It's been a pretty good couple of weeks. I have implemented many planned changes, and I think they are turning out quite well. I began my new position at the high school, which is working out MUCH better than my last foray into high school, and I'm juggling two teams with (so far) little drama. This achievement is an enormous shot for my confidence, and other than sleeping with dubious effectiveness, I'm handling all the changes with aplomb that makes me marvel. I am losing Scrabble game after Scrabble game online, though, and my rank's in the toilet. This losing streak bothers me more than I care to admit -- but it's quite possibly a good thing that the streak's worst thing going for me right now. How bad can life be? But it does indeed bother me.
On the personal life front, I don't think I've gone any farther in resolving what I'm beginning to see is a whole lot of anger about my divorce, relationships in general, and expectations for my future. I realized the anger as such about a week ago, when I was hanging out at my friend's pool with a third friend who was asking me about my counselor and possible available men at my school. My friend's friend is a social worker and adult-education advocate, and she somehow tapped the magma chamber of unresolved feelings inside of me so that they erupted. Anger bubbled to the surface, and I was shocked to find myself raising my voice to express my perspective and make myself understood. Vehemently. Rather than becoming offended at my reaction, this woman further surprised me by praising me, and she reminded me that there is no set schedule for how long these feelings take to achieve resolution. Maybe the full-blown anger stage of grief has ripened... now, three and a half years later.
The gist of my attitude problem was that love relationships are the stupidest thing on which to hinge any part of my future, as those are the one kind of relationships without any settled guarantees. Parents are always parents, even if relationships with their children become strained or estranged. Brothers and sisters are bonded forever, as even if they never see each other, they are always a part of each other, bonded by sharing the same parents. Friends can come and go, because the whole point of friends is having a collection of them, a feathered nest, and when one's time wanes, it's all right, as the ones who mean to last do last. But to find a man, to feel infatuated and excited, and to develop feelings -- feelings! -- for him and then make decisions and investments which affect my entire life, and which are suppose to sustain and maintain for the rest of my life... when I know how people change, how feelings -- feelings! -- are fleeting and change, when I know how people think they know themselves and their needs when they don't, when they mean well and don't have the character or integrity to back up their promises... no way. No freaking way.
My friend's friend accepted this. She just did. And somehow, the accepting of it made me angry. But I think the entire situation made me angry. I wanted her to argue with me, to fuss that I'm wrong, because I was prepared to fight with her that I'm not wrong, no matter what else everybody says. I make a hell of a lot more sense to myself than these starry eyed women who hinge their future happiness to the star of some man who, we all hope, is worthy of the faith she places on him. Double for her if she has children with him. And what if he is miserable, but his code of silence makes him stay?
The chances for finding a real relationship that provides joy and comfort, that fits my kinks as I fit his, where I want to be close and can trust that the person has my best interests at heart... that he knows my best interests and himself well enough for authenticity and honesty to prevail over the mercurial nature of feelings, the bad moods and attitude problems, the ways life can smack people down without warning... I just can't believe they exist. The chances. As such, no guy will prevail against my perspective right now. Chances are so extraordinarily higher that any relationship I attempt will fail to sustain itself, there is no real reason to search for a "right" one. And what the wrong choices I make in relationships will take away from me is considerable enough to entirely nullify the worthiness of even speculating on ever finding a right one.
So I see the anger, and through the red haze of my perspective, I see why my friends who do argue with me choose to argue. I myself would probably tell someone else who said these things, in my position, that she is ridiculous. That great guys would love to get to know her. That great guys have a lot to offer. That great guys could make it all better than it already is.
To myself, I say, "Whatever!"
I don't trust great guys. I don't trust, fundamentally, myself. I don't trust myself to choose better. I don't trust what I've learned since the divorce. I am just not ready.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Sometimes, It's Just a Cigar
I saw my counselor today for visit number two. Her thing is to get me to "experience my feelings," which on some level I find amusing, because I've worked hard to manage my feelings and not have them get in the way of what I mean to do or accomplish. I don't believe I deny them, in other words, I just refuse to give them "rent free" space in my mind to supercede my other priorities and obligations. After all, feelings are fleeting, and catering to something that changes capriciously doesn't make sense to me. Sure, it's fine to have feelings, but the way I see it, it's not so good to let them get the better of me.
The other level on which I find my counselor amusing is that she seems to want to provoke me, or at least to provoke feelings that I put to bed already. For example, she often expresses utter marvel at the idea of my ex-husband's flight of no return and what kind of terrible detrimental effect his choice must have had on me. That's just remarkable that he did that, she'll say, staring into my eyes as if willing me to break down and howl. Instead, I want to laugh at the soulful look on her face. Well, duh, it was remarkable, and it sucked. It was shocking and traitorous that the person who promised to love me forever decided he didn't love me after all and disappeared without backward glance. To have my all-important marriage come crashing down atop of me, crushing my hopes and illusions and leaving me to live amid its broken pieces hurt like hell. I was shattered, of course I was. Is that what she wants me to say? But saying it today doesn't make me cry. It happened three years ago. At the time, it hurt like hell, but that was then, and I'm not sorry if I no longer feel a need to cry about it now. In the end, my ex's seemingly spontaneous and complete departure from our life together was not really spontaneous, and really, in the end we didn't have much of a life together.
Today, I mourn far more for those lost hopes and illusions than I ever mourn for him. I can -- and do -- still hurt for them. For my lost ability to trust easily, to believe in real love, to imagine that someone out there really wants to know me fully, and for me to fully know him, and that in that complete knowledge we can accept each other in joy, not with reservation. I don't know that I believe in this ideal any more... and that, if I think about it enough, can make me cry.
I guess -- I'm used to it. What happened in my marriage is something bad that happened, and then it was done, and now it's over. Yes, understand that at the time he wounded me almost -- but not quite -- to the point of a mortal wound, and I realize I'm scarred now. It's those scars that are causing me some trouble, not the wounds that created them. But it's as if my counselor thinks that poking emotionally at the fact of the divorce will spawn some other reaction from me than disillusioned acceptance... that by rehydrating those feelings of abandonment and betrayal, I'll somehow see them differently or work through them differently. But nobody can reconstitute a mummy, and those feelings are verily mummified within me. They had their time in the sun, and they're reconciled. I can accept them. I can accept the history that unfolded since then. But then, I've had three years to do it.
The other level on which I find my counselor amusing is that she seems to want to provoke me, or at least to provoke feelings that I put to bed already. For example, she often expresses utter marvel at the idea of my ex-husband's flight of no return and what kind of terrible detrimental effect his choice must have had on me. That's just remarkable that he did that, she'll say, staring into my eyes as if willing me to break down and howl. Instead, I want to laugh at the soulful look on her face. Well, duh, it was remarkable, and it sucked. It was shocking and traitorous that the person who promised to love me forever decided he didn't love me after all and disappeared without backward glance. To have my all-important marriage come crashing down atop of me, crushing my hopes and illusions and leaving me to live amid its broken pieces hurt like hell. I was shattered, of course I was. Is that what she wants me to say? But saying it today doesn't make me cry. It happened three years ago. At the time, it hurt like hell, but that was then, and I'm not sorry if I no longer feel a need to cry about it now. In the end, my ex's seemingly spontaneous and complete departure from our life together was not really spontaneous, and really, in the end we didn't have much of a life together.
Today, I mourn far more for those lost hopes and illusions than I ever mourn for him. I can -- and do -- still hurt for them. For my lost ability to trust easily, to believe in real love, to imagine that someone out there really wants to know me fully, and for me to fully know him, and that in that complete knowledge we can accept each other in joy, not with reservation. I don't know that I believe in this ideal any more... and that, if I think about it enough, can make me cry.
I guess -- I'm used to it. What happened in my marriage is something bad that happened, and then it was done, and now it's over. Yes, understand that at the time he wounded me almost -- but not quite -- to the point of a mortal wound, and I realize I'm scarred now. It's those scars that are causing me some trouble, not the wounds that created them. But it's as if my counselor thinks that poking emotionally at the fact of the divorce will spawn some other reaction from me than disillusioned acceptance... that by rehydrating those feelings of abandonment and betrayal, I'll somehow see them differently or work through them differently. But nobody can reconstitute a mummy, and those feelings are verily mummified within me. They had their time in the sun, and they're reconciled. I can accept them. I can accept the history that unfolded since then. But then, I've had three years to do it.
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