It’s midnight, give or take a few minutes. You dodged your own bullets, another round. You don’t, always.
Small victory, you think. Or not. These days, it is impossible to tell what is a victory and what is not, and this is maddening to you.
You could have called; you did not. You could have said too much; you did not. You could have gone where you shouldn’t; you did not. You could have asked for the unthinkable; you did not. You thought about it — of course you did. You had a plan, you had a fleeting hope. You had choices.
These are times when any move or no move could be the right thing to do. ‘Right’ is losing its meaning, as is ‘wrong.’
Instead, you painted the bathroom with $50 worth of cheap paint, cheap rollers, cheap brushes, cheap pans. Your new career will not be house painter. It is a disastrous job. Still, you gleaned some satisfaction in the vanilla cream as you slapped it haphazardly on the walls. Sometimes, there is pleasure in a job done badly, but passionately. A revelation.
Still, you saw in your mind the scar on the back of his hand as you gently tapped the paint can closed, the way you saw him do it a year ago, in the kitchen.
*****
These days, you strain your addled brain to think of who it was who said, “Put your head down close to your soul and listen hard.” One of the many writer Annes? You have your head and heart pressed to your soul, at all times, and the messages are mixed at best.
Some People Think Things. You assume they Think Things, Think They Know, because you are a person too, and you have Thought Things, Assumed Things, Judged Things. But the divorce has humbled you, knocked you to your knees. You want to hug everyone you see, you want to tell them that you understand that you don’t understand. You see broken people wherever you go. You are no longer who you were.
There is so much more to it, to what you are thinking and not thinking, but you don’t know whom to tell. Part of the deal, this divorce deal, is living with others’ assumptions, following you around like little dirty Pigpen clouds. You try not to look over your shoulder. You try to look ahead. But it is no easy feat. The public truth is not the private truth. You have never witnessed so many shades of beautiful, heartrending gray in your life.
Whoever it was, whoever counseled listening closely to that enigmatic soul, well, you are pretty sure she killed herself. One of those, one of the many who wrote, once, from a place you understand now. You can’t help understanding them, and of course that worries you. Just when you get to know them (for you are a late literary bloomer), you find out they are no longer of this earth. Then you find you are relieved for them, and a little envious, if you are being perfectly honest (of course ‘perfectly honest’ is another term that has diluted over time).
*****
There have been a number of suicides in this small community lately. When a good friend says what she feels she must say about one of these suicides—how could she / she had children / it’s so selfish—you surprise yourself with the vehemence of your response. You defend this stranger, a woman you never met, and never will.
It was not selfish, this much you are sure of. There is pain, and there is Pain. And when pain transforms into Pain, all bets are off.
You know this. You are not there, you managed to paint a bathroom today, but you’ve been close enough to know.
“She was in Pain,” you hear yourself saying, stumbling over your words, speaking too fast. “She did the best she could. It wasn’t selfish — she just felt she had nothing left to give.”
Your friend eyes you carefully. You have more to say, it is clear. You say, “She probably saw herself as a terrible burden. This, no. This is not selfishness. This is the end of the line. She loved her children so much she couldn’t bear for them to go on with a mother like that, so mired in grief.”
Your friend nods. She sees where you are coming from. If it worries her, she does not let on, not here in the parking lot of your children’s school.
“Well,” she says. She is on her way to the wake. You are not, because you do not know this woman, the woman who died. But your heart aches for her, for what she felt was inevitable. After all, you have daughters too.
*****
You try to draw a circle around yourself, as you make your way through each day. A psychic told you you needed more filters. Air-conditioning? Auto? You try to meditate sometimes, imagining yourself perched in a paper coffee filter. You are still not sure what the psychic meant, but now you think about filters, often.
The days pass slowly, brutally so on some days. Often, you wake up already wilting, knowing you should be grateful for your life, grateful to have a first breath of the day awaiting you. Instead, you gulp and wonder how you will possibly make it through a lifetime. God blew it, you find yourself thinking idly, almost daily. The human lifespan is too long, too long, too long.
Your girls will read this someday. This doesn’t bother you. Strangely, you have been a better mother to them than you have in a long time. Let them have this, let them have it all, you think. Maybe they will want these pages, maybe not. You want them to know that laughter can emanate from someone broken, someone who is not sure how she will possibly find a way to continue in this world. You find the laughter miraculous, when it comes.
Most of the time, your life is a trainwreck, is how it feels. There are many kind people on hand to tell you that this is not the case, not at all the case, but it is difficult to take their word for it. They say they are trying to let you make your way, “at your own pace.” You have no idea what this means anymore. You have been trying to move at others’ pace. You blur into others, they blur into you.
One beloved friend laughs exasperatedly at you at your frequent use of the phrase “too much.” You worry constantly that you are saying too much, thinking too much, asking for too much. The problem, of course, is that you don’t know what you are allowed to have in this lifetime. You no longer have a grasp on this. You have two healthy, whip-smart daughters, kind readers, and a roof over your head. There are many people who love you, whom you love back. But you despair.
The thought of promises and vows terrifies you now. You feel hollow, carved out, your heartache and yearning and desire sitting in an unsavory pile beside you—a tag sale of offerings you can’t seem to unload.
You want to be wanted for exactly who you are, like every other human on the planet. Nothing original. You are not asking for originality. You suspect that your desires are powerful, but mundane.
But you have been a chameleon for so long you no longer know the difference between what you need and what you want.
And this seems to you to be a fairly important distinction, if you’re hankering for a life well lived. Which you are.
*****
The other night, another beloved friend cuts your hair and reduces you to tears. She has not seen you cry before, although you have been telling her for months that all you do is cry when no one is looking. It is not the loss of the hair that brings on the tears; it is her plan to create a glorious art community, a utopia full of friends and lovers and music and magic. You listen to her speak. You listen to others respond positively, enthusiastically. Yet all you can do is sob.
Because you do not believe it is possible, such a place. Or, if it is possible, you do not believe your life would allow you to go there, to find peace there. Your girls need you, but they also need to be close to their father. You want this for them.
You feel on the outside of something beautiful and free, permanently so. You don’t know where you can go anymore.
Others need you. They want to help you. They want to see you ‘moving on.’ The world is full of people, it seems, who are good at moving on, people who have read the manual. This ‘moving on’ is not a skill that comes easily to you, and your failure in this department embarrasses you, again and again.
You know in your heart of hearts you have never moved on from anyone you have loved.
You don’t want to belong to anyone, but you want to be loved, of course you do.
You cannot find your center. You cannot find your home, even when you are in it — the concrete place identified on legal papers as your home. You are now the Head of Household, according to the accounts and the federal government, but you don’t know what to make of your new title.
You realize how much home to you has been about other people. This scares you, profoundly. You are losing touch with what is possible, with what you need, uniquely. Some of what you need is unspeakable, and you know it.
Speakable: You want that Nova Scotia cottage with perpetual soup on the stove, a place of no judgment, a place of humanity and safety and love and being heard. When you tried to find that once, tried to get it back, in smart ways and stupid ways, your world derailed. You are still picking through the wreckage. Even this — midnight words — you hesitate as you write, knowing just who will read them and guessing at what they will make of your thoughts.
You mostly believe Dr. Phil when he tells his studio audience, “You’d be surprised to find out just how rarely other people give any thought to you.”
But there is always a handful of folks whose opinion matters to you. You can’t imagine a life in which it did not matter. You can’t imagine people not noticing, not wondering.
Almost speakable: You have lost his friends, his family. You cannot reach out to your once-husband’s tribe, that seems to be the rule. You wish they would reach out to you, if even just once. But this is divorce; you harbor no illusions. You understand. The wagons, circled, fierce and tight.
Still, you long to reach out, to touch what once was, to show that your heart is open, that you are not unkind, that you are not insane, that you are working hard to find answers, that you want him to be happy, that you will always love him, that you don’t understand — not fully — how it came to this. This.
You want them to know there is so much more to the story than they realize. You long for a life closer to the Nova Scotia cottage, a life not just bohemian in its creativity and art, but in how you and they choose to love, to keep loving. There are two beautiful little girls in this world who were borne out of true love. Surely this should count for more, somehow.
*****
This morning, all four of you ate breakfast together: your once-husband, your children, you. You were Invited. It was strange and lovely and gut-twisting, the only way these things can be, perhaps. You don’t dare ask if there will be more mornings like this. You can’t bring yourself to say all the things you want to say. Instead, you eat the apple pancakes that your husband used to make in the house you once shared. You drink coffee together as the kids play and pack their bags for the trip to your house. You lie on the wood floors. You try not to look around too much. You pretend not to see the name written on the notepad by his phone, or the title of the book he is reading. The details are potent and hurt like nothing else.
There is no status quo, not yet.
*****
Several weeks ago, driving home from Parent-Teachers night at your daughters’ school, you began weeping. You wept so hard that you considered pulling over onto the shoulder of the dark road. You wept until you ran out of tears, because you and your always-beloved once-husband received, for the first time, separate packets of information. You wept because the new school directory listed you separately, with separate addresses. You wept because he did not say goodbye to you when you left that school cafeteria full of evening small talk and Brie and terrible coffee.
You have no idea what he thinks about such things. You wonder if these are the things that break him too, or if there are entirely different things that break him when he is out of your sight, which is nearly all the time now.
The not-knowing is painful. The wound does not fester, but neither does it show signs of healing. You leave it open, you do not dress it. Perhaps it needs air, you think. Just more air. If only there were enough air.
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Jenn, as always, your way with words leaves me breathless. You describe the overwhelming, “what the hell am I supposed to do with this”, and “why does everyone else seem to have it together when I’m just happy to get out of bed and not scream at my kid” chaos that takes over more and more of my life every day so spot on. Thank you for having the strength to put this all out there. It helps to know that I’m not the only one longing for something that I’m not even sure I can have. If I can ever figure out what it is, of course. Long distance hugs to you from a fellow midnight thinker.
Wow, Jenn. You’re words tore at my heart. Reading it, I had tears in my eyes.
-JJ
OMG, I have been there, too. You won’t live in this spot forever. Just honor the pain and know that it truly does not stay this way forever.
I’m almost speechless, but need my fingers to type some words to you. I can’t even imagine the pain you must feel, the loss of what could have been. As you look around your house, the reminders must be everywhere. I’m so, so sorry for that.
I know this sounds cliche, but baby steps, take baby steps. Painting a room (I suck at painting too!), doing something with your girls that you only did before as a 4-some, getting through a long winter of snow. Every day you do something amazing even if you can’t see it now. Remember, Nova Scotia isn’t going anywhere soon.
I recently read the kids a Buddhist story about a mother whose baby has died. She is in terrible grief and asks the Buddha to bring her child back to life. He tells her he will, but first she must get some seeds from a household that has not been touched by death. She runs off and returns much later, having found no household like this. She realizes that no one is without terrible pain and this helps give her perspective.
There is so much compassion out there for you—just reach out. Soon, probably sooner than you think, life will start to feel normal again and you will be the one holding a hand, drying the tears, cutting the hair. Hang in there.
I think you are doing very very well. I wish I could do something to help you.
you are still writing, so you do have something left to give. keep writing.
If I were there, I would bake you brownies. Know that you are not alone and many of us who seem happy and pulled together out in public sit alone in front of windows and cry when no one is around. Some of us know that Pain and barely escaped from its grasp. When it gets bad, remember that you are bearing it for your girls. If you left, the Pain would be passed to the girls. If you need help bearing it, get help.
I’m sorry you are here. You will not always be here. I know that’s hard to believe. That’s where faith comes in. {{{ hug }}}
This piece was heartbreaking and beautiful…same as life.
I don’t know where the Pain comes from or how long it will take to dissipate or how you’ll feel after. But I’m pretty sure your sharing of it dulls the ache for anyone who can relate, and can read, and looks at this and says, This! This is how I feel; and thank god I’m not alone in it.
What Simon said – This! This is how I feel; and thank god I’m not alone in it. But I am sad that so many of us are in it.
My husband is leaving me and our children. This is a foreign land, full of words and emotions I don’t understand – everything fraught with meaning that tears at my heart.
Your strength and grace are an inspiration to me. Your writing is powerful and beautiful.
I don’t know how to write what I want to convey. I want to ask you if by writing what you wrote helps to alliviate any of the pain. Acknowledging it and releasing it on paper instead of it pounding in your head and heart?
When my first husband died suddenly (we were both 38) I was completely lost. The pain came from two sources: The heartache of losing him as a husband and a friend who was always present, but more instensely was the pain of suddenly losing my bearings, my direction in life. I was 38, single, no children, owned a home with land with 2 horses, 2 donkeys, 2 dogs and 2 cats that I was going to have to maintain by myself. Gone were the projects we planned together, the family we had been trying to start, the relationships we had as a couple (I constantly felt like “third wheel”), and work relationships were constant reminders of his absence (we had both worked in the same industry.) I couldn’t handle being with my own close knit and loving family often the first 6 months because I selfishly couldn’t deal with their own grief and mourning over his loss, because I was so lost in mine. I became acutely aware when people were discussing, in hushed tones, the fact that I was a widow and sending me sympathetic glances. It made me question whether I was representing the “role” correctly…or failing miserably, and opening myself up to be the subject of sly criticism.
Jenn, I tell you this because I want you to know the pain does ebb. You do find another path eventually. It was rocky at first for me because I had so much guilt about moving forward, always wondering what people might think of me if I laughed, or showed happiness, or dated etc. I wanted to hold my late husband’s memory in honor….afraid that someone might think I was disrespecting our marriage or life together.
Slowly I moved forward, and I found my path. And now I truly believe that where I am in my life right now, is where I was always supposed to be. I’m 46, I’m remarried to another wonderful loving man, we were blessed to have been able to conceive (in my 40′s) and have two healthy sons. Life is good. I still find myself lost on occasion, but now I’m realizing that it is a natural process….and it’s happened to me (like it does to everyone) throughout my entire life. I try to give it time, and eventually the pain ebbs and I find my way again.
I’m a different person now than I was at 38, and it’s a better person due to the pain.
I’m sorry this is so long. I just wanted you to know that there are others that know the pain of which you speak. I want to send you a life line to hang onto…the hope that the future can hold great things.
Thank you. Five years out, now I can go through whole days without reliving every one of the moments you describe here. Occasionally two days in a row.
When my first husband left, I spent a very long time sitting on the couch that I could no longer afford, watching the puppy I could no longer care for, in the apartment I could no longer live in because of the terrible pain of the memories. I ate gummy worms, and quit my job by the mere fact that I just stopped going. I cried and cried and cried. I tried to explain to friends that even though this was the right thing, it was the worst thing. I still loved. I was grieving a loss that seemed more painful then death, because it was a conscious decision to leave me – not a terrible accident or an unexpected tragedy. He packed, and left. Left me. Abandoned us. By choice. Life without me was better then life with me. Was I really that bad ?
My mother showed up one day, and took me home, Where I stayed, regressed, started over, healed slowly from the terrible injury to my heart, to my confidence, to my pride, to my psyche.
This is HARD. And eventually, you do stop crying, and find a new way of living. It will never be the same, it will never be familiar, it will all be new….but the grief ebbs.
You are grieving. There is no timeline. Just hang on and love on your girls and paint every wall in the house if you have to.
xo
Jenn! Everywhere I turn I see people with beautiful, stitched-together lives and relationships. My husband and I aren’t divorced (yet?), but everyday we struggle with each other.
I don’t see anyone else walking through Trader Joe’s, unshowered with puffy eyes from crying all the time. I just keep telling myself, at least I’m out here shopping, that has got to mean something.
I’ve always been a sensitive soul. It sucks to be surrounded by people who are like ducks and things just slide right off of them. Meanwhile I’m constantly wounded.
I don’t know why I’m saying all this except that maybe you’ll feel better knowing there are other people out there whose lives are filled with huge emotional tidal waves who are doing the equivalent of painting the bathroom. We’re all hanging in there somehow.
a hug- for a broken person, from a broken person.
Jenn. I think that no life is pain-free. Each experiences it in different ways before it is over. For me to say I know exactly how you feel, would be so wrong. I couldn’t possibly know how you feel. Nor could anyone. No one feels the same Pain as you. But, when you describe your Pain, there are similarities, homogenous bits of suffering that others may recognise. I, for one, recognise equivalent emotions to those you have written about. I’ve related to the mother who left behind her children when she took her life. I’ve defended her actions. Even, sometimes, felt a little jealous of the courage it might have taken. I’ve felt completely isolated and empty. Unable to give even a drop more. There have been mornings when I have fought to keep my eyes closed, just to avoid facing another day, believing that I would not make it to the end. But, as cliched as it seems, time heals all things. In time it will be easier to breathe, easier to smile, easier to love. And Life has a way of handling itself like a wave. Some days you’ll be up, and some days you’ll be down. And when you’re up, you can be sure that there will be a trough on its way, before you get to enjoy the high life again. And in the same way, when you’re down, in a valley, and the walls of water on either side of you are high and suffocating, have faith that you will rise out of that hollow. It may be a little bit at first, but there will be another peak to lift you up. It’s just the way it works.
Sincerely.
~hugs~
You painted!!!
Perversely, I actually think it’s good that you feel this way. People who do *not* feel this way are locking away their emotions, to the eventual detriment of themselves and everyone around them.
You have a lot to mourn – love, joined parenting, The Future you had planned on, The Past and it’s events that led you here… that’s a lot to go through. It’s a death, or even several deaths. Every day, every step, every tear, will make your mind clearer and your heart change into something new. You will get to where you’re going, regardless of whether or not you know at the moment where that will be.
I am crying right now for the place where you are, and that you are there at all. Don’t let yourself become the suicide mom.
This was just eviscerating. You don’t know me from anyone, but I just feel the need to tell you that I read everything you post, and I care about you. How anyone can describe something so wrenching and raw so beautifully is amazing. I’m sorry you are hurting, love. I wish I could do something to help.
Jen, I need you to trust me on this. Really, seriously, and if I could grab your shoulders and look you in the eye as I tell you this, I would.
This hard part WILL end. It will. I swear to GOD it will. And it will end far sooner than it feels like right now.
Your job is to put one foot in front of the other til it does. That’s all you have to do. Everything else can wait. And I mean everything.
I have been thinking about you and sending light.
As I started to write this comment, I looked down, and the security code I had to type in was “MAYBE”
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Life is full of maybes. It’s like a scratch-off card with infinite chances. And no matter how rough it is, and how much you think “HERE?, REALLY? I SOMEHOW AM STANDING ON TWO FEET OVER HERE WHERE I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD EVER EVEN CRAWL TO?” you’re still just another scratch away from something wonderful. Wonderful things are throughout your life, they have been and they will be. Just keep scratching.
Oh darlin, I just adore you and your ability to cut yourself and have these lovely word equations come out that seem to have a summary even when we don’t know what the hell that answer might be. Just know you have so much love surrounding you, especially in the moments when you want to check the notepad to see a name or the title of the book – things that were once your life and are now somebody else’s business. No matter, your seeds go deep and spring up fairytale worthy stalks of meaning. I just love you.
for as often as you absorb my thoughts, and it is often, you are embraced from a far away stranger. someone who may never know anything more than your most intimate expressions of faith – both lost, found, and that for which you are still searching. a deep faith in yourself can be overlooked and drowned out in the white silent noise of the banging; your spirit against the perverbial wall, desperate to break through to the other side, the higher understanding side. i wish you could see how powerful you are. how important you are. and how invaluable your words are to so many struggling daily to find something as close to air as you.
Some of us dont move on, we squat and pick at whatever’s left. Some we save for later, some we take apart. Some we give away and some we toss out with last night’s trash. Then we pick at it some more and we cry and we get used to the little mess on the floor. and then one day–it’s bound to happen–someone will vacuum, and you can start over. fresh. only a little humbler, stronger, funnier… ah, wiser.
You’re in Pain pain, it’s allowed, expected, yours to wear. But not forever.
So, you will never be the person you were, true, there’s a before / after shot here, and if you do this right (stay healthy, mourn, five stages of grief, etc.) for as long as you need, your glamorous after shot will actually be beautiful. (not like some of The Swan ladies)
i’m de-lurking to say: i’m sorry.
i’m twenty-something, i’m newly-wed, newly mom-ed; still have hope for a Happily Ever After– more than hope, even. i’d like to send it through the magic of internet, so you know that some sort of Happily Ever After exists, even if it doesn’t look the way you thought it did.
Jenn,
This was so painfully beautiful. We all have our own version of that Pain. I’m so sorry that you are mourning this loss. I wish there were something I could do for you. You are a great mother and it sounds like a great friend. You are one of the most compassionate, caring, non judgemental people I “know”. It is quite a privilege to read your words. Thank you for sharing with us.
“You know in your heart of hearts you have never moved on from anyone you have loved.”
Yes, this.
Jenn, I’m so sorry. I love you (in an internet-friend kind of way) and I am sending you good thoughts. And I too am a defender of the suicidal, or the nearly so. I wonder what my colleagues think of me for it, but I defend them all the same.
I wish I could give you more, but for now it’s good thoughts and commiseration.
i hope you find enough air.
I just keep hearing The Weepies song, “Little Bird” in my head…over and over…all day after reading this post. I think my soul is singing it to both of us – it is still mind blowing how our lives parallel right now…
“Little bird, little bird..”
Thank you for your honesty – it terrifies me. I am so often shocked, disappointed by how ugly, difficult and painful having a family can be, and how few people admit this (no wonder I never knew). Your daughters are so blessed – your writing is a most rare and beautiful gift to all of us, but especially to them, and I so admire you for giving it so fearlessly. Being a wife and a mother is so much happiness, and yet I am standing in line waiting for Pain, and how, how will I deal with it when it is my turn? How will I even breathe? And so when I read your words and the words of your readers, I cry for you, I cry for them, and I cry for myself, too.
Depression, you know, isn’t really sadness. It’s fear.
In the now, whatever our situation, we know the world is still spinning. We know we have some good things that bring us comfort and happiness.
It is the fear that we will lose those good things, or the fear that pain will be inflicted on us in the future, that makes us despair.
Being in an “unscripted” situation, as most new divorcees are, creates a lot of anxiety. You feel like you don’t know how things are supposed to play out for your ‘happy ending’. You fear that the comfort of romantic companionship is lost to you forever. You fear that your future only contains pain and loss. Like Martin Seligman’s dogs in his famous experiment, you assume that there is nothing you can do to avoid the hurt. You feel like you’ve lost control over your ability to find happiness.
Ours is a generation that has created the term “starter marriage”. Welcome to the club. We have jackets. They have kind of a mall-goth style to them and come with matching black eyeliner.
You want to know what’s going to happen in your future? I’ll tell you, and I won’t even charge you $2.99/minute like the psychic friends network.
Sometime within the next 12-18 months, when you’re least expecting it, you’re going to meet some guy and the two of you are going to start flirting. You’ll go out on a date or two, and maybe decide that he’s not really someone you’d want to spend the rest of your life with, so you’ll part ways. The experience, though, jolt you back into ‘guy-shopping’ mode. It will remind you of the fun parts of being single, and plant the seed in your mind that just maybe Mr. Right is still out there for you.
Within a few months/years of looking, you’re going to find him. He’s going to be everything your grown-up self wants in a guy, and you’re going to be everything his grown-up self wants in a girl. The kids are going to like him, and the two of you are going to be happily married for a long, long time
read this. cried.
made myself read it again. absorbed it. cried some more.
if only my heart were as closely connected to words as yours is. thank you for giving a voice to my feelings. thank you for allowing me to step out of myself, if only for a few minutes every week.
your cottage in nova scotia is out there, and you may paint it any colour you like. xoxo
Three things get me through times that you have described so well for so many.
1. The belief that things do happen for a reason, even if you have no idea what that reason could be right now.
2. Things absolutely do have a way of working out the way they should (the distant light at the end of a very long tunnel).
3. Don’t worry and stress about things that you have no control over.
These are just a few chapters in your life that WILL pass and progress into better chapters. You are already changing and healing. You are getting there Jenn.
I’m sitting here with tears welling up…I am struggling with Pain creeping around the edges of my life right now, too and am starting to feel exhausted at the battle to beat it back. I’m sorry you are struggling with this, that so many of us have to struggle with this.
At the same time, though, look at how so many have survived and how many are reaching out to hold your hopes for you for a while until you can keep them for yourself again. Know that there is one more person here holding onto a vision of a warm Nova Scotia cottage, feeling a chill on my cheeks and stepping in to enjoy a warm bowl of soup. I’m so comforted by your dream and by the thought that someone must be holding mine for me for the time being, too.
Peace for you
Delurking . . . yes. So many times yes. Your profound ability not only to recognize and acknowledge, but to capture in soul-squeezing words the intricate details of THIS pain makes me want to be a better writer, to pursue my own path towards finding my cottage, and to hug you. Thank you so much for sharing . . . may that act bring you comfort, healing, perpetual soup, and air.
Your words could have been written by me two years ago, except that I can’t write nearly so well. My always-beloved once-husband is now my always-beloved husband-again. Life is full of maybes, as someone said above, and the best-laid plans… you know the rest.
Am tired and peeved because just shared wise words with you, only to lose them to evil wordpress
To sum:
depression is a room. it’s got windows and a door and the lighting is crap and it could use a new paint job. But all the same it’s your room and you like it. There’s a blanket that is good for curling up into. You can stay as long as you’d like. The door is never locked from the outside or inside. It sticks sometimes and you’ll need to lift a window and crawl out, tho not gracefully. Sometimes you’ll take a peek out the window and decide to stay a little while longer. Sometimes you’ll hover at the door, not sure whether to enter. Or to exit.
Other random bits of what I recall writing:
heart stripped bare. I know that feeling. I appreciate it when others expose it in themselves
life is not a romantic comedy. Things do not tie up nicely in 440 pages or 112 minutes of cinema viewing. I’ve suffered for not having realized this earlier.
it is good to learn to be alone. In your room or out. I think this is a survival technique that would serve us all well. I certainly know it will – once I master it – keep me from much trouble with the men-folk.
More than anything, thank you for writing this. And the resulting thanks to those people I am so envious of, for knowing you and envious of you, for having such kind and caring souls.
Jenn, no words, just the HUGEST POSSIBLE *HUG* transmitted to you virtually.
I’m keeping you and your girls and loved ones in my prayers.
love,
~m.
Just: wow. Awed by amazing writing and an amazingly difficult time.
From Spot’s mouth to God’s ear.
Aw sweetie. I wish I knew what to say. I do. But if I were near you, I’d bake you a cheesecake, and some tangy lemon sauce to go on top to cut the richness, so that if you like, we could sit and eat the whole thing (I would do that for you, eat my half of a whole cheesecake and damn the calories and fat grams) and just be. Just feel it, all of it, the not knowing that all grown ups are supposed to have grown out of but somehow…don’t, the fear, the uncertainty, the enormous love for those affected by our choices but can’t have any say in the matter of our choices, at least not such a choice as this.
Not that you chose this life. But now that it’s chosen you, I would stand beside you (in real life if I lived near you, but virtually since that is the best I can do) and stare defiantly at this life choice that’s splattered all over you, pissed off that it smacked into you in the first place. Then I would get out my wet wipes (I keep them with me at all times, hazards of a child under 1) and gently wipe this choice away, but that I think it has to be you doing the wiping so you can get through it on the other side as you’re meant to do. I’ll be there, though, calmly handing out wet wipes and letting you know that I’ll help, if you need me to.
If you need.
Yes. Exactly. This is my life– exactly as you said. Here’s a toast to the sad that have hope but who just aren’t sure what it is they’re supposed to be hoping for.
“Still, you saw in your mind the scar on the back of his hand as you gently tapped the paint can closed, the way you saw him do it a year ago, in the kitchen.”
Oh, God. That sentence is just perfect. It makes my heart ache to read it and tears well up in my eyes. There is this idea that is popular in our society that pain heals in a certain way, like a cut on your finger: it hurts a lot at first then gradually subsides. Everyone always forgets about the little memories that catch you off guard and send you tumbling to your knees. My step-father died in a car accident we had when I was in 4th grade. He liked vanilla pudding. I never thought about that until I was 16 and a man in line in front of me at a ski resort cafeteria had some on his tray. I ended up sobbing into my long underwear in a bathroom stall of the lodge. Sometimes the sad just creeps up on you.
I’m thinking about you and I hope the little reminders find you less frequently.
Oh Jenn….Pain and I are old friends too. Some of us are often a little too close to Pain and many don’t understand the lure.
This was an amazing post, so vulnerablely beautiful and painfully real. What amazing loving comments.
I just want to hug you and eat some of that cheesecake with lemon with champagne and cry some more.