby out to the car and putting them both in the car. Not to mention having to care for them until I’d get there. To me, the number of moving parts that I’d have to oversee and make sure meshed correctly made it unacceptable and I was firm about saying no. to her it was merely a matter of “making arrangements with somebody”, because “I needed Gary”. She had no idea, and probably wasn’t interested in knowing just what it would take from me in order to free Gary up to be at the beach that night with her.

Same when my family came just after Connor was born and insisted on EVERYONE coming. To them it was just them visiting, and they were probably sure they helped. To me it was an exhausting amount of juggling; Connor’s needs (he’d be crying in the car while they stood there and talked to me so I’d be forced to choose between letting him cry, or to turn my back on them—overcome my training—in order to tend to him: just having to make that choice was exhausting and painful for me. It was a horrible time and I don’t think they’ll ever know how much that cost me.

That’s the crux—people who ask for things and/or expect things and don’t begin to imagine what that means to the person whose expense it is at.

I just had an important thought about Scott. I was replaying the conversation with Don in my mind and “heard” my imagination saying “Connor and Scott are similar in personality types, but I think Connor’s and my natures are a bit more in tune, than mine and Scott’s. I flashed on a picture of what that would look like—how with Connor it means he sees a different me than Scott sees. Connor’s experience with me is largely harmonious and I think it may be about because some similar inner tunings. When I imagine Scott, the harmonious chords turn 90 degrees to each other and make a very discordant tone. It’s the tone of me yelling at him, or speaking to him with a sharp edge in my voice, or the high squeak of irritation. That’s HIS atmosphere between him and me and it’s very different from the atmosphere between me and Connor.

I think I’d like to change that tone. I don’t want him to feel that the air that he breathes in is saturated in the tone set when I’m yelling at him, like yesterday. I’m allowing myself to use an angrier tone with him. I pictured the harsh tone reverberating just outside his ears. That must be what it feels like when I yell at him. I don’t want him to grow up thinking he’s someone who can be yelled at.

I want to tell him, at eye level, that I AM going to make sure he and I are in more harmonious tune—it’s my job to set the tone of his and my relationship.

I think he’s telling me he needs me to put him first sometimes, instead of “Wait a minute”. If I’m helping Connor it’s legitimate to have him wait, but there are a lot of times I keep him waiting, when I don’t really have to. Instead, I’m satisfying the need inside to have something complete before I move on to something else. I’m serving that need first. I wonder if I can just take a deep breath and resolve to let that go for a bit. Get back in the mode of not minding the news or trends I’m missing, effortlessly giving up my wants for his…You know, get in the mode where I don’t resent it giving up my wants—go back to that generous mode again; because I expected him to need so much of my personal attention. I guess the time frame I had set for the amount of personal attention to decrease is short than his. I think he’s saying he needs that level of attention again. I’ve been inadvertently viewing those “requests” as misbehavior—at least in my response. I treated these requests purely as misbehavior.

I guess I got a little taste of freedom and I’m resenting being reeled back. And I’m going to have to give that up, too. It’s harder to give up my wants now. I don’t know if being perimenopausal has anything to do with it…maybe it intensifies it. Maybe the extreme reluctance I have to relinquish a chore I’m doing to go and see to Scott—maybe it’s just a different manifestation of some genetic encoding of holding on. Some survival value in a reluctance to surrender what you have? And maybe this particular gene sub-type, it’s producers get stimulated—either over or under—by the shift in bloodstream hormonal tide. And maybe I have a tendency toward that anyway, and now those glands are being more stimulated to produce. Because it really is SO HARD to interrupt what I’m doing, which amounts to surrendering what I’m doing to the needs of his.
It seems much harder than it used to.
So I think I need to practice doing just this very thing. I need to counteract each extreme with another, and I suppose doing the opposite of my normal inclination will do some counteracting. Make a connection instead of trying to claim the life I think I’ll have when Scott is older, and I guess I expected that period to start sooner than reality. At least with him, I want to start counteracting some of the noise he does get from me when our priorities clash. I think our tone may always have a bit of turbulence (?) because I can see that the things that define him are going to be at odds with the things that define me. But, dissonance is very valid as a tone, it doesn’t have to be crytstal harmony, but it doesn’t have to be so harsh, either. Right now it’s too harsh and I need to interject some changes to make that better. He’s too young to be exposed to the full strength of my frustration. It bothers me that it has been easier to yell at him. And I can remember a time when I took pride in not being a yelling person. It was within the last year. It’s still very recent because I’m close enough to see that gradually the magnitude is increasing in size and volume. I think my treatment of him, in allowing myself to yell at him is an adverse climate for him to be in—and I think doing that treatment might predispose a person toward increasingly worse behavior. I mean worse behavior on the part of the aggressor (the yeller).

I was just wondering if the feelings that I feel just before I do yell—powerful irritation, deep impatience, sharp frustration—have at their root that sense of giving something up to another’s need. And not wanting to give up. I wonder what percentage of the times that I’m exasperated with Scott has this need been at the root of my exasperation?

So it seems my strong desire to stop giving up listening to the news and reading the paper, at a time when he still needs me to.

I have to try this. I wonder if I can really successfully do that—start letting go some of the things that don’t matter—like dishes—leave them, and go to him. Some important things I won’t be able to, and I can exercise some judgment in determining those times. But there’s a lot of things I can leave (chores-wise, etc) that really don’t require my current attention. I could significantly reduce the times that we have friction by removing some of the cause of it: which is my desire to have my choice prevail in any given moment. Scott’s choices and mine are often at odds—when my preference is that he moves quickly, his is to see how far he can run down the hill while Connor counts. My will is that he leave me alone, and his will is to engage me often. What I’m holding on to in the situation of getting in the car is my strong desire to leave on time—I think there is some sort of symmetry thing about it I’m seeking. Maybe it’s the need to complete the task of getting Scott in the car and the straps of his car seat fastened. And to do it within a certain time. And so the frustration or delay of that need causes the raised pitch in voice, the abrupt disrespectful tone (meaning I wouldn’t talk to another adult that way), the roughness with which I grab him to take to the

Still, just being able to describe this need I think might give me some autonomy over it. I get a sense of having some influence over it, little flashes of those senses. The Need for Completion. I see it’s shape as a ring, only it’s bent into the shape of a box. I feel like I have a ghost of awareness of what it looks like—how I know when I’m doing it—trying to satisfy a compulsion. I feel like having that awareness may give me a measure of choice in situations where I must choose between my need to complete and something else’s need for attention.

Basically I’ve been suffering because I’ve been wanting my way (in this case, fewer demands on me—more freedom to pursue my interests) before it’s realistic to expect it. If I weren’t acting out my being upset then 90% of the harsh interactions with Scott would just disappear. Or the edge would come off of them, a bit. Insisting on my independence when he isn’t ready to surrender his need of me is only a cause for grief. It’s probably not going to last a whole lot longer anyway, this period where he needs this much. This period is going to play it’s course, and it can either be in conflict with me, or not, depending on my willingness to surrender the desire for independence. Once he’s past this time things will be more harmonious as a matter of course, so I may as well try to bridge this gap in between my making it as small as possible. We may as well pass through it harmoniously as harshly.

It seems I need to either engage with him as much as he needs, or act like I am. Start doing what I can to shield him from the painful splashes of the tone of our relationship (I picture it as a tube, that is filled with very agitated orange light and the shape of a face, and a corrosive liquid suddenly splashes on it/in it. That that’s the character of our relationship that I’m worried is going to become background and embedded—sort of his inner picture of who we are. So I need to do what it takes to lessen the frequency of these toxic encounters.

Took a break from writing to eat a little. Oh, just a minute—that reminds me I need to send a message to Gary.

Got that done, ended up taking longer than I expected.

[I’m in the midst of an atmospheric feeling, that’s as all-encompassing as a smell. I remember I wrote above that I was possibly/probably going to be carting kids over to the teacher’s house. I didn’t hear from her, so I’d resigned myself to it. But then there was an e-mail that came in in the early morning saying that they had the drivers covered. I had asked them myself if they would mind seeing if someone else would be able, and if there wasn’t anyone else I’d be happy to do it. I did it face-to-face, and I did it in an e-mail where I explained that I needed as much time as possible away from Scott , and that my time off is really precious to me, and I’d be willing to help out in another way. Then comes the double bind that I think most people avoid by just saying Yes to every request, and some avoid by saying no. It’s an uncomfortable thing to refuse a request for help. The nature of the double bind is say no and feel uncomfortable, or say yes and feel uncomfortable. Just being in a situation of having to make a choice like that is uncomfortable and draining. If I had done the driving, I think I would have felt the stress of watching how much of my time alone I`t takes—how much is narrows my box. I think I could have done it without resentment, but I would feel that I’d lost something—a day by myself that’s whole. I’d have had a feeling of deprivation, which I’m not sure is a good thing right now. So I spoke up for myself and did what I said above, and felt a little uncomfortable when I took Scott in this morning. This is in that subtle state where neutral interactions seem charged with some possibility. Usually of a slightly negative cast. I felt some waves of shame as I was coming home because I had a convincing picture in front of me of me as spoiled and selfish. It was so convincing it was hard to not believe—and wouldn’t it have just been better to smile and give up that extra time—it’s not really much, not in the great scheme of things. But I did have some voices rise in my defense inside, that I am entitled to whatever my needs are, and I just need this last couple weeks before school lets out be whole. (All things being equal, that is, the kids not sick or something.) It felt convincingly like a legitimate need, and I was entitled to honor it. I couldn’t do it, and that’s final, and it’s only when I think I see myself associated with some of those negative images, spoiled and selfish, that’s really me fearing that “they” have me associated with those images. And that’s when I get it about how there’s an infinite number of associations available to make out there, and I really can’t control what associations someone makes with me. And the way they look at something IRT me will be determined by their own anxiety level, not by me.

That whole situation is a microcosm of what I’ve been thinking about and writing about—that our nervous systems assign a given value to any stimulation that comes in—as a response to the shift in anxiety level, or background tone. On one hand when I walked into Scott’s class and they asked me if we’d brought a car seat and I said yes, that Tony was putting it in his car and one teacher said, “but I don’t think Scott’s going with him”—that is, who they’d assigned riders to—in one possibility it could have been that there was an edge when she said that and it could have been that it was because of the possibility that they resented my refusing to help. Or it could be that she had an edge in her voice and that it was for reasons having nothing to do with me. It’s possible there was no edge at all and she was just stating a fact and passing information or thinking aloud.

I often feel this sort of magnetic pull toward the association of my behavior with something that’s negative (in the same way that someone can look at a woman who’s tall and blond and inside check off their mental criteria of what counts as beautiful without looking in more detail)—that some aspect of my appearance or behavior resembles something negative in some respect, and some people don’t have a very rigorous check list for determining that if something resembles selfishness (i.e. the image of me in my blue denim vest and capri pants driving off in an EMPTY van “just to be away from her son”) in one or two ways, then in their book it IS selfishness. And I guess because I can see the resemblance, or association, I fear the worst, and feel a strong desire to rid myself of that feeling—of the anxiety that my behavior represents the worst of me.

In a macrocosm, it is the negative associations people make with each other that is the essence of prejudice. Example: people associating black people with more crime, and then applying that association to all black people. Yes, so while it’s true that my not-driving today had some roots in self-care and strong desire, it doesn’t have to follow that I’m selfish and spoiled. It’s funny; in some ways association-making and prejudice, in some ways LACK discrimination. It lacks distinguishing between one quality and another before assigning it a value, or a judgment—waiting and seeing. It seems that the tendency for many people is to jump reflexively to a value or judgment without taking everything into account. Which is why we hear intimations that this is a “war against Muslims” or of “US against the Muslims”. It’s so easy to herd people into a shared point of view and common perception of events; it doesn’t take much to divert collective human attention and send it in a certain (sometimes destructive) direction.]

Ok, I have lots more to think about, but I also better go get Scott.

3/09/06

The above said, I have to comment on another feeling I have. Today snow was on the ground and the schools delayed their opening for 2 hours. There wasn’t any problem getting Scott down the hill, there was only rain down there. This wasn’t forecast, for there to be this much accumulated snow, and for it to continue to snow through the day. Enough accumulated that I felt the need to get the van out of the driveway for fear of not being able to when it’s time to go get Scott. And, sure enough, I had to make a couple tries to be able to claw my way out.

Anyway, the feeling is one of a sense of not enough. I just have not been able to have enough time to myself, and I feel the need like something palpable. There is this feeling in me of “too much”, and it goes like this: I have the interior feeling that one would have if one were trying to squeeze too much into their time. Where someone else may have quite a lot of ballast to absorb before having that kind of inner sensation of stress and disorganization that is telling them they’re doing too much, I have very little of that ballast. It takes me very little to feel that I’ve taken on too much.

It scares me a bit to have that feeling, because I wonder how long it will last. And I’m aware that to most outside observers, that I seem like I have a TON of time, and have no justification for feeling as I do. I feel vulnerable to people’s demands, since I look perfectly well on the outside but feel so incapable on the inside.

Reading books lately has been a revelation, or source of them. I read a phrase, or a passage that reminds me of some aspect of my present or past experience that has some illumination. For example, in reading “Returning Lose Loves”, and reading from the point of view of a character who has had a stroke and expressive aphasia—I have a realization about something I haven’t noticed, much, because it’s always inside me and ever-present—and that’s the experience of myself of being—experiencing my emotions from a step removed…weird, and very difficult to explain. But it had the sense of being a tone, a certain note that was a backdrop to my experiences. Reading of the experience of this man who’s had a stroke I pick up HIS background hum, tone, and that reminded me of mine. Unfortunately, his is quite bleak, and that reminded me that my default inside wasn’t very happy, either. It was a sort of one of sorrow, though that’s not quite it. Perhaps it was just the awareness of being very alone, ultimately. That’s part of what I read in this story—and had a flash of wondering what my tone might be when I am elderly.

It seems like it could be of value, to be aware of this deeply intimate sense of self.

Anyway, it’s days like today, that had the interruption of my alone time (and it’s going to carve something out of it this afternoon, too, since I’ll have to leave early to pick up Scott) and weeks like this (where I’ve lost a day of my alone time, and won’t get to recoup some of it tomorrow, since they can’t keep him in the afternoon like I’d hoped), and months like this (where it’s been ages since I’ve had a week, let alone 2 consecutive weeks where there HASN’T been some disruption) that make me realize that I’m feeling a weight pressing on me. It’s a feeling of having not gotten enough to sustain me, and feeling uneasy about my ability to keep on meeting my obligations—and feeling nervous that there might be other demands. I feel afraid that I can’t do it—what it takes to get through a day. And this has been the tone that’s been preoccupying me a bit—because it’s rather uncomfortable and I don’t know what I can do about it, given that my situation is not that sympathetic to Gary. And what does “not being able to do it” mean, anyway?

03/10/06

A little further on the above note; it’s about obligation, I think. I have little tolerance for obligation, and even its shadow causes me to feel anxiety. I can hardly keep up with my basic obligations, and adding anything to that—even inviting a friend over for dinner, feels like obligation and feels depleting. I know I’m going to have to expand my level of obligation, too, to be part of this community and to support the kids’ schools, but I don’t feel up to it. I fear having to fend off pressure to assume more obligations. And I feel like it might be a long time before I am. Longer than most people would consider acceptable. I guess I do feel this weight of “other people”.

I’ve been reflecting a bit on human tendencies and realize there is a sort of given in human nature that gives rise to some fearsome and irrational behavior(s). And it seems to be so interwoven into our humanity that I can’t see it as changing—the danger from it.

Reading Mary Doria Russell’s book, “Thread of Grace” really awakened me to some aspects of human brutality. For one thing, it’s a pattern that repeats. There was an especially horrifying description of an interrogation with the Gestapo that haunts me to this day—because of the capacity of the human body to feel pain and how some humans exploit that. We have bodies that can experience such exquisite pleasure and the other side of that coin is the vulnerability that capacity engenders. Another aspect of human brutality was its irrationality—how reason stands powerless before an onslaught—of what?

Examples:

The violence against Muslims in this country following the bombing of the two towers. And not just Muslims, but anyone with an appearance that can associate them in some way with Muslims, like skin color, or facial features, or dress, like the Sikhs. The way that the bombing of the shrine in Samarra meant that Shiites who lived in primarily Sunni areas, and vice versa had to move, for fear that there would be violence against them, even though they’d lived peacefully with their neighbors for generations: “Our neighbors cannot protect us” said one Sunni family as they departed their home in a Shiite neighborhood.

It’s very irrational that wars be fought over religious differences, even sects within the SAME religion, but history is full of this. And there’s a kind of tension that pressures the particular conflict with terrorists into a frame of a “clash of civilizations”—the West vs Islam. I think that’s a false, or at least very misleading characterization, but so many seem to be succumbing to the pressure to view it that way.

And to consider that irrational ideas can gain currency among millions so that they’re willing to do unspeakable things, or die is so frightening. Or send their children to die, and call it “sacrificing for our way of life”, or “for freedom”, or “for our country”.

I feel fear of the potential in humans to do unspeakable things for irrational reasons. I feel fear that it wouldn’t take more than scarcity of necessities, like oil, to create a disruption where people would do such. And, on a basic level, I feel fear because by looks, language, and residence, my family and I are associated with an entity that has moved unilaterally and belligerently in the world—has supported regimes that have been responsible for killing and torturing thousands, and has engaged in some grave insults to the Muslim world, as in Abu Ghraib, in Iraq.

Later:

I was listening to my voice and tone as I spoke with the kids this evening, particularly Scott. My whole tone says, “Get the fuck out of my way!” and it accurately reflects my feeling at the time. He is soooooo slow; I am constantly saying, “Quickly, Scott”, or “come on, Scott”, or ordering him to do something (that I’ve already asked him to do) in very clipped tones. I get so impatient with him it is nearly unbearable, and I feel so badly afterwards. I worry about schools treating his dreaminess like misbehavior; I’m the biggest culprit.