Category Archives: Healing

Hurry Up and Wait

Healing, Learning, New and Unknown, Positive Attitude, Separation

I’ve been hurrying up and waiting my entire life. And this week feels like the longest waiting ever. I’m waiting for signatures to start the clock ticking forward.

Once my dissolution paperwork is signed by my almost-ex-husband, I feel like I’ll need to hustle. We talked, made some verbal agreements (or so I think, you never know with him), and now I’m waiting for his lawyer to return from vacation to finalize some things.

I’ve been hiding out at my parents house, taking care of my kids, in a part-time job for the past 7 months. I can’t stay here forever, nor do I want to. I feel like everything is up in the air. I do not feel settled. I want some stability and to feel settled. I don’t even care where, I just want to have a place that I call home for the long haul and where I have set doctors and schools and stores and restaurants and people that I know. I have that here and I have that where my last home was, but making any future plans these days is a pain in the ass.

I succumbed to getting a pediatrician and a dentist in my new temporary mode of living. I do not have a doctor. I do not know if I should register my kids for their current schools for next year or not. I do not know if I should look for a house or apartment in one area or another. So I move forward while waiting. I’ve registered them for their schools and I live like I live here permanently, but the back of my head always has a “what if”.

If, last Fall, you would’ve asked me if I would be in the state of living in waiting still this Spring, I would’ve laughed and said hell no.

Yet here I am. I’ve stood my ground on what I want in the dissolution paperwork and I just need signatures. You’d think that the career progression wouldn’t be related at all to my marriage, but it is. I’ve seen the first hand how each time I set a boundary with my almost-ex that my career encounters a new positive opportunity. I don’t know if this is some sick game the universe is playing or if I made that up in my head and it just seems to be working out that way.

This week I’m moving on in the second round of a job opportunity. It is near my old home an hour away. It’s a good opportunity with benefits and long term potential. It’s closer to my ex, which is great for my kids well-being, but it’s farther from my family, which may not be the best for my own well-being. They are my support system. If I move with the kids back to being closer to their dad, I have no support system.

I’ve been really working on myself these days with setting boundaries and not trying to make decisions involving others in spite of myself, but when it comes to my kids, obviously I want what is best for them. But I realized the other day though that they’re actually really doing great. They don’t see their dad daily, but we do our best to accommodate each other’s schedules, even at a distance, and they seem to be happy and healthy and thriving. They both love their schools. They are sleeping soundly and wake up with smiles on their faces. They are loving and they are loved.

So I don’t think I can really make a bad decision. I get hung up on what if this happens or that happens and OMG, yes, what if??? Guess what, the worst has already happened (okay, no one died, but close enough). My marriage and career died all in the same year and I’m still standing. It can only get better from here, right?

Stifle Me Not

Withdrawal from My Old Motivation

Healing, Honesty, Learning, Motivation, New and Unknown, Uncategorized

It’s like I was super hooked on a drug and I’m still having withdrawal. I don’t even want the drug anymore, I was just used to it. It was my way of living. It became who I am, and so I just accepted my life that way. Now I’m lost and confused and lonely, and even though I don’t want that drug anymore, I’m not quite sure what else to do.

I’ve never been on drugs before, but I know reason for dependency on a substance is to go after the feeling that the drug gives you.

At first, I was going to make this analogy about my almost ex-husband. Then I realized it applies to my career. But I really think it applies overall to the way I’ve been feeling, or wanting to feel, for the last 15 years.

I have been a hooked on a feeling. A fleeting feeling.

I am driven not by who I am, or what I really want, but what I can do for people. I have been caught up in the stress of imbalance between doing what is best for myself and using that energy to make others happy – in my marriage, in my career, and even when I was a little kid.

I have been hooked on doing well in life to help others, to make others happy and proud. I went to college, I acquired skills, and I have always done well at nearly everything that I do in my career. The same thing in my marriage. I paid attention and strove to be the best wife I knew how to be for my husband (no matter how much he’ll say that I did not). If he wasn’t happy, I’d overcompensate or corrected my behavior the best I knew how. We wouldn’t fail, we would prevail despite the bills and the stress of raising a family. I could make this work. “I”.

I am of the “pleaser” variety. I get honest joy out of making others happy. It’s not bullshit, I’m not making it up. I didn’t fully realize the extent to which I like this until it was too late and I had served so many others in spite of myself.

I have served others in spite of myself.

And I lacked the boundaries to look out for my own well-being.

Others do not question it. Why shouldn’t they? They aren’t responsible for my boundaries. I am nice. Nice, and smart, and oh wait, I’m pretty too. I’m “perfect”. I take these compliments and I accept them because I like feeling like I did something good and I helped someone else. I like the approval, even if it doesn’t last long.

It feels strange getting to know this person that I am in this 39-year old body. I start to have regrets about what I could’ve done, should’ve done, would’ve done in my 20s or early 30s… but I’m recognizing the same “mistakes” in others as I’ve made. Who’s to say it’s a mistake? I’m the only one saying that. I’m trying not to beat myself up and label everything I did or didn’t do that led me to this place as a mistake… because at the end of the day, I’m learning from it.

If you learn from it, it’s not a mistake. It’s a lesson. Learn, move on, and do something different the next time is what I keep telling myself.

So here I am, having an eerily similar feeling to when I was 18 and first on my own at college. I didn’t know who I was – I was just out in the world trying to “make it”. However I’ve learned that if you don’t recognize your own wants and needs, your own purpose, you can wander aimlessly and stumble into serving the purposes of others instead of your own. That happened to me. I let that happen.

I’ve been cautiously taking each step like its the first time. I’m paying attention to my feelings. MY feelings. I’m trying not to discount the reason for my feelings – that is what they are for. If I begin to feel similar to before and don’t like it (fearful, anxious, unhappy, etc.), I’m trying to take a new direction… set a boundary – even if that means straying from the comfort of known territory. What I once was is no more – I can’t be that person anymore or I will be miserable. I can’t use those drugs, the happiness of pleasing others can’t be my reason for existence. I have to find what makes me want to live on my own without pleasing others as my primary motivation.

I’m searching for my new motivation. I buried it within me long ago and it’s just taking time to emerge. I suppose it will surface when I’m ready.

Stifle Me Not

 

Hibernating, Healing, and Making Slow Progress

Healing, Learning

I’ve been really trying to focus on my own well-being these days. I feel like I’m hibernating, and healing in the process. Its funny how, until you’re out of a certain situation, you’re so unaware of the reality of your life. It’s not really funny, it’s more sad and unfortunate.

I’ve felt so good lately, and been having so many realizations of what my old life was like – I’m amazed that I ever lived that life.

I can’t believe how suppressed and disillusioned I was in my marriage, especially now after being out of my old home for months. I only see my ex when we exchange the kids for visitation. Even though I kicked him out over a year ago, I still saw him regularly because he lived nearby. I didn’t realize how damaging his frequent presence was. Being farther away from him has done my mental and emotional well-being a world of good.

I have come to realize that in the past, every action or inaction of mine was so fear-based. I wasn’t afraid of being hit or scolded. I was never beaten or screamed at. It was quite the opposite. I was seemingly showered with love and affection and allowed to have all the freedom that I wanted…yet, I never felt free to be my own person.

Why? What was I afraid of?

I was apparently afraid of disapproval and ultimately not feeling “good enough”. Not pleasing him in the littlest way would cause me to overcompensate in any one area. It’s hard to explain without examples, so the example that is top of mind was my weekly grocery trip (aka my weekly energy zap), followed by alleged accusations of me being uncaring and having complete disregard for what my ex liked.

The Weekly Energy Zap

Each weekend, I would make a grocery list and go to the grocery store. My goals would be to: 1. Buy healthy meals for the week (and try to save money), 2. Get anything extra that he or the kids needed (wanted), and 3. Make sure I wasn’t gone too long or he would be mad when I got home.

I would happily drive to the store and navigate the crowd on a Sunday afternoon. Grocery shopping on any weekend afternoon is just a bad idea if time is a priority for you, however, that was the only time I had without kids. While shopping, I’d often get calls or texts from him about the kids’ behavior, or a reminder to pick up something else that wasn’t on my list. Fine, great, got it. I’d get stuck behind a slow-poke in several aisles, or have to wait in the dreaded deli line. Without fail, almost every time, I’d get a text while in the checkout lane – “how much longer”?

I’d get home and unload the groceries and balance the impatience of my children. Sometimes he would help unload the car, sometimes he wouldn’t budge from the couch or the video game he was playing. I would sometimes spend $250 for a week’s worth of groceries and he would ask “Did you get my iced tea?” (even though I just bought four other kinds of requested beverages).

When I first didn’t buy the tea, I didn’t think much of it. “Sorry, I forgot.” I didn’t think I was some worthless slug wife that can’t do a simple request for her dear husband. I was unfazed. I just worked a 50-hour week, cared for kids, cleaned the house, and just bought lots of food to feed our family. I was amazing. I was handling life.

It was bit-by-bit and day-by-day as the years went on that I became a puppet.

He would be disappointed about the tea, but he wouldn’t chastise me or get mad in any way. He would simply make it a point to buy the tea that week. He would save this tea example for weeks or months or years down the road to illustrate how much I don’t pay attention to him. The next time I went to the store, I made sure to buy more damn tea. From then forward, I always bought the tea.

One time I accidentally bought diet tea. He didn’t criticize me (too bad), but he again made sure to get his own regular tea and let me know how it tastes different from diet. He would even drink the diet so it wasn’t wasted. What a guy! He would even drink the diet tea. He’s so flexible. He’s so patient with his apparently brain-dead wife who can’t read tea labels.

I wasn’t beaten, but I was invisibly controlled and manipulated. And I allowed myself to be trapped. I allowed the opinions and perceptions of my spouse to impact my self-worth. Example after example would go into his mental database of ways in which I don’t care about him. And before I knew it, I was keeping my own mental database of how unworthy I was. It was a classic case of him projecting onto me, and I absorbed it all. I was like a sponge that soaked up much of what he spilled.

My self-worth became a dirty wet moldy sponge.

I don’t think much of what he projected was intentionally planned, and I creatively learned how to make excuses for him rather than ask myself how healthy it was to live that way.

This one example may not seem so bad. And to me, at the time, it wasn’t bad at all. It just was what it was. It’s the sum of the parts that made the overall whole so detrimental to me.

Hibernating to Survive

In nature, animals hibernate to survive. The purpose is to reserve energy when food is scarce.

I’m hibernating to survive. To heal. I’m working part-time so that I have energy left for my kids. I’m getting sleep. I’m learning to consider myself when I make decisions. I’m like a toddler figuring myself out.

This hibernation phase of my life has been invaluable. It’s opened my eyes big and wide to learn from the past rather than let me be a victim from it. Manipulation by others is so damaging if you don’t keep your own well-being in check. Whether a person intentionally manipulates you or not, it can happen so subtly; you don’t even realize it’s happening. Typically, if someone is manipulative, they have their own underlying reasons for why they behave that way.

I certainly have more healing to do. The real test will be if I encounter another person that spills ongoing sludge. Will I absorb it or speak up loudly and clearly and not make excuses? I certainly I hope I choose myself if that happens again.

Until then, I am peacefully resting and restoring my energy.

Stifle Me Not