Anything I’ve ever done that was ultimately worthwhile…initially scared me to death.
Betty Bender
09
Mar 10
Living On The Roof
I miss the roof. There. I said it. We camp out on the roof because of the good and the bad. We are ever-hopeful that the good outweighs the bad. After awhile, we lose sight of that delicate balance.
The good, with John, included that delicious ping sound the computer makes when I get a new email. Those emails used to come from long-distance, John. I’d hear that ping, look at the bottom of the screen, and that cute little envelope would be smiling up at me. I would drop everything and check my inbox. I miss anticipating hearing from him. I miss the plans that I’d made for future visits. I miss the sweetness of that fantasy of a life with John. It’s funny how the missing overshadows the reality. The reality is that I had plans. He didn’t.
I’d been thinking a lot about how it is that we end up staying in unhealthy relationships. Before I even figured out the roof analogy, I was wondering what it was that keeps us in something that ultimately makes us miserable. Is there something in our wiring that makes us gloss over the negative and focus on the positive? What if there is a lot more negative than positive? Is it the same thing that makes women forget the rigors of labor and delivery. If our brains didn’t have the capacity to stifle the negative, the world would be populated with only children, and there’d be no such thing as marriage. We’d all bale out of relationships at the first sign of hurt feelings, thereby making it impossible to stick it out long enough to make it to the altar.
I’ve been following Seth Godin’s Blog. He talks a lot about the lizard brain and fear and resistance and how those things relate to productivity. I’m intrigued by the concept that what holds us back is basically biological. We don’t wake up every morning and say to ourselves, “I’m not going to take risks. I’m not going to jay-walk. I’m not going to talk to that cute guy at work. I’m going to blend in and not make a fool of myself.” There is an unseen force in our brain that controls all those choices.
I assumed, then, that the lizard brain played a part in relationships. And it does. The lizard brain is consumed with the desire to reproduce and the avoidance of fear. Picture this little lizard holding a large blueprint that maps out everything that happened to you up to the age of six. The lizard compares any new situation to this blueprint, and then determines your knee-jerk reaction. If you feared being left as a child, you go out of your way, now, to make sure you will never be left again. If you craved attention as a child, your lizard fears the absence of attention, and will make sure to put you in situations where you get lots of attention. In my case, when getting my feelings hurt, or when I feel rejected, my lizard brain (LB) studies the blueprint carefully and determines that I should be more pleasant, play nice, and keep my disappointments to myself. My LB tells me that if I’m nicer, I won’t get my feelings hurt; I won’t be rejected; and I won’t be deserted. Continue reading →
06
Mar 10
I Am Part of the Universe or Get Yourself Off the Roof
So a flood is coming. The man has been warned. He sees the waters rising. He’s standing in his front yard praying for God to save him when another man floats by on an inner tube. The man on the tube says, “Hey, there’s room on my tube. You better come with me.” The first man says, “I’ll be alright. God will save me.”
The waters rise forcing the man to climb the side of his house to wait for God’s help on his roof. Just then a motor boat goes by, and a woman in the boat yells up at him, “Hey! We’ve got room. You better come with us!” The man yells back, “That’s nice of you, but I’m fine. God will save me.”
The waters begin to crest the house. The man is running out of time as he continues waiting and praying on the roof. Suddenly a helicopter appears. The pilot hovers over the man’s house and sends down a rope. The man waves off the pilot. The pilot cannot hear the man over the roar of the helicopter. What the pilot couldn’t hear was the man yelling, “Thank you, but God will save me.”
After the man enters the gates of heaven, he summons up the courage to approach God. The man says, “I don’t understand. I prayed. I waited. I had faith. Why didn’t you save me?”
God said, “Geez, Buddy. I sent a rubber raft, a boat and a helicopter. What more could I have done?” Continue reading →
05
Mar 10
Where Is The Universe When I Need It?
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist
05
Mar 10
Recipe For Moving On
Apparently life is not waiting for me to catch up. It’s time to put an end to my little pity party, round up the soggy wads of kleenex, wipe the mascara from under my eyes and move on.
Ever since the kids could walk, I’ve asked them to get a kleenex when they see someone is hurt or crying. It’s not because I wanted them to wait on me, but handing someone a kleenex when they are crying is a great way to show you care when you don’t know what the hell to say. It’s better than standing there waiting for the sobbing person to tell you, “Could you get me a kleenex, already.”
Tuesday night, Will wised up and brought me the whole box.
There’s too much to do, too much to plan, and too much to anticipate to spend any more time licking my wounds.
Enough is enough. Continue reading →
03
Mar 10
Stop The Clock
It was the winter of 1996 and I was standing in the middle of the produce section of a grocery store wondering how anyone could fuss over a navel orange when my grandfather had just been found, face down in the drifted snow next to his mobile home. I thought for sure that the clocks would have stopped, that time would be frozen somehow, so that everyone could acknowledge the passing of someone who was so dear to me. How could people go on about their day, squeezing heads of iceberg lettuce, griping about the long lines, and fumbling through their purses for coupons? How could life continue to be so ordinary?
I thought of that today when my neighbor walked by with her Golden Retriever. She’s a pleasant gal. I’ve not chatted with her a whole lot. She has commented that she likes the wine glasses hanging from the wine rack above my kitchen window. We exchange pleasantries. She always has a smile on her face. Her dog is beautiful, and he’s always excited to see Rita. Today her smile annoys me. Last night I said goodbye to my long distance friend. I can’t quite fathom how my neighbor can be so damned happy when I feel as though my heart has been flattened, drained of life, and pinned to the bulletin board. Naturally, the neighbor lady doesn’t have a clue. I envy her delight in the simple, mindless pleasure of walking her dog. She makes one pass, two passes, and the kids comment on her happy grin. By the fourth pass, I’m thinking, “Pick a different route. Please.”
I am marveling at how messed up I am at the demise of this relationship. After all, it was long distance. I’m not sure it ever had the chance to get to the point of being called a relationship. We didn’t get to know each other well enough to find out what would irritate us about each other. Maybe that explains the sadness. It’s over before it got bad, or before we had the chance to see that it could be really, really good. But I’ve been thinking all day that it’s strange that I’m worse off now than when I left Mark. Back then, things had been bad for quite awhile when I decided to move out. By the time the kids and I had moved to my mom’s, all I could think was that it was great to be able to breathe again. It was good to see that the sky was still blue. Life could be simple and good. I could find pleasure in the routine of caring for kids, and being with family. We had come out of the darkness at Mark’s. It was hard to be too sad.
The end of this relationship is different because I was clinging to what I thought was the promise of a happy future. I see now that I was clinging to him like a lifeboat. He even told me once that I should remember that this was my first relationship since my divorce — and all that implied. (I hate the word ‘rebound’ as it applies to relationships.) He was a huge part of my surviving the narcissism. I’m thinking I’m going to learn more about the surviving now that I don’t have the lifeboat anymore.
Maybe it’s time we got a dog.
02
Mar 10
Ditch The Heels
Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?
Germaine Greer
02
Mar 10
Boulders In My Shoes
Some days are like that. You have to remind yourself to laugh. You have to stop taking yourself seriously. You have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
And after a long day of putting one foot in front of the other, treat yourself to a hot sudsy soak for your toes. I’m going to. Those simple little bright spots — that we can look forward to — they get us through the day. That, and a kiss from my kids.
01
Mar 10
Don’t Let Them
Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Eleanor Roosevelt
01
Mar 10
No One Can Cut Your Shadow In Half
“How did you sleep?” “Did you have any dreams?” Each morning begins the same way. While rubbing eyes and stretching long thin arms, we ask each other how the night was. We’ve talked about dreams since the kids could talk, or since they first started having dreams. I can’t remember which came first. When Jen was little, she felt left out if Will and I were discussing our dreams, and she didn’t have a dream to share. I don’t know if she just couldn’t remember, or if she had a hard time with the difference between dreams and reality. When it was her turn to talk about her dream she’d always say, “It was about a snowman.” And that was it.
Last night she had a symbolic dream about ‘a guy’ that cut her shadow in half. When she realized that he cut her shadow in two pieces, she cried for a whole day. When she had finished crying, her shadow became whole again. But just as the shadow became one, ‘the guy’ cut her bunny in half. (This was the very special pink bunny that she had gotten when she was in the hospital with pneumonia.) So with tears in her eyes, she brought the bunny to me, and I “sewed the bunny all up and it was good as new.”
I have always felt that we process things and solve problems in our dreams. Some of us are lucky enough to remember dreams, and then we can hang on to what the dream means. Some of us don’t remember much about our dreams. I’ve taken the approach that if we talk about them everyday, we start to remember them more, and we’ll have better access to the lessons. In Jen’s case, each time I’d prompt her to tell us about her dream, all she could come up with was the snowman. But after awhile, she seemed to listen to herself more, and she started remembering her dreams. It’s kind of like intuition — if you stop paying attention to intuition, it will stop speaking to you.
That being said, sometimes (a lot of times) dreams are too bizarre to have any real tangible significance to anything in ‘real’ life. But there’s nothing wrong with a little comic relief in the morning. For example, Jen’s other dream last night was about catching friendly, minuscule rubber-headed leprechauns in a tiny paper house. Not sure where to go with that other than the kids set a trap every year to try to catch Larry the Leprechaun. Maybe she’s working out a plan for a new trap.
Jenny’s dream about ‘the guy’ is pretty straight forward. To me it says, her dad is squashing her spirit (cutting her shadow in half). She has been afraid to cry out when her dad does something that denies who she really is. She is learning the value in crying — showing who she is and how she feels. And as she lets herself out, her spirit (shadow) can be whole. And sometimes she just needs a little help from her mom.
28
Feb 10
Let Love In
The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
Morrie Schwartz
28
Feb 10
Let Me In
These prints belong to Nina, the world’s most patient cat. She left them on the front step while she patiently waited for one of us to remember to let her in.
I hope this last day of February finds you happy and healthy.
I hope you have let in those you love, and that those you love have let you in, too.
26
Feb 10
Narcissism Sucks
A wise woman once said, “narcissists suck.” I’ve spent some time on her blog. It’s a deep, dark, cavernous hole of information. I would caution you to be careful before spending much time there. You may learn more than you really want to know.
Tonight I am really thinking that narcissists suck. I have a little girl who hasn’t been feeling well. She will be fine. But for right now, she is depleted. She wants to cry and she can’t. She actually told me that she, “wants to let the tears out, but she can’t.” When I ask her why she can’t cry, she explains that she’s been practicing not crying in front of her dad. She doesn’t want to cry in front of him because he treats her like a baby. So now she thinks she’s forgotten how to cry.
In the meantime, Mark has not come by to check on Jenny. You see, he skied on Wednesday and Friday. And he’s leaving town after work tomorrow for a convention in the sunny Napa Valley. He can’t afford to come by and check on his daughter because he doesn’t have time, and because he wouldn’t want to risk catching her bug before he leaves town. (So how about calling to check on her?)
Narcissists suck.
——————- Continue reading →
25
Feb 10
Narcissism and Annexation
I was up all night with Jenny. I’ll spare you the gory details, but she was afraid of falling back to sleep for fear she’d get sick again. I held her pretty much all night long while she drifted in and out of sleep. I looked at her long lashes and perfectly arched eyebrows, her long delicate fingers and the wisps of hair around her forehead. She’s not a baby anymore, but when she’s not feeling well, she seems as fragile and vulnerable as when she lived in my arms.
I had a lot of time to think last night, and Jen’s being ill reminded me of the scary time she spent in the hospital with pneumonia. She was four years old. It was the last weekend of ski season. Jenny’s fever started Friday afternoon. Mark worked his usual Saturday shift, and by Saturday morning I was running out of the fever fighting duo – Tylenol and Motrin. I called him at the shop and asked if it would be possible for him to leave to bring us some medicine. He said that he could leave long enough to run and get it, but that I would have to come down to the shop and get it from there. So I got two kids out of bed, buckled them into their cold car seats and made the 20 minute drive to the shop to get the meds.
He did come out to the car to make a show of checking on his daughter, and then we zoomed back home.
That afternoon, he was able to get out of work early enough to head up to the ski hill.
When he got home from skiing, he found me sitting on the couch next to a lethargic Jenny. I was able to manage the fever, so at this point I felt we were just letting the bug run its course. Quite frankly, it was easier to care for an ill child if Mark wasn’t around demanding to be center stage. Continue reading →
