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07222
Today has been excruciating.
I think I hit what might be identified as my breaking point. I got to the point where nothing seemed worth it to keep up a charade that has been slowing eating away at my self-worth, self-esteem and happiness for years.
But reaching that point has also put a glaring light on something that John + I never discuss/deal with/acknowledge. It’s been our dirty little secret for most of our relationship. And having to face it has pushed our relationship into a pressure cooker. He feels attacked, trapped … whatever he’s feeling that I don’t know because he gets deadly quiet and doesn’t talk at all. And I’m feeling sad and alone. But also unable to apologize or make things ‘right’ like I have in the past because doing that is in direct contrast with taking care of my own mental health.
On the plus side, for the first time in the years that we’ve been doing this dance with his parents, he conceded that they do treat me the way I say they do. That he sees it and he doesn’t know what to do. Which sounds awful typing, but was actually a relief for me. Because until that moment, I was sure that he just thought they were justified in their behavior. And I turned a blind eye, because I love my husband deeply. It was like an unspoken agreement that we would just stay quiet about it all – but especially the really tough stuff. That our love would somehow get us through it every time.
I know that the pain he must be feeling right now is awful. Facing the infallibility of our parents isn’t easy. It sort of disassembles so much of what we as people grew up believing. And that can be devastating.
My heart is sore but I also know that I cannot stay stuck in this loop of denial and avoidance. Because inevitably it leads to me getting physically and mentally sick. And that just sucks.
Anyway. Today has not been the best day.
xox, g
06222
It’s one thing to talk the talk. It’s entirely different to walk the walk.
Today was an epic fail of me walking any type of decent human walk. I know I don’t usually get into specifics but we spent the day driving my in-laws to the hospital for my father-in-law to have surgery later this week. The hospital in question is NIH and the drive from their house is not short.
It’s a lot of time in an enclosed space with humans who just don’t share many of my thoughts or ideas about life. That’s a wide net to cast, but it needs to be because I have very little in common with my in-laws. Other than my husband. And I continually find it hard to believe that a man as good as my husband came from two people who just … aren’t that good.
Anyway. It’s very easy in theory to understand the dynamics between John and I and his parents. But in practice, in real life, all that rational thought goes out the window and I struggle to just be basically kind. It’s such a constant onslaught of uncomfortable conversations, judgement and condescension that I lose myself completely. Only after it’s all over and I’ve had a little time to decompress do I realize that I have once again failed.
And then I get to the point of fatigue with the repetitive interactions that I decide it’s all insanity on my part — repeating the same actions with the hope of a different outcome – that I don’t want to try anymore. Haven’t I learned?
But you don’t get that reprieve with family. Family never leaves, family never relents. It’s ongoing and stressful and unrewarding.
And that was today. And Wednesday. And then hopefully not again for a very, very long time.
Xox, g
05222
There are so many things no one tells you.
As though it’s a rite of passage to learn difficult lessons. As though we all should feel lost, afraid, angry and alone at multiple times in life for multiple reasons, and no one is compelled to help us out.
Like how life can feel happy and settled and you can feel blessed and lucky and so overwhelmingly content and then a wrecking ball blasts through your whole world, taking no prisoners, leaving havoc in its wake.
Like how you think you’ve worked out all the kinks, done all the growing and learning and accepting but then still be knocked over by a feather. A tiny, inconsequential moment that would otherwise be forgotten before it’s even acknowledged …. But this particular feather dismantles your carefully built life with a swirl.
I’m having a day and I’m feeling painfully alone.
And I know I will survive. I will move through this as I’ve moved through all the obstacles I’ve faced to this point. But I know it will hurt. And I know things will be irreparably changed. And that knowledge hurts almost as much as the obstacle.
Xox, g
03222
At dinner this evening I stated to husband that I was no longer going to make any New Years Eve resolutions. I’m not sure where it came from but it came tumbling out of my mouth confidently and assuredly. Somewhere, during the course of this day – this random, not totally inconsequential day— I finally knew.
I knew that I needed until February to understand what my goals for the year were. Too much happens in December — my birthday, lots of other birthdays (Jesus, for the believers!). The anniversary of the loss of my mother. Too many things to have any additional time to contemplate changes for the new year. If I wanted to do that in a timely fashion, I’d have to make the decisions in October or November. And I certainly couldn’t make those kinds of new year, new you decisions months in advance. Too much changes.
I decided – and then articulated – that I needed January to get my bearings for the new year. I needed January to decompress and get back into a rhythm. Get a feeling for where the next twelve months were leading me. I decided that January will serve as my ‘pause’ moving forward. January will be the moment when I catch my breath.
And so, as February dawns and we get into 2022 in earnest, I can more clearly see what I want to focus on, and what my goals are. Some things I try to do every year – read more, watch less TV (this resolution has taken years to make an impact, but I do actually read more and watch much less TV so I guess… worth it? ??♀️). I usually hope I meditate more and practice the piano. Still working on consistency there.
But February brings with it clarity. It allows me to take stock of how far I’ve come, and how far I still have to go.
I’m not saying that husby and I are going to start Cross Fit tomorrow (or ever really; husby is deeply skeptical). And I’m not saying that my grand idea of a letter writing campaign will ever take flight. But I do want to lift more instead of only doing cardio. And I want to give my friendships the focus and attention and time they deserve. Life is short, and I want the people who matter to me to know they matter.
Anyway. Small goals. We’ll see how I’m feeling at the start of March.
Xox, g
02222
It’s funny – you can feel it when the bad energy is pumping even before you realize that’s what you’re feeling.
Today is Groundhog Day. Which is great … except that two years ago tomorrow, John’s brother died. And tonight, when my Dad came over for dinner, he shared that his dad, my grandfather, died on Groundhog Day.
Bubski died in 1979 – the same year I was born. We just missed each other. I used to think I could physically feel that sadness of missing him by just this much. The stories I heard about Bubski (his nickname) were legendary. I was sure that he would have loved me and spoiled me and been the best granddad ever. But we just missed each other. And that closeness – that near miss -haunted me as a child.
Now I wonder how much I’m like him – if his spirit is within me. I dearly hope I am like him -even if just a little bit – because he sounded wonderful and what a gift that would be. I’m less sad and just grateful that his memory lives on with such love and vibrancy.
Life is funny like that. How our perspectives change as we get older, as we gather more information. I’m sad I never knew my grandfather. I’m sad that I lost my mother when I was thirty-nine. I’m sad about all the tough hits I’ve taken — MS, my first marriage, blah blah blah. It all sucks. Life isn’t fair. And it certainly isn’t kind. But my choice is how to react to that, how to frame it and sit with it. How to hold the energy and then release it.
It can’t change the losses we’ve suffered. But perhaps it can help us carry them.
Xox, g
01222
Another month.
Time is crazy to me. Sometimes I’ll stop and wonder where I am, as though the wheel is spinning and I’m just skipping around, not having landed yet. It’s disorienting and I reach out, trying to find my roots.
LIke – how did we buy a second house only three months ago? Was it really only three months? I mean, it’s February 1st and we bought the house at the end of October … so that’s five calendar months, but only three full months since we did that thing. It’s insane to me.
And on Friday we head back to the city for medicine. It feels like forever since we were last there … but it was only four weeks. This will be my second infusion of 2022 … craziness. (Plus side, I’ve almost hit my insurance deductible and things will start costing zero dollars soon! Benefit of being a sick person, I guess? Hitting those thresholds early on).
When I am tired or I have a headache (regularly occurring things) time stops existing. Everything is paused. Tasks that would take five minutes get kicked down the road. Everything feels overwhelming. I’m grasping for time to steady myself and also wishing it to pass and finally reach the end of the searing pain.
I’ve gotten good at existing within the pain – at getting life things done. But by the end of the three days (that’s the typical length) I’m so exhausted from enduring the pain – from smiling – that it takes another couple days to recoup.
I’m tired of apologizing and explaining. I’m tired of feeling bad that I can’t just exist as a regular person. I’m tired of all the pressure and judgement I put on myself. Because even if it is other people, the only judgement I really feel is the judgement coming from within.
Fucked up, right? Yeah, it’s a side effect of having an invisible illness.
Xox, g
30122
I’m at a loss for what to write about.
My brain is full but I’m still chewing on things, figuring out how I feel.
I got a text the other day with an article. It doesn’t matter what it was about, but there was no context provided. Just an article, out of nowhere, from a person I haven’t spoken to recently. But I understood by the headline that it was an article about a commonality between us.
I opened it and read the first paragraph or two. I responded with an emoji, because I agreed with the article. I was familiar with the subject, and I’d read many things about it over the past few years. I knew how I felt.
My friend’s response was that perhaps the article got it wrong. I sighed and realized I’d have to read the whole thing to properly respond.
So I did. And my feelings didn’t change. I knew how I felt about the situation. I’d both read articles and observed/gathered my own impressions. I felt how I felt, and while I was open to a discussion, I wasn’t ready to change my mind. This specific article did not add anything new to the conversation or give new information.
That was a moment when I knew exactly what to write and how I felt.
That is not the case today. I’m tired and my brain is full of so many things. Thoughts about how life is, how we put people in boxes and try desperately to keep them there. How we are not open to change, we are not willing to see other people as different than who they’d always been in our own minds.
Except when it suddenly becomes socially acceptable to allow that someone has ‘matured’ or ‘evolved.’
It’s a tough nut for me to be chewing on. It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge my own biases and even more difficult to contemplate that perhaps, I am wrong. Not always, but not seldom, either. If I am asking grace of others, if I am working and always learning and changing, I have to grant that others are doing the same. And that is very difficult in certain cases.
As an example: must I be open to my ex-husband being a better person than the one who treated me badly, ripped me apart and left me shattered? Isn’t it easier and more comforting to continue to believe that he’s awful? …. I mean, easier, yes, but fair? Not at all. And if I want to keep growing, I must admit that just as I’m constantly evolving, so is everyone else, including that man. Otherwise I haven’t evolved or grown at all. I have just judged. Possibly unfairly.
Oof.
Yuck.
Asking others for grace means giving it myself. And that’s the hardest part, isn’t it? Learning and understanding that everything is a two way street.
Xox, g
28jan22
Today was the last weekday of John’s annual ‘half’ – and because his company does quotas and such in six month increments, it was the last day of crunch time to get deals in to hit sales goals. I’ve learned an enormous amount about corporate America and sales from listening to John talk about work. It’s all fascinating but I am also glad to not be in the rat race anymore.
On the plus side, John hit the goals he wanted to hit yesterday, so today was just icing on the cake. He’s had a really good run since about late May, and we’ve been very lucky. I’ve been supremely lucky because for the first time since I stopped working, I haven’t felt any pressure or need to go back and earn a paycheck. That’s a huge stress relief for a woman with an autoimmune disease that’s triggered by inflammation brought on by stress.
It also began snowing this morning and has continued throughout the day into the evening. It’s beautiful, soft falling snow. Keeping life quiet, but not panicked by massive accumulation. Even the grocery store wasn’t a hot mess when I stopped to get Starbucks this morning.
Today felt calm and cozy. We raised the thermostat two degrees because things just weren’t warming up (even with some space heaters) and now the house feels so warm it makes me constantly want to fall asleep. Haha!
Life feels strangely okay – not the okay you say through a strained smile, but the actual okay of feeling secure and at ease. I don’t trust it – I’ve had too many body swerve moments to feel safe. But just to have this moment – it is a gift.
Xox, g
18jan22
Sometimes when I’m beyond tired (more tired than normal MS tired… like, can‘t focus, can’t move, have no motivation tired) I wander down memory lane. This is inevitably aided by the socials, and mostly FB, because that’s where I’m connected to all the people I used to know across my life.
Memory lane can be beautiful and nostalgic but it can also be painful. Today I had two polar opposite experiences. I was reminded of the death of a friend – far too young and now, twenty years ago. I remember when it happened. We’d fallen apart as friends because we were young and I’d moved away halfway through high school and boys and girls – in my experience – aren’t that good at keeping in touch when proximity is no longer a factor. He died in a car accident near State College. It was a gut punch. Surreal. Young people dying always is, but a young person that I knew …. Harder to comprehend. And I had no one to talk about it with because our friendship had been in those golden years of middle school. That time before cell phones and hormones and all the complications that came later. When we just played street hockey and had sleepovers and went sledding when it snowed. He was the first person I told about getting tested for MS. I remember that. Anyway. It was another gut punch moment, seeing the old newspaper article from the Daily Collegian re-posted by a mutual friend. My mind wandered and I was back there for a moment, on Heather Hill, trudging through the woods, playing tag. Standing in rollerblades telling him about my tests. Life is crazy and surreal and here I am, twenty years later, married with two houses and a nice car. And he didn’t have the opportunity to do any of that. How is that fair? How is that decided? It shakes the foundations of humanity.
And then later – a simple ‘like’ by an old college roommate. Someone I haven’t seen or spoken to in over a decade …. Memories of college flooding back, smiling at our shared history and how sharply our lives diverged following Penn State. How we are virtual strangers to each other now, our bond that brief period of time we shared at that formative time in life.
Both men I’m glad I knew back then. Such a strange juxtaposition.
Xox, g
14jan22
Some days play out exactly as you think they will. Others … not so much.
Today was a bit of both for us. We had a plan, we knew the objective … but life wasn’t feeling super cooperative, so things didn’t go exactly as we’d envisioned.
I’m not always very good about being super aware in the moment, but today – for some strange, unknown reason – I took a beat. I realized that in the end, we would arrive at the same conclusion (back home in Bellefonte, new truck). And that the way we got there might not have been what we’d anticipated, but wasn’t that the quirky nature of life?
I even had the crazy forethought to understand — as we climbed in the truck to head home —that I should eat something or risk being a complete bitch for the duration of the drive.
So our day was crazy. And we ended up not even making dinner (French fries and mozzarella sticks will do that). And then, instead of a movie or a show, we watched the Harry Potter reunion.
But it wasn’t bad. It just … was. I guess I’m learning that it’s easier if I let go of the expectations. Everything feels less intense, less dramatic and less dire if I just accept it as it comes.
I’m forty-two and that’s a really tough lesson to learn.
Xox, g
D5 Creation