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.