Stepping Over the Junk

I go back and forth between calling Ex husband, “the ex husband” and “the girls’ dad”. Recently I was in a group at the beach and said something like “my ex husband will be with the girls for Fourth of July.” Red piped up from behind and said “DON’T CALL DADDY YOUR EX HUSBAND!”

I was reminded in my first discussion with Ohio, that it may ease things to address him as “the girls’ father” or “their dad”.

In thinking about it, I realized that it was better for the girls to hear it coming from my mouth. And that is priority number one. It is better for others to hear “the girls’ dad” instead of “my ex husband” because it insinuates a more pleasant feeling in our home, between the children, with their dad, with me. And for the most part now, it is. Even if things aren’t always pleasant, there is a good cause to at least pretend.

I also realize that I feel better omitting “ex husband” from my language unless absolutely pertinent, say, when relaying to the health insurance company that the subscriber is my ex husband. And so on.

So this is the part where I thank the girls’ father for sending home their leftover pizza from their Wednesday night dinner with him.

Around ten thirty last night, I opened the fridge to see if pickles and olives, and perhaps an english muffin, would satisfy…and saw the small box of leftover pizza sitting there.

Two pieces.

And two crusts with pint sized bite marks leading up to it. (if you have children, YOU know)

It did the trick. (per previous post)

That’s how I feel today.

Cranky and flighty.

I’ve spent the last week or two wanting a pizza. But I haven’t gone out to get one and am not quite sure why. I suppose it’s because the moments I can actually go get one, I find I don’t want it. At midnight when the kids are in bed and I’m done working, I want that pizza.

The other day the girls left for dinner with their dad at five and I had a few hours to myself. I sat down and watched a Tivo’d episode of “Army Wives” and fast forwarded through “So You Think You Can Dance”.

I wanted a pizza but instead, ate things I thought might replace that desire I had.

I ate popcorn.

And a toasted Pop Tart.

And fizzy water.

It didn’t really cut it.

I still wanted a pizza and beer.

It’s isn’t just “pizza for dinner”, because I can always take the kids out for pizza. It’s more that I want it at midnight, sitting in front of “Sex and the City” episode 4 of season 3 from Netflix, with an entire pizza I have no intention of finishing.

Summer’s half over. It is hard to believe. Red has had math tutoring a few mornings a week for the last few weeks and it appears the whole subtraction thing is throwing her for a loop. Unfortunately, I am reminded of my struggle with math and the concept of what it means.

“Ooooooh! Subtraction! THAT means ‘take away’.”

Or “multiplication! THAT means “add this number to itself, this many times”.

That’s how it is for me at the moment. Like I am just kind of floating around.

Little bits of confusion and then some clear moments.

I have a few friends who call recently, including Ohio, who at some point in the conversation ask “How are you doing? Are you okay?”

I called a girlfriend yesterday to say hello and didn’t leave her a message because I figured I would try her back later. She saw me on the call log and was in the midst of chaotic events with her children but called back, saying “I’m just making sure you’re okay”. Funny, in that instance, I am not sure she has any reason to feel that I’m not.

I sound okay, don’t I?

I’ve become friends with the piano guy at the piano bar and we’ve bartered guitar lessons for artwork.

We’ve hung out for little bits of time and had breakfast last weekend before my guitar lesson. My face hurt from laughing. But then after the guitar lesson, he asked why I moved here, so it went on into the divorce a little bit. And in the end he looked at me thoughtfully and said “but you are doing really well now, aren’t you? You’re good.”

And I thought “glad you think so.”

I think I have come to accept that part of life is that there is an ache in all of us.

An ache for something.

Whether it be for that middle of the night pizza, happiness in profession, yearning for children, wanting and aching for real love and partnership with pure joy, trust and safety. Little and big things. I am too tired to list it all, much less think it all. I know there is alot out there to ache for.

Like sleep.

This morning I woke up weary.

Up in the middle of the night with a 5 year old nearly drowning in sweat and pee…add a tantrum upon sheet changing over the pillows and stuffed animals not being returned to their proper spots around her, and you have one tired “me”.

Up shortly after falling asleep again, to a 7 year old climbing in bed and squishing her butt up against me while she cried about her bad dream and wiggled around so that she finally fell asleep, clutching at the front of my nightgown and snoring and sweating against my chest.

I slid out of bed finally and lay down on the couch…around 5am I got up, thankful for a bit of light and figured the light and a pot of coffee would be better than trying to eek in more of the kind of rest that I really needed.

Do we all do this? Do all moms do this? Motherhood is number one for me and I feel guilty in saying that I sometimes feel it isn’t complete enough for me. And maybe it’s because I feel I don’t always feel like I am doing a good enough job at it. I imagine some days, that my children are going to bed at night disappointed in their mother.

Being a single mum is more empowering for me than anything, but there are times I wish for that someone else to climb out of bed and tend to things. Yet on the flipside, I want to do it all myself. I am proud in a way that it is what I chose and what I am doing. I take no pride in admitting that some days I want to strangle myself and need to walk away and tap into something else that fills me up for the moment, something that separates me from my children.

Lately it has been a yearning for that pizza.

Or something really really healthy.

Oh, the conflict.

And then the kids go off with their dad and off to school and go to sleep at night and I am left with myself in the end.

I feel kind of unorganized, overall.

In my thoughts, I wonder if I am capable of maintaining a healthy relationship…will I ever fucking EVER be able to be in that place I imagine with someone? It’s not like I want it right now, or I want anything. I am just tired of it. But someone crosses my path who touches me and I see it as promising and then think to myself “is this going to turn to shit too?” and “What the hell is my problem and my role in these experiences that contribute to their demise?” So I don’t really plan anything or expect anything. I just go with the flow.

I feel a bit disgruntled.

Where am I headed professionally as the time draws nearer for the girls to both be in school 5 days a week, all day?

Personally, I’d like to think I will have some sort of structure to my days, balance between working out, house work, painting and selling. Mostly, I worry that I am not finding the joy in it that I feel I should be feeling. Or that I am producing plain old crap.

I don’t feel confident at the moment about stuff.

I warned you, look back up to the top there at the title of this post.

“Cranky unorganization and feeling flighty”.

Woot.

I am a painter.

If you used to read the Blogspot version of “Stepping Over the Junk”, you remember some of it.

I hung a show in May at a local place and it was really really cool. I have another show booked for October. Until then, I am working on new stuff and doing biz with some publications and private clients.

I’ve somehow managed to keep working this summer. Usually it stops, business just stops in the summer. But not this year and I am grateful. I paid off the girls’ art camp!

I spent a large portion of the weekend painting and I decided to just post some photos. If you would like a link to my professional website or are interested in a piece, please email me at steppingoverthejunk@gmail.com.

A 65×26 acrylic and water on wood (mounted on my living room wall)

“Snack Bowl” 11×30 unframed watercolor

“Pomegranate Cut” 20×10 unframed watercolor

“Line of Buoys” 11×30 unframed watercolor

We have a plethora of digital cameras in the house. I had been taking photos of my new work for my website and put the camera down while I made dinner.

Red picked it up and started taking photos.

A great thing for a rainy day.

Or any day.

It is just the cost of batteries.

Or a camera, if your child drops it.

Ahem.

The one time I went to couples therapy, was when my husband and I decided to separate and we went to hopefully figure out how to do it gracefully, especially since we had two children to consider. I was hoping for some guidance on how to tell the kids, how to pack them and move them, how to make sure they felt safe.

I realized shortly into it that he and the therapist had actually met before. And it ended up being a session of trying to intimidate me into certain legal decisions that I knew weren’t right or fair.

I couldn’t help but spit my Caramel Macchiato out on the therapist’s nice pleather couch when he started laying out his law in a place that should be reserved for resolution of some sort, not legal negotiations. (yes, I said “pleather”) I walked out of the session, 40 minutes early and the next day called a lawyer.

So that was the end of that therapy session.

When I returned to therapy, it was to go back to my regular therapist in Cambridge. I started going to her months before and had initially walked into her office that first day and said “my marriage is over and I am not so sure what to do next.”

Little did I know, my relationship with my therapists would grow into a need I have on a regular basis, the same way we need to know we are loved, I need therapy. And possibly right now, I need it more than I need to know I am loved.

I changed therapists when I moved further north and my current lady keeps a bowl of chocolates near my chair. I sit there trying to refrain from eating more than two in a session, even though when I start to cry and go for the Kleenex, she also points to the chocolate bowl.

I told her once that I may need therapy to get over chocolate addiction if that kept up. The next week she just had mints.

When I look back at my therapy sessions over the course of the last few years, I see almost a life running along side the one I have lived already…a life I thought I was living or covering up and a life that really is.

What I discovered, the meaning, the healing, the change, the confrontation of my abusers, all of it makes me up to who I am now…as well as how I can handle further conflict or confusion or regret.

Sometimes there are moments of rejoice and my therapist and I are near “high-five-ing” because I had a clear moment or revelation. I think mostly, those moments aren’t the end of some sort of pain I’ve been feeling but the beginning of a process to let go of it and heal and move on.

Yesterday, I went to see Lady T, as I call her, my therapist for the last three years.

The lady with the chocolate.

The lady with the mints.

Yesterday, she had an electric pot of water for tea and it was as if she knew that was what I needed, whoever thought a therapist might actually give motherly comfort in such a roundabout way?

The bowl was mixed with mints and chocolates this time, so I had some of each, with some tea. I blew my nose a bit because I haven’t been able to get through one day in the last week or so, without breaking down.

Seeing Lady T offers relief and comfort.

Yesterday, it was at the beach. The day before it was at the bank. The day before that, I choked in the shower. I got a bit misty eyed when I went to bed, after an evening at the piano bar on Saturday night. I moped when I had gin. I ordered a damn gin.

The discussion this week was “How come whenever we feel at peace and calm and like we have our lives the way we want it and the chaos is gone and the creativity remains and the friendships don’t suffer and the children are seemingly feeling safe, does something come in and stir it all up so that nothing makes sense anymore? Something we want and can’t have, a tragedy, a conflict, a difficult choice… right when I have felt everything is going to be okay because I made my life this way and I made it good.”

Interestingly, what I am going through right now is something that comes along with depression that usually hits right around midwinter. The kind where my doctor and I revisit the option to find a drug that doesn’t wig me out. Trial and error…more on the side of error. And what I am going through is a feeling of loss and I am not sure why, considering all that I have, all that I have gained in the last few years.

Ohio called two nights ago and I was able to listen for the first time because he was willing to talk about his stuff for the first time. Instead of cryptic poetry, I heard what he was thinking and how he was feeling and what he was going through. For the first time in a week, I felt like I hadn’t lost so much. He’ll come back sometime, at some level. Even if just for coffee and a talk. Or a walk or float in the ocean. Even when he leaves again, it will be more than what we got the first time ’round.

“Ohio” because when I think of him, I think of his coming in for an unexpected-fleeting time and returning to Ohio, where he belongs now. Even though he hasn’t been gone from my head, he belongs in Ohio.

I didn’t really come to any clarity in therapy over it, past what I already know and past where I know I need to remain, I still ask it because I am not willing to accept it.

Growth comes in our working out challenges. Challenges can hit us full on or sometimes sneak in the back door. So we owe it to ourselves to embrace the shit. Even though it bites while we are going through it.

Growth equals life. Like a tree. A flower. A human being. If we don’t keep tackling the weeds, they build up so we can’t survive. If we do the weeding, we become beautiful and whole and perfect and fully alive and healthy.

I know it. I don’t necessarily like it. But I know it.

There you go.

Along with that, I think therapy has cost me a five pound weight gain.

So, say, you call things off with someone for the fifth time or so and you know it is IT. IT IS OVER. What, nearly two months ago?

And you make it clear. And the talking part is over and he’s no longer in your contact list on your cell phone.

And your last response to him told him you were no longer comfortable with the email banter back and forth every week and it was time to say goodbye.

Well, is it bad to hit “delete” when you get three more emails from him? How about two more after that? And not respond? I mean, WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT HERE?

Yes, we shared about 8 months together. Half of which was wonderful and adventurous and felt like a team and partners and well into love in many many levels.

The other half was abusive and spiteful and competitive and manipulative and was squashing my self esteem. And in return, I was causing him anxiety and causing him to drink and get angry and downright mean. And then turn the next day into a sweet loving caring apologetic man.

I also need to note that these emails are similar if not identical to about ten others I have gotten and not responded to.

Did I already ask the question: WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT in these emails? Is he selling himself?

• Email 1 from Steam:

I have also been sticking with my Mom’s food program and I feel and look a whole lot better. Between it and exercising a lot, I’ve lost almost 30 lbs. and dropped 4″ off my waist. I’m really feeling good about it, not to mention the extra energy that I have. Also, by cutting out the flour and sugar and the alcohol, my mood has improved dramatically . I don’t feel anxious or tired anymore and never do I feel so angry that I can’t cope constructively with any situation. It really feels good.

Everyone else is well. I have S (his son) the week after next for vacation and I’m really looking forward to it. I don’t know what we’ll do exactly, but we have many options. One thing that we’ll probably do for sure as long as the weather remains hot is go to Water Country again. It was so much fun yesterday, that I bought a season pass for the both of us. Now we have to go…

Please do not misinterpret my last e-mail. I know you’re probably eons away from the place you and I shared last year and life is much better for you without me in it. I can and have accepted that, but I wanted to say ‘Hi’ nonetheless. That’s all. Best of luck with with everything in front of you.

• Email number 3:

I still love you, for what it’s worth, even if you don’t care, I need to tell you. Even after all this time.

AND THEN

the next day, I got these two emails:

• Email number 1

Subject: Just so you know…I don’t think I’ve said it, but THANKS!

I also apologize for challenging you so much. Now that I have a clearer head and with hindsight being 20/20, I have come to realize what I was doing to you, to us, very clearly and I have a lot of regret surrounding it all. I realize now that what we shared wasn’t a lie. I know it was genuine. However, my behavior, coupled to yours, really made it impossible for either one of us. I thank you for your patience as well as the passion that you put into making us work. I realize now that with the way we were acting as people, we couldn’t go on together. That is why I am trying to identify and resolve any issues that I have right now so that I don’t go through life repeating them. They stem mostly from me not really being in my right mind. It really is amazing to me how much better I feel, how much clearer I think and how much more energy I have without the sugar/flour/alcohol. I mean I am not tired and irritable anymore so it has really freed up my mind. Subsequently, the insight I’ve gained so far is tremendous. It’s almost my epiphany!

I’m seeing my therapist tomorrow and I wonder what she is going to say about you.

I wonder what she is going to ask.

I wonder what she will say to this leather that is wrapped around my wrist.

I wonder if I am right, what I say to her about you.

I was slammed against the wall on the second day when I looked at you and realized that I was looking back at a very familiar version of myself.

You passed your gin across the table to me when I scooted into the booth across from you and just because it was yours, I drank from it. When I returned it, you pushed it back for more. Perhaps for the same reason.

I sang and you were there. Way back there. But you were there. And then you came forward and sat beside me. Later, you came back for me.

I didn’t come to the fireworks because even then, I didn’t quite know how to keep the shaking from inside, the shaking that stemmed from our three hour talk where I sat and talked and talked and talked and you looked at me as if I were normal and what I told you wasn’t fucked up.

And it took me a while to feel okay with you touching me.

There is something about this being so undefined that keeps me grounded in this. I don’t want anything fucking defined anyway. That’s what gets me into situations I can’t handle.

I ask you how you are and I know you aren’t doing terribly “swell” and when I told you to not worry about me, you said “I don’t worry about how you are doing, I worry about how I am doing”.

I worry about how you are doing too.

I know how I am doing.

I am proud that you think I can handle this and glad you aren’t worried about what this is doing to me…you are right, I can handle it. But remember that I still do care. I don’t just shut it off.

So, as I go through my day, I think of you. I think about how I’d like to be that special something that guides you out of this and into what feels right for you, whatever it may be, whether I am a part of it or not. That makes things good enough for me, even though I would like to try more. Big risk, eh?

Don’t be fearful that I’ve forgotten…no, I shouldn’t, you know. I haven’t. And inevitably, never will.

It doesn’t mean I will be here if you come back, you know. That’s the reality of it. I may be here if you come back soon. In the long run I’d like to be, but we aren’t aligned now, and I can look at you and say that if we were, then that will be a miracle? Perhaps that is some of the frantic that we may feel.

I also think that maybe you crossing through here is all I am meant to be for you. And likewise. I think other things too but will not go there. Oh, the possibilities.

I’m sitting here working out my own shit, wanting to be alone, craving it, needing it. I am not waiting. I am just not going anywhere.

If I get too caught up in it and think too much about what I want, I think I want you. And I guess I hope that one day when I am ready it will either be you because you are there. If not, it will be a somebody that has a bit of you in there.

Remember, I did all the talking. Most of it anyway. So you know me, but I don’t know you, really.

It’s like a code to crack from my end.

I don’t know you the same way because you didn’t want to talk to me. It kept this safe for you to not bring me into you. But you wanted to meet inside of me, didn’t you?

You speak “Poetry” and I’m deciphering it and inhaling it. But still, I know nothing.

And so this is where I am now.

Just not going anywhere.

A hazard of living alone, is being stuck in a dress.

It seems my boobs have grown or my back fat got fatter or something.

Or maybe it’s my ass pushing up towards my back. (what’s better, a fat ass or back fat?)

It’s all that sitting around and drinking in the summer and eating chocolate and fringe fruit on the beach.

And then I go home alone with no one to help me un-stick my zipper.

I find myself stuck and consider two things.

1) sleeping in dress until the morning when I can get my neighbor downstairs to do it for me.

2) cut myself out of the damn dress.

****************************************

Bras are good for the most part.

They push me up.

Keep me from going down.

Keep things together.

Give a little cleavage.

Some padding for the cold days.

But going for a steady hour long walk in the summer, pushing my 5 year old in a stroller that is too small for her (but I swear, I will cram her in there as long as I can just to get a good walk with her every now and then) and wearing a bra, is just way way sweaty.

On the way home yesterday from our 4 miler, the sweaty bra kept riding up.

And then we ran into a fellow artist on the street. And I wondered if it had ridden all the way up to my neck. I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and just pulled at it to get it adjusted.

To “get myself out of an embarrassing situation”, because it was obvious that I was “adjusting myself”, I blurted out “this damn bra keeps riding up on me”.

Thankfully he laughed.

Yeah, I’m a wiz at making things less embarrassing like that. Huh.

****************************************

Since I am on the topic.

I hate wedgies.

note: yeah, I wish that were me in the photo. but I Googled “push-up bra” and got that.

I drove a route home the other day that is a bit out of the way but I go there on purpose to pass a church that posts on their board on the lawn, a thought for the week. When I found this church is when I started keeping a notebook in my car with a pen so I could write down things that came to me when I was driving and often, signs like this that inspire me. Or sometimes make me mad. Or sad. Or grateful.

Recently the sign said “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.”

Although I haven’t stepped foot in a church, any church, in years, nor have I ever figured out my way to pray, I feel a sort of spiritual comfort in reading these signs because they usually provoke some emotion or memory.

My mind went to Pieter, who died around 1989 or 90. And I promise you, I feel horror that I don’t remember the date. But I remember everything about him and the friend he was to me for those few years.

Back before email was everyday mainstream, Pieter and I wrote every week for three years after we met as “kids” during the school year. I say “kids” because he was in college when I was in high school but it didn’t keep us from looking at each other across the fire pit in the summers or lying on our backs on the island in the lake up at 12,000 feet.

The high rush in writing to him every week, checking the mailbox so ferociously every day, my mother made a rule that I was no longer able to get the mail because I was often in a near state of panic over it. When his fat letters came, usually with doodles on the envelope or a math problem, I’d slip it in my back pocket and wait for later. The temporary comfort of actually having it arrive led up to the high of actually reading it.

When my friend called me one day to tell me he had died, I will guiltily admit that I was relieved to finally know the real reason I hadn’t heard from him in the previous two months. Why he didn’t call or write back to tell me when he was arriving for a few days around Christmas. And then I shut myself down in my walk in closet with a headlamp and tore open the bundles of letters, sorted them by date and read them over and over again.

One day I came home from school and my mom had been in my room organizing and cleaning and immediately I noticed a pile of “junk” she had pulled from my closet and told me to either throw it away or find a way to get it out of her sight. My box of letters from Pieter was there and I grabbed it and disappeared into the closet again after sweeping everything else into the trash.

My parents never knew that I had lost my friend. I never told them and never talked about it. They never asked what happened to him. And that shows how disconnected they were from what was going on with their own children.

When my sister came home from college one weekend, I walked right into her room and bluntly stated “Pieter died.” And she just stopped and took me into my room and opened my drawers and pulled out the t-shirts and sweatshirts he’d sent or left with me when we saw each other each summer and set them on my bed. She pulled one out and handed it to me and I put it on and wore it for three days until my mom wrinkled her nose at me and made me put it in the laundry.

I wonder sometimes what happened to the letters I’d written him. If he kept them like I did? Or after he died, did someone find them and read them? Or if they still sit all these years later in boxes in the family’s attic. Or if they were burned in someone else’s rage, someone else who loved him and felt as mad as I did that he was gone.

I have few regrets in life, mainly because I know that the things that happen that fucking suck, make us stronger and help us with future negotiations with ourselves. I regret that years and years later, when I stood in fear of losing myself to a life of control and anger, manipulation and fighting, I sat in front of my mother’s fireplace one Christmas and burned every letter.

I hadn’t read them in a while and my anger built over time because I hadn’t had a friend like Pieter, someone who sorted things out for me just by writing every week and someone I could freely tell when I’d had the shit beat out of me by my first boyfriend. I never had the chance to write to him some years later about how I was with someone else who raised his hand to me. Over and over again. Pieter made where I was feel okay because he was knowing and loving me. And then he was gone.

I still think about him. For a few years he came into my thoughts daily. And then the times disintegrated as I grew further away from the solid assurance I once had from a friend. The lack of dependence I feel on others is sometimes a good thing and an ironic gift that my parents gave me, to feel I can’t depend on anyone but myself to survive… because I can walk away easily and take care of my own shit. I am learning that we all need “many someones”, to fill in the gaps of the needs we can’t fulfill for ourselves. And opening myself up to that, the possibility, is like receiving mail in my mailbox every day.