Therapy

My parents came into town last night and are here for a couple of days.  After my therapy session today I flippantly said to my parents, that "I'm not sure why I'm going."  Granted it was only my second session, and I know it's good to go, but how in the world can this help me I argued?  I feel like self-awareness is one of my strengths.  I feel like I understand conceptually what happened here.  Yeah, it hurts.  Miserably.  But I get that I'm going to get through it and it takes time and it's grief and yada yada yada.   So what insight can she possibly provide me with?  Especially since it doesn't seem like she intends to provide me with any insight but rather let me find it for myself and I feel like I've already found it for the most part.  I realize that sounds ridiculously self-assured and like someone who isn't open to learning at all, but it's not that at all.  I'm very open to learning.  In fact I'm desperate to learn from this situation, about myself and others and relationships and everything.  But I don't really see how 50 minutes a week with a therapist is going to accomplish that.  If she hardly knows me, how can she get to know me at the level that she needs to in order to understand more about me than I understand about myself, if quite frankly, I'm pretty strong in the self-awareness category.
My father, who's in no way "anti-therapy," answered my quip by saying, "I was was wondering that too."
"Because," I answered him. "Everyone tells me I need to go to therapy to deal with this."
I'm not saying it won't be helpful to have someone to talk to as I go through this process, especially as we get into mediation, but it also seems like I'm not going to get what I want, someone to guide me through this process and help me become wiser and stronger.  Not that I won't become wiser and stronger, but what can the therapist really do to aid that if she hardly knows me?  Dad agreed, and again, not because he takes issue with the notion or therapy, but because I think he believes I'm doing what I need to do already.  Emoting, processing, learning to appropriately compartmentalize, honoring my grief while also carrying on, and choosing to find joy in life despite pain.  What the hell else am I supposed to do?
The one nugget that came from today's therapy session (so perhaps there's evidence of its usefulness) was that it's clear I'm looking for answers or even more specifically, I'm looking for lessons.  What can I learn from this to grow as a human being, to make sure that I don't have this same experience again?  And the therapist challenged me on that a little bit, something to the extent of "why do you want to learn from this?  So you can avoid this pain in the future?"  And I realized what she was saying is that nothing I can do will guarantee that something else horribly painful won't happen.  I get that.  Life's uncertain.  I'll get through this and recover and who knows what could happen.  God forbid, but I  or someone I love could get a terrible illness, I could lose a loved one, I could... who knows what else, but I can't control that (and how I like to have control over thing)s.  But I'm not entirely on board with her point.  I certainly can't control all of my life, but I do have a lot that I can control, my own actions and behaviors, and in so much as those effect what happens to me, I'd like to control that much.  But perhaps that's also the point.  Maybe I was doing everything I should have with my actions and behavior and this shit storm still happened.
Ok, falling asleep at my laptop, so I need to give in to it at nearly 2 am.  With the boys away from me for the weekend, I think I'll have to give into a Saturday nap.  Maybe as soon as the 5 teen girls having a sleepover in my house get picked up (after I make them pancakes in the morning).  What a trip to have a house full of adolescent girls!  I think they've had a good night.  They helped make Shabbat dinner, we did Shabbat and girl stuff and then made vision boards and finally watched a movie.  It feels good to give them what I hope was a meaningful evening together.

Rings

The first few days after I took my ring off, there was still an indentation, not to mention a paler strip of skin where it had been.  Both clues to the great symbolic change in how my fingers are adorned have essentially disappeared by now.  It doesn't seem like that's enough time for my fingers to adapt.  Ten years of wearing those rings.  Shouldn't my finger still show evidence of it?

Soon after I took off my wedding and engagement rings I went and bought a new ring at the market.  I desperately needed the feeling of a ring on my hand, something to fiddle with.

Slippery slope

It's a slippery slope down to the pit of misery, and I find like in some twisted emotional chutes and ladders game, that I never know what one little thought might trigger the downward spiral.  For example, I was looking at my kindergartner's journal today that he brought home on this last day of school.   Lots of entries about zombies and volcanoes and a few about what his birthday will look like.  Innocent musings.  Happy pictures and short sentences filled with the simple anticipation of turning six.  I couldn't help but think how that will be the first of the boys' birthdays that we aren't together.  Now we have to navigate this distasteful course of the divorced family birthday situation.  We've always had home birthdays too.  We've never really been that gymnastics place or pizza fun land restaurant family.  Too expensive I've thought and better to just be able to do it ourselves at home.  And we've thrown some amazing parties for the boys.  Hawaiian and Legos and Star Wars and Roahl Dahl, and more.  And I can't imagine another party like any of those again.  At least not with both parents involved.  And what's bound to be more important to the boys than sharing their birthday with both parents?  So I guess we get to become one of those gym  or swimming pool birthday families where we can both show up and not talk to each other and smile and hug on our boys for their special days and ugh.  Awful.  Ok, so I guess it's only "awful," because it's so not my vision of what I want for my family.
Anyhow, thoughts of my now-first grader's upcoming birthday made me wonder all of a sudden then if he (my soon-to-be-ex-husband) postponed the inevitable back in January because of Number One's birthday.  Did he stall and not leave right before my trip to Hawaii in Februrary?  Had he given up all the way back in December but didn't want to make it official until after Hanukkah?  Or then until after NO's birthday?  Maybe it was the same with Thanksgiving.  So when did he give up?  When did he cross that line?  I obsessively want to know.  When did he stop loving me?  And then I go to the inevitable: Did he ever really love me to begin with?  And there you have it, from looking at a kindergartener's school work to wondering if he ever really loved me to begin with in no more than two minutes.  It's taken me longer to write all this down than the amount of time the thoughts bulldozed their way through my brain.
I try to stop the downward spiral by reminding myself that I'm pretty certain he loved me to the best of his ability for a good time.  I have evidence. Cards. But that reassurance is weak in the face of such pain.
Good thing I'm going to see the therapist tomorrow.  Maybe she can give me some tools for shutting down this emotional spiral.

Bedtime

Absolutely must learn to go to bed earlier.  It's closer to 2am than 1am.  I know that I'm not as good of a parent when I haven't had enough sleep.  And after two baseball games and late bedtimes last night, the boys aren't going to be at their best either.
There's just so much to do.  Between the old chores (laundry, dishes, pick up, etc.) and the new chores (setting up online banking for my bank and my credit cards, paying bills, dealing with all the legal paperwork that's beginning to call out for organization and management), it's suddenly 1:40 and it's not like I've been wasting time watching TV.  I don't care how unequal the distribution of effort was around here, he still contributed more than naught.  And now, not only am I left with all of it, I don't even have the emotional support.  I can hear my mom and sis arguing that I was practically doing all of it anyway and didn't have much emotional support.  They're right in a way, but he did contribute, and even if the emotional support wasn't what it should have been, I still felt like I had a partner instead of facing it all alone.
Then again, sometimes, doing it all on my own cultivates a sense of pride and "screw you - I don't need  you" attitude that is empowering to a certain extent.  And so my mind spins, round and around to see all sides, ad nauseum.  Sleep will overpower that.

Interactions

What would be normal everyday interactions are so very painful. Even when we manage to interact without any emotional drama, keeping it entirely logistical and business-like, it's still so indescribably hard. Especially when he smiles. That's the worse. It's awful when he smiles and it's unbelievably irritating when he looks like a sad puppy dog. That one just pisses me off. Which I realize isn't fair to him, because that doesn't leave him many options for expression that won't upset me, but I don't need to be fair right now.

I think my goal is to be able to stand beside him at Number One's bar mitzvah and have all my energy going into pride and joy at his accomplishment and none of my energy going into my self-absorbed pain over the loss of the family that I believed in. I have three and a half years to accomplish that emotional transformation. To become that iridescent grateful butterfly, not sad and angry because I'm no longer a caterpillar, but happy with where I am. Seems like a Herculean task.

The other night he put up on Facebook a few beautiful pictures of the boys from their night together. Stunningly gorgeous photos of our sons. And yet seeing them just filled me with anger and sadness. How proud I've always been of his photography. I have loved the way he captures the spirit of our boys. And now, the pictures are just hurtful. Perhaps more so because they were taken in the other house. In a new bunk bed and in the different setting that so clearly isn't their life with me. Perhaps it wouldn't have been quite as painful if they were in a park, but I don't know.
Maybe the photos should be another goal. To be able to enjoy his pictures again without pain, even when they are of times I'm not with my boys. He took some pictures of the boys for Mother's Day and they put them in a frame for me. I have yet to hang them. They're too tainted, nor are they the best pics, compared to so many others.

Ok, enough moping. It's 10:15 at night and after two games this evening, I need to figure out how to get grass stains and dirt out of baseball pants. It will doubtlessly be midnight again before I get all my chores done.

Thank you Dar Williams for your song, "It's Alright."  I've been listening to it regularly as one of my theme songs for this experience.  Sums things up quite nicely.
I know change is a bad thingBreaks me down into a sorry sad thingNot some iridescent grateful butterfly

I do resist change.  I am inherently someone who likes stability, tradition, patterns, met expectations.  I am not my sister who constantly yearns for the next thing.  I generally want to stay and perfect whatever I have.  


I'll resist with defianceNot the valor of a mystic silenceI will fight the dizzy spiral of goodbye

And boy did I resist.  I fought this dizzying spiral of goodbye with everything in me.  I gave it everything I had.  And I know that I am and will draw confidence to move on from knowing that I did absolutely everything in my power to not let this happen. 
And it's alright, it's alright, it's alrightIt's alright, it's alright, it's alright
Please don't say you don't love meNever dangle any sword above meWith the kind of change that severs me in two
I don't believe I ever really heard this verse until it happened for real.  I don't even really remember knowing what this song was about until it was my life. How many times had I sung along to the first verse or the chorus without even realizing what I was singing about?  Not that it's hard with three boys in the car to not catch all the words to a song during those rare moments when I was listening to "my" music.  But, like those theories that say you can't see something that you don't know exists, I don't think I ever realized what Dar Williams was singing about.  And now, I wonder, how does she know?  Has she had her husband of 10 years, father of her three sons, leave her?  How am I supposed to become a butterfly through this?  And not just any old butterfly, but an iridescent grateful one? 

Give me amberizing glassesCould you slow it down like molassesAs I salvage my old self away from you?
Oh, it's alright, it's alright, it's alrightIt's alright, it's alright, it's alrightIt's alright, it's alright, it's alright
Because I have seen insane thingsAll those grand, historic paintingsMorning light on polished swords and burnished pride
Anxious smiles encased in whaleboneSpines of steel from head to tail boneCannons poised to blast the turning of the tide
It's a sad and a strange thingBut it's time and I am changingInto something good or bad, well, that's your guess
I refuse to have it be questionable which way I've changed in the end.  I WILL come out of this stronger, wiser, and with a heart still full of love for those around me.  
I'm my own sovereign nationDedicated to a transformationMarching on with this target on my chest

I feel like a sovereign nation indeed.  Suddenly I'm at odds with my partner.  The one who was supposed to by my ally is now an adversary.  And I'm supposed to both stick up for myself and take care of my needs in this mediation process, which I sure as hell will, while also building a new partnership with him as a co-parent.  So I have to fight for myself in one part of our life and work with him in another part.  I guess the good news is that the mediation process can't last forever.  Eventually I will be able to put that aside and focus only on building the parenting partnership. Though right now I am so filled with hurt and anger that is very difficult, like walking around with a "target on my chest."  It's so easy to go from the logistical, businesslike conversation to the emotional and fraught-with-danger conversation.  One little comment can switch gears with a whiplash of intensity.  

Oh yes, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright Oh, it's alright, it's alright, it's alrightIt's alright, it's alright, it's alright
Oh, it's alright, it's alright, it's alrightIt's alright, it's alright, it's alrightIt's alright, it's alright, it's alright
But it's going to be alright.  In the end.  In the end.  Every day I'm working my way to being that butterfly.  Often I think of it more as a fucking butterfly, but eventually I hope to be iridescent and grateful.  I have so so many thoughts that just circle and spin in my head. It's like watching clothes spin through the glass door of a washing machine.  There's that one again, and again, and again.  And it's connected to that thought, which makes me think of that other thing again and there it is again, and yes, that makes me think of that again, and hey, isn't this a pattern, and haven't I already had this conversation in my head a thousand times already?  So maybe if I put some of the thoughts down I can take them out of my mental spin cycle.  Maybe.  Or at least, I'll have a record of how they eventually wore themselves out and new thoughts moved in. 
In my first session last week, my therapist asked me if I was a patient person.  I told her I had always thought of myself as patient, until I became a parent.  That's not entirely true I realized later, it was becoming a teacher that showed me I was less patient than I thought. But I believe her point was that I wasn't being very patient with myself.  That I need to allow myself to feel what I'm feeling (I am, trust me), and not be in such a hurry to feel differently (that's the hard part).  I'm not accustomed to holding onto grudges or anger or hurt this long.  
Ok, there really is no conclusion to this opening piece.  There probably won't be any nice tidy opening and closing thoughtfulness to any of this writing.  It's for me and me alone.  Stashed somewhere in the recesses of cyberspace, with my new anonymous identity, it will likely never be read by anyone but me, and that's fine.  I'm the only one who needs to see it.    Now to figure out how to blog straight from my phone.