- My highly analytical/high feeler combination… how normal is that and what to do about it…. The thought-provoking Oprah mag article about thinking versus feeling and how instinct is feeling and we often confuse the two… how to stop thinking about my feelings so much..Layers of them. Thoughts atop feelings and then feelings about the thoughts and thoughts about those feelings. My GOD, make it stop. Meditation? Prayer? When I remember to do it.
- MC asked me whose idea the divorce was. I stumbled through it. I HONESTLY don't remember what I said. How do I honor my need for emotional honesty while doing what's right for my children? I can not lie and say it was mutual.
- NO wants to have a laser tag birthday party. I can not do that for/with him. CAN NOT. I've tried to tell him I really don't like laser tag, that I've had a negative experience with it and simply don't like it, and he just presses for more. I don't like keeping information from him when I ask him to be honest and open with me, but it is not his burden to carry to know that I hate laser tag because the one and only time I played laser tag was with him, his father, and his father's mistress on the opposing team. FML that was quite the evening. He pushed and pushed for an answer from me, not satisfied with my "I just haven't had a good experience with it and I just don't agree with shooting at people for fun anyhow" response. He finally dropped it, but I hardly imagine it's the last time it will come up.
- And what to do about his birthday in general. The big 10. Shitty time for a party, as we are still adjusting to the new reality. I'm not sure that the rules I set up between the birthday party for the MC and the LO this summer and fall still apply. I'm not interested in trying to do it together. Why don't we just have two parties/events.
- And random topic…. I think I should email my lawyer and ask if there's anything I should do about the fact that it has now been over two months since I made my proposal in mediation. Do I nudge for a response? Or do I just let it go for now since the one positive about this whole situation is that he is still paying the bills by and large. I can't emotionally let this go on after the house sells, which will be next spring or summer (God willing), but until that point, I really don't care. But is there any kind of risk or downside in this?
- More evidence of how all my relationships are built on this notion that I'll be there for them when they need me. My mom texting me with a message saying, "please check email from me and respond" in the middle of my work day (she didn't necessarily know if I was working or would answer my phone or what, and I gladly stopped what I was doing for 5 minutes to assist. Honestly didn't mind. I like to be helpful. That's not the point. Or maybe that is the point.
- How hard is that anniversary coming up on Saturday going to be? Would have been 11 years. My parents will be in town. Their anniversary as well. Planned it that way on purpose. How romantic then. How tainted and painful now.
- What does it mean that my sister and my father (whom I both love dearly and who love each other but also struggle with each other in part because they are so similar) had affairs? I thought that my father's affair(s) shaped me in one particular way, but I'm just wondering now if perhaps they affected me in other ways as well. I thought his affair (primarily the one I was most aware of), affected me by showing me that good people can make bad choices, people can grow up and out of immature habits into healthier patterns, marriages can go through rocky times and come out stronger, etc. etc. Those are all good ways that I was shaped by my parents' experience with infidelity. Did it perhaps also shape me in a less positive way? Is my father a bit narcissistic? Yep. He's a wonderful dad in so many ways, but he's also a pain in the butt. And some of the specific ways he's a pain could be described as narcissism. Some of the things I've been reading lately, suggest that some of us are more inclined to fall in love with narcissists. So did I inherit some of those patterns by both having a father-daughter relationship with him and also watching my mom be in relationship with him? Do I even have such patterns? Was my marriage's collapse partly due to a relationship to someone with narcissistic tendencies?
- This entire damn obsession with who might be or have certain qualities of a narcissist. Is it a useful thing to explore or a diversion. I'm pretty clear that's it's a diversion if it's just an attempt to blame the whole thing on another person by diagnosing him (something I'm not qualified to do). That's looking for answers (and falsely finding them) where in reality, there really are none to find, just the grief process to go through, anger, acceptance, etc. etc. ON THE OTHER HAND… am I just beginning to uncover some important themes here about myself and my relationships with others in general (not just my husband), that might be powerful and important of establishing a brighter future. Hence all these books available about people who are attracted to narcissists and how not to fall in to those patterns again.
- And I get that I have to change in order to get what I want out of life. No one said this was going to be easy. The point of all this therapy is to actually grow and make my life better, not just to have someone listen to my pain. That said, I think I have figured out what it is I need to do and I'm not comfortable with it at all. I don't like it. Don't want to do it. Am scared. Resistant. Hiding from it. I think I need to learn to put myself first and just saying it scares me because I feel like the sole reason I'm well-liked is because I don't. I'm so resistant to the notion that I don't even want to acknowledge that I have work to do in this area. Even the acknowledgement feels vulnerable. Like people are going to not understand it or think that's just like them when it doesn't look like them from my perspective.
Ok. 1 am AGAIN. How am I ever going to fit all that into a 50-minute hour as Dar Williams says….?
In honor of dear Dar…
What Do You Hear In These Sounds?
Words and music by Dar Williams
I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak
I go and I find the one and only answer every week
And it's just me and all the memories to follow
Down any course that fits within a fifty minute hour
And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something,
But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself...
And she says
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, What do you hear in these sounds?
And... Oooooooh,aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?????
I say I hear a doubt, with the voice of true believing
And the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving
And she says "Oh", I say "What?"...she says "Exactly",
I say"What, you think I'm angry
Does that mean you think I'm angry?"
She says "Look, you come here every week
With jigsaw pieces of your past
Its all on little soundbytes and voices out of photographs
And that's all yours, that's the guide, that's the map
So tell me, where does the arrow point to?
WHO INVENTED ROSES?"
and.......
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?
And...Oooooooh,aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?????
And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink
But Oh how I loved everybody else
When I finally got to talk so much about myself............
And I wake up and I ask myself what state I'm in
And I say well I'm lucky, cause I am like East Berlin
I had this wall and what I knew of the free world
Was that I could see their fireworks
And I could hear their radio
And I thought that if we met, I would only start confessing
And they'd know that I was scared
They'd would know that I was guessing
But the wall came down and there they stood before me
With their stumbling and their mumbling
And their calling out just like me...and...
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, The stories that nobody hears...and...
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, and I collect these sounds in my ears...and
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, that's what I hear in these sounds...and...
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, that's what I hear in these......
that's what I hear in these SOUU OUUUN NNNDS!
I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak
I go and I find the one and only answer every week
And it's just me and all the memories to follow
Down any course that fits within a fifty minute hour
And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something,
But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself...
And she says
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, What do you hear in these sounds?
And... Oooooooh,aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?????
I say I hear a doubt, with the voice of true believing
And the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving
And she says "Oh", I say "What?"...she says "Exactly",
I say"What, you think I'm angry
Does that mean you think I'm angry?"
She says "Look, you come here every week
With jigsaw pieces of your past
Its all on little soundbytes and voices out of photographs
And that's all yours, that's the guide, that's the map
So tell me, where does the arrow point to?
WHO INVENTED ROSES?"
and.......
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?
And...Oooooooh,aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?????
And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink
But Oh how I loved everybody else
When I finally got to talk so much about myself............
And I wake up and I ask myself what state I'm in
And I say well I'm lucky, cause I am like East Berlin
I had this wall and what I knew of the free world
Was that I could see their fireworks
And I could hear their radio
And I thought that if we met, I would only start confessing
And they'd know that I was scared
They'd would know that I was guessing
But the wall came down and there they stood before me
With their stumbling and their mumbling
And their calling out just like me...and...
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, The stories that nobody hears...and...
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, and I collect these sounds in my ears...and
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, that's what I hear in these sounds...and...
Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, that's what I hear in these......
that's what I hear in these SOUU OUUUN NNNDS!
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