He was a well educated professional. I was an unskilled hourly worker. I guess you could say he married below his station. In fact, he had a genius IQ and, like the movie character Little Man Tate, had his advanced degree by the age of nineteen. He went from college into an administrator position straight out of school. He was brilliant. But I was smart.
Within weeks of our getting married we were dealing with children in crisis. His dear daughter was being released from court-ordered drug rehab and he was excited to see her. He handed her the car keys and a wad of cash and told her to have fun with her friends. What a great Dad. I remember telling him, “I wouldn’t trade my smarts for yours for anything in the world. I hope your daughter survives to grow up. Meanwhile, what am I going to do with you for the the rest of my life?”
Like many unhappy couples, we primarily argued about money. Especially since we skipped silly little tasks like repairing the leaky roof in lieu of supporting the nearby casino. But if I brought this up he told me, “at least I have a real job.” I used to sing around the house, “why can’t you be like your big brother Bob – get a haircut and get a real job?!” Because I would make jokes about anything I couldn’t communicate any other way…a sort of last-ditch effort at making a point. From the abstract to the surreal I guess.
Just a few days ago a friend called to talk. She is in the grievous process of selling her home and filing for divorce after forty years of marriage. She stumbled upon his affair, apparently hidden for years at this point. Being in their 70’s now, I seriously doubt it’s his first. He’s always been rather distant. Emotionally unavailable. And, of course, we haven’t lived this long without having dealt with our share of hardship. I have watched for decades as she held that family together through thick and thin. Having lost her own parents early in life, she cared for his ornery, ungrateful mother through years of dementia with the patience of a saint. She nursed him back from the edge of death more than once, including donating an organ to save him. But he was preoccupied elsewhere. By divorcing, she’ll get half of everything, which is half of what she’d have if he’d died…and you wonder why women contemplate murder.
Let me make a monumentally long story short: I am dealing with the depression and angst of feeling like I have been stupid for the first 60 of my 70 years. Really – just downright, flat-out stupid. Trying to make relationships work with narcissists. The word familiar comes from family.
And part of this recent realization comes with the acknowledgement that I allowed my creativity to be sabotaged all of my adult life. In other words, I sabotaged it in deference to people pleasing. In a futile attempt at keeping my beautiful home and family together.
Like Camille Henrot, I did everything I could not to become an artist, and like Camille Henrot, I find art can help make sense of the world a little bit – or at least respect it’s nonsense. When I say respect, I mean like I respect the power of water, or nature. I mean respect like reverence for that which I find myself powerless to control.
“Oh love, bring every grief you’ve carried with you as a door you’ll walk right by / if you don’t stop to look with that loving heart and a troubled eye.”
Our troubles feel as if they are like stone, a compacted, impenetrable medium which will not allow us in. It’s time to “put my money where my mouth is…” so to speak. Time to show up, front and center, and face that stone inside, standing steadfast between me and my own liberation. I talk a good game, don’t I? All this wisdom about getting free. As if I had a clue.
When I am lost as I am this week, in the rock hard grief of my own making, I have few places I can turn. I can always turn to David Whyte. Ironically, I was introduced to him long ago by a friend I no longer have any contact with. She chose to stay in the comfortable captivity of her abusive marriage, and I had to stop pretending that I could be her supportive friend. If you read this journal once in a while, you’ll realize this theme has carried throughout the 13 years since I began here. I’ve gone no contact with more people than I have in my life anymore. Every single one has been a death I am mourning. In retrospect today, this seems an obvious theme. After all, I began this outlet as a means to help me process my divorce and separation from family, from everything I’d ever thought I wanted. To come up against that rock hard resistance and face the unknown.
C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying how shocked he was to realize that grief feels so like fear. There is good reason for that. Grief is the last doorway between us and our freedom, and we are terrified of our freedom. How, exactly, do we manage to be in the world, but not of it? Get back to me on that, won’t you, please?
It turns out that ignorance is never bliss; it’s really only ignorance. It also turns out that bliss was never the goal. It has always been awareness, whether we care to admit that or not. Bliss would be, well, blissfully easy by comparison. But awareness is how we get to freedom – which is our one and only job here. We like to pretend the god ate our homework. Yes, you read that right. So what is all this angst-ing about? Well, I have come up against the biggest boulder my heart has ever encountered, and I’m guessing you have one, too.
Since my teenage years, all of my relationships have been hard. I am hard. I have always been difficult to get along with. Something inside of me has always been as uncompromising as a boulder. I was the eldest of five children, and the scapegoat in a narcissistic family system. Yada, yada, yada…I married young. I got out as soon as I could, and I wasn’t going back. At the age of 24 I had my son, and he has been the light of my life. In many ways, my salvation. I don’t think I’d be alive today were it not for him, and I certainly wouldn’t be the person I am. He inspires me endlessly. But we are at odds right now, and it is breaking my heart. It has shaken me to my core.
Intellectually, I can explain everything. To tell the entire story, I have to begin with the health problems which impacted that pregnancy. I was always a nervous and thus scraggly kid. In high school I was diagnosed with bleeding ulcers. I struggled all of my young life to keep weight on. So I was considered medically malnourished when I became pregnant at 23, and I proceeded to lose 24 pounds. I gave birth to a healthy 9 pound, 6 ounce baby with teeth coming through his gums, but I left the hospital at just over 90 pounds. I’m 5′ 6″ tall. Perhaps because of this, he has always had some (miraculously mild) learning disabilities, despite an extraordinarily high I.Q.
During his first year in school he began to show behaviors that we would now recognize as autism. I took him to every doctor of every type that I could think of. We checked his eyesight, we checked his hearing, we checked his cognitive abilities. The doctors all told me exactly the same thing: this child is a genius. He is bored. With the wise counsel of some teacher friends we began a discipline of working through a daily checklist. I would write and draw it out on a blank sketchbook page at night, and he would work through it after school the next day. He had to complete it before he was allowed to play. It always included 2 or 3 light chores and 2-3 fun, creative activities. It always included Hug Your Mother (because I’m not above manipulation.) Then, an hour before bed we sat together and read a story or watched a favorite cartoon while I massaged his feet with a grounding oil, usually sandalwood. This routine was working beautifully. To this day, when he becomes stressed he will often create a checklist.
I am telling you this now because he has been struggling again. As mentioned recently, he is quite depressed. The aftermath of the recent natural disasters seems to have impacted him deeply. He is a highly sensitive person. But I, too, am struggling terribly as a direct result of interacting with him, in his mental and emotional distress. And because I am literally the only sober person he knows, I’m the sole voice of reason in his life right now. I must make mental health the priority of our lives.
And yesterday, I suddenly felt terribly helpless. I was consumed with fear, and I blew it. He came out of left field touting some wild conspiracy theory about the corrupt government having created the weather disaster and being out to get us all – and I lost my shit. It isn’t even that I necessarily disagree with everything he was saying, but I absolutely cannot – cannot – function from that perspective. It is mired in fear. It is entirely divisive. And it is utterly hopeless. Talk about a conspiracy!
I don’t know that I have ever screamed that loud before in my life. I screamed at the top of my lungs – at him. I told him he was dead wrong about so much of what he has recently adopted to believe. And in no uncertain terms I told him that he is subscribing to cult behavior, and that I am afraid for his sanity. I frightened him, and I frightened myself.
And so, shaken as I was yesterday, I must ask myself some very tough questions. Do I want to defend my own personal beliefs at the cost of anyone else’s freedom, including my sons’? What if he and I become estranged and never speak, as the current politics has divided so many families? Can I live with that? Are my convictions that important? Are yours?
Do I have other options here, besides finding “the truth” of the situation? Of course. Firstly, I recognize that if I am not experiencing peace, I have given away my sanity. Somewhere in the hours/days/weeks leading up to this blowup I have assigned meaning somewhere it doesn’t belong. If every upset is a setup (and it is,) I bought into somebody else’s agenda. Or in this case, depression. I picked it right up because it’s a familiar habit. And if I picked it up psychically, so did my empathic son. We can put it down just as fast. I’m not going to give assholes my vote this election. My pussy is not up for grabs. Neither is my mind. Out, demons, out! Here’s to our better angels.
Both my son and I lost our sense of humor – and perspective! After all, that’s what depression is. I fell into that bad habit, and so did he. Now I want my funny son back. I want my kind, intelligent son back. I’m thinking that screaming at him isn’t the best approach. But I’ve been holding on too tightly. Too much fear bottled up inside. It is no coincidence that I am having a flare-up of asthma symptoms. I have been holding my breath. I’m done with that. You want to see what created weather looks like? Watch out for that boulder rolling downhill. Tomorrow’s forecast is warm and sunny.
“You too have travelled from so far away to be here, once reluctant and now as solid and as here and as willing to be touched as everything you have found.” Thank you, David Whyte.
“I need a God who thinks I’m funny.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
Me too, Liz, me too. Gilbert’s relationship with consciousness, or God, is very similar to mine. And only recently, through a Buddhist friend, have I realized that we also have much in common with some basic Buddhist tenets, mainly that a human incarnation is a rare and extraordinary occurrence. To be profoundly revered. That is not to say easy. As Liz also reminds me, “Even a good life is hard.”
I woke with a migraine a few days ago. I had blissfully forgotten how completely debilitating they are. I used to get migraines chronically. They stole days out of every week. The leading neurologist treating me began with new, cutting edge migraine treatments and eventually resorted to Dilaudid (generic morphine). Administered 20 minutes after Compazine for nausea, so that I didn’t waste the morphine. And it never once took away the migraine. My body was screaming at me.
Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk wrote The Body Keeps the Score, and he likewise knows, “the mind hides it.” When I was having chronic migraines in my 40’s and 50’s I was desperately trying to find something – anything – to relieve the pain. But there was something seriously wrong. As in, my life had gone flaming dumpster fire awry. I was dying.
Liz Gilbert is right about something else – the closer we get to living our true self imperfectly, the more displeasing we are to the world. I was this many years old before I didn’t care how the world finds me. Alive would be good.
Knowing this and doing it is much easier said than done. Those old childhood habits are deep and strong. I do so want you to like me. In fact, that inner child in me needs you to like me. My life depends on it. I think you must know something I don’t – and I’m waiting for you to share that with me so I can get on with life.
The task here is to become as generous with myself as I am with you. Maybe – just maybe – I know something. Maybe my body knows it even if my mind doesn’t grasp it yet. Maybe I have always known it. Maybe it is my core. And maybe the real issue – where the healing will occur – is in my being more greedy than needy. Greedy for my own company, my own council. Greedy with my solitude. Or as I used to tell my self-righteous, narcissistic, fundamentalist family when they would call me crazy: I choose MY crazy.
I choose MY crazy, not yours, nor anyone else’s I might momentarily assign authority over my wellbeing. I get to decide what it means to be sane and well. I get to choose peace. I’ve got this. No soliciting here. Go away. I’m finally becoming very greedy. I cannot wait for some other person I’ve deemed worthy to honor me; it isn’t in their best interest. It seems their God has no sense of humor. Sell crazy someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.
From this new practice of greed there are no longer many people I will give access to my time and attention. Maybe because I’m older now; being needy seems frivolous. If you are trustworthy, you will defend my solitude, and I yours. And Elizabeth Gilbert is our spirit animal.
Ugh. I’m not sure where to start here today. This writing thing isn’t getting any easier with time. It keeps me raw. I’m so fortunate that I no longer have to function in social or business situations. I no longer have to work everyday. It’s the lifestyle I’ve wanted all of my adult life…I’m living the dream. Ha.
I like to think I’m pretty self aware. Three people close to me to have directly said to me, “you are not as self aware as you think you are.” These occurrences were separate and years apart. THEY brought the subject up. One of these people was a former husband, one was someone I almost married, and the other was my sister. As it happens, I am no longer in contact with any of them. They are all blatant narcissists. Undiagnosed, of course, because narcissists don’t do therapy (let alone introspection), two are covert and one overt. We got along fine as long as I was in people pleasing mode and they were in control. So pardon me if their opinion of me doesn’t matter a rat’s ass.
I repeat, I like to think I’m pretty self aware. I’m aware enough to know that this is a life-long process and that it is humbling. We all have blind spots in our self awareness. We all have an unconscious. If we didn’t we would be enlightened, and while I’m sure there are enlightened people around, I do not personally know any of them. The rest of us are all in the ‘I coulda had a V-8’ school of human experience.
At the moment, I am doing well, other than being quite concerned about a few people I’m close to. These three people, who I am in regular contact with, are all dealing with the aftermath of the recent natural disasters. My son’s father lost his home in hurricane Helene and hasn’t been able to even begin to think about rebuilding or moving on since Milton hit. He won’t have a home again for some months. But he and his partner are safe and have a temporary place to live.
The other, a dear friend, is ill with RSV and has only yesterday been able to get to a doctor in Florida. She spent days in bed with no power, food or drinking water. No one could get to her because the roads were blocked by downed trees and power lines. At least now she has medicine and can hopefully make a fast recovery.
The third person I am concerned about is my son. Here, in NW lower Michigan, where we have not had severe weather. Because he is going through what I can only call a dark night of the soul, and it is a direct result of the recent hurricanes. He was sick worrying about his Dad. He felt utterly helpless. Then a friend and fellow carpenter reached out to him. A few local men were getting together to travel down to North Carolina and work for a volunteer agency, helping to clean up and rebuild. Could he please join them?
Now, my son is a genius (identified early in his school career by doctors, not just because I think so.) But he is also an empath. He would have to give this request a great deal of thought. He knew that he would have to “go into warrior mode,” and put up a shield. Through this agency and men he knows who were already down there, he was seeing a gruesome picture of death and devastation – far beyond what the nightly news was reporting. Could he keep it together and be useful was his concern. He decided he would volunteer, filled out the requisite paperwork, and began pulling his gear together. I was just trying not to panic.
It seemed to actually be helping him mentally. At least he had a goal, a focus. As he said, a channel for his grief. But it was not to be. He got news last night that the government was shutting down all volunteer operations and moving the military in. And his grief has increased. He is back to feeling absolutely helpless.
Now, between you and I, hearing him talk to me last night was triggering. But I was determined to listen and not respond; to let him talk it through. I trust him. I trust his genius to take him where he needs to go. I also know how to identify when I am being triggered and why. And I can tell you exactly what I saw in my head: I am 16 years old. I am laying on the carpet of my bedroom in front of a small television set. I am watching the Vietnam war. I see a Vietnamese child running naked on fire. I keep having to run to the bathroom to vomit.
It was the first time in my sheltered childhood that I had witnessed trauma. I had not yet lost anyone near to me. I still had four grandparents and two great-grandparents, and all of my immediate family. They would face death shortly thereafter, but at the time I was entirely unaware of our fragility.
I also trust what my son was telling me, and I know he wasn’t sharing all he knew. I know the worst of any human suffering never makes the television reports. The advertisers don’t like it. And from the perspective of age I now can know that my son is grieving deeper traumas than the obvious. Helpless is the very definition of grief. Like any of us who are given the great privilege of time, he will come to terms with his smallness, his vulnerability, his place within the world. He says he doesn’t know what to do with all of this anger and grief. He doesn’t know how to switch it off, how to go back to functioning fully. How to return to life.
All I can say to him is that life will never be the same again. I tell him he’ll come though it, but he won’t ever be the same. One day perhaps I will tell him my stories. I will remind him what he faced when diagnosed with cancer in his early twenties. But not today. I cannot help him today; I can only listen and trust. Author Elizabeth Gilbert says, “you can’t avoid grief. It knows your home address.” So it would seem.
A Painterly Home 