A lightness to my step

There was a lightness to my step as I made my way through the Atlanta airport, walking between terminals instead of taking the plane train, taking in an exhibit on Atlanta history, observing travelers hustling around me, and checking out the renovations in the D terminal. Even as I waited for what seemed like an inordinate amount of time in a crowd at Einstein Brothers Bagels, there was a sense of peace and wonder.

There was no one to bring me down with impatience and complaints.  I didn’t have to manage anyone else.  It left me with opportunity, with energy, with time to wonder and seek out the joy in the experience.  It left me feeling free.  It was a breath of fresh air.

And to think I didn’t even realize what I was missing these last two decades.  Better late than never.

Resentment and Judgment

I reached a point in my life some years ago where I decided the cost of resentment wasn't worth it.  I don't know that I've ever been someone who spends a lot of energy on resentment or grudges so I'm not sure this was a big leap for me but I wasn't immune to it either.

It wasn't some clear decision I was aware of.  It was just a shift in how I approached conflict and hurts.  I think it coincided with the shift in how I viewed my parents as that was when I finally released the resentment I felt towards them.  

When I was a high school teenager, I suffered from depression.  My parents didn't understand the importance of mental health and mental health treatment.  And it felt like they were too busy focused on my sister to even notice I wasn't okay.  I remember a phone call with a good friend who helped me find the courage to talk to them about getting treatment.  Even with that courage, they took some convincing.  In the years that followed, I remember holding onto how shitty it felt as a teenager having to advocate so hard to my parents to get the help I needed.

I suspect I finally recognized the cost that I was paying to hold onto that resentment.

So from that point forward, whenever I faced a conflict or hurt, I only gave myself the option to either speak up or to fully let it go.

So as my marriage ended, I didn't feel like I had left anything unsaid.  I didn't necessarily feel heard or understood.  And the way he had re-written our history, there were many examples of ways he had twisted my words.  I struggled with the lack of control I had in how my words were received.  But despite my feeling the need to further explain myself, in reality I had done my part in expressing the things that were important to me.

So now I have the benefit of hindsight and a whole lot more clarity that comes with space and processing.  And if I'm honest with myself, I was aware of the imbalance and unhealthy side of our relationship to a least a small extent even as I was making those decisions about what to communicate and what to let go.  And I still made the decisions I made.  And I don’t have any regrets or hold onto any resentments today.

Maybe my judgment wasn’t faulty.  Maybe I knew exactly who he was but lacked experience in how it would affect our relationship in the long run and so with that lack of experience, I leaned into two qualities about myself I greatly admire - my loyalty and my ability to see the best in people and circumstances.  Now today, I get to add the experience I gained from this relationship to my decision making going forward.

Closure - Learning to trust my judgement again

I've been trying to write this post all week and after the conversation I had at the end of my session with my therapist, I think I just need to start the post over as my prior thoughts were too jumbled and maybe why I hadn't yet gotten to a point I felt ready to publish.

A recurring theme over the past year has been this desire to have one more conversation.  Everything still feels so unfinished.  I'm still stuck trying to find closure.  What's interesting though is that what I imagine that conversation would look like has significantly evolved over the past year.

If I go back to last fall, there were so many things I wanted to tell him, so many things I wanted to say.  But when I was honest with myself, I realized I had already said all of those things to him before we separated and he had not listened.  My desire was to get him to actually understand.  Except I can't make someone understand.  I had already done my part in communicating.  It was up to him to receive that communication and he had chosen not to.  Over time I accepted this and my need to explain myself slowly faded away.

But the desire for one more conversation still lingered, except now it is focused more on what he would say.  Logically I doubt anything he would say would actually be helpful.  I don't believe he is honest enough with himself to be able to give me any sort of honest answer.  He is more likely to say something really dumb and try to again turn the blame on me.  So my mind recognizes that one more conversation is unlikely to be productive.

My therapist asked some really good questions to help me try and understand what was behind this need.  It is this lingering hope (however small it may be) that I wasn't so wrong about him, that I would see a glimpse of the man I believed him to be, that the man he showed me to be last year was just a bad dream.  It is a lack of trust in my judgment and a need to forgive myself for getting it wrong.  The relationship feels unfinished because I haven't reconciled the man I believed him to be with the man he showed me he was in the end.

I don't think a conversation with him will actually resolve that.

Footsteps above me

Every morning, even weekends, a few minutes after 5:00 a.m., I start to hear footsteps in the apartment above me.  I've never met the person who lives there but I feel a sense of solidarity with them.  Those footsteps every morning are a comfort.

Over the past year, I have felt an incongruence between my fascination with the hustle and vibrance of the city and my introversion and love for quiet, alone time.  And as I contemplate a move to Atlanta, that incongruence sometimes feeds my doubts.

But maybe it isn't an incongruence at all.  It's not silence I seek.  It's sanctuary, a private space of my own where I can retreat when my fascination with the city gets too much.  It's the ability to seamlessly navigate between my desire to sometimes participate and sometimes observe.  It's a desire to be connected with the greater world in both deeper ways through good relationships and more surface level ways like listening for the footsteps above me.

Maybe as a single introvert, a small apartment for my sanctuary in the middle of a vibrant city with so many opportunities to participate is exactly where I belong.

Intensity vs Intimacy

I read recently to be careful not to confuse intensity for intimacy.  That's exactly what I did when I met him.  It was an all-consuming first year where we spent every waking available minute together.  I used to joke about how little sleep I got, hanging out with him until 2 am and then being at my office job by 8 am.  I worked two jobs that first summer.  He only worked one but often tried to adjust his hours at the grocery store to match mine and then would sleep while I was at my office job.

He was so attentive and effusive with the words he wrote and spoke to me.  And his family was over-the-top welcoming and loving.

When I read that advice about intensity and intimacy, I realized intense is the perfect word to describe that first year.  

What it really reminds me of is the love stories in movies - that all-consuming, whirlwind romance that ends in happily ever after.  And interestingly, when he wasn't watching YouTube videos about relationships that last summer, he was watching romance movies which got real awkward (at least for me) in those weeks we were still living together but had separated.  He seemed obsessed with romance as Hollywood depicted it.  

I got caught in that initial Hollywood whirlwind romance but had enough life experience to recognize that a lasting relationship was more than that (even if I didn’t understand the real nuance and importance of reciprocation and balance) so I stayed, grew, invested, chose love, etc. when the whirlwind ended.  

He, on the other hand, chose silent resentment over investing in the relationship when the whirlwind ended.  And as we separated, he was still looking for that whirlwind romance thinking that is what love is.  I imagine his new girlfriend is experiencing the intensity now.

If I ever find myself falling in love again, I hope I am cautious of intensity and focus more on who they are when things get real and how they show up in the relationship in a way that is more balanced.  I hope I don’t get caught up again with someone who has bought into the ideas of Hollywood romance.  I want someone who believes love is a choice and an action and is willing to invest in me and the relationship with a steadiness and consistency that is sustainable, not an intensity with a short shelf-life.

Astrology, Psychics, etc.

We were visiting New Orleans.  His Dad was quite sick or had recently passed away.   It was probably December of 2017, a couple months before his Dad's passing.  We walked past the business of a psychic, Bottom of the Cup Tea Room and he urges us to enter.  It caught me off guard because he had never mentioned any interest in something like this or talked about any belief in psychics or mediums.  But I followed him in.  I remember waiting in the store while he went in a back room for a reading.  I don't remember him wanting to share much of what he learned in that reading.  I didn't push and honestly, I didn't think a lot about it.  I'm a skeptic so silently wondered what value he could have gotten.

I'm pretty sure there was a second reading a number of years later from this same place.  I can't recall exactly when.  I have this vague recollection it may have been by phone, possibly during the pandemic.

Then last May when he was in New Orleans for work, he had another reading.  This was the week I knew something was wrong but he wasn't yet talking to me.

And then he spend last summer reading and listening to everything he could about horoscopes and whether our signs were meant to be together.  Before this, he had never expressed an interest in horoscopes that I can recall.

I remember reading and listening with him just to try and understand what might have been going through his head.  Everything I remember reading just seemed off from what I knew about each of us.  Capricorns (my sign) are supposed to be traditional and one of the most pessimistic signs that lack an adventurous spirit - none of which sound true about me (at least from my own perspective).  Sagittarius (his sign) are supposed to be the eternal optimists who are open minded and very enthusiastic - none of which described the man I saw in front of me.  And so much of the advice I saw about compatibility anchored on those qualities.

And what made me think about all of this more recently is that his IG post a number of weeks ago about his trip to New Orleans with his new girlfriend includes a selfie of the two of them in front of the Bottom of the Cup Tea Room so I imagine he went in for another reading.

I don't know if I believe in astrology or the ability of psychics.  But I wonder what role his belief in them played in the end.  I can't imagine one would tell him to just discard me like he did though even if they suggested our relationship would end, just like I can't imagine his therapist would have supported him discarding me like he did.  But if he was only listening for what he wanted to hear and that matched the re-written story he had created about me and our relationship, I can imagine him using their words to justify his actions.  And in the same token, more recently, he may have used their words to validate his new relationship.

I don't know what I take from this reflection.  Does it truly matter if he let himself be influenced by astrology and psychic readings instead of actually talking to the woman he was in a relationship with?  We are at the same end result.  And honestly, it's just another example of how his actions interfered with us having any chance of making a relationship truly work.  It's just another example of how he wasn't capable of a healthy adult relationship and he wasn't willing to do the work to become capable.  It's easier to just pay a psychic $50 and take whatever answer you want from the fortune they tell you than it is to learn how to communicate.

It's not a resume builder

A few months back, my supervisor came to me and asked me to support two attorneys in an employment discrimination trial.  I was hired to support fraud, my funding source even narrows it down to a very specific type of fraud, not defensive cases.  But as we have lost staff during this administration at an alarming rate, they have started to ask me to do non-fraud related tasks.  This was pitched as both a way to help out the team and as a resume builder.

What my supervisor clearly doesn't understand is that it isn't a resume builder for the direction I've told him I want my career to go.  You see, for the last 3.5 years, I have also being taking on the role of fraud investigator in addition to my paralegal duties related to fraud cases and discovered this is where my passion is.  I even interviewed with my supervisor for the fraud investigator role a year and a half ago.  And both I and the attorney I work closest with have had ongoing conversations with my supervisor about getting me officially into that investigator role.  An investigator doesn't get called into trials to do administrative work.  So no, this is not a resume builder for me. 

Then as the trial got closer, the paralegal in my office who usually handles trials showed up in my office early one Monday morning and told me that he had talked to our supervisor and that he would be supervising me in my role as paralegal on this trial.  He followed up with patronizing conversation after conversation in the days and weeks that followed.  To fe fair, there were a couple key things I needed from him but the rest was just an unnecessary, condescending distraction.  He even had the nerve to go to one of the other paralegals and ask her if she thought I was smart enough to handle this because I wasn't asking any questions.

In the meantime, I was pulled into a huge brief last week, on another  case matter unrelated to fraud, that consumed so much of my time and added so much additional chaos to the chaos of preparing for a trial.  This brief and the trial were by far the two biggest tasks for our division in the recent weeks and they both fell disproportionately on one attorney and on one support staff, me.

Fast forward to today, the day of the trial, I was in the elevator with the two attorneys on the case and they asked me why he was there.  He had walked over with us but forgotten his ID so had run back to the office in that moment.  I found it interesting that he had not actually been invited yet made time to attend the whole trial today.

My work managing exhibits both in paper and electronically went incredibly smoothly.  I was called a superstar and people were impressed with my abilities.  The intern was surprised to hear it was my first time given how well she thought I handled it all.  And one of the attorneys said that now I will become the paralegal of choice, the one others ask for.  And I kept getting asked how I felt about it all.  They wanted me to feel like I had accomplished some big goal, checked off another check mark on my list of accomplishments, etc.

What none of them realized was how much the whole experience was convincing me how much I needed to leave this office.  

There's a frustrating danger in being competent.  I have experienced it in almost every job I have ever had even going back as far as my high school job at the state Department of Transportation.  What I liked about my current role is that my funding source narrowed my job description.  Even when we lost our investigator and I took on that role as well, I still could keep narrow the types of cases I worked.  Only a couple of attorneys in the office ever truly got to see the quality of my work.  I could hide in the office down the hall with easy access to the back staircase. 

And it's hard to believe this truly was just about helping out during tough times when I think about how much time the normal trial paralegal had to bug me, patronize me, and then sit through the entire trial.  He could have handled it himself in that time.  So this wasn't about him being overworked.  They just didn't want him to handle it.  Maybe because the technology for displaying exhibits had changed and he uses his poor technology skills as an excuse to not learn new tools.  Or maybe because he doesn't wear the hearing aids he needs forcing the attorneys to have to yell to get him to hear their directions (which is not ideal in a trial when often you don't want everyone in the courtroom to hear you).  So they turned to someone they believed would be more competent even if it wasn't in her job description.

If I do manage to secure an investigator role in another district (whether that be in Atlanta or somewhere else), I will feel bad leaving the remaining attorney I work with on fraud cases.  He has advocated for me, consistently shown a huge respect for me, considered me in the decisions that affect me, and treated me like an important member of our team.  I can't say the same for my direct managers, overall leadership, and administration of the office.  They had so many chances to do better by me and chose not to.  I will not feel bad about leaving them.

So with an interview scheduled for next week and this trial behind, I'm ready to look forward with the realization that ultimately, my gain in a new opportunity will be a big loss to this office.  Wow, that sounds familiar, me turning someone's inability to see my value into an opportunity of gain for me (and a loss for them).  

Is that just the reality of life - that many people struggle to see the value in what is right in front of them?  Or is there something specific about me that makes it easy for others to overlook my value?

Amelie, a French Film

I watched a movie last night.  If you know me, you know how much I avoid TV and movies altogether and don't even own a TV so this first sentence probably caught your attention.

I dug out the portable DVD player, hooked it up to my computer and pulled out my copy of the French film, Amelie.  (It appears I own exactly 3 movies and a handful of Yoga DVDs.). I bought Amelie back in college, maybe even before I met my ex-husband.  I can't remember the last time I watched it because he hated the movie so would veto it anytime I brought it up.

I have always felt I relate to the main character, Amelie with her quirkiness and the way she observes the world, often hesitant to participate in it.  She finds an unlikely friendship with a man in her building who has health problems that prevent him from ever leaving his apartment.  It is this friend that encourages her to participate.

There is a love story aspect to the movie and I felt some nostalgia to my early years with my ex-husband as some of the gestures and interactions in the film brought me back to specific moments of my own.

And then last night I dreamt.  I have been dreaming more and actually remembering my dreams, something that is not normal for me.  Last night's dream was the early stages of dating with a different man, someone I know in real life but who I did not think I had ever thought of that way.  Honestly, I don't even know what to make of it, so I'll just tuck it away to reflect on later.

Community and Starting Over

I was walking to the grocery store this morning when I heard my name.  Looking over in that direction, I saw someone from church sitting at a table across the street waving to me.  I waved and called back and then continued on my way, my step just a bit lighter and a smile on my face.  

And then I thought back to the fundraiser the evening before and the conversations and laughter shared with good friends as we sat around the table after dinner strategizing about our silent auction bids.

And then I was reminded of the easy connections I started making at a writing workshop another friend had invited me to earlier in the week.

Then for a moment, doubts entered my mind as I contemplated whether I really wanted to start this process of building community all over again by moving to a new city.  I feel like I have come so far in the last year that it would be very sad to leave it all.  But I also recognize that it has only been a year and I was able to accomplish this much in that short of a time.

The Best of Me

I've been told I ended this post with a really reflective couple of lines that I'm not sure fully sunk in when I wrote them.  Often I'm writing to process and the thoughts that come out on the page are thoughts that then toss and turn in my head in the hours and days that follow.  I like the metaphor of a puzzle which I know I have used in the past.  My mind just keeps picking up pieces and each time I look at them, I see something different - sometimes it's enough to make sense of where it goes, sometimes it gets put back in the pile to pick up once again at another time after I have reviewed more pieces.

But back to Thursday night's thought, I was reveling in the greater bandwidth I have now and recognizing that the woman my ex-husband knew didn't have that bandwidth.  On a very practical level, what that means is that he never got the best version of me.  The version he got was drained and restrained.  It was a smaller version of me with less joy and less energy.

On a gut level, this realization that he never got the best of me, just fills me with sadness.  Maybe it's that grace coming out again.  As angry as I am at him and as much as he created this situation himself, I still wish he could have experienced the best of me and I want him to be able to experience the best of others in the future.

On a rational level, it's a huge reminder that you get out of relationships what you put into them.  When you are a positive force on someone else's life, it leaves them with the bandwidth to be a positive force on your life.  That's no guarantee everyone will choose or have the capacity to be that positive force, but it's almost guaranteed not to happen, if you aren't making that choice yourself first.

And then there is the back of my brain thought that wonders how I could have reacted better, whether there is anything I could have done to change the course of that trajectory.  It's easy to sit back and blame him for draining my energy and not leaving space for me in the relationship.  But maybe I could have done more to counter that.  Although, maybe that would have pushed him away and us to the end faster.  I do think it was my own growth in learning how to set better boundaries and communicate that played a role in the end.

Doctor's appointment

I went in yesterday morning to establish care with a new gynecology provider.  It had been since just before the pandemic that I had my last annual exam.  I've had so many bad experiences with doctors that I find myself cycling in and out of compliance.  I know the value of preventative medical care which is what keeps me coming back to try again but the bad experiences simultaneously push me away.  My last Pap smear was with a provider who was not gentle, which because of my chronic pelvic pain, left me in pain for several days afterwards.

I should add that after I finally got the courage to schedule this one, my insurance got into a fight with my provider so for a while this summer, I wasn't sure if the appointment would even be covered which probably would have been enough for me to cancel it.  But at the last minute they signed a new three-year contract.

So with all that running through my head, I walked to my appointment yesterday morning and navigated the complicated building, ending up on the wrong floor before finally finding my doctor's check in and waiting area.  This time my appointment was with a nurse practitioner.  My one prior experience with a nurse practitioner many years ago was more positive so maybe that is why I so readily agreed to an NP for this appointment.

When she came into the room and asked about my pelvic floor pain, I explained that for most of my marriage intercourse had been painful.  I had been to many different doctors and specialists who could never determine the cause.  I then said that since my divorce last year, I had seen other improvements in my health.  And then I paused before I told her I wondered if my pain was caused by stress or anxiety from my marriage such that it might improve now that I'm divorced.  She told me she had seen many cases of that being true so it definitely is possible.

And then she did the exam.  She was gentle and she talked through what she was doing and checked in with me frequently to see how I was doing.  She was so pleasant and kind.  And although there was discomfort, there was not any pain.  And this morning, almost 24 hours later, I am still pain free.

This feels hopeful.  And it's really nice to be able to add a good doctor's experience to my memories.

Bandwidth

Leaning into the exhale (see my last post), I put on some classical piano music, toasted some good bread and poured my favorite olive oil into a dipping dish, and opened my journal to write a bit of poetry.  When there was a break in the flow of lines on the paper, I got up to wash a few dishes.  There was peace even in the flow of the water from the faucet as the music continued to play.  And then I sat back down again and admired my drying rack.  

When I moved into my very own place last year, I bought a set of reusable zip lock bags.  My ex-husband rolled his eyes at me when I placed the order.  I could just imagine his thoughts, "she'll never keep up on washing them and eventually give up."  It's now eleven months later.  And I smile because he was both right and wrong.  He is wrong because I have kept up and I absolutely love these zip lock bags.  But I recognize he was right because the woman he knew didn't have the bandwidth for something like that.

And that makes me smile as I lean into the beauty of this evening and revel in the bandwidth I've regained.

I exhale

When I hung up the call with my therapist, I felt a large exhale leave my body.  I had gone into the session with so much negative energy from work, anxious energy from the interview I was offered but we haven't been able to schedule yet, and exhaustion from the heavy processing I've been doing all week (as evidenced in my blog posts).  And I ended the session feeling lighter.

I don't have any big reflections in this exact moment, there's time for that in the days to come.  I'm just going to sit in the calm and appreciate the value of a good therapist.

Creativity through a last minute invite

I was so tired today.  I didn't sleep the greatest last night.  I haven't had many good nights sleep lately.  And the chaos of work was pulling me in too many directions - the very poor form joke from my supervisor coming at the worst of it.  But in the midst of it all, I received a Facebook message from a church friend with an invitation to a writing workshop this evening.  

I will admit, I didn't respond right away.  I let it sit, repeatedly coming back to it.  I was so tired but I was intrigued.  Ultimately, I followed the link and completed my registration while there were still two seats left.  I know I follow through on my commitments so completing that registration was the push to get me through the rest of the day and find the energy to do something different.

So after work, I gave up my prime parking spot, ventured into rush hour traffic, and found my way to this public library in the suburbs.  And then I immersed myself in writing prompts, my own creativity, and the incredibly creativity of the others in the class, each of us unique and interesting.  My nervous system rested as 90 minutes disappeared before I ever glanced at my watch or my phone.  And I wrote this poem to myself from one of the prompts that is very relevant to my recent blog posts.

Dark tinted rose colored glasses

created a haze, an isolation

between the depths of your mind

filled with hopes, dreams, self

and the sound of his soothing voice

as he re-wrote and re-created

your clouded memories.

You ignored, glossed over, made light of

the intuitions that came through

with clarity, yet lightheartedness

in the writings of your journals,

only to find yourself decades later

lost and broken,

as the haze begins to clear.

I feel like a fool.

Finally seeing all the red flags I ignored, things I had enough self-awareness about to write in my journal, I feel like such a fool.  Thinking about all the ways I excused his behavior last year and still had good regards for him as I talked about what was happening to me, I feel like such a fool.  Remembering all the ways I bent over backwards to accommodate his Mom, I feel like such a fool.

Rationally, I realize I was young and inexperienced and I realize I was up against some pretty strong manipulation.  What happened to me has happened to so many other women (in many variations) and will continue happening to women.  Rationally, there is no reason I should feel like a fool.  He should be the one feeling like a fool.  But realizing all of that doesn't take away the feeling.

I'll work through this though.  I'll learn from this.

The early years

For some reason, the journal entry from January of 2004 where I realized I would never be his number one priority and I didn't feel I could talk to him about it is very heavy on my mind today.  I wrote about that journal entry in this post.  I think it's because as I read about how the mind works and continue to see things differently, I want to understand where my mind was at that I thought that was okay.  Why did I think it was a good idea to marry someone who I knew would never prioritize me?

So last evening, I went back and looked at my journal entries from those early years wondering if a fresh perspective might see something I missed when I read them last December.

From July of 2002 (when we met) until mid 2003 (before we moved in together), I wrote about a lot of insecurities and doubts.  I talked about having low self-worth.  I repeated several times that I didn't think I deserve him.  I talked about how I need to stop running and that I have trust issues and have not truly trusted anyone since Beth in 8th/9th grade.  I don't fully recall what I meant in saying I need to stop running.

I gushed on and on about his unconditional love and how I don't think I could ever love him the way he loves me (kind of ironic knowing where this blog post is going).  I also thought his parents were absolutely amazing during this time.  They were attentive and interested in me.  They seemed to love and welcome me as one of their own.  At the time, I had this perception that my own parents were uninterested in me so his parents' love seemed like a dream come true.

Within the first two months of dating, he was seriously talking a future together - what kind of house we wanted to buy, what we would do with our degrees, etc.  Within five months, he was already talking about buying a ring and trying out how my first name would sound with his last name.  I mention on more than one occasion that this all feels too good to be true.

Six months in I write about how I feel like my life is spinning out of control and decisions are being made too quickly.  He's decided to forgo an internship with his undergrad degree and instead start his masters the following fall at my university.  So as early as December of 2002 we were securing an apartment together for the fall of 2003. 

We were long distance except summers during this time period.  There are several times where I wrote that I appreciated the physical distance because it gave me space to think and get some clarity as it seems the time together was so intense.

We have one minor glitch when a mechanic does something wrong to his car and he is ready to go out and buy a new one instead of giving the mechanic a chance to try to fix it.  It appears I talked him off that ledge.  (That was my foreshadowing of a life of impulse car buys.  I still remember the time he used the excuse that our car needed new windshield wipers so we might as well go out and buy a whole new car.)

In February of 2003, we took an online quiz "Are you ready to be loved?" and he scored a perfect score while I was embarrassed by my low score.  I sought a lot of reassurance from him in this first almost year.

I still had doubts come April of 2003 when I started planning to propose to him although I had a lot of confidence in the moment of the proposal.  When I got home that summer of 2003, I wrote about not sleeping well and crying but not understanding why.

And then we moved in together before the fall semester of 2003, and there was a huge shift within just a week or two.  He had stopped ever treating me when we went out, each of us always paying our own way or paying out of the household joint account (which I think we contributed to equally).  I wrote about only one time he brought flowers home and how weird the interaction was.  He said someone was selling flowers at work so he bought them but then didn't say anything to let me know he thought of me or that they are for me or that they are because he loved me or anything like that.  Even when I ask what the flowers are for, his only response was that someone was selling them.  It's not that I needed flowers or anything like that, we were fairly poor college students.  It's that any attempt to continue to date me is noticeably missing.

We were arguing about housework, sometimes because he wouldn't give me a chance to get to it and sometimes because he was refusing to do it and the burden then fell on me for a period of time.  We were starting to run into issues where he wouldn't stand up for me to his parents and let them run right over us with each visit.  That was true from their very first visit that October after we had just moved in together.

I wrote about how I felt there was an imbalance in how much emotional support I was providing him (which almost seems a bit of a flip from the time period before we moved in together).  I'm handling all the administrative stuff - the portable dishwasher we bought that didn't work, the newspaper we subscribed to that didn't arrive, the maintenance issues with the apartment complex, the errors on our joint bank statements, finding a vet for our pet turtle (the pet he wanted) and then caring for the turtle, etc.

I didn't write a lot of entries during this time frame and the ones I do are mostly about school but when I write about him, they aren't overly positive entries.  I think there were a lot of good times mixed in but I had limited time to write and when I did have time, it was just to process the bad.  But regardless, the all in, love bombing man (and his parents) of our pre-move in days had disappeared and the man who had replaced him was doing more of the bare minimum.  

Another thing that really stands out is that I no longer write anything at all about my own insecurities,  doubts, or self-worth.  It's like they just magically disappear.  I actually am now the one gushing about how much I love him and how much he means to me.  When things got real for him, he distanced himself.  When things got real for me, I dug in deeper into the relationship.

So fast forward to that journal entry in January of 2004 that sent me down this path this weekend - he had distanced himself enough that even his car was more important than me.  And I was writing that I loved him so much was willing to sacrifice for him.

I don't even know what to make of this.  It just sounds so messed up and I'm not any closer to answering my question as to where my mind was at when I thought this was okay.  Honestly, I'm probably further from that answer now because I think it was even more dysfunctional than I had initially remembered.  

Honestly, before I found those journal entries, I had always believed that our honeymoon phase had lasted well into our marriage.  I had remembered quite a few of those early years as really special and wonderful.  But my journal entries don't quite paint that picture.

What if the magic was always within me, not in the relationship?

As I am now coming up on a year of doing life alone, I wonder how much of our "we did life so well together" was me vs him vs true coordination from both of us.  How much of my fear of handling it all alone is missing his physical presence vs missing his contributions?  And if it's just missing his physical presence, what am I really afraid of?

I remember when we stood up from the kitchen table about a year ago after having finalized a property division spreadsheet, he turned to me and said "I'm going to miss your resourcefulness."  I don't think I really understood what he meant so I just tucked it away to contemplate later.

When I think back to the context of his comment about my resourcefulness, it was after I had done the work to figure out how to value our pensions so that we could find other ways to fairly offset his pension which he didn't want me getting any part of.   I'm happy with the end result but I realize now it was truly on me to figure out how to get to that end result.

When we moved south, I took the lead in finding apartment complexes to tour and then was the one to communicate with the leasing office to secure a unit.  And it was on me to find renters and auto insurance and figure out the process to transfer our cars/licenses.  (It's interesting to realize that despite cars being his obsession, I always dealt with our insurance agent.  They knew me by name, not him.) 

I'm pretty sure I was the one who took the lead on finding a realtor to sell our Wisconsin house and communicating with the realtor we chose.  I was also the one who dealt with the realtor when we sold our underwater condo in Minnesota and brainstormed how to come up with the cash for the closing.

And then I think back to the day I moved into my own apartment.  We both worked from home that morning.  In order for each of us to pick up our respective keys to our new apartments, we needed documentation from the power company that we had put the electricity in our names.  He hadn't received that documentation yet and was panicking.  When he called it turned he had put the wrong date down for the start date.  It was kind of a surreal moment as I sat there calmly watching him fall apart over this little detail.  I remember thinking to myself, "he depended on me more than he even realizes."  As I reflect on it further, it is quite eye opening because my image of him was always of someone who had his shit together, at least on a practical level.

Maybe there wasn't magic in how well we worked together.  Maybe it was me.  He may have been my security blanket.  I'm sure at times he was also helpful in bouncing ideas off.  But in hindsight, I'm now starting to realize, I may have been a pretty significant contributing factor in how easily we navigated life together.

Maybe I was so focused on what "we" accomplished in life that I lost sight of my specific role in all of it.

So going back to the post I wrote two days ago called Emotional Intimacy, this view in today's post really highlights how my perceptions are created and can change significantly with more information, time, reflection, etc.  It's kind of mind-blowing to realize how dependent our experience is on the perceptions we create in the moment.

I'm in the middle of Daniel Kahneman's book titled, Thinking, Fast and Slow that is making me realize how little I understand about how my mind works and thus how little I truly know about myself (as my perception of self is created from that same mind I don't exactly understand).

A day in Atlanta

A tear or two formed in my eyes as I pulled out of the parking garage early this morning and pointed my car towards Atlanta.  There was a little girl in side of me that was scared of change, scared of an unfamiliar place, scared I couldn't do it on my own.  I wondered why the life I had with my ex-husband wasn't good enough, why I found myself in this place of having to forge a whole new path.  But then I looked down at the everything bagel in my hand and remembered I no longer had to worry about whether any crumbs fell.  So I reminded myself of the good that has come out of this and told myself I had proven my strength and could do this.

As I continued to drive east, the clear skies were overtaken by dense fog.  At times, my car's auto steer warned me that it was limiting my speed due to lack of visibility.  What an interesting metaphor for this time in my life!  Here I am forging a path into the unknown with so many uncertainties, not unlike the unknown and uncertainties created by the fog this morning.  I don't know if I will actually get this job and move to Atlanta.  And if I do, I don't know what kind of life I'm going to create there.  But like my car's auto steer, I can slow down when the fog gets too dense while still moving forward.

To be honest, I didn't have a clear plan for today.  I hadn't made any appointments with apartment complexes.  I didn't even have a very complete list of ones I was interested in.  I just knew that Georgia Power's headquarters had level 2 EV chargers in their free lot on the south side of Midtown, the neighborhood that most intrigued me.  So I set those chargers as my destination and headed out as soon as I was awake and ready.

My phone says I walked 21,582 steps today over 9.2 miles.  I spent 5.5 hours in the car - road construction added a bit of time.  I toured three apartment complexes, walked through my favorite parts of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, discovered an art fair at Piedmont Park and watched the ducks in the pond.  I smelled the smells of an Indian restaurant outside one of the places I toured.  I walked across the rainbow crosswalks.  I stopped and observed both a delivery robot on the sidewalk and a driverless car pulling up to a stoplight.  I heard so many different languages and walked among so many diverse people.  And I really enjoyed it all.

I have no idea how this job opportunity will play out but it feels just a little less scary now that I have walked a neighborhood where I think I would really enjoy living if it does pan out. 

Emotional Intimacy

The topic of emotional intimacy came up in therapy yesterday evening - the ways I look back at intimacy in my relationship with nostalgia that I might want to look for if I ever got in another relationship and the ways intimacy was lacking.  And the discussion got me to thinking about how (perceived or real) intimacy may have been what kept me in the relationship for so long.  I realized that perceived intimacies were so intertwined throughout the entire relationship with times that intimacy was really lacking.  The really good was frequent enough to convince my mind to ignore the inconsistency.

In the first three years of our marriage, we had a pretty consistent date night Wednesday nights during the school year at the Mall of America.  We would eat Cousin's Subs in the food court in the park area - this was the years where we watched it transition from Camp Snoopy to Nickelodeon Universe.  Then we would play in the arcade before spending some time walking the mall and talking.  We went so frequently, we even had a favorite spot to park.  

The conversations we had, the connection I felt, the routine time spent together created what felt like a really nice intimacy.  These nights at the Mall combined with all the date nights we had trying out all the amazing Mexican restaurants in the Twin Cities are times I look back on with a lot of nostalgia.  It's interesting that I had to go to my journals to remember the arguments we had in those early years yet this part of those years is as clear in my mind as if it just happened yesterday.

I also remember a time at the Minnesota zoo.  We visited the zoo all the time.  We were at the tiger exhibit, our favorite exhibit - I must have thousands of photos of those tigers.  He was around the corner, out of my sight, at the glass where a tiger would often lay.  I was in an area where I could photograph them without having to shoot through the glass and one tigers suddenly got up and charged towards where I was.  There was fencing and a moat between us so I was in no danger at all but he came running out of concern.  Why does such a little thing stick so clearly in my mind?

Fast forward to about 7 years in our marriage, when the doctor suggested that the birth control I was on could be a contributing factor to my pelvic floor pain, without a hesitation, he went to his doctor and got a vasectomy so we no longer had to depend on hormonal birth control.  And then when in trying to treat my pelvic pain, I developed constant, at times debilitating back and hip pain, I was prescribed an opioid but I mostly avoided taking it because it made me so foggy and I wasn't comfortable driving while on it.  But there were a few nights were the pain got so unbearable but I really didn't want to miss choir practice and so he drove me to practice, sat in the back to wait until I was done, and then drove me home.  It just seemed like he was really there for me during this time.

With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect my pelvic floor and subsequent hip and back pain were my body's way of trying to tell me he wasn't good for me so there is a lot of conflict in me thinking about how much I really appreciated and loved the way he took care of me while I was dealing with a problem that might have been created because of our dysfunctional relationship.

I was still holding on to the way he responded so well to my pain issues when we separated last summer.  It was something that meant so much to me that I allowed it to excuse a lot of in the many years that followed.  I remember it actually coming up in a discussion we had last summer, although I don't recall the whole context of that discussion.

The other way I felt intimacy was the way we so seamlessly did life together.  Whether it was trying to sell our condo in the Twin Cities just after the housing crash, facing his Dad's illness, picking up and moving across the entire country, or one of the other countless challenges we faced together, we cooperated and communicated so effortlessly.  That was even true as we divided our assets and debts in the divorce.  There was an intuitiveness in how we solved problems together that always felt unreal to me.  Isn't that intimacy?  To know someone so well you can work through big things together so effortlessly?  To feel that in synch with someone?

When it was us against the world, there was no stopping us.  It was only when it turned into him (with or without his mom) against me that we crumbled.  I had never thought of it this way before.  When it all fell apart so abruptly last year, I kept telling myself "but we did life so well together."  There was this huge disconnect between all the times we had faced the world together with the times it felt like we were battling each other.  

As long as intimacy wasn't a threat to his own insecurities (and I suspect shame), he was right by my side.  The second he perceived something as an attack on him, a wall went up.  I think I believed that the relationship couldn't truly be bad if we were so in synch that it felt like we could conquer the world together (as long as I didn't trigger his insecurities).

I don't ever want to be a relationship again where there is that conditional "as long as I don't trigger them or their ____" attached to all the good.  And I don't ever want to tolerate a them vs me mentality even if it is just some of the time.

A stranger that feels a bit familiar

I ran into my ex-husband yesterday evening at my apartment complex.  We just exchanged a quick “hi” and continued on our respective ways.

Although I didn’t feel any real strong emotions (I’ve come a long way in my healing), there was just a bit of sadness at the mix of familiarity and stranger his image brings to mind. This was the person I felt the most comfortable with, someone who felt as familiar as myself.  And overnight, he became a stranger to me.  Although, I recognize that process didn’t truly happen overnight, I just became aware of it all at once.

I don’t miss him but I miss that feeling of comfort and familiarity even as I understand it was based on my incomplete perception of reality.

What I know to be real

I've decided that it is more productive to focus on what I do know to be real and how it has formed me instead of worrying about which parts of our marriage were just a pretense.  I guess it goes back to the idea that we never actually experience reality since our perceptions are created.  So there will always be a component of pretense in life whether that be people intentionally pretending to be someone or something they are not or whether that be our worldview and perceptions distorting who they actually are or both simultaneously happening.

So I've been working on this poem below.  I'm playing with the formatting a bit to contrast what I understand now with what I saw clearly within the marriage with what my rose colored glasses convinced me to mostly ignore while we were together.

I'm not sure it all logically makes sense in my brain, that all of this could have occurred within a single relationship, how parts seem to conflict with one another.  But life is just complex.  It doesn't always make sense.  Humans are complex.  And nothing ever completely stays the same so a relationship that spans two decades will change over time.

What I know to be real

My energy and joy today
My happiness throughout
My ongoing growth
as a person
in relationships
in my career
My focus on the good

His adventurous spirt
His laughter and his smile
The physical comfort I felt with him
His trustworthiness with finances and
hardworking nature

Unbalanced priorities 

His insecurities and

my confidence 

His mom’s interference

and his lack of boundaries

a lesson in setting my own boundaries 

The places we traveled
The bird species list we added to
The trails we hiked
The challenges we triumphed over 
an upside down mortgage
ten moves in three states
the death of his father
an amicable financial split in the divorce

The unresolved conflict

"and one-sided "solutions

His unspoken resentments

His unregulated emotions

and the lack of space for my emotions

His drain on my energy

His negativity

and view that the world is out to get him

A perceived kindness interlaced 

with a lack of consideration 

A quiet distance I refused to see

My acceptance of the dysfunction

My capacity for love
My trustworthiness 
My loyalty
My integrity 
My resourcefulness

My resilience
My optimism for the future
My joy
My energy
Me

I am in awe of my strength.

Below is my Facebook memory from a year ago.  Tears rolled down my face as I read it this morning although I don’t think it was pain or sadness causing those tears. It was awe (a very emotional awe!) at the strength I was able to tap into even at my most raw stage and the clarity I already had for the path forward even amidst all the confusion at what had just happened.  It was the moment, maybe series of moments, when I started choosing me.  And this was the beginning of letting my very new community in.

I absolutely love how I ended the post, “I am strong and I like myself so I know I will come out better on the other side.”  FYI - the sermon series in August of last year was about meltdowns (quite timely!), hence the reference in my last sentence.

The other thing that struck me was the fact that I applied for my very first apartment alone on August 10 of last year and this August 10, I applied for my first professional job as a single person, one that might take me to a whole new city on my own.  What a year of growth it has been!

I have claimed this park bench (and this view from the bench).  I really should talk to Railroad Park about having them put my name on it.  😉  It has seen my tears, heard my laughter, and sat with me in silence as peace washed over me.  We have watched sunsets together and just soaked in the vibe of children playing, people gathering, and dogs walking their owners.

I will be starting a new chapter in my life that will follow the uncertainty and pain of today, a place I never imagined I would be in my early 40s.  But here I am.  I really paused to make this post.  Social media is so often a curated version of our lives without all the messy parts.  But I think it is the messy parts that make us who we are.  So I'm not sure what good it does to hide those parts from friends and family.  

My husband and I are separating.  Yesterday, I applied for and was approved for my very own apartment with a move in date set for late September.  There's still a lot of work to do to sort out who gets what and untangle more than 19 years of our lives.  So some very tough months still lay ahead of me.

I am strong and I like myself so I know I will come out better on the other side.  But I'm having my share of meltdowns these days.