Mar
30
I didn’t have anything going on this weekend, which felt a little yikes to me going into it — I should be doing something, I should have plans, I should be productive/busy — and then it settled around me, like a full-bellied exhale. Why should I have plans? There are plenty of times when I do, and having free time is a luxury, not some sort of criticism.
(This is definitely a divorced lady thing, for me anyway. I feel like it’s weird/embarrassing somehow to have an open dance card? As though my worth as a person is tied to a busy schedule? As though in family life you don’t get a free weekend and crow about it to anyone who will listen? “I didn’t do shit, it was just chill!” “Oh that is so nice, girl.”)
I did however take myself on a local summit hike, Mt. Pisgah, which is technically less of a hike and more of a grueling deathmarch up a gravel trail. It’s short but quite intense, although I can count on being passed by a runner just at the point when I am wishing I had brought a cyanide capsule for a quick exit option. Or someone in a weighted vest, just COME ON NOW.
Once you get to the top, the misery is instantly forgotten and you can bask in the view along with the knowledge that getting down is far more pleasurable. I hadn’t done this hike in a good long while, and like many things around town it is a little haunted for me. I remember the kids leaving us in the literal dust on the way up. I remember sitting on the bench at the summit, flanked by both boys. I remember when it wasn’t just me, when I felt like a part of a bigger whole.
There are ghosts everywhere, though. I pay for groceries and remember when the same bagging clerk would say nice things about the kids. I drive past a playground and remember sitting there on warm days. I go to the movies and remember when we would thumbs up or thumbs down each preview. I see an ad for Sonic and remember getting treats there, watching the workers come out on roller skates.
This can all get a little muddled in my mind. Sometimes I find myself piling all the normal sad feelings that every parent goes through as their kids get older into a sort of divorce bucket, like it’s all part and parcel of one outcome. But it’s not, of course. Kids grow out of playgrounds, and that has nothing to do with my marriage status.
So I have to watch that. Being at the top of a hard hike is not a lonely feeling, it’s one of deep accomplishment (and relief). Being divorced does not mean I will never do this hike with my boys again. Sometimes the best way to de-haunt a place is to go back, perhaps not necessarily to playgrounds like a creeper, and be in it again. I was here once before, and I’m here now, and things have changed between those times, just like they changed everywhere.
Maybe what I felt when I got up there was the sense of being a deeper kind of alone. The same sneaky feeling that tells me I need to stay visibly, acceptably busy or I am of no value to anyone. The same feeling that prompts me to take a photo and post it on Instagram Stories or it will be like I was never there.
But I was there. That was enough. And you know, maybe that means I am enough, too.
Letting myself believe that, even a little, helps me stop clawing at memories and enjoy them instead. It helps me sink into a restful weekend without worrying that some unseen entity is shaking its head in pity at me. It helped me on that hilltop, feeling the breeze, feeling strong, feeling gratitude for what was instead of pain for what isn’t.
Mar
28
For many years now, this blog has been a place for me to document my days, but more importantly, process my feelings. I often find my way to the heart of what I’m dealing with emotionally through the act of trying to describe things to you, dear reader.
The stage I’m in now has been enormously tricky to navigate with public writing. I have this great desire to make sense of the reality I am living in, to be seen in it. Things can feel so isolating; I deeply crave commiseration, validation, reflection.
But that kind of support can be destabilizing to others in this story. The parts of my story that feel the most painful are live wires connected to people who are not me, who have stories of their own, who I love more than anything in the world.
So my work here is to find the truths that can be shared in a way that honors my experience, while staying fully in my lane. And let me tell you, that has been hard and I have messed up more than once.
I think the most honest, safe way to describe my life post-divorce is that it does not look like what I thought/hoped it would look like, and that is something I can keep talking about in general terms. It’s the part of my life that is the most difficult, the most painful, and it feels so BIG. Sometimes it feels like everything, this feeling that things are not as they should be.
That is where the struggle happens, right? What is that saying, Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Which is a deeply annoying thing to consider sometimes, like oh thanks I guess I just have to life coach my way out of this severed arm that got torn off by a wheat thresher. But I can understand the basic truth of it. If I’m stuck in a pouring rainstorm, I can either accept that I’m getting wet or I can get wet and howl in misery at the sky. Neither option keeps me dry.
It should be different is a thought I have to let go of. In part because the whole of that thought is “…because things would be better,” and I can’t keep trying to convince people to agree with me. Maybe that isn’t even true, no matter how it feels to me. But also because this is how things are, full stop.
Who knows about the future but this is how things are, there is no sign of change, and it’s time for me to stop scrabbling against it. Beating my wings on a hot bulb, nothing happening but my own ability to fly burning black.
There is a big difference between sitting with pain and spinning out trying to figure out how to get rid of it. Sometimes it feels like way too much to let that pain really come to the table. It tells me it is overwhelming, that I can’t handle it. It comes with a lot of sneaky no-good thoughts like this is all your fault and this is because you’re a bad person, you always have been and you always will be. It tells me that it is an endless black hole of hurt and it will never ever get better.
I have been stuck at acceptance since day one, I think, and always trying to convince myself that I’ve progressed. Whew, that was tough but I think I’ve got it now lol!! The truth is that it was tough, it still is tough, it’s going to be tough.
This is tough and that’s okay. It’s okay for things to be hard because sometimes things are hard. Pain does not automatically mean I did something bad. Pain will not kill me, it is a natural thing to be feeling, and it will in fact evolve over time. It won’t always feel like this. Nothing stays the same forever.
I think it’s important for me to allow the bad feelings to come on in, and also to make sure they’re not bring a bunch of backchannel buddies. Yes, I feel loss, but no, it does not mean I am a bad mom, a bad person, or that I did not exist for the past 24 years. Yes, this is sad, but I am not erased. I cannot be deleted from life’s grid. I am still here.
My life meant something before and it still does. My whole life has taken on a different shape and not everything looks like how I wish it would look and that is how it is. If I manage to expand outside of my own navel-gazing, there are a GREAT many things that are not how I wish they would be, and that is how it is.
Don’t let this pull you back from being their mom, my therapist told me recently. Mom harder.
I like that, Mom harder, and I think it can apply to my own self as well. Oh honey. I know it hurts. I’m sorry. Let’s just sit here for a minute.
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