Sunday, November 25, 2012

A perfect mess

I swear sometimes I should just call this blog a shit storm. Just when I think I am grounded have got it figured out I'm firing on all cylinders, boom, I fall flat on my face. I was feeling great after my last blog post. I spent that week feeling so alive and connected with others and just having these great insights about my relationship with Josh. I felt resolved that I had figured out what I had learned from him and what I needed to put into practice - so much resolve that I felt completely ok with it all. I had my house warming party to look forward to this past weekend, my birthday, thanksgiving with my family. How quickly a week can change and leave me feeling emotionally ungrounded, sad, and just not wanting to be where I was. I've always been emotional. I thought this to be a strength of mine - to be in touch with my emotions, to know them, and to be able to see emotions in others. I think it is a strength - but a weakness too when I am not grounded in my emotions. This has been a great problem of mine - not being grounded in my emotions - for some time. It would come and go but always in a love relationship with another, I'd lose my footing at some point. I felt Josh was good for me in that he is a live and let live kind of person. He will tell you he's not very emotional which is true in a sense - but the fact is he does feel things very deeply but he doesn't express them always. Now me, I feel them, and I express them but in relationships often with drama and tears and feeling all over the place rather than grounded and clear. I feel this is what Josh has and was teaching me - how to be grounded in those emotions. Now here you have two people - one less emotional, but grounded in their emotions, another more emotional, and often ungrounded emotionally. You throw a baby into the mix and total chaos insues. I retreat further and further into myself, feeling unable to express my emotions clearly cause I am exhausted for one, and feeling so many different things all at once. I nit pick and nag expecting Josh to know what I am feeling or want or need without expressing it. Josh runs away because he's feeling emotionally ungrounded and there's no one there to ground him because I am all over the place. He can't express what he wants or needs either. We become very very alone when we need each other oh so much. And the relationship breaks and we're forced to learn how to be what we need to be in order to parent - to get what we need from ourselves rather than each other. Realizing all of this brought peace. I saw Josh this past Saturday as I got ready for my Open House and we shared an afternoon with the baby together and it was so nice. He sat with us in the kitchen while we had lunch, he played his guitar, the TV wasn't on constantly nor was he glued to his phone - he seemed to really take an interest. And we hung out on the porch and witnessed Julian climbing over the porch step together, for the first time. That was special. I was emotionally grounded during all of this - I felt strong and good. And then I had my Open House on Sunday and I had 30 or so people who came and Julian and I were surrounded by so much love. Then Monday comes. I am stuck in my head wondering what it all means - Josh taking an interest, being more present with us. I put pressure on myself about spending the holiday with the baby but without him. I make the holiday larger than life rather than just another day. I teach and am heading off to PA for Thanksgiving with the baby on my own, without Josh. I was emotional as he brought Julian to the studio after I taught and we both teared up as we said goodbye. I kept expecting something out of the movies were suddenly he's like, no I'm coming with you, but that didn't happen. I cried the whole way there - well the drive is about 6 hours so I didn't cry for the full 6 but I couldn't let go of this heaviness around my heart. Tuesday was my birthday and my parents took me out for lunch with the baby, I shopped a bit at my Mom's consignment store - it was really a lovely day. But no Josh. And Thanksgiving comes and a part of me is hoping he'll just show up at my parents house. But again, no Josh. And seeing my family wasn't a piece of cake to be honest. The baby brings so much joy to everyone. We witnessed him climbing up stairs for the first time. I took a video to send to Josh. Yet my family seemed to be falling into old patterns I thought had passed. I'm not responsible for their happiness nor do they claim me to be, but there is a part of me that does feel responsible. This is a role I took on as a child growing up in an alcoholic dysfunctional family - my actions keep the family together, bring happiness - that is what I learned. And being there this Thanksgiving, I had my brother who is dating a girl he's not truly happy with simply because he feels insecure. He admits this, yet he's willing to settle. My father who is unhappy his mother is living with them since Aug and keeps him from doing as often the things he moved to PA to do (fish, kayak with my mother, etc) drinks and isolates himself. My mother who is unhappy with having to do the majority of caregiving for my grandmother and misses being around her grandson throws her energy into the consignment shop she opened shortly before my grandmother moved in. And my Mom will joke with me and say I'm Dr. Phil and I do feel like that when I am home sometimes. I listen to the complaining and nitpicking and nagging my mother and father will often do to each other and about my Grandma, I'll listen to my brother talk about how he's always working, never making enough money, burning the candle at both ends... I love these people so much and they've always done what they could to help me and the baby. I want them to be happy so I offer suggestions, I try to offer a way out, knowing it's not up to me but to them, and deep down I feel they will continue to live unhappily because they don't feel they can choose different, and maybe they can't (move my grandmother out) but I am a firm firm believer in choosing your own situation and if you don't like it, deal with it, or choose something else. Advice I am trying to take! I come back on Friday emotionally drained and head off to Ray Lamantagne with a friend of mine who offered to take me. Amazing show. Any of you who know Ray Ray know he sings with such emotion. He sang this one song called A Lesson Learned which he said he couldn't sing for a long time on stage cause it was too close to home. I hear Josh singing this song and me being the one sung too... Well, the truth it fell so heavy Like a hammer through the room That I could choose another over her You always said I was an actor, baby Guess in truth you thought me just amateur That you never saw the signs That you never lost your grip Oh, come on now That's such a childish claim Now I wear the brand of traitor Don't it seem a bit absurd When it's clear I was so obviously framed When it's clear I was so obviously framed Now you act so surprised To hear what you already know And all you really had to do was ask I'd have told you straight away All those lies were truth And all that was false was fact Now you hold me close and hard But I was like a statue at most Refusing to acknowledge you'd been hurt Now you're clawing at my throat And you're crying all is lost But your tears they felt so hot upon my shirt But your tears they felt so hot upon my shirt Well, the truth it fell so heavy Like a hammer through the room That I could choose another over her You always said I was an actor, baby Guess in truth you thought me just amateur Was it you who told me once Now looking back it seems surreal That all our mistakes are merely grist for the mill So why is it now after I had my fill Would you steal from me the sorrow that I've earned Shall we call this a lesson learned? Shall we call this a lesson learned? And I hear he spent Thanksgiving with his new girlfriend at her uncle's and she met his parents for a bit and I just lose it... I get stuck in my story of wanting somebody to please come save me, to take all this away to make me feel whole again instead of a bunch of shattered pieces...to just love me. I feel like a child again, a sad little girl, seeking out affection. And luckily for me Josh doesn't give in.. He didn't give me a gift from Julian to me for my birthday like he did last year. He didn't show up unexpectedly at my parents on Thanksgiving. There are no grand gestures no words to make it ok - he is not the knight in shining armor. I am left bruised and battered and feeling utterly helpless and consumed with my own pain, my own story, feeling so depleted. All the sweets and carbs and lack of yoga this past week didn't help either! I teach a lot this weekend. I let myself cry a lot. I let myself feel the nausea, the pain the utter sense of hopelesslness in my body. The feeling that all is lost. The sense of regret. Of realizing my own mistakes - of taking someone for granted and not being grateful for that relationship and putting the responsibility of my own happiness on them and having my own agenda and just never truly letting them see me and feel me and letting myself love them and them love me. Now I wasn't always this way with Josh but it did happen at some point. There's this little girl in me at 33 who is still waiting for someone to come save her, to take away her tears and her pain, to always keep her safe and you know, that knight is not coming. That childhood has ended. And I never truly believed all that psychoanalytical crap about mourning your inner child and all that, but I have found some truth to it. This being emotional ungrounded that comes with my love relationship and not being able to vocalize my feelings and resorting to crying and smothering and fear is doing me no good. I want this woman I've become to know and use her voice. To not just write but vocalize her truth. I was blessed to do a private today with three lovely ladies and afterward we are having tea and cookies - so sweet - and chatting. One of the ladies there tells a story about a bridal shower where the woman's family is from Mississippi (or some of them at least) and that the shower gift they are giving for the bridal shower is a bar of Zest soap wrapped up with a nice message on the front and just how tacky was that that it was Zest... and I don't say much - well the rest of us ladies don't say much - but we giggle and laugh a bit but I do say "at least it's an A for effort" cause inside I'm thinking man, at least this woman tried to pull something together, who cares if it's Zest really, I wouldn't... but I don't come out and say what I'm really feeling cause frankly I just met most of these ladies but also I don't know what they'd do with my different opinion and it's easier to just agree and nod my head but inside I'm like, I am so not that girl!! What am I doing!!! And this I realize is the girl who gets into relationships and plays it safe but is so much more interesting when she does not. I'm learning this but it's so hard to put into practice. So I come back to this email on Thanksgiving I received that is about gratitude. And it is making me believe that gratitude is the answer to my problems, the answer to this loss of self I mourn, the answer to what I want in the future - I am starting to believe that gratitude is ALWAYS the answer. Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. So here's to my next year around the sun - a year of giving thanks for all that's come before, for all that I do have, for all that will come.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Press pause

Some weeks it seems the flood gates are just wide open and I get more than one blog post in a week because realizations are coming and I can't keep myself from writing. After I wrote my last blog post No Distractions on Monday, I was reading old blog posts and remembered I started this blog when I returned from India in 2009, right at the very beginning of my relationship with Josh - the first 6 months. Reading those posts showed a relationship in many ways vastly different in roles than it is now. I was the one feeling more insecure scared unable to trust while Josh was the one being more open. Or at least that was the perception then. And I feel right now I am the one wide open, vulnerable and raw, sad and blissful at the same time, not safe at all, and he is the one closed off to emotion, shut down, playing it safe. I was really struck by it all as I read and decided to call him after about 15 min or so of picking up the phone, putting it down. We see each other a few times or more a week cause of Julian, but we text to correspond and I haven't called him just to call him in.... I don't know how long. So I decided to do it cause I felt it was what I wanted to do. And he picked up. And I talked for about 15 min and he listened not saying much, and then said that he had to go, but if I wanted to talk again soon, we could. Saying that to a Scorpio is like turning on Niagara Falls! And if he knows me, which I feel he does, he knows this - I was hooked. I don't think he intended to be manipulative - but it was. He was unconsciously playing with my emotions by telling me I could talk to him which I desperately want to do - but also not opening up himself. I have a feeling he learned this well from someone very close to him. It has worked on me in our relationship and it was working yesterday and today. Till I paused. Yesterday was a day the Universe spoke loudly to me. About a month ago I was teaching at South Boston Yoga and a man and his traveling companion took my class. They were jovial nice yoga loving guys. He was visiting his son and grandson named Ananda in Boston. I wished them well. Here we are a month later and I'm visiting a friend of mine and her son in Davis Square. We sit with our babies next to a couple with their baby. Conversation strikes and we learn their son is named Ananda. I think this is too different of a name to be a coincidence so I ask, and sure enough it's his dad I met a month before. He calls his dad right then to tell him. We all continued to chat and connect and it turns out he and his partner have been on again off again since the birth of their child - struggling too. And I find out this guy grew up a few towns over from where I did, and the girl rowed crew as I did. So I invite them to this Open House I am having Sunday and as it turns out his Dad is in town and will come too! This guy is an artist who teaches yoga and art and meditation and I go on his web site, and he's been to India! So of course the mind wants to make a story out of all of this... Josh saying I could talk to him means this, this guy who loves yoga and meditation and who I can clearly see I'd have something to talk about and it would be so much easier to communicate with and who understands what it means to be a parent means this... After I emailed him inviting he and his partner and their child to the Open House and I'm waiting all day to see if he emails back wondering what will he say.... I'm thinking of Josh all day searching online about emotional repression, narcisistic mothers, scorpio capricorn astrology texting him about it and even thinking of being so bold to just text him "hey the baby is asleep. wanna fuck?" Excuse my french. I actually have my sex drive back post baby even with my lack of sleep but alas! And truly I just desire that connection so bad as much as I am afraid of going there with someone. I am being brutally honest here... Suddenly I'm like what the hell is going on? I pause, I breath and I reel myself back in. I read the Daily Om a friend sent to me yesterday which struck home when it said "There are people whose psychological problems prohibit them from having a long lasting relationship. These people are married to their pathology - their story. You chasing them will not break their defenses, resistances and impairment" Hello, wake up call. Truth be told I still love Josh so very much. Truth be told I want my family to be whole and intact so very much. Truth be told it can't happen unless Josh is emotionally available. I've done my work, I'm doing my work, and I'm just glad I have yoga and my community and the love and support around me to keep me in check. I may stumble, I may even falter a bit, but luckily it hasn't been too much of a detriment. I know I'm doing the best I can. Josh said when we talked on Tuesday he's simply trying to move forward. The truth is we don't have to try to move forward at all - life is happening. Julian is a beautiful reminder of that. Life moves forward without any action of ours at all. So the more we can sit and press pause and reflect on our feelings, our actions, our state of happiness or lack thereof, and then act accordingly, the better we will be for it.

Monday, November 12, 2012

No distractions

About a week or two ago, I decided it was time to get rid of as many distractions as I could that were keeping me from truly sitting with the emotions and thoughts that have been coming up for me. This decision came about after I was out driving on a Sunday morning with the baby to get groceries for the week and who do I see driving by me? Josh and his new girlfriend who I know. Ugh. Now I suppose I should have referred to him as my boyfriend or my ex months ago when he's been mentioned in here, but as you all know, I am not much of a private person, and he hasn't made a big stink about it, so Josh he remains. Anyway, I cried underneath my sunglasses on a gorgeous morning truly not caring who could see I was crying at this point, posted something about it on facebook, and my Mom called me and gave me a great reminder - that I had the best of Josh in Julian, and that really hit home for me. No matter what happened between us our son is the best of him and me. It was something about seeing the two of them together - the Universe giving me this great reminder that YES this is YOUR LIFE that I decided it was time to get rid of distractions. I unfriended him on facebook that day. He doesn't post much on facebook but when I'd get on there on my iphone I'd check his profile and see if there was anything new, and then I'd search for his new girlfriend, who I am not friends with on FB but I know, and then just seeing her would make me want to puke... you know the drill :) I also took the facebook application completely off my smart phone because I felt I was using facebook as a way to communicate with him and with others, without truly communicating, if you know what I mean? It's much easier to say something on Facebook than it is in person! It's much easier to text or email than it is to talk face to face or call on the phone. Facebook has been a huge source of comfort for me during this time of great change but I'm at a more grounded place now where I feel I need to process all of what's coming up and truly communicate with myself first, and then with others. This blog also has been a huge outlet for me during this but I feel continuing to write here, helps others, and there's no hidden agenda like there could be by posting or going onto facebook. So how has my life changed since no facebook? My hands hurt less! LOL I was glued to it on my phone and now my phone may still be nearby but I play music a lot more. I dance more. I interact with my son more. I am happier. I am discovering things I've wanted to do for a long time - like learn to play guitar. I went and bought myself expensive sexy bra and underwear for my upcoming birthday because even though I have no one to wear it for I'm wearing it for myself! That's a whole other blog post in itself... to be continued... I printed pictures I've wanted to for a long time and bought frames and hung them and feel so happy every time I see them! I'm finding I'm still connected with those that matter even without FB and even more connected actually. Life is happening and I'm IN it rather than trying to just capture it or observe it. No distractions has caused me to understand the feeling of truly missing someone. I was teaching the other day and I wasn't sad or thinking about Josh in particular but all of a sudden it was like BOOM I miss him. My emotions are becoming much more clearer. I also cut out all (well most) of my trips to the Portuguese and Brazilian bakery and more than one cup a day coffee because yes those too are distractions. I am watching for when I am treating myself because I am being good to myself and I am treating myself so I can push or shove an emotion down. I'm getting a better understanding of what I want though I don't know entirely. I am realizing I am still very much a passionate woman - she has not been lost - and I'm sharing that with those around me. I am understanding that I've had this tendency to stop being myself in relationships and that needs to stop. I'm understanding I have this great fear of failure but that isn't going to stop me from trying. I think I always tried to eliminate the fear - it can't be eliminated but by acknowledging it and still trying I'm giving it voice and living with courage. So that's what no distractions as been bringing. Keep it coming!