A No Good, Very Bad Post

I hate my husband when he gets into his moods. Those moods where I can do nothing right. I'm sitting in my car in a church parking lot right now because it's better than sitting home with him. 

Just once I would love it if he would be able to suppress this part of himself. Just once. I know now that he is incapable of it, but sometimes I am just too tired to be the bigger person. 

So I am sitting in my car.  I am tired, my back hurts, my head hurts and I have 3 more hours of human interaction before I can go home and bury my face in my pillow.  

I hate him when he's like this. I hate my life when he's like this.  But life goes on, doesn't it?   So tired......  Just tired. 

Irrational Fear or Destiny

I've blogged incessantly about my lack of friends, why and how I came to have a lack of friends and what (if anything) I can do about it.  For a period of time,  that's pretty much all I blogged about.  I really thought I was in a better place mentally and emotionally because I didn't feel the need to blog incessantly about it.

I was wrong.

I still think about my Mom a lot.  I try to think of her as she was when I was younger and not as she was in her last years, but I can't help but think of her life as sort of a collective body of work with a very unhappy finale.  I've also insisted that I don't want to end up like her, but I'm starting to think that I have little control over the situation.

I always assumed that my mother was a solitary person who didn't mind spending time alone.  I never paid attention to whether or not she made any attempt to change her situation.  I do remember that she was very good friends with my sister in law's mother.    When my Dad was alive, the four of them were very social together going to dinner, movies, concerts, etc...  When my Dad died, Sue was her rock.   When my sister in law's father retired, however, that's when things got dicey.  He was very possessive of his wife, and her personality was not one that lent itself to .... shall we say... independent action...   We found out a few years later that he had Alzheimer's disease.  Unfortunately, the damage to their friendship was done.  I knew my mother was sad about it, but I now believe that she was probably devastated.

The bottom line is that I really have no idea if she tried to cultivate new friendships as she progressed through her middle age years and beyond.  Besides making me question my worth as a daughter, this leaves me with all sorts of questions.  I am really like her?  Did she have friends when she was in her 20's that she gave up on?  Did she, like me, try to turn her work associates into personal friends only to have her hopes dashed?  She bowled with friends and relatives well into her 50s.   Did she think that they would become close friends?  Was she upset when she stopped bowling and the friends drifted away out of her life?

The simple fact is that I am petrified of spending the last years of my life alone.  I have always thought that my mother was alone most of the time because she was crabby and disagreeable....  but just maybe she was crabby and disagreeable because she was alone.   A vicious cycle.  Which again causes me to question my worth as a daughter.  Would her mood have improved if I had forced myself to spend more time with her?  I'll never know.

Yes, we have the power to shape our destinies.... to a point.

I'm married to a man who prefers his old antique car to me a lot of the time.  He thinks that spending time at home is a waste of time, I guess.  I don't know.   He doesn't realize that his presence is the important thing - not that we have to be engaged in conversation or activity together every minute he's home.  What is that saying about two people who are just able to be in each other's presence without the need for words?

I am miles ahead of where I was 10 years ago, in that at least I do have one important friend.  She is 20 years older than me.  We're an interesting and unexpected pair.  Sometimes I get the feeling that people don't know what to make of us. We don't talk about the age difference very often anymore.  I think that when people connect on a mental, emotional and spiritual level, chronological age is rendered irrelevant.  I love this woman.  She has made me a better person in more ways than I can count.  We are good for each other in all sorts of ways.  But I can't deny that I find myself thinking about what I will do without her someday.  The thought of this makes me want to cry and- in fact, I have done just that.  I don't like reminders of her age, but they are there and for me to ignore them or disrespect them is unkind and unfair.   If I'm to be any kind of friend,  I must respect them and be considerate of them and of her.  I've gone through periods of flat-out denial, and other times I've attempted to bridge the gap by pointing out the signs of my own advancing age.  I guess my behavior has been sort of stupid at times.  And really, who knows what the future holds?  I really am getting to the age where people my age are passing away from untimely deaths-all the time, it seems like.  What if I'm next?

Right now I am 51 years old and already feeling alone.  Which makes my problem worse than my mother's problem at this age.  I'm on the fast track, comparatively speaking.  What to do?  As I've said before, one doesn't just impose oneself on other people and expect positive results.  I can't force people to invite me to things.  I can't force my husband to stay home.  He'd probably be miserable - at which point I'd end up telling him to go away.   This aloneness makes me irrational.  Another vicious cycle.  Who wants to hang around with an irrational, clingy and needy person?

Maybe it would be best to accept my fate.  I may become the crazy cat lady who carries on conversations with herself.   And the cats.   At least they won't argue with me.....much.

What to feel when you don't know how to feel.

Lately, I've been trying to flood my psyche with happiness-inducing memes and stories and quotes, because I figure... sooner or later, something has got to stick with me.   So what have I got to be unhappy about?  If I knew the answer to that question, I might know how to help myself.

I recently figured out that I have a co-dependent personality.   For a little while, this brought some relief.  That there was a root cause for my behavior.  But now, more and more, I realize that I'm sure not going to be cut any slack by anyone based on this revelation.  The only person who can cut me any slack is me.

I have felt unhappy, lonely, and misunderstood for the majority of my life.  It's become very difficult to do anything or make any decision or say anything without second-guessing myself.   Almost impossible, really.  I'm not even sure who I am most of the time.  I think I can be a reasonably pleasant person when I try.  Other times, it feels very difficult and when that happens, I feel defeated by myself and that's when I become the angry, bitchy me.  Which leads to more second-guessing and self-condemnation.  It's a vicious circle.

I read something on Facebook about how people who have committed suicide are wrongly considered to be selfish.  This post went on about how people who are depressed enough to end their own lives truly believe that the people around them would be better off without them in the world.   I'm going to admit that I understand that thinking.  There have been times when I thought that very few people would know or care if I ceased to exist.  And sometimes I wonder .....  how fine is the line between very few people and nobody?

Maybe I just need to start cutting myself some slack.   I mean really, what are the facts?

I am NOT the most challenged, downtrodden person on the face of the earth.  Here are the facts of the past ten years:

Many of my immediate family has dispersed to other states.  Many of our most joyful holiday traditions no longer happen.  Hell, these people have essentially disappeared from my life.  I miss them more than I care to admit.

Three members of my family passed away in the span of 10 months.  One of these people was my mother.  One of these people was a 10-year-old child.  In the years since then I have experienced the deaths of people my age and people I sang with.

Roughly around the same time, I found myself fully engulfed in perimenopause - night sweats and brutal hot flashes.  I now know that my hormones had also rendered me incapable of maintaining an even keel of emotions for more than an hour or two.  Sadly, I was entirely focused on the physical issues and was dwelling on the deaths in my family,  and it took months for me to recognize that I was basically acting bat-shit crazy.

I have identified my co-dependent personality and, as I said, there was relief.  But now reality has set in.  My wacky co-dependent behavior is why I  am sitting home alone on a Saturday night.  Or, that's how it feels at the moment.

So..... what now?

How do I turn erratic behavior into something a bit more consistent - consistent, as in consistently good..... not consistently bitchy?  Hormone patches were a start.  What 's next?

How can I help myself feel more positive about "alone time"?    Since it seems to be a fact of my life,  I need to find a way to put a positive spin on it.

How do I stop beating myself up and second-guessing everything I say and do?  That's the tough one. That's where the whole co-dependent personality thing comes into play.

What is likable about me?  

I am funny - in a sarcastic way, mostly.
I am loyal.
I am creative

.....hmm, I'm sure there's more, but I don't think I'm at the point yet where I can come up with more.

So, I guess this explains why I don't know how I feel about too much these days.  Except that, mostly... I'm just afraid of messing up the rest of my life.  I'm afraid of alienating the people I care about.  I'm afraid of acknowledging that I deserve to be treated as well as I should be treating others.

Basically, I'm just afraid.   So there.   Let's move forward, shall we?

A Startling Self-Revelation

For the record, let it be known that I am NOT an Oprah devotee.  I subscribed to her newsletter, because once every ten e-mails or so, there is something interesting there.  A few days ago, the title of an article caught my eye.  You know, when you're checking off all of junk that's headed for the e-mail "trash" and suddenly.... whoa.... what's that???   The title that grabbed my attention...."The Day My Best Friend Broke Up With Me".   Yikes!   Due to my ever-present paranoia, I felt that I'd better read it, just in case, because you just never know when a useful nugget of information will present itself...

As I read it,  I felt the most weird combination of relief and horror.  This woman was me.  She was absolutely, positively ME.  The woman with a co-dependent personality disorder was her AND me. Of course, the story had an upbeat and hopeful ending, and of course my best friend has NOT broken up with me...but it left me with all sorts of questions.  But after further research, my initial suspicions were confirmed.  I have a co-dependent personality disorder.

This is a difficult thing to communicate.  Most people associate co-dependent personalities with relationships involving substance abuse.  That's what I always thought, anyway.  It seems that this is not always the case.   Now, the other issue is that we all know that it is quite unacceptable these days to blame your problems on your parents and how they raised you.  You hear this all of the time.  Yet, it seems that a lot of people with co-dependent personality issues were raised in environments that were emotionally deficient and/or abusive.  This is what I'm finding out now.  Wow!  After all of these years of trying to not be one of THOSE people, it turns out that I really am.... one of those people.

Where do I go from here?  This explains so much about my whole adult life up to now.  The lack of friends, the low self-esteem, and on and on.  And I can take steps to help myself, starting now.  I can help myself to be a better wife, friend, person... everything.   If I have the guts, that is.  Do I need to go to support group meetings?  They actually exist, come to find out, and practically in my back yard.  Yes, I have some real thinking to do about my next steps.  But at least there is so much more about my behavior that makes sense now.

For anyone who cares to learn more about this journey of self-discovery, here are some links:

This is the story on the Oprah website that started it all:  http://www.oprah.com/inspiration/Best-Friend-Break-Up

More interesting info:

http://coda.org/
http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-You-Are-Codependent
http://www.codependencynomore.com/codependency-quiz-2/

Half optimism, half fear......

 

A Reflection on this Summer

"The Fair closed last night.  It's the end of Summer."  Every year I hear this phrase repeated on the local news broadcast.  For some reason, it always makes me irrationally annoyed.  My theory has always been that it is NOT the end of Summer, at least not according to any calendar I've ever owned.  If people choose to make it be the end of their Summer...well, that's entirely up to them.  But when I heard that inevitable phrase this morning, something felt different.  I found myself silently acknowledging the hidden truth behind it.  Why?  Because this Summer has been an emotional roller coaster for me, with a very clear beginning and a very clear end.

In review...

My daughter, my only child, one of my best friends, moved to New York City to begin a new and challenging life and career.  While I am so very excited for and proud of her, I keep wondering if and when the day will come when I will wake up in the morning and not miss her.  Or at least not miss her so much that my chest hurts,  I see other people whose children have lived elsewhere and have come back to Buffalo, and I know the happiness that they are feeling.  But I don't kid myself that it is a happiness that I will ever feel.  Look, it took Buffalo 100 years to rise into one of the great cities of our country and then decline into a national joke.  I am so proud and happy that we are on the rise again, but I just don't think it will happen fast enough for someone in my daughter's profession.  She is a chef.  Can anyone guess how many new eateries we would have to add before we even come close to New York City or Boston?  If she were in almost any other line of work, I would have hope.  Right now, it all seems very permanent to me.

And speaking of New York City... I traveled with members of my Chorus to sing in various venues around Manhattan over the July 4th holiday.  I will not go into detail about the performances, because I've already done that elsewhere (Five Days in July - making Miracles with Music Notes ).   I will just say that traveling with these people, performing with these people, enduring with these people and celebrating with these people bolstered my faith in humanity.  In a way that nobody or nothing else could have or probably ever will.

It dawns on me as I am composing this that the rest of my summer had a theme of health - my health, both mental and physical.

On the physical side, I was furiously battling some upper respiratory woes in a fight that had been going on since February.  Lesson I've learned - specialists are called "specialists" for a reason.  If you are really suffering and haven't gotten to the bottom of your problem after several visits to your general practitioner, then run -don't walk - to a specialist.  What are you waiting for?  Divine intervention?   I also decided, after seeing some pictures of myself, that I had really just had it with my pudgy, bloated self.  I didn't feel terrific.  I certainly didn't look terrific.  I decided to try a program that I had been reading about off and on for months called Whole30.  Without going into the necessary copious detail needed to really understand it, Whole30 calls for eliminating foods that are known allergens and inflammatories from your diet for 30 days.  It is really about discovering if food is the source of what is ailing you (it usually is), which particular food is ailing you (could be more than one food group) and the shocking discovery that so much of what we are sold in grocery stories - even so-called "healthy" grocery stores- is just plain bad for us sometimes to the point of almost qualifying as poison.  I suspected it all along, but until I experienced feeling about 250% better after completing this 30 day program, all I can say is that I am determined to continue eating this way even though it takes a lot of planning and cooking on the weekends and even though I'm pretty sure it will be even more difficult to execute during the winter months.  No wonder Europe doesn't want anything to do with our food.  Amazing!!

On the mental side, I've really been exploring the major relationships in my life this summer.  I  don't have many of them any more, but the ones that I do have are pretty complex.    It has been a process that started with my daughter making her permanent move to New York City and culminates with this post - although I would be pretty ignorant to think that relationships aren't continually changing - growing, shrinking, morphing, etc...

It started with identifying which relationships were even worth examining.  You know, expending energy on evaluating someone who really adds nothing to your life might not be worth it.  A person isn't necessarily valuable to you just because he or she isn't a detractor.  (Before I go any further,... I am not talking about social media "friends" and other acquaintances here.  I'm talking about truly major relationships created and built due to either blood, time, proximity, experience or any combination of these things.)  So, over the course of this summer, I've thought about these special people in my life - the good aspects, the not-so-good, the downright infuriating stuff, and I've  parsed them down into two groups.

- The "Time for Radical Change" group

 If someone contributes a whole lot more bad than good to me and my mental well-being, it's time to create some distance from that person.  I've heard the term "toxic" relationship being used in print.  That's way too general for my liking.  If two people have any kind of history together, their interactions are usually much more complex than that. No relationship is all bad or all good, unless you're living in some sort of magical fairy world. If it's not possible to physically cut the ties for some reason, then I have to learn how to mentally distance myself from that person.  I'm not sure yet just how I will accomplish this or if I will even be successful at all, but one thing's for sure: if it's coming down to my mental health versus this person's mental health, I'm choosing to fight for my own.

- Relationships worth fighting for.  This was the easy category to identify.

My daughter.  I know that long-distance relationships really can't be the same as the relationships we have with people in our own back yard.  What I have to do is to find a way to be done mourning the "back yard" relationship I had with her and move on to the next phase.  She is, as I said before, one of my best friends - the happy byproduct of successfully helping our children grow into adults.  Social media, for better or for worse, will be our ally, as will text messaging and e-mails.  I will be vigilant in my efforts to keep our lines of communication open, and our visits to the "Big Apple" will be highly valued, and every minute will count.

My husband.  What I have come to realize over this Summer is that he is struggling to adapt just like me.  Three months ago, I wouldn't have thought so.  We just returned from a trip to Toronto.  I had insisted that the trip not be about my birthday.  Mostly because I don't care that much about my birthday any more.  While we were there, though, it was clear that his priority was that I have a good time.  For my birthday and just simply for me.   Not all of the plans worked out as anticipated, but what spoke the loudest to me was that there actually were plans.  I loved that more than anything.  What I came away with is that we will have to grow into our empty nest.  We cannot just snap our fingers and - viola! - everything works.  I'm not sure why I ever thought it would be that easy.

My friends.  What I learned over this Summer is that, as with my daughter, just like long-distance relationships can't pretend to be backyard relationships, so too, backyard relationships can't thrive and grow if they're treated like long-distance relationships.  To me, they're like a flower bed - in your "back yard" (get it?).  You can't water and weed them through the computer or telephone.  Now of course, it's really just not that black and white all the time - is it?    But if the effort is there, the garden will flourish.  There may be a lot more weeds at some times than others, but as long as the weeds aren't allowed to overtake the flowers, everything will be OK.

Maybe the end of the Fair is the end of Summer.  I didn't even go to the Fair this year.  The Greek Festival has often been hailed as the beginning of Summer.  I didn't go to that either.  This is our life. Artificial beginnings and endings have a habit of psyching us all out.  Don't buy into it.  Try creating your own beginnings and endings and see where they take you.

August 10, 2015 Not a Bad Weekend

Checking in today with good news.  We had a nice, confrontation-free weekend.  Of course we were apart all day, both days and only met up at dinnertime.  Rather than analyzing what that might mean, I'll just accept it.   Because...... the last "episode" occurred on a weeknight....

Breathe... and one day at a time.  I am very happy that we are going to Toronto for two days, on a weekend that coincidentally falls on my birthday.  I am really not comfortable with the idea that this trip is "for my birthday".   Bill keeps teasing me that it is.  In my mind, it is NOT.  We try to go to Toronto at least once a summer, and the summer is rapidly disintegrating.  The 22-23rd just happens to be the weekend of which both of us have no other commitments.  This is not a milestone birthday, so I feel really uncomfortable thinking of this getaway as a birthday trip,  He will persist, though, because that way he gets to paint me as the self-centered jerk - at least that's how I feel when he refers to it as a "birthday trip".

<Sigh>....... one thing is for sure.  We are staying in a very cool hotel, and if it's the same type of room as last time, the room is also very cool.  I had the misfortune of getting my period the day we arrived last time.   A crushing disappointment, to say the least.  We had better make up for that misfortune this time around - bring on the wild night!  

House Rules

I really should post an entry on days when things are going well.  Monday was a good day.  Tuesday was good until approximately 9:00PM or so when, in the interest of sharing, I told Bill about some of my social plans for the what remains of the summer.    You see, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.  I'm told that I "don't tell him anything".  I was also accused on Tuesday night of "yelling at him all the time."    Hmmm.... what reason could I possibly have to yell at him, I wonder?  Why would I want to hesitate about telling him things?  It couldn't possibly have to do with the fact that anything I tell him that doesn't directly involve him is met with mockery, insults or incessant grilling and critiquing...

To sum things up, here are our current house rules

Husband:

 - does not clean up dishes after any meal and hasn't since he started working in the metal shop presumably because he was always "beat".   He no longer works in the metal shop.  Hasn't for months.  This along with never, EVER putting things back where he found them,.

- Plans random activities every weekend with male friend, whenever he isn't sewing insulated blankets.  Informs wife of his activities on a "need to know" basis.  All she needs to know is that he's rarely around on weekends,  He does usually show up for dinner and evening activities.  I'll give him that much.  And if I make plans for both of us, he's there.

- takes care of household tasks and chores on an "as needed" or "emergency" basis.  IE - one of his acquaintances was coming over last night, and he was frantically vacuuming and throwing clutter into bags to be hidden.

- if the wife says anything that he isn't 100% happy with or that he thinks may lead to something that he won't be happy with, he feels entitled to the use of swearing and nasty name-calling.  His idea of an ounce of prevention?  This behavior is usually followed by an extended period of nit-picking every move she makes.

- randomly intersperses periods of  light-heartedness, joking and generosity into all of the above so as to keep the wife off balance at all times.   During these periods is when sex usually occurs, which makes the wife wonder about his motivations.

Wife:

- cooks and cleans up after because the alternative is to eat out all the time which is expensive and unhealthy.  After a few years of picking up after husband and putting things away, she became totally discouraged and  not only stopped picking up after him but lapsed into his patterns of bad behavior.

- Engages in one outside activity that is very important to her -  important enough to put up with the mockery, insults and critiquing he give her.  Has gotten to the point where she plans activities with friends, tells him, then thumbs her nose at him when he fusses about it.  No point in even trying to be pleasant or diplomatic.

- now feels justified in saying what's on her mind as it comes in to her mind.  Otherwise, she will be accused of "not telling him things".

- No longer holds back her anger when he degenerates into the swearing and name-calling and sometimes responds in kind. She knows that it's wrong, but in the heat of the moment, she doesn't care.

- has decided that if she is such a crashing disappointment as a wife, she might as well respect herself by sticking up for herself when arguments start.  She knows and admits that she is not perfect.  Too bad he can't do the same.

- will continue to go along with the sex as long as it continues to be better than self-gratification.  So far, so good.   They always say men are only good for one thing.  Too bad they feel the need to live down to that saying.

Those are our house rules as of today.  So the question to be answered is this - are we life partners or are we roommates with benefits?    And what happens when you can't tell the difference anymore?