Muchness and Light

Scratchin' and survivin'.... Hangin' in and jivin'.

I wrote my last blog post four days before an unexpected first date.

That was eight months ago.

I have been crafting this post for weeks or longer, debating and processing what I wanted to say and what the implications were for me and others. I have thought about who would see this—those loyal readers who’ve been with me from the very beginning, the new friends I have picked up in the 10 years since I started writing again, the people who were removed from my life by their own accord or by mine, those who I know still lurk from time to time for whatever reasons.

Like so many others, I met him online. In the aftermath of my last breakup, I spent some time with some of my girls and debriefed, both before and after Achilles’ tendon surgery. I wanted to have some fun and see what the dating landscape might look like, for whenever I decided I was ready to spend time with another man. I needed to heal, both physically and emotionally. I was still working and raising two young men and in the middle of grad school.

But there was this smile, this tilt of the head that intrigued me. It was simply lovely. Candidly bashful but brazenly joyful and mischievous. Real, complicated emotion captured at just the right angle. Just the right moment.

We realized quickly we had mutual friends, people I’d gone to high school with in Alabama in the late 80s. Similar sense of humor. Incessant, funny, deep, honest conversation started immediately.

The day after I wrote my last blog post.

I was still in a splint and on a blue knee scooter with a basket, but we both wanted to meet. Soon.

That was eight months ago.

Neither of us could have foreseen this, though I suppose no one ever does. But our respective breakups happened almost simultaneously. There was no intention of becoming really involved with this man, and I know he had no intention of jumping into another relationship.

Woobiee. My manister. He’s warm and fuzzy and comfortable. He is strong and supportive. He is present and mindful and considerate. He has done his work—really, with a professional!—and he is wholly encouraging of my continuing my work. He is brilliant and funny and caring. He is gregarious and generous. He is complicated and open and honest even when it’s difficult for him or for me. He is respectful of my boundaries, and I am encouraged by his words and his actions to defend them when necessary, without fear of recrimination.

He did what I asked him to do—which is the same thing I asked of myself—to be open to the possibility, truly willing to accept the consequence of each other, good or bad.

That was eight months ago.

I could gush ad infinitum about his qualities, and I share those words with him regularly. That’s not what this is about.

Muchness and Light was born out of my need to understand myself and to change. Ten years ago, I was unhappy and unhealthy and restless. I didn’t understand that my midlife crisis was beginning. To look back from the position of my life now, it’s startling to see the changes. I don’t know how 2010 Stephanie would feel about 2020 Stephanie and if she would have made the same choices, if she’d known what changes were coming.

Whatever intention I had then, I have achieved only a modicum of success by those standards. I did some writing. I saw some bands. I did a lot of therapy. I have been in and out of a string of relationships that became increasingly nuanced in their unhealthiness.

Whatever I hoped or planned for in 2010 and in the subsequent few years didn’t materialize in the ways I’d intended.

What I got was even better.

I have gotten two sons almost to adulthood. I have a close-knit core of friends who love me, and whom I adore, even when we can’t be together. I am six hours away from finishing my third college degree. I work at a job that I love, and I intend to add part-time teaching to my schedule as soon as graduate school is finished. I am in a relationship that is healthier and more secure than I have ever experienced.

From the very beginning of this process, I have written about how it’s all about the journey and not the destination. I was always open to the possibility of having my path twisted and turned in unexpected directions. I often chose the road less traveled, just to have something new to see along the way.

Above all else, I wanted to live an adventure. It didn’t matter the details, so long as I could talk to my friends and hang with my kids and listen to music and eat some good food and spend time with a romantic partner who offered reciprocity in care and honesty. Nothing ever has to be grand; I thrive on small moments strung together like colorful, random beads.

That journey took me in an unimaginable direction. When I started Muchness and Light, I desperately needed to hear my own voice. It was never public validation that I needed. Accolades and encouragement from others is always nice, but what I needed most was to know that I existed and had value. For a while, I searched for proof that I had value to others.

What I was really always looking for was the value I had to myself.

Over the last 10 years, I have struggled through the demise of my marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of divorce, returning to college while working and raising two kids, health issues, and one unhealthy relationship after another. Sometimes I flailed and raged against the difficulty and the unfairness of it all, but I never stopped moving forward. Not once.

I still have days that I struggle. Life continues, and my journey is ongoing.

But I am content. Most days, I’m happy. Some days are darker than most. But I am generally content in my life. I am still defiant in being exactly who I am, but it’s no longer in reaction to other people or their bullshit. I am no longer screaming to hearing my own echo, just to know I exist.

Woobiee has admonished me from the beginning to be present, to avoid comparing the past to the present or looking too far outside the immediate moment. As I’ve discussed before, creating expectation spawns the possibility of disappointment, and I still believe that to be true. But expending significant energy on extensive emotional contingency plans is exhausting, and Woobiee makes it safe for me to relax and enjoy myself. He does not make me happy—that’s wholly on me—but he supports and encourages my happiness to the best of his ability, with as much effort as I expend in supporting and encouraging his.

Most days, I am centered and Self-led. I am integrated and whole, better able to handle stressors and insecurities. Not perfect, but better. Self-aware and Self-actualized and Self-controlled.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to handle Muchness and Light.

This blog has been a huge part of my journey, though admittedly decreasingly so over the past couple of years. As my work and school took a different direction, I turned to this outlet less and less. I am no less- Self-analytical—perhaps even more so—but I can hash out those deep explorations with an audience of one or two who know me intimately; I no longer need to hear myself to know I exist.

 I am a Real Girl.

So I have decided to put this on hold indefinitely. I will likely leave something up for a while, at least until I can get my files downloaded and park my domain names and figure out what I want to leave publicly available. For a while, I felt as if I were letting down 2010 Stephanie and 2013 Stephanie and any number of internal parts and iterations that have depended on this medium to be heard.

But I realized they don’t need that anymore, either. Muchness and Light was an invaluable tool, and it helped me to find the voice I lost over the years. It helped me learn to listen to myself and to advocate for myself, even and especially when there is no one else who will advocate for me. The support is always nice, but it’s ultimately Me who is responsible for Me, no matter when or where I am.

I wanted a life with no regrets. That’s impossible to achieve, really. To be wholly human is to be flawed; it is how we react to the consequences of our flaws that defines us.

But to be comfortable in my own skin is blessing. It is a merciful gift that I have given to myself. All I could tell my earlier Selfs is that it gets better, to just keep going.

I intend to still be going for a while, just not this direction.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and supported me and challenged me. You have been an integral part of my journey. Some of you always will be; some of you may never have a place in my life again, nor mine in yours.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you well. I wish you good health and peace and the exact amount of adventure that you need. I wish you contentment and love.

Just as importantly, I wish the same things for myself, and I intend to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I deserve no less.

- StephQJ 5/16/2020

 

 

Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon.

During and after my break-ups of recent years, I have lamented why I wasn’t worth their fight. There is a lot of good about me, so why wasn’t it good enough? Was there something inherently broken, or was there something about me that was so bad that it outweighed the good?

In part 2 of this series, I wrote about what I find valuable in a partner. In part 1, I wrote about what I find to be valuable about myself. In hindsight, I do believe that the men I’ve loved found me inherently valuable. Whether or not they valued themselves, I’m not even sure I know, though their actions would indicate they valued themselves above all others.

But one of the things I realized recently is that we didn’t necessarily value the same things in a relationship. Shared interests and similar social and political leanings cannot sustain romantic interaction, if both parties aren’t looking for similar things in romance.

So what do I value in a relationship?

I value communication. It’s important for me to be in regular contact with the person I’m dating. It doesn’t have to be constant, though I fully admit that I am a very active texter, emailer, and caller. I will think of something that I want to share with that person, and I’ll send it before considering any ramifications. I don’t expect that there will always be an immediate reply, but it is important to me to get a response eventually. Ongoing conversation builds rapport, expresses affection in subtle ways, and strengthens bonds. But it’s just as important to me that expectations—of plans, of emotions, etc.—be shared. Far too often, I have inferred one thing to be true, only to be met with irritation that my interpretation was not at all what the other person intended.

I value reliability. Interaction doesn’t have to be constant, though it does have to be regular. Just as importantly, I have to be able to rely on the person to be there. Both because it’s just downright irritating when people don’t do what they say they’re going to do and because I have this deep-seated fear of abandonment, I need my partner to show up. I need them to show up when they say they’re going to, but also when they should. Dismissing important events or forgetting to do the logistical things that you’ve promised to do is an indicator that something in the relationship isn’t worth your time and effort. If you tell me you’re going to do something, show up and do it.  

I value kinesis. I spent a lot of time during my marriage and later in my relationship with Rango sitting around and waiting. I was waiting for them to get up on a weekend or waiting for them to get home from working late again or waiting for them to finish what they were doing to join me (or me and the boys) to do whatever. I stagnated in my marriage, and I became stagnant again during that subsequent relationship. It’s not that I can’t just sit and chill sometimes, but I enjoy going for walks at the park or going to see a concert or a show at a museum. But I also value emotional kinesis. I need movement forward. Not necessarily toward a goal of cohabitation or marriage [in part because I don’t know that I’ll ever be willing to do either of those again!], but at least toward shared future. Happily ever after shouldn’t mean stopping at some self-imposed pinnacle and hoping the balance of my life stays exactly the same.

I value family. My boys are a huge focus of my life, and that’s not changing any time soon. My extended family is important to me, and my girlfriends are the sisters I never had. Whomever becomes a part of my life becomes a part of that. It’s vital that we forge our own sense of family, as well, and that necessarily includes my babies.

I value safety. Yes, physical safety is a big deal. I was in one physically abusive relationship and for far, far longer than I like to admit. But emotional safety, for me and for my partner, is just as important. The relationship needs to be a safe space to share feelings and thoughts and ideas, without recrimination. Far too often, I have felt punished by my partner for expressing emotions he didn’t like. In healthy love, there’s no tolerance for stonewalling or emotional abuse.

I value passion. Look, physical passion may well dwindle after that ubiquitous honeymoon phase, but the loss of physical intimacy is the death knell for a relationship. I know; I’ve been there twice. Sex is natural (and wonderful and fun) and is a healthy expression of emotion and trust between two people. For me, a loving relationship will necessarily be emotionally and physically intimate.

I can write about what I want or need, what’s important to me in a relationship. But until I’m actually in a relationship again, I have no way to put these things into practice. Queen Frostine commented that my break-up with Finn was probably the healthiest and most mature I’d ever had. I do believe that I’m capable of clearly discerning when something is not working for me, of giving it time to grow rather than starting from a place of intense, immediate emotion, and of evaluating clearly whether or not the other person may be a healthy, cohesive match for me.

So I’m going to try dating again. At least theoretically, I’m open to the possibility.

But I’m also going to keep spending more time doing the things that are fulfilling to me, even if I don’t have a partner to join me. I’ve done a couple of 5Ks this year. I joined a fantastic philosophy discussion group that meets monthly. I’ve started volunteering.

If I meet someone who wants to join me for some things, I’m willing to let someone into that space. But I’m also keeping that space well-defined. It has taken me a very long time to realize that I’m worth my own effort, and I’m not willing to let that stagnate again.

 

 

A million lights are dancing, and you are a shooting star.

As I wrote about a few weeks, I have been seeing someone new. I won’t wax poetic here; it’s simply too early to exalt him to the status of Blog Fodder, in and of himself. I hadn’t necessarily intended to get into a relationship—though maybe it’s still too early to even call it that—while also trying to work on my own stuff, much of which was highlighted and exacerbated by the ending of my relationship with Rango. But the fact is he presented as an opportunity worth exploring while I was beginning the process of self-reintegration.

Whether coincidental or due to some meaning I have assigned (or even thanks to that fickle bitch Fate), there are things about him that remind me strongly of Bounder. He is not another alcoholic, though he may well be overcoming a history as a dismissive-avoidant. He is not Bounder, however, and it is unfair of me to make direct comparisons. They are two different men, with different histories and stories, but there are moments that are striking, to say the least.

Because of this thing with Finn (so named because he is my huckleberry) and because of the end with Rango and because I sometimes pass him driving on the road between our houses, Bounder has been on my mind a lot. A lot a lot. It makes sense that he would be, but it set me off on a path of re-analysis and overthinking (again). I think I’ve dissected that relationship for the millionth time over the last few weeks, still looking for where exactly I went wrong. Because his shit is his shit—I can’t control how he acts or reacts or fails to act—all I can do is try to figure out what I screwed up. He told me numerous times that it wasn’t me, and I generally believe that, but I always dissect to the point of vivisection, flaying myself to a bloody, psychoanalyzed mess.

I do remember getting a text from him, a couple of days after we’d met. He said he was glad we could take things nice and slow. Except we didn’t. We started intensely, quickly, and that’s exactly how it continued. Within two hours of that text, I was making out with him in the parking lot of his office, a quick drive-by on my way home.

And that is where I failed him. Hurricane Sassafras was coming, no matter what he did. I didn’t really hear him and slow down. It wasn’t terribly caring on my part, no matter how unintentional the push was.

Finn also said he wanted to go slowly, I have tried to honor that. I have tried to dial back my impulses to forge full-steam into his world. There is something there worth exploring, and I don’t want to do it all in hindsight.

Which brings me back to Bounder.

Working within the IFS model, I have become very mindful of my feelings. I don’t just mean my emotions. When I feel something—anger, grief, sadness, longing, affection, attraction, love—I take note of where in my body I am processing the emotion. There is usually a physical locus of that energy. Because my strongest emotions are often tied up with what a subpersonality is processing in a given moment, I feel them in different places, which is effectively where each of those subparts resides. Harley and Quinn and Stephie and each of the others sits in a specific spot and pulls on my center from her point of reference. When I feel a subpart whose name I don’t know (who maybe I didn’t even realize existed) pull at my center, the emotional and physical feelings are often coupled with anxiety.

Because there has been so much thought of Bounder over the last few days and weeks, my anxiety has been really high at times. It has often felt like a pull from the right of my stomach. Sometimes it has been so bad that I would get nauseated and irritable, desperate to make the pain stop.

“What is that she’s feeling?” my therapist asked. “She may just want you to acknowledge her feelings. Can you tell what she wants?”

“She wants relief,” I replied. “She is hurt and angry and confused. She doesn’t understand how anyone could have something so precious as that kind of love in their damn hand and just walk away. It makes no sense, and it’s infuriating.”

This, of course, is wholly indicative of my fear of emotional abandonment. While that’s rooted deeply in my childhood, the feelings of hurt and betrayal and confusion are never more profound than when I think of Bounder. While I’m still angry at Rango for how he handled the boys during our break-up, I have dealt with my feelings toward him, kept what I needed to keep and shed the rest. Same for DH and Rex and others whose names and memories don’t really matter or impact me all that much anymore.

I explained to my therapist that the feelings are seated in this very specific location, that they can be overwhelming at times. And when I am most overwhelmed by something, I tend to dive into it head first, hoping to reach the bottom quickly and resurface cleansed.

But that never seems to happen with him, and I am forever in a loop of self-flagellation.

“Well,” she said, “first of all, she needs to know that you are simply witnessing the trauma again, a memory of it; it’s not actually happening again. You’re not being traumatized again.”

Okay. Just a ghost. Not real. Not happening now.

“And,” she continued, “she doesn’t have to feel that anymore. You don’t have to feel that anymore. That’s a lot of burden to have been carrying around for so long. She can let it go. You can let it go. Let the elements have it—they can take it—they can take a lot more than that. But she doesn’t have to feel that anymore.”

Wait—WHAT?!?

Even I could tell that my facial expression shifted in that moment. I was stunned, utterly baffled by the idea that it was okay not to keep feeling those emotions over and over, effectively retraumatizing myself every time. I have dealt with it repeatedly, and there is no healthy in dragging the futility of it all around, night after night.

And it makes sense. I had stopped feeling similar things for others long ago, in a healthy timeframe and in healthy ways. Why is he so special that I should continue to carry that burden?

In part, I think, it’s because he wouldn’t. Part of what happens during the emotional abandonment is that I’m left to feel whatever with no support, and I’m the only one feeling it. Maybe the other person is feeling something, but it never seems to be anywhere close to what I’m feeling, especially when the other person is a dismissive-avoidant who is so well-versed in compartmentalizing emotions away to protect themselves.

I have often railed against feeling like I was carrying it for both of us, because that was sometimes the only way to prove that the thing had ever happened, with no acknowledgement of grief coming from the other person. I am sure Bounder felt it in the darkest of times, but I know that he never faced me to tell me he was sorry for hurting me. His not acknowledging me and the hurt he created, his ignoring of me when he damn well knew it was the worst possible way to hurt me, made me feel worthless, especially to him. But that flew in the face of his telling me he loved me, of his moments of showing me deep, incredible love, and I could never reconcile the conflict of extremes no matter how much I psychologized him and myself.

But to think, to realize, that I don’t have to do that was foundationally shifting. I could feel the anxiety and the tension to the right of my stomach abate immediately. There was a deep sense of relief. She’s there, and she’s a little antsy about what she’s supposed to do now. If her job was to hold all that baggage, what is she going to do now that still allows her to be of use to the Self?

I had a dream once while Bounder and I were dating, one of those lucid nap dreams. I was standing outside a tall, wide, stone tower, trying to figure out how to get inside. I could hear a knocking from the inside, and I needed to let whomever was in there out. As I looked more, I realized the tower was his face, the details of his mouth and eyes and brows built from each brick. I climbed some scaffolding and began to chip away at this one high, white stone. It was the speck of light in his left eye.

Months later, he told me that I’d been like this force knocking on his walls, over and over and over, until he eventually poked his head out enough to see what was in the light.

I let light back into his darkness, and somehow that wasn’t worth staying for. And it’s not that I wasn’t worth it; it’s that he didn’t see himself as worth me. So convinced that he would hurt me in the end, he made it happen, pushing me unaware into the dark pool so that I felt like I would drown before I could resurface.

But in the same way I did it for him, I must do it for myself. I get to be the disco ball for myself, to reflect light and shine it brilliantly into my own dark corners. Disorienting and distracting at first, yes, but eventually it becomes a beautiful swirl worthy of dancing.

It is odd, a little unsettling, to think of life without the possibility of him. I gave up the possibility of him as a romantic partner long ago. Our life goals are different, and he would never be able to consistently meet my needs. But he was always this driving force of emotion and thought, even when we weren’t together, sometimes in contact and sometimes not. Music, in particular, became a daunting prospect for me, because everything could remind me of him.

And that’s her job now, that’s what she is supposed to do, to dance. She is lightened of her load. And she gets to pick the music she wants to dance to. She’s not trapped by the years-long playlists of Bounder songs. She doesn’t have to be afraid of hearing one of them in the grocery store and bursting into tears. She doesn’t have to listen for him in every new song. She can move freely again, not weighed down by his burden or mine. She can find the path that she lost, can move toward light and laughter and love, because she deserves that.

This wasn’t her fault.

And if we pass him on the road again? I don’t know. I could feel something; I could not. I may well never see him again. I’m not going to dwell on what might happen. Now I have different roads to explore and a different Stephanie to discover.

And there is dancing to be done.

 

 

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You can be the outcast, or you can be the backlash of somebody's lack of love... or you can start speaking up.

NOTE: This post includes discussion of some pretty difficult subject matter, presented in an emotionally honest way. It may not be appropriate for all reading audiences.

At the heart of my myriad insecurities is a deep-seated fear of emotional abandonment. I am afraid that the people who profess to love me will stop caring, will decide that I am not worth their love and affection, and will dismiss me and my own emotions outright.

Physical abandonment is daunting enough, but it always seems to be symptomatic of a deeper emotional distance. DH left after our 19-year marriage crumbled, but that came only after he’d emotionally checked out of our relationship for years. I’d struggled to get Rango to engage in any emotionally significant way for more than a year before he told me he just wasn’t showing up for Max’s football game or my birthday. And when Bounder was most overwhelmed by the intensity of our relationship, he stood me up and distanced himself—at least until he decided he missed me too much to stay away—only to do it again and again.  

But the fear comes, plainly, from my childhood and adolescence.

I’ve written extensively about the sexual abuse I suffered as a child. There are at least six years during which I can remember being told, “Don’t tell anyone. You’ll be the one to get in trouble.” Years later, when I did finally tell—in the aftermath of a date rape at 16—I was left to deal with the physical and emotional impact on my own. Both the molestation and the rape were acknowledged very calmly for a few days, but there was no significant follow-up. I wasn’t sent to a counselor or therapist. I was sent, by myself, for my first pelvic exam to make sure I didn’t contract an STD.

My fear and my shame were dismissed, were boxed away so that someone else could handle what happened to me. My emotions were treated as if they were secondary and unimportant—or at least it seemed that way to me. With the exception of one close friend who literally held my hand through the process of telling, I never once felt that I was supported or cared for in those days and weeks.

I was scared and sick and confused and alone. When I most needed to be loved, the person who should have loved me most left me alone in my horror, pretending then and for most of the years since that none of it happened.

So what I learned from an early age, and relearned over and over and over, was that when someone loves you, then they leave you when your emotions are too much for them.

They leave you when you are too much for them.

Because they can’t handle what they’re feeling in response to what you’re feeling, it’s easier to pretend the feelings don’t matter or that there are no feelings at all. So while love is supposed to be this caring, beautiful, wonderful thing, for me it’s also tainted by hurt, twisted up with rejection and carelessness and neglect.

None of this is new. None of this is revelation.

What is new for me is the realization that the subpersonalities are afraid that I will emotionally abandon them. They are terrified that I will decide that they aren’t worth the trouble, that the help they try to provide is too much of a hassle for me to bother to listen to them. They are afraid of being ignored and dismissed. They are afraid that I will shut them all down, in turn becoming exactly what I fear most.

And my choices, my culpability, in all of my relationship failures make my trustworthiness questionable. My complicity in DH’s ignorance of me, which I would go on to rebel against in the most damaging of ways possible. My constantly shifting boundaries, allowing Rango to pull further and further away while I accepted the blame for his distance. And my tortured love for Bounder, whose kiss could make time stand still and the seas turn to sand—who I will still seek out when I feel utterly lost and alone, even though I know he will almost certainly let me down. The multitude of others, who said I mattered but then walked away with barely a glance over their shoulders.

Besides, I was the one who was making out with that guy the night of the rape. I was the one whose tiny body reacted with sexual arousal when touched inappropriately. While that is a totally normal physiological response, the behavior that wasn’t normal became utterly normalized. I knew things at an age when I should’ve been happily playing with my baby dolls and getting hugs goodnight instead of confusion and lies to deflect someone else’s blame.

They won’t love me anymore if I don’t do this thing that feels weird and wrong, being done to me by someone who says they love me.

Hurt was normalized. Secrets and shame were normalized. Pretending like nothing happened, like it didn’t matter, was normalized.

So if I have culpability or complicity in those hurts, who the hell am I to be trusted? How can my internal family trust me to make healthy loving decisions for them when I can’t even seem to make them for myself? How can I be trusted to do the right thing for any of us?

The difference in me and those who’ve hurt me is that I don’t want to be distanced from my emotions or anyone else’s. I don’t want to be ignored or dismissed, and so I try like hell not to do the same to anyone else. To disregard those parts of myself, to act as if my own emotions just don’t exist or matter, inflicts unbearable hurt. Shutting down, being numb again, silencing those inner voices entirely is the last thing I ever want to do.

I have to show myself the love and care that I expect from anyone else.

Integration can only come about if I trust the parts not to hurt me and vice versa. I have to honor what each feels, acknowledge each emotion I am ultimately feeling, and accept that the emotion itself is not the trauma. The traumatic events are over and done; the feelings are ghosts whose chains rattle me in a million directions at once sometimes, making me shaky on my feet. Making me insecure.

I may be moving forward, but I’m not leaving them behind. These parts of me, trapped at different ages and stages of development—disintegrated—deserve the chance to mature. They deserve the opportunity to grown into the woman they would’ve become had shit not gone horribly wrong.

I deserve the same.

Part of that maturation is coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t allow those other people to hurt me. I didn’t encourage them to devalue me and to dehumanize me. I didn’t ask to be sexually assaulted. I didn’t ask for them not to love and care for me.

It wasn’t my fault.

IT WASN’T MY FAULT.

I am worth love, and I am worth care and concern. There is nothing about me that is so inherently ugly or unlovable to have warranted horrid, difficult abuse. I was a sweet, smart, precocious little girl with Moonpie eyes and one dimple. I should never have been a sexualized object. I didn’t deserve to be molested. I didn’t deserve to be raped. I didn’t deserve to be smacked around and degraded by an angry boyfriend. I didn't deserve to be used and abused and discarded.

I never deserved being the target of someone else’s self-loathing and guilt.

I was worth more than dismissal and ignorance because I didn’t meet someone else’s expectations or conform to their fucked-up, dysfunctional norms. I am worth more than an eyeroll-and-sigh in toleration.

All of those bits inside me have fought to protect me from hurt, from allowing anything in that might cause more damage, But the fracturing of my personality into smaller parts left vulnerable cracks. Rather than fill the spaces with gold, like Japanese kintsugi, I often used whatever I could find: leftover packing tape ripped from an old dusty box… someone else’s half-chewed gum… desperate hope coated in blood and sticky mess.

But I was never going to be able to close my own rifts with someone else’s effluvia.

It’s up to me to find the healing from deep inside me, to let those internal persona who so badly want and need to help do just that. If the end goal is a whole Stephanie, the parts that make her up have to have a role in filling those gaps.

So I’m letting them talk, and I’m listening. I’m hearing what each of them says they need, and I’m doing my best to honor those wishes. I’m giving each an opportunity to share their respective visions of wholeness and then choosing what works best for all of us. For me.

It is a process to pick up the broken pieces and put them back together. It took years for the breaks to happen, for the dust to settle enough for clean-up to begin. But it has.

And it’s up to me to do that work.

It’s up to me to show myself the love and care that I need, and that starts with sweeping away everyone else’s pain and destruction and refusing to force my bits to fit with theirs.

It’s up to me to trust that I can do this.  

 

 

And if love is real, maybe I'm just too bad to remember how good it feels. My heart is still.

One of the things I like about the Internal Family Systems model is that it doesn’t pathologize any of the subpersonalities. Even when their behaviors are seemingly destructive, their dysfunction serves a greater purpose, at least in their minds. Their actions and reactions serve to protect the Exiles, to prevent further harm from coming to the already damaged parts of the psyche.

When I am hurt or sad, and usually in response to infliction of hurt by someone else (and usually a romantic partner), one of my subpersonalities will fling terrible thoughts and words at me.

You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re gross. You’re stupid. You are unlovable, and no one loves you. You aren’t worthy of love and don’t deserve good things. You are a waste.

Now, logically, I understand those things may not be true. But why the hell would part of me continually tell other parts of me that I’m a waste of human flesh?

For a while, I wasn’t even sure who she was. I thought it might be Stephie, but she’s more likely to inflict her anger on others, not on me. And this one’s voice is no one else’s. It’s not my mother’s or my father’s. It doesn’t belong to any number of exes. It is a strangely-pitched, younger, strange version of my own voice. She knows how to inflect dripping sarcasm, spitting hatefully at me when I’m in the worst of the throes of pain. And just when I can’t take more, she hits with a final sucker punch, spinning me deep into tears and frustration.

She’s Harley.

Yes, it’s an easy moniker. And if she does her job well, she can get Quinn to act out, to seek out comfort in dark places.

And all of this to protect some Exile.

But what’s her purpose? I’m already hurting like hell; what good does it to do to inflict more, albeit different, pain?

Well, my first reaction to hurt and sadness is to close it down, to wall it off where it can’t reach me. Rango complained more than once that I would turn icy when hurt and angry. I can become very mechanical and refuse to feel emotion, let alone express it.

And that’s what she does: Harley forces me to feel something, anything that keeps me from returning to a dissociative state of numbness.

I spent the first ten years of my sons’ lives in that space. Struggling to find value both within myself and reflected from my husband, I shut down. My anxiety after giving birth to Max was so great that I started a low-dose SSR. It stopped the anxiety and kept me in the center, so I stayed on it until I couldn’t bear not feeling anymore. While the wild swings from joy to sorrow were abated, I generally felt nothing. When I got nothing in return, I became frustrated, and Quinn stepped in to give me some semblance of meaning again.

But because I am drawn to emotionally-unavailable men, Harley does what she can to keep me from becoming an avoidant myself. Given the last few years and recent relationship troubles, I get the appeal of shutting everyone and everything out. I get how it can seem beneficial to artificially limit what you’re willing to feel for another person, who well might break your heart. There is safety in walling yourself off from the Great Outdoors.

But I’m also a firm believer that love matters. It matters when we feel deep, caring emotion for another person, no matter the context. I don’t mean infatuation or attraction or simple affection. I mean the kind of love in which we are willing to sacrifice to help them reach their next goal. The kind of love that is so simple and pure that it expects to be cared for in return, simply because that is its nature.

It is unimaginable to me to walk away from that. It makes no sense to me that the people who’ve said they loved me could then walk away, could turn their backs on the thing they need most, which I just happen to be willing to give in droves. It’s nonsensical to have what you want most, what is good and healthy and true, right in front of you and to drop it carelessly on the ground on your way out the door.

So, the hurt for me comes from both the act of abandonment, whether physical or emotional, and the injustice of the leaving. And emotional abandonment is a very large part of the hurt for me. Hiding deep inside is a little girl who felt abandoned. Every time she felt it was safe to come out, trust someone enough to hold their outstretched hand and hope for love, she was let down again, over and over. She continually learned that she wasn’t worth loving, because people who love you stay and support you and care for you. They sacrifice for you, and no one sacrificed for her. She was, at times, a sacrificial lamb of sorts.

So, when the same wounds are reopened, Harley steps in to keep me from shutting down entirely. She steels me for an onslaught of disappointment and confusion. If I can already feel badly about myself, the abandonment makes sense. If they leave, it is because I am unlovable, so it shouldn’t be so hurtful or saddening. Even if what I feel is disgustful pain, that’s still better than feeling nothing at all.

While I know the things she says to me aren’t always true, there is, of course a nugget of truth to everything she says. I regained weight. I became complacent about my health. I can see myself aging both in photographs and in the mirror. I am emotionally difficult, hence my return to therapy. And even when those faults seem natural and overblown in my mind, there are long stretches of time in which I’m unable to find more good than bad, unable to value myself as more than my faults.

Pandy and I had a wonderful Saturday recently. I took her to see my beloved Afghan Whigs for the first time. Even though I’d just seen them in Atlanta a few weeks before, I traveled to Birmingham for what turned out to be the best Whigs show I’ve ever seen.

 

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A few days later, she messaged me and asked me to look at the photographs she had taken of me that night. She asked me to see what she sees, what she was trying to capture, “joy, or strength, or tenacity reflected in you.”

You are exquisitely beautiful. I know you seldom feel the woman I see, but that doesn’t mean you are any less the one I see. Sometimes friends see us more clearly than we see ourselves. Those are the times we need to redirect our focus, and look with kinder eyes; look at yourself for a moment as I do. See yourself in my photographs of you, and imagine what I was trying to capture. I see beauty. I see sass. I see strength. I see might. In short I see a very real version of Wonder Woman. She is a woman I love, admire, and appreciate. She is you.

I looked at her photographs. I can see what it is that she sees, why those moments capture those qualities of the woman in the photographs. What I don’t see, is myself. I don’t connect to those women in those pictures. I don’t feel attached to or protective of them. I don’t feel that their beauty and strength and sass is my own. Because if I feel those things about myself, it will open the door to hurt. It will allow for the possibility of disappointment.

But no matter what I do, no matter how far I get from my own center, Pandy is there. She is with me through thick and thin, through skinny and fat, through aging and heartache and wonder. I love her, and she loves me. I know this. I feel it every day, even if I don’t talk to her. Even when I’ve been at my worst, she stayed and supported me and loved me anyway, even if it meant telling me truths I didn’t want to hear.

Sometimes Harley argues with Pandy. Sometimes she rolls her eyes and just lets her talk. But every so often, she stays still and lets me feel the love that comes from this woman who has no desire to ever abandon me.

Somehow, that is progress.

 

 

Is that too much to ask? Well, maybe I'm an idiot.

About three months ago, Rango and I made the decision that he would move out. More than a year of tension and difficulty had spiraled us into a pretty deep pit of darkness, and neither of us could see a way out together. We decided pretty quickly that we still wanted to try to make things work. We continued dating. He still spent time at the house, still called it home, still saw the boys as regularly as their schedules would allow. For several weeks, we both thought we were on track for him to move back home.

But tensions surfaced again about a month ago. Old patterns emerged in both of us, and we find ourselves again in a depressing spiral. We love each other, but our respective needs and wants clash constantly. He feels pressured to give more than he’s able, stressing that I should just accept him the way he his—which he is not going to change for anyone. I think a caring partner makes the other a priority and tries to support their happiness, even and especially when it is inconvenient or difficult. By no means am I suggesting that one partner should kowtow to the other constantly. That’s not healthy at all. But sometimes we should do things that are best for the people we love, even when it requires uncomfortable effort on our part.

The last year has been exceedingly rife with difficulty. After my thyroid radiation, it took months before I started to feel physically and emotionally normal again, due to shifting hormone levels. By the first of the year, it became clear that my chronic neck pain had worsened, and I had a three-level discectomy and fusion in April. I was working full time and finally finishing my bachelor’s degree after twenty-seven years of on-again/off-again, half-hearted attempts. I hoped that alleviating most of those stressors would give us a fresh start toward reconciliation and growth.

I didn’t talk about it much. I tried to avoid it most of the time with the girls. The Castration Committee is amazing, and they will back me up no matter what. But bringing other people into the relationship, even tangentially, can profoundly influence perceptions—and not always for the better. Also, due to somewhat skewed perspectives, my family wasn’t always supportive and could be judgmental. Mostly I found it better to keep it to myself or between me and Rango. Mostly.

But as we’ve come again to a place of incredible conflict, I’m turning back to Muchness and Light. I haven’t written in months. I have barely written for the last two years. Much of that was due to school and work and health and child obligations. Much of it was due to my not feeling it was worth it.

DH told me years ago that I should stop writing, that blogging was nothing more than an echo-chamber. He was vitriolic in his assertion that only my friends cared about what I had to say. I know he was wrong, at least to an extent. But it also became apparent as time went on with Rango that he didn’t care to read what I had to say, although he would encourage me to write. He understood it was cathartic for me—effectively making it nothing more than a publicized diary—but that he had no interest in engaging my thoughts in this forum. This week, I’ve been told that I should just blog what’s bothering me and find a way to fix my messy head, but that he is uninterested in either climbing a wall of text intended for him or in talking about our problems.

At heart, he’s a good man. He is generally kind and generous. He loves me and loves my sons. But he often seems dramatically different than the man I met and fell in love with. Time has passed; we have changed. But where I thought we both wanted to grow and change together, he believes he hasn’t changed at all and that I shouldn’t expect him to.

When I did finally break down and really talk to Pandy, she said I deserve more. She is sweet and whole-heartedly believes I deserve to be in a healthy, committed relationship, receiving the same love I so freely give.

But she’s wrong.

I don’t deserve to be loved. No one deserves to be loved. As I said a few posts ago, the only thing anyone deserves is an eventual death. I used to believe that there was some cosmic force that somehow wanted good things for me, that maybe if I did good things then I would receive them in return. I believed in deep, abiding, passionate love that was reciprocal and maybe (just maybe!) destined. For a little while, I believed that I was worth enough to get happiness, not to be faced constantly with disappointment and hurt.

But I was wrong. There’s nothing up in the sky but air.

No matter how hard I try to be good, to be accommodating, to be considerate, I cannot make someone else do the same. I cannot make someone be or do what I think is ideal—or even what I think is a reasonable compromise. I can’t force them to hear me or try to see anything from my point of view. I can only accept them for who they are or not. I can live with their personality and eccentricities or move on.

I don’t expect perfection from anyone. I’m even learning not to expect it from myself. I have worked really hard to not overreact to emotions, to sit with them and understand their locus, to act appropriately in response to those emotions. But I can’t not respond to them.

So, there is sadness and grief, hurt and probably some anger. I’m sure more will come later. I’m sure it will abate eventually.

But I’m not berating myself that I deserve any of these feelings, either. So maybe I did change for the better, after all.

 

 

I haven't got time for the pain.

I’ve been sick again.

I fell in October and injured my wrist, and it turned out the slip and fall gave me carpal tunnel problems. A steroid shot in February triggered a 4-day migraine and pulled two already-bad cervical discs back of position. An MRI ahead of what will be epidural #10 showed a growth on the left side of my thyroid.

Except my thyroid came out in 2013.

Ultrasound showed three new thyroid nodules, but no isthmus of organ. It looks like the surgeon really did get everything he could; I just happen to be a freak whose super power is regrowing glands.

But for the last 18 months, I have felt horrible. I told my GP that I felt like my thyroid was crazy, except there was no thyroid left. My bloodwork always looks perfect. He suggested it was stress—from work and kids and school and GOAL—and offered to put me back on an SSRI.

I have written before about choosing to take a mild anti-depressant when they boys were little. As a new mother in 2001, I was paranoid that something would happen to my child. I was bordering on becoming agoraphobic. My then-obstetrician started me on a very low dose, and I felt better taking it than not.

But after ten years on the medication, I was heavier than I’d ever been. I was miserable in my own skin, and I was unhappy in my marriage. I was absolutely numb.

I stopped taking the medication, I lost a ton of weight, I felt better, and I got divorced.

But then I felt bad again.

Yesterday was wrist surgery, next week is a thyroid biopsy to get a read on the nodules that are as big as what came out in 2006 and 2013, and a cervical epidural is the following week.

Worker’s comp is covering the wrist treatment, which is great for my wallet, but payment for missed wages doesn’t begin until I’ve missed a week of work—all of which has to be covered by me with my own leave or unpaid. It sounds unfair, but that’s how worker’s comp law works in Georgia and most states.

The orthopedist won’t let me return to work for at least five days. I also need to make sure I have enough leave to cover my epidural day and the activities for Tricky’s 5^th grade graduation. I am in constant neck and back pain because of the cervical damage, topped by constant weakness and cramping in my left hand, combined with constant tingling in numbness on the other side of the same hand because of my neck.

I’m a damn mess right now.

But through it all, I have to keep going. I am irritated and petulant that the doctor won’t let me go back to work today. I understand that I need the tendon in my hand to rest and heal properly. I scheduled this surgery during the break between the upcoming summer semester and the just-finished spring semester—which saw my third perfect research paper in a row (worth 100 points) and maintained my 4.0 GPA.

I don’t like sitting still under the best of circumstances, and this is likely to drive me crazy. Even in pain, I push through because shit just has to get done. Rango and the boys help as they are able, but most of the housework falls on me. My standards and expectations differ from theirs.

There is so much to do, constantly.

But for the last month, I have felt as bad as I ever have in my life. Lethargic and weary, like pregnancy fatigue, plus horribly itchy, dry skin and stomach issues and this intense brain fog that causes terribly dysphasia at times. It feels like placenta brain, but it’s not. I am still gaining weight.

It’s hypothyroidism with blood results that look perfect.

So my endocrinologist has changed my thyroid hormone a bit. Even after just a few days, I am feeling less foggy. They asked me in pre-op yesterday to rate my pain. My wrist was fine; my back was not.

So this physical pain will hopefully be relieved before I start summer classes, but I can’t sit still for the next two weeks, waiting for that to happen. I have to keep pushing through. When I was at my worst over the weekend, a quote from Rune Lazuli popped up on my Facebook feed:

 

Got it. Really.

This is a reminder that I have to slow down and take care of myself. I have to be still in this and just let it heal. No matter how much glitter I may trail across the world, it’s not magical—not like that anyway. It will mend my broken physicality the way I like to think it mends hearts.

So I’m going to post this and get the boys on their respective buses and pick up some things at the pharmacy and then watch TV and maybe read.

Because apparently, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

 

 

 

I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.

After a couple of intense days of more “discussion,” I took the boys out for the afternoon. It was a lovely afternoon with my men and Max’s girlfriend, Kiki, followed by a delicious if tense dinner with Rango. (The man is a great cook, by the way.) Rango and I excused ourselves to the talk privately, again going in circles about the same issues from the last few weeks. We disengaged, and he went to sleep on the couch while Max and I drove Kiki home.

On the way home, Max asked if Rango and I were going to break up.

“I don’t know,” I replied carefully.

“Well, I want you to do what’s best for you, of course, but I love him to death. I don’t want him to leave.”

And then I remembered exactly how much my relationship with Rango impacts so much more than just me and him.

By the time Rango came into our life, DH had been living out of state for four months. In the two years he’s been gone, he has seen the boys for 34 days. On average, they talk to him every 3-4 weeks. Max and Tricky have very little expectation of their father, other than 1) he will eventually show back up for a brief period and 2) he will buy them something when he does.

For Max, especially, this has been incredibly difficult. He has 4 extra years of memories with Dad that Tricky just doesn’t have. He was hit hardest by DH’s withdrawal. He is also the most willing to seek out a relationship with him, but he tends to do so guardedly, with hope but no anticipation of regular engagement. Having just turned 13 when the move happened, it came at a really tough stage in his life.

Enter Rango, who understood being a child of divorce, being the child of distant and difficult parents, and being a teenage boy in a way I just never will.

And while he fell for me, he also fell for my boys. They hit it off immediately, and he established a solid, loving, imperfect relationship with them that is entirely separate from me.

He did what a good stepdad should do.

They fight sometimes. They give each other shit. But he also brought Max out of his shell, showing him that it was okay to trust someone other than Mom. He is a steady, constant, loving, engaging influence on their lives.

And he does it because he loves them, not because he loves me. (Though he does, certainly.)

So is that a valid reason to stay in a relationship?

No, of course not. But it is a reason to re-evaluate the strengths and reasons for that relationship.

When I got divorced, DH and I blew the boys’ world apart. Max has said before that we are all happier and better off after the divorce, but it has also been really hard on my children. (see above) Rango is a large part of why and how it got better. (see above) And I do not want them to have to extricate another important, loving relationship from their lives. (see above)

So Rango and I have called a détente. We realized how scary this was for the boys, and that’s just not okay. We have issues to work through, but we have agreed to stop them in their tracks and move forward, together and carefully, because there is more at stake than just us.

I’ll be honest (surprise!): it still scares me. Choosing to rely on someone else means allowing for the possibility of disappointment. I’m not one to run from adversity, so why the hell would I choose to run now? In the end, the possible pay-off is much greater than the possible loss, and returns on investment don’t come when you buy high and sell low.

So there are still things to work on, and we will. This was a warning to us both, to remember the lessons of the past. I don’t want to repeat the past, good or bad, and it is unfair to compare Rango or myself to those times.

While I was out with the boys, Max bought me a gift. He saw it and thought of me, even before Kiki pointed out to him that it was Alice:

And on the drive home, he told me, “Just because something doesn’t go the way you want it to, that doesn’t mean it’s bad, even when it feels bad. You can’t appreciate what you have now if you didn’t experience the bad you had before.”

That boy is totally my kid.

Don't believe that the world is empty, just too noisy to hear the sound.

Looking for something else, I realized this week that I haven't written a blog post in almost two months.

Two months? Really? How can that be??

Well, the last two months have been incomparably busy. I finished my internship and my last fifteen hours of classes to complete my Associate's degree. I started classes this week in my Bachelor's program. There have been several speaking engagements as a result of my GOAL award. Somewhere in there were four cats, two boys, and Rango.

And I'm still on the perpetual search for a job.

An employment recruiter asked me a few weeks ago, "What do you want to do?"

I immediately answered, "I don't know."

It's not that I don't have any idea of the direction I would like my career to go. I went to school to become a paralegal, and I have completed an excellent program of substantive training for the legal field.

But the list of what I don't want to do is much better defined. I don't want to do family law or bankruptcy law or real estate law. Those are necessary areas of the legal profession, and I have friends and family who are successful in each of those areas. They just don't seem to be the right fit for me.

This uncertainty is not the I-don't-know of my 20s, when I blew my chance at college the first time, when all I wanted was something easy and comfortable to drop into my lap and push me in a direction—while hopefully letting me veg out on the couch all day.

It's not the I-don't-know of my new-mom 30s, when "I don't know" really meant "no", when I was too polite to say what I wanted and to truly be myself, afraid of what I might lose by defying other people's expectations.

And it's not the I-don't-know of two years ago, when the daily mantra was a tear-streaked "I don't know! I don't know! I don't know!", when I was trying to find a way, any way, to survive.

Now, "I don't know" comes from exploration, from having so many options, from proof that I am good at something and worth far more than I was led to believe. Far more than I led myself to believe.

"I don't know" means I want to try everything and don't know where to start.

The other question that invariably comes during job interviews is, "Where do you want to be in five years?"

If the last five years have taught me nothing else, I know that whatever plans I make will almost assuredly be broken. Something is likely to come along and divert my path, alter my journey, and that I have to be willing and open to the possibility that can come when I expect nothing more than uncertainty.

Last night, in my first class with my new academic advisor, I was asked what my plan was for my major and for any graduate work I might want to do. Because I chose a Liberal Studies degree, I have some flexibility in the concentrations I'll pursue, based upon both what coursework I transferred in and what my plans may be going forward.

"Combined concentrations in Criminal Justice and Communications," I replied very pragmatically.

But then my advisor suggested that maybe there's something else, something that will better suit my intentions for myself as I continue to explore just what those intentions may be.

He asked me to be open to the possibility of me.

I still want and need direction right now. I feel rudderless, honestly, without definitive projects and contributions to make to a world outside my home.

Lately I've felt like I am drifting along my path right now, rather than actively traversing. I'm having to learn to stop my own panicked thrashing and just float, feeling the warm sun on my face and the water splashing across my cheeks as the river carries me where it needs me to be.

I don't know what's coming.

What I do know is that it will not be something I've done before. There is newness and opportunity close enough that I can feel it within reach as I approach it.

Now all I have to do is grab it and hold on. I'm almost where I'm supposed to be.

 

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Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Huffington Post Article #3

Wonder if I'll ever bury the hatchet inside.

About the time Rango moved into the house with us, I started to realize that I was having a hard time with his past.

Due to the constraints of time and distance and the necessary logistics for the boys, he and I never spent a night in his apartment. He insists that the apartment was never more than a landing pad and that it never felt like home. While I do believe home for him became wherever I was within days of our meeting, part of me still feels like I never got the opportunity to... I don't know... mark that territory...?

It sounds stupid, I know. I feels stupid. Every time some ex comes up, I cringe.

I know part of my insecurity comes from my maladaptive attachment style, which was established in my childhood and then reinforced over and over and over (and over and over and over) in my adult dating life, especially in the two-and-a-half years after DH and I split. I'm a fragile cat, without a doubt, but so is Rango. Generally we are very careful and patient with one another's emotions, lovingly treading across the scarred battlefield of the other's heart.

But really, I have no idea why the hell I am so freaked out when some former relationship of his is mentioned. Because I took the brutally-open-and-honest approach while I was dating, Rango learned probably far more about me in those first days than maybe he wanted, especially my history with the fragile cats.

When you're divorced, or maybe it just happens at this age when you have a good deal of life experience, first date conversation inevitably turns to prior relationships. Were you married? Do you have kids? Why did you break up? First dates are basically an interview, after all—a chance to see if their fuckeduppedness will play well with your fuckeduppedness.

So he knew very quickly that I was living in the same house I'd lived in with my ex-husband. He knew my most painful ex lived just a few miles away and semi-regularly sees me in passing. He knew I'd had a very active dating and social life on the weekends before DH moved out of state and dropped regular contact with the boys.

Hell, I wrote a book about some of it.

In the semi-autobiographical Persona Non Grata, Tierney talks about how she has a hard time hearing about her husband, Sam's, relationship with his long-ago ex-girlfriend:

"I worried for years that you had loved her more than you loved me," I admitted one night.  I couldn't look at him when I said it.  I kept my gaze trained on the darkness in the woods behind our house.

"Why?  Why would you even think that?  Didn't I tell you every day that I loved you?  Couldn't you just believe that?"

"I believed you.  I still do.  But, Sam, you were so broken when you guys split.  I kept waiting for you to come home and tell me that she'd called, that she wanted you back.  I used to dream about it all the time."

I really didn't know that DH loved me more than he'd loved her until the day Max was born, more than seven years into our marriage.

And I know that love should never feel like a competition, but my head is sometimes a mess, and I sometimes feel like I am constantly at battle with the ghosts of the past. I am forever struggling to overcome my screwed up perceptions of how I think other people see me. Often this drives me to be bigger and better and faster and more. I feel like there is so much inherently wrong with me and about me, and that if I can perfect as many small things as possible then the huge amount of bad is still outweighed by lots of little good.

No one is harder on me than I am on myself.

I few weeks ago, I told Rango, "I won't feel secure until I've been with you longer than you've been with [your ex-wife]."

"But you already have."

I looked at him, puzzled. "You do remember that you were married for five years, don't you?"

"Yeah, but our relationship was over long before we even got married," he replied. "Emotionally, we were together for a week-and-a-half."

A few days later, we took our first trip together. Without the boys, we went to Texas for his sister's wedding, which also gave me the opportunity to meet and spend time with his family. We had a lovely couple of days in San Antonio, walking around Riverwalk and later dancing at the wedding, followed by a day in Houston.

 

Wedding Selfie #Sassafras #Rango #JenAndAli

A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on May 2, 2015 at 5:22pm PDT

DH and I had flown into San Antonio once, gone immediately to buy a car, and then drove straight home to Alabama. We passed through a section of Houston on the way. My 2012 trip to Austin by myself was my only real trip to Texas.

Rango spent his teen years in Texas, especially in and around Houston. He lived in various places before moving to Atlanta (to be with [his ex-wife]), but he still thinks of Texas as home. (Well, maybe until he met me.)

Although I'd never been to San Antonio, I set part of Persona Non Grata there. Tierney's life blows up (the climax without a climax) at the Marriott Riverwalk. I spent some time researching and wrote about what I'd never actually seen:

    I walked out from the hotel and turned onto the wide walkways along the river.  I knew there was a coffee shop nearby.  I ordered a frittata and took my coffee to a small table.  I ate slowly, trying to abate the nagging headache.

    I was tired but didn't want to hole up in my hotel room.  I spent a couple of hours exploring San Antonio.  I walked over little bridges and through lushly landscaped mini-parks.  I was impressed by the mix of modern and traditional, of historical and new. 

    I found a shady spot outside a coffee shop, sitting under a bright yellow umbrella.  It was still early, but the River Walk was bustling already with people ready for the new day.  I sketched the profile of a young woman sitting on a park bench, reading a book.  The face of the sleeping baby, parked in his stroller at his parents' table next to mine. 

 

Tierney is hanging out at the Riverwalk in San Antonio. #personanongrata #junkture

A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on May 2, 2015 at 11:21am PDT

Rango and I stayed at another Marriott a few blocks away. On Saturday morning, he happily walked with me to find the spot I'd written. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant that was included in an earlier draft of PNG. (It was eventually cut and re-written because the scene was lifeless.) And while he knew this was a fictionalized account, that I'd never been to these places, he also knew we were living a moment from the fictionalized account of the events that triggered the metamorphosis that led, in part, to my divorce.

Never did he complain. Never did he express a jealous thought. Not once did he have to choke back an angry lump and leave the room to catch his breath and regain control.

But driving to Houston the next day, picked up by his best friend, some comment was made about an ex they shared. (Who am I to judge someone for dating their best friend's ex?) Sitting in the back seat of the car, I bristled at the mention, knowing full well that she was long, long before me, that the relationship was short-lived and didn't work for a reason, that he loves me more.

Days later, as we were talking about traveling again soon—something DH and I never did together—I told him I would never go to Sweden with him, because he went there to see a now-ex.

"But it's a beautiful country," he argued. "You would love to see it."

I'm sure I would, but I was never willing to go to New Orleans with DH (in theory, because we didn't travel together or take vacations) because India had lived there in her childhood and later gone on vacation there with DH.

I've talked before about how I am a hoarder of memories. Because I remember virtually everything, I hold onto a lot of shit on my big, broken brain. Combine that with my intense sentimentality, and my head is an emotional minefield that I can barely traverse—how the hell is anyone else supposed to get through?

What I realized is that I am more than willing to give Rango the chance to replace some of those memories. Sometimes, he does it and doesn't even know it. Maybe we're having an incredibly wonderful moment and a song comes on that would have previously tied me up in knots, a reminder of a past moment. While there are still songs I just can't bear to hear anymore, there are a few that are now associated with Rango. Maybe it's a trip to a place I've been before or only dreamt about with someone else.

His heart replaced theirs in that memory space.

His cautions that there are formative memories that cannot be replaced. Of course. No matter what he or I do, there's no possible way to replace everything, and I wouldn't want either of us to do that. What happened before is what has led us to here, to the place where our paths converged. It's all about the journey and not the destination.

Yes, I know that I am letting my own insecurities and fears get in my way. I loathe that I think and feel this way. I am repulsed by the dark, tangled emotions that swirl around inside me, ensnaring my thoughts and hijacking what should be a calm, normal moment.

The only way I know to fight the dark is with light. When I don't feel like my own, internal light is strong enough to illuminate the path, I turn into the disco ball, spinning and reflecting a broken, scattered mosaic of brilliance that can be as annoyingly blinding as it is charming in its kinetic chaos.

Through it all, Rango says he is more than happy to be in my shadow, to let me spin in the spotlight while he supports me. I want him to be where he is happy and comfortable. I don't want to ever lose him to the darkness that I refuse to face and enter.

But I really have no idea how to counter the jealousy. I don't know how to not feel like it's a competition, even though it's one I know I'd have won months ago. I don't have a clue how not to snarl back at any of his memories that I'm afraid are snarling at me.

 

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Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.