Because I got high and Christmas spaghetti in Mexico

I wasn't really concerned about spending Christmas alone. It is pretty clear to all that I am not Christian. There is some speculation that Jesus was a High Boddhitavva, that he traveled and studied Buddhist teachings in his lost years. There is even some theory that Jesus was a reaincarnate of Buddha himself. But, all the same,  I do not celebrate his birth. In any theory, he was still just a man. The celebration of Christmas in my life is cultural and Western and untraditional. My children and I have a long tradition of celebrating the holiday on any day, when the time feels right. This year, that was December 12th. By the 16th, the tree was down, the stockings in boxes and the family spread around in various places. Today is Christmas day. A day most will celebrate the birth of Jesus and be with family and eat and exchange gifts and watch football. But, today, I woke up alone in Mexico. And I did not feel any need to be elsewhere. My children are spread celebrating with other people who love them and care about them deeply. My husband is on a ship somewhere and we are barely speaking anyway. So, I didn't mind waking up alone in Mexico. I did not long for my family. I am ok.

Last night, I let the culture of this place guide me. I visited friends and had drinks and roamed around dispensing good wishes and receiving friendship and tequila. I was invited to several midnight dinners. An apparent tradition here that I appreciated and enjoyed the idea of. But I was reluctant to accept these invitations. Only for one reason, I do not speak the language. I felt that sitting with a group of friends of friends and their friends and so on would likely result in my sitting at a table with Spanish conversations buzzing around me and I would not understand most, if any, of it. Still an idea that I appreciated and enjoyed but I did not firmly accept any invitation.

As it happened, I was moving from one set of friends to another and was stopped in the street by another set. (Isn't that sentence beautiful? Yet another joy of this city and this part of my life. People. So many wonderful people) I was 1 beer and three margaritas into Mexico Christmas Eve and was content to just be roaming. But, the set of friends in the street would not let me pass. It was firmly decided for me that I was to go with them to Christmas dinner at a local home and there was no saying no. I actually resisted a bit but in the end decided that the insistance of my conpany was worth whatever would come of me in the swirling spanish voices at a stranger's table with people I knew well and people I would meet that day.

So we went and we bought cervesas and rum as our part of the dinner and I found myself in a small Mexican apartment. There was no table. There was only friendship and smiles. Chairs and stools and the smell of meat and spices and good will. I was welcomed into a couples home who I had, incidentally, met the night before. There were no strangers in the house. I was overcome with this incredible feeling of being honored to be invited into their home. Honored to have been so insistently welcomed into their tradition. I felt a sense of kindness and connectedness with the room full of people. The Spanish and English both poured out of everyone as easily as the cervesas and rum poured into our glasses. I felt, as I often find myself feeling here in Mexico, like I was at home. Like I was where I was supposed to be. And then the dinner was served. I had seen it cooking. It was in the corner of the one room apartment after all, but I was so caught up in the community of it all that I had not paid attention to the content of it. Just the smell. And then, the woman of the house handed me a plate of spaghetti. I don't know why it struck me as so funny to be having spaghetti for Christmas dinner, but it did. They called it chili over noodles. It was delicious. The song "Cheeseburger in paradise" parodied in my head as "Christmas Spaghetti in paradise."

As the night and the drinks went on, soldiers started to fall. I found myself, at 4am, walking down the street with only 2 people left. I intended to be on my way home. But the men left standing with me, both from the group that insisted I come to the dinner, wanted to stop at the tall one's house to complete the celebratory night with some Mexican weed. So, we detoured and I found myself in another one room apartment with a tall boy and a drunk boy from California, a Altoid tin of marijuana, a cervesa, and a coca cola can. It reminded me of so many times with so many friends. The coca cola makeshift pipe reminded me of something my husband had said a week ago and so many nights as a teenager watching friends pass around a can in the same way and me passing it up all the time.

So, in my 4am Mexico Christmas rum and cervesa and spaghetti state of mind, I took the can from the tall boy and I smoked weed. It's a little inexplicable. I not only do not smoke marijuana or do any other sort of drugs but I especially hate being high. "Seemed like a good idea at the time" comes to mind. I don't know why I did it. I think I just wanted to connect with so many of my friends and my childhood friends and my new Mexican friends and continue to feel the community of the night. So, I didn't pass on the makeshift coca cola pipe. I got high. I mean, I got really high. It's a little foggy for a bit. I know I layed in the floor and put my head on something softer and heard different ins and outs of the tall boy and the california boy coming in and out of consciousness too. But I did not feel bad, or uncalm, or any of the things I usually feel. I felt good. I felt completely relaxed. I probably would have just stayed there on the floor and found some dreams. Everyone was basically in the same state I was in. But then the california boy's body decided it was time to purge. I hazily heard the door of the apartment open and then the all too familiar sound of 5am's violent rejection of cervesa and rum and spaghetti and weed. The california boy was puking, loudly, and the tall boy was providing water and whatever comfort anyone can give in that situation. Me, I was still just laying there being high. But, I got up and put on my shoes. It was time to go home.

Then, my thoughts went strange. I started having these thoughts that since me and the tall boy (he is a friend, by the way, with a real name and he is a man, not a boy, but he is 6'4" and has this funny innocence about him so I have never called him anything but the tall boy) were the last soldiers of Christmas, we could not fall. I could see, or maybe not, that he understood that. He was ready to soldier on too. We went with the California boy to hail a cab and made plans to go have a drunken breakfast. Soldiers watching the Christmas sun come up. But, as the cab rolled up, the California boy got in already fallen and wounded and the tall boy started to waver. A few minutes of debate next to a cab at 5am on Christmas between three drunk, high, probably mostly incoherent people and the tall boy decided on sleep.

I have to blame the weed for what I felt after that. I was offended. Hell if I know why! I felt like I was the last soldier left and everyone had abandoned me. You know me, with my over analytics and my constant searches for the deeper reason for my feelings. Weed doesn't help that. I guess it took me 36 years to find that out, but now I know. So, the fact that the tall boy who is nothing more to me than a casual friend passed out drunk and high in a completely normal and logical way at 5something in the morning made me feel abandoned. Rejected. Like I was being cast out. The entire cab ride home, I was lost in these thoughts about how the tall boy had been my last hope (of what, I don't know, I only know I should not smoke weed) and that I was all alone and rejected and it was somehow my fault.

So, logically, of course, I came home and immediately messaged my estranged (or, well, I guess I'm the estranged one) "husband." I remember doing it. And I remember swimming in all these feelings of abandonment. And I saw my husband had been online (damn facebook for giving me the ability to know such things) for 2 or 3 hours and had only sent me two words. And, logically, of course, I sent him a message asking him if he was too drunk (?!?! He was at work on a ship without the ability to even drink alcohol) to answer me or if he just didnt want me to find him (?!?!?! find him? He's on a ship in the ocean) because the "tall boy had given me all the rejection I can handle tonight." I read the message back to myself and started laughing. I mean LAUGHING. What the fuck did I just write? And I couldn't imagine how my husband would actually even be able to decipher the sentence. What? Haha. I wrote more. Laughing at first. And then I went some place sad and dark in my mind. I read it all this morning. Some was things he wouldn't even understand at all because it was coming from my subconscious. Others were apologies for my blame in the current state of our "marriage." I felt it all. And over felt it all. And realized that my feelings of rejection and abandonment and being left to soldier on by myself were just manifestations of how I felt about my life right now, about my marriage, about my disease, about my lonliness, about my uncomfortable transition into freedom. He read the messages at 11am this morning. 18 minutes before I woke up. He didn't respond with a word. If I was high again, I'd be able to use some seemingly unrelated experience to explain how that made me feel even more rejected and abandoned. Even more alone. But, I'm not high. I'm just hung over alone on Christmas with my feelings and these words on the screen.

But, I am ok. I am. I didn't mind waking up in Mexico alone and I do not long for my family. I am still doing this important work of figuring myself out. I think I'll go back to hating weed. But I think it helped me on the path to figuring out me. Today, I'll meditate on rejection and abandonment and lonliness and why freedom is so uncomfortable. I'll try to let those things go from deep inside me. I am ok.

Liquid embrace.

My first memory is as clear as if it were yesterday. I don't know how old I was or what I may have looked like. I remember no faces or consciousness of any visual stimuli, outside of stainless steel and flashes of skin color. All I remember was the smell of my mother’s hair, like Ivory soap and that very clean smell that you can't really capture any more since Bath and Body Works infected the innocent smell of the freshly clean. I remember the smell very distinctly. And I remember the sensation of being bathed. I was in the sink. The water was very warm and was wrapped around me like a hug. I fit perfectly into the sink like it was designed just for me. It was a womb and I was a baby. I remember my mother humming and talking to me in that voice that people reserve only for non-verbal infants and pets. I remember, most of all, an overwhelming sense of safety, love, and warmth. The water dances down my neural memory lane the most. The warm, soothing, safe water. I can still go there sometimes when things get rough and let that 34 year old water from a well tap in a house that burned once, flooded three times and is now an empty slab of concrete in an abandoned campground. You can still see the outlines of the rooms filled with all the memories or forgotten. The rock porch and waterfall that I helped my father build, in that way that small children help build, still stand as they were, minus a working waterfall pump. The well still plummets deep into the ground but no tap arises to pour warm embrace on any more infants. I can still go back there though, any time I want. That is the joy of memory. I think that's why I love water so much. My first impression of safety and embrace, pure unsoiled security, no strings attached love, came from that half-filled stainless steel sink that my Ivory clean mother bathed me in. My first lesson, security can be real. Love can be pure. I have spent a lot of energy in my life chasing that warm stainless steel liquid embrace.

Paralysis

Today, my thoughts wander to whether I hate men. I love them, but I think maybe I hate them. Right now, I do not like any of them. I do not like my husband. I do not like my ex husbands. I do not like men who are kind or men who are mean or men who are in between. I just do not like them. But I love them. I don't know how to work that out in my head. I feel relationships feel good until they are real and then, they make me crazy. There is not a more eloquent descriptive word for it. I feel crazy. I feel like it is always a constant struggle and eventually everything in the relationship just hurts. It is part of my pattern. I feel like I have no business being in any relationship at all. When this marriage started to hurt me more than make me happy, I just wanted to give up. To run away. To hide from all relationships. Love is such a complicated and hard thing. People bring their pasts with them. They bring their futures with them. They bring the baggage of all of their journeys and another suitcase full of expectations. I do too. I do not know why I think that any relationship should be perfect. I know there will be hurt and anger and uncomfortable silence. I know that there will be times when things are bad and times when things are good. But I feel like I have had too much of the bad times and not enough of the good times. I don't know if that is just my thinking or if it is reality.

I have a very hard time forgetting the hurts, but I am not sure if this is justified or not justified. The hurts can be so enormous. So cruel and lasting. To be called a bitch can be forgotten. To be told you are the worst women in the world and be attacked on every possible level is very much harder to forget. Forgive, sure. I can forgive. But forget. To believe that the words said are not true. To believe that the lies or the abuses will not happen again. To believe that it will pass and not return. That is the hard part. That is the part that makes me feel that I have no business being in a relationship. That's the part that makes me want to wrap my heart in armor and let the chill of the metal turn me cold toward romantic love.

I have been through almost anything a woman can. I could sit in at least 10 different support groups and have something to contribute. In my adult life, I have been beaten, controlled, raped, verbally abused on a level that is beyond comprehension. I have been emotionally abused (a term I do not use lightly and am fully aware of the real definition of), imprisoned in my own home, stalked, manipulated, stolen from, used, lied to, isolated, shamed, beaten some more, emotionally abused some more, cheated on over and over again, stalked some more. I have had to disappear. I have had to fight with all I have. I have had to gather strength that I did not know was possible just to stand up and move forward. I have had to leave. All from men. Men. And I know this is why I hate them. 

I have been loved, but I'm not sure I have been loved in a way that others have been. I have not felt respected or protected or secure or cared for. I have been loved. I know this for sure. I am still loved. I know this for sure as well, but I do not understand the kind of love that I have experienced. It is a love that does not make sense to me. It is not the love I have in my suitcase of expectation. A love that does not make me fear for myself or my children. I have not had that love. I have had it for a while, and then it is ripped from me in a moment sometimes and slowly over time other times. Love. The hardest word in history to define. What is it? And why have I wanted it so much? 

I have loved. I have also hurt men. I never went into any relationship with the intent of hurting anyone. I honestly believe I never initiated any hurt. I went in with positive intentions. With feelings of hope. There has been only one relationship that I willingly endeavored without real affection and feelings of at least some form of love. That was a very long time ago and I paid dearly for it. When I was young, I was not knowledgeable or mature or unselfish enough to do it perfectly, but I did love and I did have positive intentions. What I learned of love from my life before my first real relationship was about commitment no matter what. It was about overcoming obstacles together. It was also about much conflict and hurt. And I did not want that part of it. I did not want the conflict and hurt. But it was part of love. I learned that and I knew that. But then, things happened. Things I did not expect. Things that did not make sense to me. Things that were beyond my scope of what love was supposed to be. Things beyond even my understanding of what people were supposed to be. Things that people do not warn you can happen. 

My first marriage was basically an escape from my parent's home. It was not that my parent's home was so bad, it was that I was a teenager and I wanted to be an adult. I wanted out of their home and to have freedom. I took the opportunity when it came. I think it's possible that I thought I loved that person. But now, it is difficult to imagine any kind of love feeling. It turns my stomach to imagine that I would have ever felt any love for him. It was a magnificent mistake, but I cannot regret it because it gave me a beautiful son that has been a source of light to me since he came to the world. It gave me him. So it was necessary and irregrettable. But the things that happened inside of it changed me forever. The specifics are for another day, but that relationship damaged me for a very long time. I came out of it a completely broken person who had no idea who I even was anymore. I came out of it exactly as he intended me to be; void of myself. Broken. Weak. Lost. But I came out of it for my son. I distinctly remember the day I gained the strength and perspective to walk away. My son had been born and I was looking into his tiny face and I had an overwhelming urge to protect him from his father. To protect that sweet innocent boy from this man doing to him what he had done to me. Before then, I am not sure I was fully aware that his father had done anything so terrible to me. I knew I was very unhappy. I knew I felt crazy and people were noticing that I was losing myself. I knew I did not wish to even be in the same room with him. I knew I did not like myself any more and that I was having panic attacks and was afraid very often. Not  afraid for my physical self, he was far too cunning to ever hit me. But afraid for what bizarre, hellish punishment would befall me if I took any step in any direction. What twisted words would be said to me or to others or what mistake I would make today. Afraid to breathe. Afraid to speak. Of all of my relationships in my life, this one was, by far, the most damaging. There was never a bruise left on my body. Never a blatant thing I could put my finger on and say "This is what is wrong." I understand it now, but only because I have studied psychology and have explored the mind of a sociopath. I was married to one. Someone without a conscience. Sometime who has, still to this day, spent a significant amount of his time attempting to fully destroy other human beings in ways that normal people cannot believe or comprehend. And I will never be the same for having experienced being the victim of that. I could have, perhaps, healed from it had I not had a son with this man and will continually have to have contact and protect my son from the effects of it. I have been forever tied to a sociopath and he will always wield some power over me because of that. At least now, I know what I am dealing with and I know how to carefully tread on explaining and helping my son understand as he goes through life. 

I went straight from that marriage to another one. I was only 20 years old. When I left marriage 1, I was a broken, fragile, very lost and confused thing. A shell of person. Nothing of myself. But I slowly began to find myself again. I slowly gained some confidence and strength and beauty again. I began to find me. Clumsily, usually drunkenly, but steadily. And I started sleeping with this boy. I did not care much for his personality. I did not like him all that much on any deep level. I certainly did not love him. Never. Not at any time. But my morality did not want me to sleep with many men; I didn't wish to be a "whore." And my fragility wanted me to feel attractive and worthy of affection and attention. So, I started sleeping with this boy. He was ok. I did not hate him (yet). I enjoyed spending time with him. I think I only enjoyed spending time with him because he showered me with attention and affection and made me feel like I was the only girl in the world. Made me feel loved. It didn't matter to me that I did not love him back. It didn't matter to me that I did not even really like him. It mattered that he made me feel better about myself. It mattered that he made me feel lovable. But then, I got pregnant. <Expletives> And in the lovely tradition of the south and misguided morality, it was certain that we would have to be married. No child out of wedlock! He must "do the right thing" and I must just go with it. I will say that I tried desperately to back out of the marriage. I even suggested that we pretend that we got married and not actually get married while we were on our way to the "alter" in Las Vegas. He demanded we get married. He physically took my hand and drug me out the door of the hotel in my silly wedding dress with a 5 months pregnant belly stuffed in. And we got married. I would say that this was necessary and irregrettable because I gained not one but two beautiful sons that have been a source of light for me, but I would be kind of wrong. I did not need to be married to him for these sons to come. The first son was accidental and the second was conceived abusively. Husband 2. What to say. He did not break my spirit. If anything, he made me stronger. He was not smart or cunning or manipulative enough to do what my first husband had done. He lacked the skills to emotionally harm someone enough to break them. But his fist was strong. He beat me. He did not beat me once. He beat me multiple times. I was fragile enough to allow it to happen. To rest in it while I gained strength. To contemplate over and over again while he isolated me and controlled me and alienated me from anyone and everyone and did what all men who use their fists do. 

But over the course of that relationship, while my bruises would come and go from the beating, my emotional wounds were beginning to come to the surface from Husband 1. Yes, being beaten was an injustice. Yes, I had rage. But I will say 1000 times with conviction and never back down from it: I will take a punch over emotional beatings any day. The bruises heal, the evidence is easy for others to see, the scars remind you that you have been mistreated. It is straightforward. It is easy to know it is wrong. It's easy to explain to yourself. It's easy to explain to others. It's uncomplicated. It's clear that it isn't your fault and nothing you could do would cause you to deserve it. At least, it was to me. It is not to everyone. Maybe it was because I was the ex-wife of a sociopath. A wife-beater seemed like the difference between Calculus and basic addition and subtraction. The wife-beater was the latter. Simple, straight forward. Again, the details and day to day emotions and rages of that time are for another day. But in general, I was a battered wife who cried and hid and felt the trauma, guilt, shame but was quietly healing at the same time. This is when I found Buddhism. This is the time I learned to forgive. This is the time I learned how to let go of anger and rage. And I found it out of necessity. I found it out of desperation. The way, I think, many people find God. I am still perfecting that practice. At that time I was a newborn deer just trying to learn how to walk in forgiveness. But I did not forget.The intense anger that bubbled below the surface in me and often seeped out of my skin like sweat started to change during that time. My black eye was just an abusive jerk who I allowed to hit me. My black heart was starting to heal. I could handle being beaten. It was just bruises. I knew I'd leave eventually. I knew it would not last forever. But then, he made the mistake of putting a tiny bruise on my son. He spanked him with such force that he bruised him. That night was a Reckoning. That was the end. To this day, I will hate him for that and that alone. That is unforgivable.

When I left that relationship, I was stalked for a year. Somewhere in the leaving and stalking, my youngest son was conceived.  A violent circumstance that can be inferred, but I do not wish to publish in clear words. Eventually, I fled and moved in with a man many hours away. I assumed anonymity. The man and I were very good friends. We were close. I loved him in that way. He loved me in that way as well. We considered getting married. He even game me a ring. We gave love a try. We walked the walk and talked the talk. But, in the end, we became roommates and lived in separate bedrooms and knew that we were very good friends, maybe the best. Probably still would be if his wife would let him speak to me. I do not have a laundry list of things this man did to damage me. He didn't. He gave me more friendship and security and time to heal than anyone in my life has or had. But, he was also married at the time I moved in with him. I was the "other woman" and I did not know it. Not for months. I found out accidentally. He left his family home to get an apartment with me. The only real negative thing I can say about that relationship was the he lied to me many times. But I was so incapable of trust on any level at that point that it was not that significant to me. I stopped trying to be his "fiance" because it was friendship. I stopped being his roommate because I fell in love with someone I'd already loved and Husband 2 had moved on to his second victim so I was free to return from anonymity. I was old news.

My third marriage was nothing short of true love. I married my high school sweetheart on a random Wednesday, half drunk, high on Xanax and inhibition and about 45 minutes after the proposal. We bought simple wedding bands with crosses on them at a pawn shop on the way. Nothing mattered. He was/is an alcoholic, an addict, half crazy, full of passion and unpredictability and I loved him. I have never, after him, had to try to figure out what love is. That was love. I do not think many get to experience the kind of love we had. That love will endure until we die. We will never stop feeling it. I am not ashamed to say that it will never end. Anyone who has ever been in a room with us together knows it is true. We will feel love for each other until we are gone and then some. We were high school sweethearts. He was my first love as a child and he was my first love as an adult. Our marriage was a complete mess. He was struggling with alcoholism and sobriety. I became, if I wasn't already, the very definition of codependent. We were more than a mess. We were constantly in some battle or another that gets told at every AA/NA/Al-anon meeting in the world. But, it didn't really matter. When we locked eyes, we were in love and electricity filled the room. A tragedy occurred a year into our marriage and his best friend and a man who I loved almost as much as I loved him died. It was both a defining moment in our love and in our demise. The entirety of the day to day of our messy struggle is, like all of them, a story for another day. But it didn't matter. Love endures all things. I know what that means now. But, I am not married to him anymore. I had to leave him. It was the hardest decision I will probably ever have to make in my life. After almost 5 years together, I discovered (because he overdosed) that he had been significantly drug addicted and had been lying, stealing, manipulating and living an entire double life. I could have endured that. I really could have. I could have moved past it and tried to regain some kind of trust. I could have gotten past the shock and the slap in the face and the complete blind side of it all. I could have. I could possibly even recognized inside of the marriage my own codependence (as it was, I discovered it afterward) and healed from it. But, he did not overdose once. He overdosed several times. He went to detox and returned to using. He committed to sobriety and used immediately afterward. He started sleeping with a silly old scratch to try to make it into more of a wound that would leave a scar. He beat us to death. But I still loved him. I was paralyzed by that. But, I looked at my sons and knew that I could not let them either know or endure the man that they had come to love as their father had become not just a recovering alcoholic, they knew that, but a true junkie. The kind that sends children into adulthood with scars and patterns of behavior that destroys their happiness. I couldn't do that to them. I could have endured. But, I did not have a choice. I believe that as firmly as I believe that the sky is blue and trees are green. I did not have a choice. 

After I left, he went to a very bad place. I had to flee again. He, in his drug-fueled insanity, had made threats to me and told plans to his family and took action to say he was going to commit a murder-suicide and that was that. I do not know that he was capable of going through with it. I do know that the man who he was when I ended our marriage was not him. It was someone else in his skin. It wasn't the man I loved. It was this other guy, a guy I'd named Tom a long time ago. He was Tom Squared. And I had to flee and hide again. 

I started talking with a friend I'd known since we were children. A facebook connection at just the right time, I guess. I started talking to him and kept talking to him and we missed a random meeting or two and somehow realized that we had feelings. We planned a meeting. And we met and there was a massive chemistry. I was, quite frankly, deliriously happy with him even in the midst of the polar opposite disabling pain of having to divorce someone I will always love. He worked in other countries and was gone half the time. One month home. One month gone. 

When he was home, I was living an amazing life. He was amazing. We laughed so hard together and got along so well. We wanted the same things. We loved the same things. He was spontaneous yet stable. He was responsible yet irresponsible in all the right ways. He was like a breath of fresh air. He was uncomplicated and easy but so fun and full of life. We seemed so perfectly matched that it felt like home. We fell in love. I don't know exactly how to explain falling in love with him while I still loved someone else. I guess it is like having two children. You don't believe you are capable of ever loving something as deeply as you love your first child, but then you look into your second child's face and you realize that your capacity for love far exceeds what you believe it can be. The love I felt for Husband 3 was not the same as the love I felt for Mr. New. It felt healthier. It felt good. It felt rational. It felt like something from a storybook. I felt like I was saved from the messy mess of my third marriage and complicated divorce by this knight in shining armor that was all things good. It wasn't the same passionate, electric love. It was a comfortable, light, happy, carefree love. A love that feels like home. Honestly, he was all things good. Even when we disagreed, it was good. It was uncomplicated. It was so easy and wonderful and I'd never been happier. I felt like I'd been given a gift to compensate me for the years of pain I had endured. I thought he was my reward. I thought that the healing and learning and pain I had taken to discover so much about myself in the in-between of him and husband 3 had given me the ability to recognize what a healthy relationship could be. I felt free and light and so very happy. 

When he was away, I mourned and learned and felt and dealt with the pain of divorce 3 and letting go of the electric love. I was living a double life as well, I suppose. But the time alone when I could reflect and heal and be confused and all the necessary things was precious to me. After a year with Mr. New, we moved in together. A few months later, he proposed. The problems started when we decided to move in together. Things started to get less easy and his demons started to come out. I think I had properly prepared myself for the minor (to me.. remember, I've been married 3 times already at this point..so it WAS minor) commitment of moving in together. I'm not sure he had. We maintained an outside appearance to most of the world that things were still blissful, but things started to happen. He would have outbursts of pure verbal cruelty. He started trying to control me. He started telling me what to wear and how to fix my hair and criticizing my body and my actions and my everything mercilessly. He started censoring my words and telling me what to do in completely inappropriate, sometimes shocking, ways. It was like some strange culmination of husband 1's cruelty and husband 2's control. But it would come quickly and go quickly. I would be left shocked and confused and have no idea what had happened. Sometimes it'd be provoked by something real, sometimes it was unprovoked by anything. It got worse. It continued, randomly, but regularly, for years. I would try to talk about it with him. He would fight with all of his might against talking, feeling, knowing. 

I had not married him in those years. I chose, by my own choosing, a very long engagement. It is not that I did not want to marry him. I did. Even with the Jekyll and Hyde insanity, I really did want to marry him. It was that I did not want to be married to anyone ever again. I was terrified of it. I knew that that permeated our relationship. I had rebounded so much from my previous state of codependence that I was now just pouring my emotions out as they came. When I felt it, I let it out. I am tempering that more now, but not in those years. That did not help. He had never been married. He had never really even been in a serious, long committed adult relationship. I think his deep demons that he was not even aware of came straight to the surface when he was facing living together, giving up his home and starting one with me, getting married, sharing his life. He would stuff those feelings away and then explode. I do not know. I am still in this marriage. I do not have the power of hindsight yet. 

I did marry him despite all of this. About a year and a half ago. What seemed to others to be a perfect couple in a perfect wedding on a perfect beach wasn't really that. We have this way of maintaining appearances. It's not really my style, but it is his and I have really tried to respect that outside our own circle of friends who are aware of the demons and how they manifest so bizarrely. And, sometimes, our life is still a fairy tale. Sometimes, I am still a princess and he is still Prince Charming. But, our storybook wedding has a few ripped out pages. We fought our entire honeymoon and had the worst fight thus far of our life during that time. I think both of us were finally letting the fears and baggage and suitcases open up and come out on that trip and we took it directly out on each other. I told him the night before the wedding that I did not think I could do it. He, rightfully, became angry. We fought. But we got married the next day. We fought on our wedding night. We fought the days after. Between perfect beach moments and wonderful dives, excellent meals, unadulterated fun, and amazing people, we fought hard. We fought dirty and mean. We even fought physically once. It was both the best and worst experience we had had together. There was a moment on my honeymoon that I wanted to die. Honestly wanted to die. It felt literally as though there was just no point any more in attempting to do this thing they call love. And I wanted to give up on all of it.  And there was a moment on my honeymoon that I believed I was the happiest and luckiest person in the world. Bipolar love. Roller coaster. It still is. Right now, sitting here, I have bruises. I'm beaten up. The relationship is currently paralyzed. I have decisions to make. And it seems that no one really knows that except a very few. Appearances and all that. Living the perfect storybook life. It is not true. This is not a fairy tale. I am not a princess. He is not a prince.

But there's something about him that is different. I do not know if it is because I have so much insight from my own experiences and recoveries or if it is because somewhere in all those years I managed to study and work in counseling and psychology. I do not know if it is because we are much more deeply connected than even we may admit. But I see this thing inside of him. I see this person in him that is not capable of the things he says and does. I see the shame in him after a cruelty. I see the innocence in him. I see his own shock that he is capable of doing and saying such things. I see the confusion in his eyes about what he has done. I see that he did not know those demons lived inside of him. I see it very clearly. If I did not see that, I would not be sitting here. I would not have married him. He would not be husband 4. I would not be so confused. I would have gone away a long time ago. But I see this better person who is battling things that have nothing to do with me. I feel immense compassion. Immense love. Immense feelings of wanting to take him in my arms and comfort him for what he has done to me. It sounds insane, but it is very real. But I also feel a seething rage. A need for revenge. At times. At times, I feel a very scary indifference. The indifference bothers me the most. Nothing seems to make any sense. Bipolar love. Roller coaster. Up and down and round and round. Our relationship is paralyzed. I don't know where to go from here. I hate this. I hate being here again. And the last incident with Mr. Hyde has put me into a state of complete and total ability to make any move. I'm just Frozen.

I feel it important to note here that I am not, was not, have never been blameless in any of my relationships. I will say that I think I was fairly blameless in the first marriage. I do not believe any action or non action I took in that marriage would have changed anything. He was a special case. But my others, I had a part. I played a role. I had responsibility. I was not perfect and never would claim to be. I did not deserve the manipulation or abuses or beatings or words, etc, but I was not blameless. I played my part. I did things wrong. I was/am a bad spouse as well. I am the subject of their stories too and they will list my transgressions as well. But it's my party and I'll cry if I want to.

And I don't know if I hate men. Or if I love them. I felt crazy for a while, but now I just I just feel tired. Men have taken too much and I'm tired of gaining strength over and over again. Every time I let go, something makes it all reattach itself. Maybe the ocean will finally take it away.

Pinball Wizard

So, I'm alone in Mexico. Just me. No kids. No husband. No family. Nobody. Me, my thoughts, and the quiet are all awkwardly sitting here together. I will be here a total of 18 days alone. I chose this. I chose it because I need it. I know I need it. It occurred to me when I was contemplating staying alone in a foreign country for a measly 2 1/2 weeks that I was terrified of it. I have never been alone for 18 days. Not at home. Not in another country. Not anywhere. I have always had kids or husbands or boyfriends or family around. Always. I went straight from my parent's house to a husband's house. Since then, I've bounced all around like a pinball bouncing off people like bumpers. When I would fall into the drain, I'd just bounce like the steel ball again into more bumpers. I've never stopped the game. I've always had people around. But, I chose to be alone for 2 1/2 weeks. I almost backed out. And facing my first full day alone here, I have had the urge more than once to hop a plane and go back to my people. I feel a pull toward my sons and I want to go to them. Just to hear them around me. Just to know they are there. But I need this. I need to be alone.

A friend told me to be careful. That being so alone could harm me. That I needed people to bounce off of right now. I disagreed. I have to be alone with just me, my thoughts, and the quiet. I have to sit here like this until it is no longer awkward. I have to sit here like this until it feels ok. I have been bouncing around for too long and I need to leave the ball in the machine and take a break. I have lived this life that seems impossible to explain. I have felt victimized far more than I feel is possible. Therapy, meetings, books, meditation, reflection, conversation; it's all been helpful but I am in a pinball machine under glass bouncing around the same obstacles over and over again. They have different names. Different faces. Different environments. Same obstacles. And it has to stop. I'm so tired.

So I am spending 18 days alone in Mexico. I don't know what I will do with it. I know I will not be drinking every day this time. I know I am not here to escape reality this time. I am here to soak in it. I am not here this time to find as much noise as possible like last time. I am here this time to quiet the noise and see what is under it. I need to find me. I need to contemplate the pinball board. I need to review the puzzle. It's not the first time I've done that, not by any means. I've contemplated more than most. But I haven't done it alone. Not truly alone. Not without the distraction of people. I hate being alone. And I need to figure out why. I need to face it down and figure out why my own company has always been my least favorite. I know, deep down, why. I know I don't want to face myself. To review, once again, my own mistakes and responsibilities in my story. I don't want to admit that I'm not as healed as I thought I was. I don't want to admit that I did not release myself from the pattern when I thought I had. I don't want to decide what I really want and how to get there. I don't want to talk to myself. I don't want to go through the work of it. But, I want the peace at the end. I want the calm, quiet, decisive end result. And I'll only get that, this time, alone. I know that the only thing I can and will talk to about anything meaningful is the ocean. And I can't run this time. I can't drug it or drown it or fuck it or laugh it away. I must feel it. I must.

So, here I am. Alone in Mexico. Contemplating the best way to feel it. Should I write about it? That always seems to help me the most. Writing it all down. Telling the story. Should I meditate? It calms me down and makes me empty. It is designed to do so. But will it be enough to get the answers I need. Should I do it with discipline and a set plan or should I let the tide take me as it decides to? Should I stop over thinking it or start over thinking it? I don't know. I'm just starting. The first thing I wanted to do was write. So I am. But maybe I just want to write to connect. To feel like I'm talking to people. Figurative. Unknown. People. But when I write, I am usually writing to myself. So maybe that is my version of talking to myself. I only share it afterward.

All I know is that I'm tired. And I feel lost. And I need to be alone. So I am. So today I will just congratulate myself on going through with it and not buying the plane ticket back to people. That is enough.

Things not to say...

I came across this list of replies to Things Not To Say To Someone With RA. It's a decent list, some not yet applicable to me because I'm so early in actual treatment of it. All the same, all of the sarcasm is priceless to me and more than a little appreciated. I am in a sort of rage about my disease right now. I'm heartily stuck in anger. The list I read isn't complete, in my opinion. It's also lacking enough curse words to properly portray the frustration of hearing this shit from people, here are my 5 additions to the list.

For reference, here is the original list: http://rawarrior.com/20-replies-to-things-not-to-say-to-a-rheumatoid-patient/

1. "You just need to smoke some weed."

Hey, listen, I get that weed can be helpful for a lot of things and may even help relieve the pain, anxiety and depression associated. But it is temporary and if we are going to find illegal temporary drugs to get that effect, why not suggest heroin or morphine? Same sentiment in my eyes. I have an auto-immune disease for which there is no cure. A joint isn't going to cure my joints. I will require hardcore meds for the rest of my life to slow down the disease in order to delay becoming disfigured, deformed, and unable to independently function. That will happen eventually anyway. More to the point, I HATE SMOKING WEED. It's not for everyone and I am not looking for an excuse to get a medical marijuana card. Liquor kills the pain too and I actually LIKE liquor. Please stop saying this to me. It makes me want to punch you in the face. Also, fuck you. 

2. "The mind is a powerful thing. Maybe you just need to change your thinking/attitude."

Ok, listen, if I could "think" my way out of this pain, I'd have done it a long time ago. On bad days, I feel like I am simultaneously walking on no less than 10 broken bones while someone is sticking knives and/or ice picks in various parts of my body and the other "better off" joints are frozen and cracking and popping like icicles when I move. AND my muscles are sore from the extra effort they are making trying to hold me up despite all that. AAAAND I have a low grade fever and that's just pissing my body off. AAAAND I generally feel like I ran a marathon with the flu. I am probably pumped full of all the meds available to me, covered in heating pads, already took 3 hot whirlpool baths, and slathered myself in whatever icy-hot-esque oils or creams I can find to distract me from the pain for a few precious minutes. When you tell me to think my way out of that and adjust my attitude, I sincerely wish the pain I'm in on you so you can try to "adjust your attitude" to get rid of it. I want to punch you in the face. Also, fuck you.

3. "Don't do that! You're going to hurt yourself. Let me do it for you."

This one is tricky for me. There are days when my pain level is baseline. Although I am literally never pain free, the miracle of this disease is that your tolerance for pain becomes superman level. So, baseline is a good day/week/month where the pain I described above isnt there and I am just in a regular amount of pain. The best way for me to try to describe the freedom of baseline is to compare it to that sort of euphoric, king of the world feeling you get when you finally feel better after having a bad flu. Your body did not, in reality, revert back to it's teenage state and you're ready to go run 5 miles but in comparison, you feel like you are experiencing the most healthy day of your life. If someone told you to slow it down or go back to bed, you'd think they were nuts. You feel great!

That's how I feel at baseline, especially after a really bad flare up. So, let me do what I want! If I want to go on a hike and carry a 20 lb backpack, carry my own tank and dive to 100 feet, help with some sort of physical labor, DANCE all night, WHATEVER... Please don't tell me not to "for my own good" or to "save me from myself!" Facing the fact that I will eventually lose my ability to do these things at all is the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with (and if you know anything about my life thus far, you know that's a significant statement). If it causes me to spend the next day or week in bed, that's my choice. I promise that my body will tell me when to stop. And I promise you it is hashtag worthit to me to climb that mountain, dig that hole, dive that depth because I STILL CAN and that ticking clock in my head is constantly reminding me of the undetermined "later" when I CAN'T. Yeah. I'm stubborn. Thank God-Or-Whoever for that. Thank God-Or-Whoever I am not giving up until I HAVE to.

When you discourage me from doing these things because it may knock me down tomorrow, I feel the love. I feel the care and concern and I do appreciate that part of it. But I still want to punch you in the face. Also, I love you. Thank you, truly, but fuck you.

4. "I am selling this supplement/shake/pill/oil/cream/drink/MLM bullshit stuff and you should try it because it will REALLY HELP! Read these testimonials."

Muderous Rage. Face punch. Fuck you. Twice.

*Please distribute that up through all the tiers so everyone can get their share.

5. "I understand."

No. You don't. Punch. Fuck you.

Exception: Some people do understand. They have some something that aids them in being able to understand the physical, emotional, spiritual, existential thing I am going through and how it all changes day to day yet is always present. Some people get it. And trust me when I say that I know the difference. If you are one of those people, this doesn't apply to you.

I want to say that I understand that almost every thing that I listed here is said to me with good intent. Most are said by people who truly want to help or at least provide me some comfort. The words are meant to elicit a positive response and eminate love in some form. They don't deserve to be punched (Except those guilty of #4, they deserve to be punched) or have an f bomb thrown at their face. It's unjustified anger; misplaced rage. The real f bombs and face punches are at the disease. But, all the same, stop saying this shit to me. It doesn't help like you want it to. Much love all the same.

Exit Here

I believe in signs. Messages. Divine intervention. Fate. The order of things. A predestined road. Whatever you want to call it. I choose the less eloquent label; signs. I think everything leads you where you are supposed to be. Lately, the reflective letters in my headlights seem to be directing me to toward writing an actual bone-a-fide full length book. I have one in full swing. Ive been writing it for years. But it, unfortunately, is too true. Chapter 1 would destroy enough illusions and piss off just the right amount of "important" people in my life to disrupt my current highly relative life stability. It's simply too true. I'll have to go the way of Dickenson and have it discovered (hopefully as complete as my life will be) after I've gone permanently into a hermit shell and moved on to the next life. It's just too true.

So, what then? I'm no good at fiction. What in the world is the use of such an interesting, often tragic yet somehow inspiring, nothing held back, mistake and recovery riddled, rich, colorful life if I have to create fiction to put on paper.

And then there's this thought: My life has been a series of choices I made consciously or subconsciously that led to a lot of pain, anger, trauma, turmoil. Yes, I recovered time and again and did that inspirational poster thing where I turned it all into wisdom or added its internal consequences to my store of personality quirks that create a stew that most people I encounter tend to have a taste for. What didn't kill me made me quite a bit cooler and all that. But I've had my share of things that tried to kill me. Literally and figuratively.

So how would the truth come across? I'd tend to vote that I'd come across as self-absorbed whining victim. But maybe it'd be fearless warrior.  Will I look like a heroine or a self-pitying sniveling bitch? Would I be able to include the positives among the mess of mistakes? Would I be able to truly portray how responsible I feel for making the desicions that led me through a maze of abuse, betrayal, hate, unraveling. Would I be able to explain the monster I became sometimes and the mouse I became other times. Would everything I am make more sense to everyone around me or would it turn my life upside down to let ALL of the bony dust covered things out of my impressively sized closet and collect them under one dust jacket? I vote that my life would flip. But my life has, thus far, been an Olympic qualifying gymnast.  Would one more flip matter?

And another thought occurs to me. How do I go back and tell these stories, my seven or so of nine lives, in short form. How do you summarize a culmination of microbe to Pacific events and really get to the heart of it. I guess that's all left to the craft of the pen. The brush must create the total portrait on one canvas.

So, maybe I'm left with fiction. Maybe.

Runaway Mine Train; I don't even know if I am married.

There may not be any poeticism or deeper lesson in this post. I just feel like I need to get these feelings out.

I haven't talked to my husband for a week. I haven't seen him in almost 2 months. I haven't worn my rings for a while now. And I call myself separated on the off chance anyone asks. It was awkward at first but was starting to feel normal and like a fact. The interactions between us went as probably any interactions go between people in this situation. Sometimes volitile. Sometimes more open and honest. Sometimes pained. Sometimes explosive. And then we went a week without speaking. May not sound like much but in 4 1/2 years, we have never done that. We have been forced by one reason or another to go as far as 46 hours without contact. Otherwise, even as a separated couple, we spoke daily or near daily. Then, we went a week without speaking. During that week, he was in Peru on a "spiritual journey" and I was in Mexico working hard toward my dreams and focusing on just me.

I expected the week to be grueling and hard. I didnt have a lifeline. I thought he was essential. Even if we were fighting, I still had a person to touch base with to keep my grip on a marriage I thought might last forever. The life I thought was going to be easier and more carefree. The man who I was supposed to love and who was supposed to love me. The person who I believed, at some point, was my best friend and partner. The life that turned out to be not at all what I expected  but I fought harder and harder to keep within the limits of what I could tolerate. The life that I lost myself in and got pretty broken trying to hold on to.  But, the week wasn't hard. It wasn't grueling. As a matter of fact, I realized that when I wasn't focusing on him, I was able to turn to me and really focus on myself. I could concentrate on what I really wanted and how I really felt. And I didn't feel guilty or wrong for it. I felt like I was free from the tether of expectations and approval seeking and damage control. And it felt good. Just as the last five months of separation had felt good. Just like having him out of sight and out of mind so much of the time felt good. I felt free. I felt like I'd finally severed the one last tie to a person who was nothing more than my last remaining crutch to cling to to abate my fear of being alone. I felt HAPPY to be alone and realized I had for quite some time. I realized he wasn't a crutch that helped me move forward but a chain that held me back.

But then a message popped up on my phone screen. Seven days of absolutely no contact, two months since we had seen each other's face and he said he had booked a flight to Mexico for tomorrow. I had no idea how to feel. My initial reaction was anger. I wasn't even sure why. I felt blind sided. I felt like a decision had been made regarding our relationship that I was, once again, not privy to. I wasn't allowed to participate in that decision. And I was angry. But after disclosing those feelings, the more important root of those feelings came out. The root of all anger, of course, is FEAR. I was scared. I AM scared.

I have tried to keep the more intimate details of our split under a careful sheet of discretion. I have tried not to publicly discuss all the ins and outs of the mountain of things that culminated in our separation. I have tried to only speak in general ideas. And I will continue to try to do that. But I also want to try to understand my fear. What am I afraid of?

I think my main fear is that his purpose for coming to my country isn't what he says it is. He says it is to show me change. He says it is to show me that he has made some realizations and transformations. To show me that the abuses and punishments and demoralizing behavior is all in the past. I can accept, in theory, that it is possible for people to change. I can accept even that the change can occur in an epiphany moment, so it can certainly happen in a week! I can accept that deep down, he has just been very confused by his own programming and is capable of the changes that would lead us back to each other. But, my blind faith seems to have expired.

Or perhaps I am just a coward. Or maybe I have now devolved back into a self protection mode to the point that I put up a wall against being hurt again. I simply am afraid to hope. I am afraid to give him the benefit of the doubt. I am afraid to go back there again. I am afraid I will be let down. Again. I am afraid I will be stomped back into the place that I just spent an enormous amount of energy and tears and fight and strength to crawl out of. I am afraid of losing myself again in the name of this man. Of ANY man.

And I told him that. In different, more specific  words, but the same meaning. I am terrified and don't know if I can have any faith or hope. The doubt is enormous and the fear is twice that. His reaction seemed to be to just give up. That made me angry again. I shared my feelings and his reaction was to say "well, nevermind then." I am not mad at him for his feelings. I don't really know why I am mad. The simple fact that he just gave up and said he would cancel his flight felt like another kick to the stomach. I guess I expected him to ease my fears a little and try to assert his good intentions. To say something soothing or be more of a rock of hope that I could try to believe in. But he didn't. He just said he would cancel his flight. I don't know why I even took the moment to hope. 

And then he quietly "unfriended" me on facebook. That, of course, sounds silly and insignificant but it felt like a punishment for sharing my fears. It felt punitive as do so many things he does. And then I wondered if he had really changed at all. Wasn't he just doing what he always does? "I will show that bitch! She wants to have feelings and be human, I will do something to hurt her. I will reject her and make her feel like I feel. I will play on her abandonment issues and kick her back down. I will show her!" Again. And so I tried to call him this morning after some time passed from yesterday's conversation. His phone is turned off. Straight to voicemail.

Round and round the merry go round we go. I don't know how to feel. I don't know if I am angry or discouraged or ok or strong. I do know that I feel like I am back on the roller coaster that I have little control over. And it isn't fun anymore. I don't know if I just want off the roller coaster or to leave the park completely.

For now, I will throw on my wet suit and throw myself into diving and see where the roller coaster is in about 8 hours. Because I can't change anything but my own reactions. I can't fix anything but myself. And that feels good.