May 13, 2004

• Day Off

  
  

   I woke up this morning with a terrible backache.  I have arthritis in my lower back from since Michael was born.  I actually haven't had too many flared ups over the past year, but we had a big front coming through and I have been working kind of hard this week, so .... I took the day off.  What do you do on your day off?

  
  

  Well, I vacuumed the house, did laundry, cooked, cleaned the kitchen - did NOT eat chocolate.  (There's a story behind that one but it's kind of weird, I'll save it for another blog.) 

  
  

  I did something I haven't done nearly often enough.  I looked at the list of people who are subbed to my site and went visitin' - Wow.  I am humbled and amazed by the people I met this afternoon.  I've been terribly lazy over the past six months, I haven't even looked at my subscribers although I do notice that the total number has remained bizarrely constant.  I'm not really sure what's up with that because I've been erratic in my posts and neglectful of the people who comment here.  But you have offered me the grace of remaining subbed in spite of my poor manners. 

  
  

  Oh!  I thought of another of my Mom's favorite sayings, "Shoot a Monkey!"  It's really hard to describe the exact meaning of this one, it comes out half frustated and half sarcastic.  Like well, "we can't do anything about it so we might as well shoot a monkey." 

  
  

  I spent some time this afternoon while all my servants (the dishwasher, dryer, washer, etc) were working, lying on my bed reading poetry. 

  
  

  I had a really good talk with Tim.  It started off a little awkward which is kind of standard these days.  We're still feeling our way through the changes we've undergone.  Neither one of us wants to say something that will hurt or offend the other, but we are friends.  Because we are friends we are determined to try to open lines of communication so we talk through the awkward moments.  That's something that came out strongly in our conversation today.  We are getting more and more to a place where we can talk about things that really matter.  Not just stuff about the kids' dental appointments and what they did or said today, we're talking about who we are, who we were and where we're going.  Stuff that we both wish we'd talked about years ago.  We talked about things we're scared of and what's exciting about the opportunities we are creating for ourselves.  We talked about things that we are learning to take responsibility for and really that has meant a whole lot of learning not to bash ourselves for the way things ended up between us. 

  
  

  He's a really nice guy.  I'm a pretty cool woman.  I know that before either one of us is fully healed, we're going to have to come to terms with how it was that we came to have such an unhealthy relationship.  But right now, that's still a raw wound and I won't speak for him, but I know that I'm not ready to lance it.  Call me an emotional coward if you like, that's what I'm saying to myself. 

  
  

  My therapist told me last Fall that leaving a marriage, it's to be expected that it would take about one year for every four the marriage lasted to work through the issues that were created.  I thought that I was a fairly intelligent and self-aware person, so I thought that surely I could cut through some of that time.  But that was sheer arrogance on my part.  I still haven't faced it all, and I know now that I can't face it any faster than it comes. 

  
  

  Um - yeah, I spent part of my day thinking.  A large part of my day thinking.  And you know what, I'm in a particularly "let it all hang out" mood so I'll even share some of what I was thinking in particular.  Last weekend, Tim and the boys were looking at an old photo album.  They brought it to me and showed me a photo of myself.  I was shocked.  In the first place, there aren't a lot of pictures of me in existence because I'm usually the one behind the camera.  But in the second place, that woman in that photo, looked really really sick.  Dead eyes, unflattering haircut, sloppy clothes ... it was embarrassing.  I wanted to tear ir up and pretend it wasn't true.  And I knew looking at that photo that I lived that way for years.  Don't ask, I won't post it.

  
  

  This morning after thinking about the way I am now versus the way I was during the last years of my marriage, I wrote an apology to Tim.  Have I mentioned that I really really HATE being wrong?  Want to make a guess why our conversation started out awkward?  Yeah, it's going to take a while before I can face all my issues.  But I'm getting there. 

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  • 8:57 pm
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