The Great Depression

The stats on my blog site indicate that the entry which has been the most widely read is the one I wrote on February 18th entitled Depression: The Refiner’s Fire? I can only assume that the title must attract readers because there are so many of us out there who struggle with the problem of depression. So, that being the case, I’ve named tonight’s blog entry accordingly, since it also deals with a recent bit of blackness that consumed me.

 On Monday April 4^th I announced that it was “Day One of a New Year”, and on that day I committed to vigorous forward movement on the path to healing.  And I maintained that commitment unwaveringly right up until Thursday April 21^st.  Seventeen and one half days of forward steps only.  I really thought I had turned a corner once and for all.  In the early afternoon of the 21^st, I felt a strange sensation descending upon my head and settling on my chest.  It felt a lot like the slow onset of a headache in the couple of hours before it turns into a full-blown migraine.  After my father had his second heart attack, I asked him if he felt it coming on, and his answer was that he did not have pain but rather he had a strong feeling of ‘impending doom’.  So to borrow from my father I will say there was a strong sense of impending doom enveloping me. I had a lovely dinner with two dear friends and was distracted from it for a while, but by the time I returned home at 9:00 p.m., I was completely at its mercy.  I called my mother and cancelled my 4-day trip home for Easter, and surrendered to the ‘black dog’ which had been snapping at my heels for hours.

I spent the next three days either crying or sleeping, and wondering, yet again, why my husband could not see past my flaws and shortcomings and recognize me for the good woman I am.  It began to matter all over again that he’d deemed me unfit to be his partner.  My newly acquired “it’s his loss” armour slipped off my shoulders and was replaced with the “why am I not good enough?” straight jacket.  I fell back into thinking that I had to find a way to make him want me, and when that led nowhere I fell back into letting my mind explore the potential implications of giving up the good fight once and for all-  by inviting an aneurism to escort me into the big sleep, (or a cardiac arrest or a run-away blood clot... whatever God saw fit to strike me with).

So I reneged on my deal with my creator.  Earlier this month, on my little altar in the forest, I had placed a stone to mark the surrendering of my belief that I could only be happy if my marriage was restored.  I also placed there some tree bark to represent peeling from my body, the dead skin which had, on occasion, made death seem like a viable pain management option.  Yet here I was on Easter weekend voluntarily picking up those 2 cumbersome weights again after discarding them a couple of weeks earlier. 

It took a lot of crying (and I don’t mean snivelling and dabbing at my nose with a tissue... I mean sobs that were jet-propelled from my chest) and a lot of sleeping, but by Sunday evening I could feel the cloud lifting.

I don’t know why I needed to be re-routed on my path to recovery.  I don’t know what prompted that wave of grief to return and settle in for 3 days, and I don’t know how to prevent it from happening again.  I decided, however, that I ought best to re-release those twin fetters rather than declaring my mission a failure (much like after cheating a little on a diet, there’s no point in feeling so deflated that you eat the entire cake). So here’s what I did.  I went back to my altar Monday evening before sunset and searched the forest floor for two suitable symbols to represent my second surrendering of my marriage and my death wish.

Not far from where I stood, I saw two snails side by side.  I picked them up and relocated them to my altar, knowing that they will have moved on before my next visit to the woods... and thinking that their disappearance would be entirely fitting!



The Fat Lady hasn’t Sung Yet

I’ve been thinking a fair amount lately about when I should wrap up this blog.  I’ve been doing so well lately in the ‘recovery’ process, and it seems a bit narcissistic to ramble on forever about minor daily ups and downs.  What will be the sign that enough is enough?  I considered singing my ‘swan song’ when I reached 10,000 hits on my site, which leaves me about one thousand left to go.  It seems like a nice round number... sort of like Oprah shutting down after “25” years.  Alternatively I thought I should set a reasonable benchmark- like 30 days without an emotional setback- as an indicator that I am over the hump and could no longer accurately claim to be in recovery.  Or is it like being an alcoholic?  Once a reject, always a reject?  Once dumped, always woe-begotten?  I should know, that being my life story and all!  Another option would be to end my blog when my divorce becomes final in about 3 months or so- that sounds like a good time to fade out.

I mean it can’t go on forever right?  I can’t maintain it forever.  I can’t have my divorce recovery blog transition into a blog on “Learning to Love your Grey Hair” or “Sensational Sex in Your Sixties” or “Being a Single, Sexy Senior”.

One thing I do know for certain is that this blog will not conclude with a fairy tale ending.  It will not slowly morph into a blog about dating again, or trusting again or finding love again.  Not because I am ruling those things out entirely (unlikely and unwelcome as they are), but because I refuse to accept being in a new relationship as an indication of having successfully moved on.  In fact I think a new relationship, undertaken too soon, is the antithesis of recovery. It is a distraction from reflecting on one’s part in the breakdown of the marriage.  It creates a false sense of well-being and a false perception of what was wrong in the relationship.  Everything smells like roses in a new relationship, and when compared with one’s marriage, it is all too easy to conclude that the marriage had become too much work, or had lost its magic, or had never felt this good.  It’s all too easy to conclude that the problem was that the previous partner was deficient.  How can I compete with a woman who doesn’t have to raise his children, clean his house and organize his life? I think I actually understand now that statement that some men just can’t be alone, so when one relationship ends (or before it ends) they have another one in place to move on to. (Sorry to end the previous sentence with grammatical awkwardness,  but it sounds too pedantic to say “they have another one in place to which to move on”.)  As my friend SP said “Men need a soft place to land”, and I was that soft place when his previous marriage ended.  Now he’s got another soft place where he can keep warm without me.

Oops a bit of bitterness creeping into my words there!  Perhaps that should be my benchmark- when I can genuinely wish my husband well in his new relationship, then I’ll know that I’ve fully recovered... then I’ll believe that our breakup was a good thing because I’ll be so fulfilled in my new life... as a nun, as a bespectacled, round-shouldered old professor or as the wacky neighbourhood lady who takes in all the stray animals.

So just as I was thinking that I was doing too well to continue writing a blog on divorce recovery, I had a major setback this weekend.  Three days of tears, endless sleeping, and the return of the death wish (hence my two day hiatus from blogging).  I’ve sorted that out now with my creator  and I think I understand what was going on (more on this tomorrow), but it made me realize that perhaps I am not quite as recovered as I thought I was. Perhaps I was being a tad hasty in my self-diagnosis.

 On a happier note, I should add that I am getting tremendously affirming feedback from readers (in 30 countries!), and apparently my experiences are resonating with women and providing comfort as they see themselves in my descriptions of grief, pain, depression and occasional triumphs on this road back to being whole.  That alone is reason enough to keep writing.

Easter: more than just Bunnies!

Since it’s Easter, I thought it was a good time to reflect on what my Christian faith means to me, so here’s the top ten lessons I’ve learned as a Christian, and which have shaped my worldview substantially especially in the past year:

1.       God can make good come of anything- even the crappiest of life circumstances.

2.       Forgiveness is a discipline not a feeling that you have to wait for before taking action.

3.       When we weep, God weeps with us.

4.       It is entirely possible to be completely and utterly redeemed of all your screw-ups.

5.       God wants only the very best for us.

6.       God wants us to be happy in a lasting way, in a way that is not dependent on circumstances or relationships.

7.       Grace is a gift that you never get tired of receiving.

8.       Only God can fill those cracks and crevices in our souls that long to be loved, healed, and acknowledged.

9.       No human partner (or canine J) can offer a love that you can entirely depend upon.  Only God’s love is accessible to you always.

10.   When God chooses not to answer a prayer, He has a really really good reason.  Trust that He knows what He is doing.

The Sounds of Silence

Why has no one ever told me to get a dog?  How have I lived almost a half century without realizing that dogs improve your quality of life exponentially?  How did I not know what a sedentary life I’d been leading.  I thought I’d hate having a dog- he was my daughter’s consolation prize when we had to move out of our home a year ago ... “Sorry you have only 72 hours to pack up your whole life in these boxes...but hey... look at the bright side. You can have the dog you’ve been asking for since you came out of the womb”.  He was the single biggest sacrifice I’ve ever made in the line of maternal duty.  Who’d have believed I’d fall so deeply in love with this creature... currently the only male in my life, currently the only male who wants to jump my bones, currently the only male who loves me unconditionally, enthusiastically and whole-heartedly.  Not only is he good for my self-esteem (who can resist being adored?),  and my waistline (how could I not run with him daily when he is such an extraordinary athlete and my house is so small?), but spending time outdoors with him is good for my head as well.... sooo good!  My thoughts become more precise and clear.  My senses become activated.  My inner hard drive deletes temporary files that have been slowing my thinking processes down.  Today on our walk, I decided to pay attention to all the sounds of nature going on  around me.  In what world would I ever have done something like that before?  So I walked for an hour, like the bionic woman*- with my super-hearing tuned to every oscillating sound wave.

The twittering of tiny little birds that could fit entirely in the palm of my hand sounded remarkably  like the alarm on my daughter’s ten dollar alarm clock . The rush of the Don River sounded very much like the rush of the cars speeding overhead on the 401 which from where I stood looked like a highway on stilts. The tall dry grasses being trampled under my dog’s feet made the snapping sound of damp logs in a fireplace, and the sound of his absurdly long nails on the paved parts of the trail made the sound mosquitoes make as they fly into those electrical zapping machines.    The tall young trees stretched by the force of the wind were making squeaky aching sounds from their trunks while their branches clicked together like chopsticks in a dim sum restaurant. 

At one point on the trail, for about 10 feet, someone had hung little Easter egg ornaments at toddler height on the branches of bushes.  'Whatever for?' I wondered.  Was it a child who’d left this pleasant surprise?  A parent gearing up for an Easter Egg hunt on the weekend?  

Who knows?  But I may look for them tomorrow if I go back that way again.



 * a cultural reference appreciated only by TV watchers in the late 1970's



Tall dry grasses



My Dog's ridiculously long Nails





















 



The little bird's nest

 

Aching trees

Highway 401 on stilts















  































A Dime Waiting on a Dollar

This is not my expression- I read it once in a Deborah Tannen book.  It means that when there is waiting to be done, the person of lower status must wait for the person of higher status rather than the other way around.  That’s why the boss has his assistant place a call for him, and then notify him when the telephone conversation can begin.  His time is too important to waste dialling a phone number and waiting for the ringing to cease when the recipient of the call picks up the receiver.

People who are bosses do it all the time in the workplace and then occasionally they bring that superiority complex home, forgetting that their partners are their equals not their subordinates.  And their partners, eager to show  good naturedness are slow to call them on it, and after a few lapses, it becomes the norm for one partner to take on the role of the dime, allowing the other to be the dollar.  We, silly subordinated partners, facilitate it even.  We are good natured about waiting on street corners, about sitting alone in restaurants, about standing on porch steps (early in the relationship before house keys are exchanged), about sitting in hot parked cars.  Why?  Because the other person is “so busy”. His... (or her- but who are we kidding here? It’s the women who do the waiting!)... his time is “so valuable”.  We are grateful for any shred of time that has been allotted to us.

It’s only when it has completely infiltrated the home front that it sinks in... when you hear that tone that is used with assistants: “You’ll need to call the lawn guy today” or “I’ll need to have this ready by tomorrow”... that’s when you realize that he thinks you’re on his payroll.  But you’re not.  You have a job too.  A busy one, a prestigious one, a demanding one, a well-paying one.  So why do we do that contortionist trick of seeing how far we can stretch and bend and twist to help someone else juggle their career and home life demands? Why do we rearrange our schedules to accommodate theirs?  When has that arrangement ever been reversed?

It's really remarkable how we settle into these patterns of behaviour without realizing what is happening. Both parties are guilty- one for taking too much and one for giving too much.  If I could do it over again, there's a lot I'd do differently.

Perspective is Everything

I had lunch the other day with a woman I met a while back at a protest rally.  Her personal story is unlike anything you’ve ever imagined.  She was a political prisoner in a country with a brutally oppressive regime and tortured for the crime of refusing to comply with specific governmental directives.  That’s all I’ll say- it’s not my story to tell, and I want to be respectful of her right to share her story with people of her choosing, not mine or anyone else’s.

But I MUST tell you that she is my hero, not just for the obvious reasons of surviving torture, or refusing to reveal the names of her associates to her captors, or making it to Canada and starting a new life, but mostly because she has done all those things and remained a woman with an incredibly gentle and caring spirit.  Being invited to her home, being served a truly memorable meal, being waited on hand and foot was the most humbling experience of my life.  I sat across the table from her and tried to remember where I was and what I’d been doing during the years she was in prison on the other side of the world. I marvelled at the circuitous path her life had taken before intersecting with mine. I cringed inwardly when I thought of how loudly I’d wailed about my own perceived injustices when a woman of my generation... a woman who could have been me had I been born in her country instead of mine... had endured unspeakable injustice.

That she could care about anyone’s sickness or emotional pain or difficult circumstances defies logic.  That she would insist on preparing a plate for me to bring home to my daughter, when my daughter and I enjoy such bounty and good health and prosperity defies any understanding of generosity I’ve ever had.  That she could have a profession that requires her to care for others when every bone in her body must call out to the universe for someone to care for her defies any definition of compassion I’ve come across.  She is a walking miracle, an embodiment of everything that is good and pure and noble in any religion,  a supernatural other-worldly incarnation of every good spirit that ever was.

Everybody needs someone like this in their lives, someone who catapults them out of their own little corner of the world and unknowingly reminds them that their own  challenges in life (i.e. a broken marriage) are survivable, and in the grand scheme of things ‘don’t amount to a hill of beans’.

Ten Good things that have come from my Broken Marriage

A year into this divorce recovery process, it’s time for a top ten list:

Ten Good things that have come from my Broken Marriage

(a mixture of the profound and the not-so-profound)

1. My relationship with God has deepened.
2. My commute to work is now 15 minutes shorter.
3. I have more time for female friends.
4. I got a dog.
5. I got back into shape.
6. I’ve discovered that making travel plans for one person is a piece of cake.
7. I have more time with my daughter.
8. I finally got my Tuscan yellow kitchen.
9. I’ve learned I can survive anything.
10. I’ve learned how to let friends be generous with me.

Singing in the Rain

I took my dog out yesterday for a walk in the pouring rain. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that we make such a fuss about avoiding the rain and I can’t really figure out why.  My daughter had taken our one and only umbrella, so I simply put on a waterproof jacket and headed out to our usual stomping ground. It’s actually incredibly liberating to make the decision that you’re not going to run, like all the people around you, to take shelter and you’re not even going to try to navigate around puddles.  You’re just going to take your time, enjoy your walk and become completely and utterly soaked.

I started analyzing this adverse reaction to rain and concluded that for women at least it has something to do with running mascara and wilted hairstyles... but if you take those things out of the mix and simply step out of the house with a bare face and a bed-head, there really is no reason to avoid getting wet.  (I will concede however that foggy, water-stained glasses are a pain!) For a dog-owner, a rainy day is a god-send.  You can head for a park and take your dog off-leash without worrying about encountering joggers or toddlers or cyclists.

I was so delighted to be free from the need to scout out pedestrians and skate-boarders that I just walked along care-free and let my crazy dog run through the woods under the delusion that he could catch a squirrel or a bird.  For a few wonderful minutes, the earth stopped moving, the list-maker who lives in my head stopped ordering me around, the ache in the centre of my chest stopped reminding me that my husband doesn’t love me any longer... and my thoughts roamed entirely free.  I found myself quite unintentionally thinking about how good my life was.  I found myself thinking about how interesting my friends were.  I started thinking about how I was a smart person, a relatively attractive woman, a kind and generous woman, a good and loyal friend, a person with broad interests who could find common ground with just about anyone in any walk of life, and then...suddenly out of nowhere I stumbled on the conclusion that my husband was absurdly foolish to choose not to be with me.  Imagine that!  My friends, my mother and my sister have been telling me this for a year but I was too busy examining my deficiencies to hear the message. I suppose you have to arrive at that place on your own steam anyway.  Now I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t matter to me whether or not my husband ever actually believes he gave up a great woman, but for a brief shining moment  in time, I didn’t need for him to think that I was a great woman- it was enough for me to think it.

And that’s what you get when you take your dog for a walk in the pouring rain. J

Butt-dialing

The strangest thing happened tonight.  I was getting ready to go out for dinner with my neighbour when the phone rang.  Recognizing my daughter’s cell phone number on the call display, I picked it up and said “Hello honey”.  Within a few seconds it was clear to me that she had inadvertently speed dialed me (butt-dialed is the term I’ve heard used for these mistakenly placed calls) and was not aware that I was on the line.  I tried several times to shout loudly enough that she’d hear me but she was in a noisy restaurant with her girlfriends.  I was about to hang up when I heard her say something about her mother.   Now I’m sure that there would be those who’d call this an ethical dilemma, but I, on the other hand, felt no compunction whatsoever about listening in on the conversation.  It was not after all as though I had bugged her backpack or something. SHE called ME!  So I put the phone on speaker, laid it down on the bathroom vanity and continued putting on my makeup.

I heard her tell her friends that her mother married her stepfather because she wanted a man who didn’t fight.  Her father, she explained, had been a fighter, and her mother wanted a calm easy going guy this time around.  I heard her tell her friends how her step-siblings had given her a rough time.  Her step-brother (before he actually even was her step-brother) had told her when she was six that she was fatter than he was, even though he was a boy and he was nine.  Her step-sister, she went on to say, had recognized this as my daughter’s vulnerable spot, and continued to comment on my daughter’s shape regularly over the years.  I heard my daughter tell her friends that her step-sister picked the most opportune moments to reveal my daughter’s quirky habits (like her loud gargling in the mornings) so as  to maximize the humiliation factor.  This might not sound like much to us, as adults, but trust me when you’re 14 or 15, and your older step-sister reveals embarrassing things about you in front of her friends, it is a pretty big deal.

I heard one of the girls with my daughter ask “Didn’t your mother defend you?”, and I heard my daughter say “No... nobody defended me”, and I felt like I had been punched in the stomach.  It’s true.  There were times when I told her to toughen up.  I thought she just needed to grow thicker skin because she’d been an only child and needed to get used to those sibling combats that we all went through as kids- like kittens and puppies who playfully practice their hunting skills on each other before having to fend for themselves in the big harsh world.  It’s true I generally thought she was overly-sensitive and needed to learn how to give it back as good as she got it.  I thought this was a good life skill that had to be developed without parental involvement. 

So here’s the incredible irony:  when my marriage ended, my husband told me that I’d incited my daughter against his children and him.  He said that I fanned the flames and encouraged resentment on her part.  I have agonized since then, wondering whether there could possibly be truth in that.  Now... fast forward a year and I am hearing my daughter tell her friends things her stepsiblings said and did, that I was not even aware of.  I am hearing her say that she felt defenceless against them and that her mother did not intervene, and her step-father did not call his children on their hurtful words.  That’s a far cry from fanning the flames.  It made me want to phone my ex and tell him “You’ve got that wrong!  I didn’t need to incite my daughter’s resentment against you and your kids- you took care of that all by yourselves.”

Eventually I had to hang up because I had only minutes left to meet my neighbour outside a nearby restaurant, so I may never know what other painful stories my daughter shared with her friends; but it made me remember that there are unintended casualties when a marriage ends.  The collateral damage has yet to be fully revealed.  What will my daughter’s relationships with men be like? Will she begin every relationship expecting for it to end, bracing for the inevitable break-up based on her mother’s experience?  Will she have a relationship with food that is rooted in comments made for  a decade by her step-siblings?  I really hope I haven’t screwed up.  All this time I’ve been thinking that being a parent was the one thing I excelled at.  Please God don’t let me wrong!

P.S.  Yes, I have my daughter’s permission to post this blog entry... and yes we’ve talked about the content of the conversation I overheard.

As Good as it Gets

I’m writing this on the subway.  My elbows are strategically angled so as not to irritate my seat-mate.  My battery may not last much longer, so I will tell my story quickly:

So I’m at the top of my game.  My jeans are falling down (no kidding... when I rise from a seated position, my pants drop to reveal  that no man’s land just south of the tailbone); my balancing skills are up (as evidenced by my ability to do my entire workout today while on the bosu ball- of course the fact that I even know what a bosu ball is speaks volumes as well ); my core is stronger (push-ups and planks no longer put the fear of God in me); my  cardio has improved due to my daily 60 minute walks which are ‘uphill both ways’ (as the old joke goes); and I kinda like my new hairdo after all.  So I’m feeling good, feeling like maybe I’m not such a bad catch after all*, feeling like a night on the town.... and my sleepover girlfriend calls to cancel our grand plans for tonight due to illness.  Pfff! Out goes the air from my balloon.   I was demoralized because I don’t often look in the mirror and like what I see, so it’s a terrible waste of a ‘high self-esteem moment’  to put on my jammies, stay indoors and cuddle with my dog.  I was stricken with that “all dressed up and no place to go feeling” - that worst of all Friday night ailments. Refusing to be outdone by the whims of fate, I called an old male friend and suggested we go together to the restaurant I’d been intending to go to with my girlfriend.  He was on his way to see an art exhibit by himself (his friend having bailed on him too) and suggested we join up for the evening.

To make a long story short, I had a delightful evening, chatting up artists and pretending to know something about art appreciation; followed by beer, dinner and interesting conversation. Ours is a platonic friendship, always has been/always will be; nevertheless it felt nice to be out with a good looking man, and to remember how it felt to belong to the world of couples for a few hours.

It also reminded me that I should probably consider an “Ode to the Men in my Life”, because I have reconnected with some male cousins and old male friends; not to mention my very special brother-in-law and nephew- all of whom have been affirming and caring.

I do think that it will always feel strange to go home alone at the end of an evening with a man.  I loved that about being married.  The best part of date night was coming home together afterwards and knowing that there was more fun to be had. 

So I’m on way home now and I’m writing this blog on the subway with my laptop balanced on top of my purse which is perched on my lap.(I actually think the guy standing beside my seat is reading this over my shoulder.  Should I look up now and see if his mouth is twitching as he reads about himself?) 

My dog will be waiting for me at the door, and I’ll have that wonderful dilemma of deciding who gets to sleep with me- my dog or my cat.  How blessed am I?!

*I need to condense and bottle this feeling so that I can spray it all over when the next self esteem crisis strikes.

Ode to the women in my life

Cousins, aunts, old friends, new friends, childhood friends, mother, daughter, sister, niece... and women who barely know me:

This is for you, for all the women who have been such a wonderful source of support and friendship since starting this blog.  Whether it’s simply clicking “like” on my blog link on Facebook, posting a life affirming message on my FB wall, sending an email or responding to one of my blog entries, you have really touched me with your efforts to express compassion and solidarity. Thank you, most sincerely.

One of the few perks of losing a marriage is rediscovering what a blessing it is to have time with female friends.  I’d forgotten the sheer bliss of going to a spa with a girlfriend, having lunch, brunch, dinner, going clothes shopping, seeing a play, seeing a film, cooking together, discovering new restaurants, sampling new cocktails, laughing uproariously, sharing books... the list goes on. Tomorrow I’m even having an old fashioned sleepover, except at this age, we don’t have to beg our parents for money to order take-out or rent videos.  We can dress up for dinner and not have to take a bus to get there AND we can drink too much white wine (back at home) and not have to worry about being caught.

I’m averaging about 3 blocks of ‘girlfriend time’ per week and it is staggeringly restorative.  Each woman is precious and bright, and a reminder to me that I must surely be of value since these beloved friends choose to spend time with me.

So much of popular culture includes representations of women being pitted against each other over a man, over style, over power in the workplace, over attractiveness, yet there is not a single element of competition between me and any of the women who are part of my life.  We are genuinely happy for each other when good things come our way, and genuinely saddened by each other’s losses and heartbreaks.

God has put angels in my path to help me through some dark days, and I am grateful.  You know who you are. Thank you. Bless you.  I love you!

Dead Skin

I went back to the woods today, unsure of what I needed to lay on the altar but relatively confident that it would become clear to me as I wandered around, kicking dry leaves and hopping over fallen trees with my dog.

When things pop into one’s head, it is hard to discern whether the items are from one’s own unconscious (or not so unconscious) agenda or an agenda originating from that big Board Room in the sky.  I have always marvelled that people could say with complete conviction that God directed them to do this or that.  How do you distinguish between the voice of God and the voice of your id.... your inner pleasure seeking spoiled child?  I think we could all do with being a bit more cautious when attributing that inner voice in our heads to God, especially when the messages also happen to serve our own interests, hedonistic or otherwise.

Having said that, as I meandered through the woods, I began to feel increasingly compelled to place, on my altar, a symbol of those death wishes which had become my default reaction to overwhelming sadness and fatigue.  By leaning entirely on my own strength, I could quickly bottom out when life’s painful challenges became unbearable.   I had somehow gotten into an emotional rut, in much the same way as the wheels of a moving vehicle veer towards a path that has been well-worn in the mud or in the snow.  My rut was the familiar path of longing for a release from the pain, rather than looking for a way through it.  The key, I realized this afternoon, was to lean on a greater source of strength.  My death wishes then were evidence of a lack of trust that I could survive, and a lack of faith in my Creator’s ability (or willingness) to stick by me through the crap of divorce:  rejection, shock, abandonment, betrayal.

I decided some tree bark would be a good symbolic offering on my little altar.  I was going to shed the skin of the one who relied on her own strength.  I was going to peel off a layer of emotional armour and trust God instead to protect and strengthen me in the face of emotional pain.  I was going to slough off the death wishes that had become a cherished sin of sorts: comforting, familiar fantasies of giving up the fight.  So I left three distinctly different pieces of bark on my altar, took a picture and returned home.

Here’s the strange thing: every time I’ve left my altar, I’ve had such a light heart that my first instinct is to call my husband and tell him what a good day I’m having.  For just that nanosecond, I forget that we’re not married anymore and that he is no longer interested in hearing about my state of mind. 

 This evening I had dinner with a dear old friend in a wonderful little Moroccan restaurant, and when  the delight in the decor and the food swept over me, I instantly thought “Oh I must come here with _______”.   I am used to that.  It happens all the time: “oh we must go to that documentary together” or “oh I must tell _____about this book”.  But it strikes me as odd that when I am feeling excited by the prospect of healing, I think of calling him to tell him so... forgetting for a moment that what I am healing from is the pain of him not wanting to be married to me anymore.  The heart is contrary, I suppose.



Here’s what I have learned in the past week

I’ve learned that my obligation to acknowledge my offenses in a broken relationship must  in no way be related to the likelihood  of the other person  acknowledging  the character required on my part to look past his or her hurtfulness to see my own guilt.  I’ve learned that my obligation to admit my mistakes comes with the risk that the other person considers the matter closed upon learning of my confession.  In fact my admission may very well liberate the other from any compulsion to self-interrogate.  It may leave him or her eternally free from the burden of wrestling down any doubt about his or her own innocence.

I’ve learned that my obligation to forgive must in no way be related to the likelihood of the person who hurt me acknowledging that he or she did so.  I’ve learned that my obligation to forgive is not lessened by the likelihood that the forgiven person may deny requiring it... may throw it back in my face even.

I’ve learned that my obligation to forgive is an obligation to myself.  It is an act of self-love that allows me to purge the anger, let go of the hurt, release the righteous indignation so that I can fill up the space consumed by those things with tiny fragile sprouts of peace and grace and dare I say it... happiness-  or at least the potential for happiness.

I’ve gone eight days without being felled by knee-buckling pain.  A year ago at this time, I could not last eight minutes without collapsing under the weight of emotional anguish.  I have no doubt that I will always brush up against an occasional wave of pain that his family and friends who had become my family and friends were as prepared to let me fall off the radar screen as he was. And I know that as long as I live I will bear the scars of being so completely broken by my husband’s rejection- by the very man  who assured me that I could dismiss the sentinels who’d been guarding my heart against yet another disappointment.

I know that I’m not done crying.  I’m not done hoping. But I am done being defined by this. I am done being defined by one man’s rejection of me.

Life happens

I went back to my spot in the woods yesterday- this time, equipped with a digital recorder and my good camera.  Like a good little documentarian, I’d brought the tools of the trade.  On the previous two occasions of being there, I’d prayed aloud without a shred of self consciousness about whether or not I was being articulate or chosen the most effective vocabulary. So I’d brought the recorder so that I could listen to myself after the fact and try to follow the thread of my monologue.  I did think though that perhaps I might try not doing any talking.  I had read that morning in my daily email inspirational message about how we never allot time to just listen for the voice of God, because we believe we are supposed to do all the talking, most of which in my case sounds a lot like a Christmas list:  “And I’d like time to get my marking done, and for my grandfather to get better, oh... and then of course I’d like my marriage restored”.

Even as I was deciding that I was going to just listen, my brain was busy thinking about what I would write in my blog about the process of just listening.   That got me reflecting on my inability to turn my brain off long enough to live in a moment. I realized that not only am I constantly thinking about how to document events in my life, but also about  how to orchestrate events in my life, making the most effective use of my time, as though it was about to run out.  I remember when my daughter was young, she would beg me to go with her for a bicycle ride after dinner.  I would instantly begin planning the most effective route.  If we took our bikes and headed east, we could drop my letter off in the postal box; then stop in at the Indian grocery store which was the best place to get good naan;  and then continue north where we were least likely to encounter any pedestrians, around whom  my daughter had not yet quite learned to manoeuvre; and then back through the school yard, and past her friend’s house where I could return a Hallowe’en costume that had been left at my place. By turning it into a “To Do” list, I effectively drained it of the possibility of pleasure for myself.  Worse, I’d set myself up for frustration because when you approach life that way, you’re bound to encounter a snag in your plan.  The Indian store with the great naan might be closed or my daughter’s friend’s family might not be home,  and then the whole outing -which was supposed to be about a bike ride with my daughter -becomes a failure because I’d been unable to execute the perfect plan.  Exquisite pleasure was mine however, on those occasions when a series of events unfolded on schedule according to my careful plan.

My brain was incorrigible, I realized.  It was constantly busy, not just recording and documenting my life but organizing it and tidying it up.  Furthermore it was always superimposing details overtop of an event, an observation or a conversation for the purposes of making it align with a script that was stored in my head.  I don’t know how that script got there or who wrote it, but I know that it drives me.  I also know that 10 seconds into what feels like an intense moment, whether it’s stumbling upon a beautiful hidden away piece of God’s handiwork, or learning terrible news or enjoying passionate sex,  I stop experiencing it and start documenting it and making decisions about how to incorporate it into my life script.

 I would dearly love to experience a letting go of all that control and acquiring the ability to simply let life happen.  There have been only a few times in my life when I have been at the mercy of such powerful forces that I had no choice but to step out of my head and be a fully sensory being. One of those times was 25 years ago, hiking on a bare mountain top in China with my daughter’s father when a violent thunderstorm closed in around us.  Another of those times was giving birth to my daughter, and surrendering to body rhythms whose demands I had not experienced before, and whose ferocity I could not begin to tame.   Other less intense versions of that same experience occurred when my daughter was very young because it’s almost impossible to predict what a 2 year old or 4 year old will say or will want to do on any given day... and when there’s no way to prepare for something, or plan out the route, the potential for magic increases exponentially.

I wonder now how much the loss of that control impacted upon my marriage.  It’s very difficult to exercise control over the events of family life when 2 of the children aren’t your own, and when three of the people you share your home with were a self-contained unit, with their own well-established traditions, rules, and worldviews before your arrival on the scene.

I returned home from my hike yesterday without having taken my digital devices out of my pocket.  I did check on my altar, and I smiled to find it undisturbed, but I felt no calling to offer up a sacrifice yesterday.  I really believe that God was just saying to me “okay you can take a break from all this internal work.  You don’t have to think about what else you have to surrender.  You don’t have to worry about trying to formulate an articulate prayer... Just take a day or two and just...BE.”

So that’s my plan for the weekend.  I am going to try to just let life happen and see how that feels.

I’m willing to be willing

A week ago, I was in another province for a conference, and while I was there I was blessed to spend some time with R who shared some pearls of wisdom with me.  There were two things that she said which particularly held meaning for me.  The first was her observation about human nature in what she described as some people’s penchant for preferring to be right over being happy.  Later in an unrelated conversation, she introduced me to the term “cherished sin” which struck a resounding chord with me, because I realized that my very own cherished sin was enjoying righteous indignation even at the expense of my own happiness (specifically within my marriage.)  There are some of you who may balk at the fire and brimstone term “sin” and I realize that not everyone’s theology or worldview includes this concept, but bear with me here.  If you think of a cherished sin, as that one thing in your life that you hold on to, even though you know it ultimately will lead to your demise,  that may make the concept a bit more palatable.   If you think of it as the one guilty pleasure you refuse to relinquish despite knowing that it is morally wrong, or damaging to yourself or to someone else, perhaps the concept will resonate with you as it did with me. I am convinced that we all have one cherished sin (or two, or five of them).  For some it’s substance abuse.  For others it’s anger or gossip or an addiction of some kind. For me, it is (or was) the need to be right about parenting, about what being a family means, and about the ways in which family members function and demonstrate  respect.  It is noteworthy that this need to be right does not exist in any other area of my life, other than within my marriage(s). On the contrary, I am the first to defer to someone else’s expertise in the workplace and in all other personal relationships.  Perhaps this is because as a girl, I was socialized to believe that it was a female’s role to create, institute and enforce the charter of rights and obligations on the home front, but like most girls of my generation, I lost my footing.  I lost my certainty and clarity as I began to encounter messages that I ought not to be happy with assigned gender roles, even though they seemed to be working well in all the families I knew of.   Perhaps this unresolved conflict rendered me overzealous later in life.  Hopefully  feminism’s third wave will allow my daughter and  her daughter to approach gender politics with an appreciation for nuances and a tolerance for apparent contradictions.  Perhaps my insistence on my way or the highway has been a way of honouring my parents’ values, their work ethic, their high expectations of their children and their vision of the family as a collective committed to a higher good.  Or perhaps... more likely, my predisposition to self-righteousness is simply rooted in stubbornness or in what they refer to in some places as “being ornery”.

So here is what I did today with this realization.  After work, I went back, with my dog, to the spot where I created my little altar yesterday.  The caramel stone I’d placed there yesterday to mark my surrendering of my dream of enduring marital love still sat on its lovely little lichen patch.  I decided that today I needed to add another stone and it had to be a black one.  The black stone would represent what I’d just come to understand as the cherished sin that may very well have resulted in the darkest, ugliest or most secret places in my being.  Unable to find a black stone on the forest floor, I wandered over to what had probably been the site of a fire pit party deeper in the forest.  I found a small charred piece of wood that would do nicely.  I laid it down on my lichen covered altar and announced that I no longer wanted my need to be right to get in the way of my personal happiness.  I announced that I was going to leave all my cherished anger and resentment behind with that little piece of charcoal on my altar.  It was humbling as I realized how much of that I’d been holding on to and how I’d used it as a substitute for happiness.

I’m telling you... I’m onto something here.

 

          My second stone                                          The steps up to my altar

                                           Oh yeah.... and my dog!



This is Day One of a New Year

Even the longest journey starts with  one step (from a Chinese Fortune Cookie), so today, without planning to, I took a baby step on a new pilgrimage.  New beginnings are clearly able to decide for themselves when they will launch, though I did have a few intimations from the universe that something was up.  It began with my awareness of a stubborn clinging to life (the sapling that’s determined to thrive in that scratch of soil between two slabs of rock) and a growing restlessness with feeling sad.  It continued when I ‘found my tribe’ upon discovering that there was a subculture of humanity called “Menopausal Women”.   Spurred on recently by a blood test that confirmed I was in full menopause (after more than a year without a period), I started researching the hormonal havoc leading up to this stage in life.  I am not talking women’s magazines here.  I am talking scholarly journals that describe how menopause can cause some women to implode with fury and destruction.    It is the quintessential black hole of emotion.  Add to that, seeing comedienne Sandra Shamas recently give her hilarious description of how menopause put a ‘carnival in her head’ and atomic rage in her soul, and you can’t imagine my relief to learn that I am not crazy.   I didn’t know I was peri-menopausal because I’d been on ‘the pill’ for years, so you could set your watch by my periods.  My marriage ended... I didn’t need birth control any more... the pills got flushed down the toilet and my periods stopped!  Oh! So that’s why I had hot flashes for the previous two years and would strip my shirt off at the dinner table!  (Don't you wish you'd been invited for dinner one of those nights?  You could have met 'the girls'.) Oh!  So that’s why I had insomnia for months!  Oh so that’s why everything was always getting on my last nerve!  Oh! So that’s why I would lie in bed on multiple occasions and sob “God- what the hell is wrong with me?!!”  I had no one to provide answers.  My sister wasn’t there yet, and neither my mother nor grandmother kept their uteruses long enough to experience menopause. You’d think maybe my doctor might have suggested this possibility.  Hello??!!

The other hint that I was about to embark on a new trail was the extent to which I couldn’t get a specific book out of my mind.  It was “Hinds feet on High Places” (a modern day Pilgrim’s Progress) and its Shepherd and Sojourner metaphor resonated with me like an Alice Munro short story.  In it, the protagonist named Much-Afraid learns to trust the Chief Shepherd to show her that she is beautiful, that she is loved and that she is loveable.  Along the journey, she builds small altars where she offers up her deepest fears and longings that have impeded her ability to accept grace.  On each altar she places a stone.  The book was staggeringly powerful for me and I suspected that it would be part of my healing from the terrible pain of a lost marriage.

But.... I did not suspect when I took my dog out for a walk this morning,  that I would return to my home much much later, marking Day One of a New Year.  It was a grey, rainy and muddy morning, not the kind of day on which one expects to find enlightenment.  I set off on a new trail with my dog and deliberately let myself get lost.  I wandered through ravines along the east Don River, under the 401, along stone paths and dirt paths. My dog was off-leash and we did not encounter a soul. After about ninety minutes of wandering I realized that I was in the middle of a picture perfect little forest with no signs of the city to disrupt my unexpected feeling of peace.  Suddenly I was compelled to set up a little altar like Much Afraid and my eyes fell on the perfect location.  At the foot of a strong tall tree was a lovely little patch of lichen (paging Alice Munro!) and next to that was a caramel coloured stone.  In an inspired act, I placed the stone on the lichen, stepped back and heard myself declaring to the trees around me that I entrusted to God (as I know Him through my Christian tradition... but feel free to substitute:  “Universe” or “Spirit Mother” or whatever works for you)  the remainder of my days and  that I was willing to relinquish my hold on my vision for my future so that He could work out the details of His.  It was a profound moment to say the least, because my vision included me being loved by a husband and never having to be alone... so that was a killer to let go of.  It was a moment signalling a new beginning, at least it felt like that.  I captured an image of my little altar with my cell phone, so that I could not later, in the midst of the day-to-day grind, deny its significance.



“A broken spirit dries up the bones” Proverbs 17:22

I couldn’t write last night.  I took a big step backwards and found myself wishing yet again, that I did not have to continue doing this ‘life’ thing.  I am guessing that I’ve come perilously close to testing the patience of my Creator with these death wishes.  At some point He will surely say (in a Yiddish accent) “Alright already! If that’s what you want...”

The fool in me (it WAS April Fool’s Day after all) imagined that somehow 365 days worth of praying, longing, aching for the restoration of my marriage would culminate in the universal laws of karma being employed in my favour.   I imagined that even as I drove to my lawyer’s office to put the divorce wheels in motion as a means of taking charge of my life (“You can’t fire me! I quit”), my husband’s black van would pull up beside me at an intersection, and he’d recognize me and suddenly realize that he couldn’t let our love slip away.  I saw several black vans en route, but the universe was sleeping while I awaited the happy ending.

I spent the morning at my lawyer’s office, signing papers to get the divorce underway.  I was numb as I looked for the little “x” on each of the pages,  emotionless, neither sad nor elated about the prospect of a fresh start.  I left in a stupor and discovered that right next to my lawyer’s office was a hair salon and on my way past it, headed back to my car, a sudden impulse struck me.  For more than a decade I’ve kept my hair long-ish because my husband preferred it that way.  His good friend theorized that my husband must have had a serious crush on his teenaged babysitter when he was a child, so entrenched was his assertion that a woman needed long hair to be attractive.

So, compelled by my ‘almost divorced’ status, I spun around on my heels and marched into the salon and demanded (okay not really ‘demanded’ but it sounds better here than ‘requested’) that my hair be chopped off.  Like some primordial shaving ritual, I imagined it to be the symbolic sealing of the deal I had just made in my lawyer’s office: “Sign here and then proceed as though your marriage never took place.”

My stylist was a lovely young woman who had a vision for my new look.  I suppose you think that I am about to describe the chopping off of my hair as either a disaster or a triumph, but the most significant thing that took place in that salon chair is that I started to cry uncontrollably.  My stylist ‘Anna’ (let’s call her that) embarked on a conversation about how her parents had just split up after 30 years of marriage, and how odd it was to be an adult and learn to her surprise that her parents had never been happy together.  They’d just sent their last child off to university and decided to declare that the jig was up.  Anna described re-thinking all the family vacations at the cottage when her parents seemed to be having fun, and searching her memory for evidence that they’d been faking it all those years.  It struck me that her whole life had been like “The Truman Show”, constructed and artificial.  So Anna, who only 20 minutes earlier was completely unknown to me, became the object of my most intense compassion. My hair turned out to be inconsequential in the face of this confirmation of the capriciousness of human relationships.  I left the salon looking like an 8 year old with a 1970’s pixie cut, demoralized in more ways that you could shake a stick at.

The universe did not prevent me from instigating the divorce.  My husband did not spend the one year anniversary of our separation arriving at the conclusion that he does indeed love me.  I’ve lived a year without him, but I don’t feel strong.  My bones are dry.