my so called lifeline

October 4, 2010

My doubt, self doubt, grows exponentially with my silence.  When I tell him that I don’t think I can satisfy him, what am I really saying? Am I asking him for help or asking him to bail?  He’s heard this over and over and it’s ingrained in his thoughts of me.  He says he needs me to tell him what I want. Now.  He needs me to tell him that I want him or that I don’t want him.  That I want to fight for this relationship or that I won’t fight for it.  He wants and needs to hear me include myself in the fixing of this partnership. Or he needs to hear the alternative.  He wants to stick.  God tells him to.  

I am confused.  I am hurt.  I am sad. I want so many experiences and I don’t feel close to my partner.  Did we ever feel close?  When did we think the same and dream the same dreams?  When did we share our desires?

I know I am growing and exploring who I never got to be.  I have consistently been the work-on-it gal.  But maybe my work hasn’t been for the good of closeness.  Have I been working toward strengthening our togetherness or our separateness?  What are my goals now?  What do I have the capability of working on?  Toward?  What do I want to work on?

Testing my limits by going to school and listening to him doubt that I made the right choice without him.  
Testing my mental health by submitting to illogical expectations of a psychotic boss and resigning before she canned me.  
Testing my self confidence and if he is right about my nursing ability.
Getting blindsided by my own confidence.
Feeling like a fool at the mercy of strangers.  
Falling into similar traps at a job without foundation.  
Exhausting myself to please and push for more and to fit in.
Ignoring the signals of security as I watch the walls crumble around me.
Running away before the explosion begins, setting myself up for self implosion instead.

How did I get here?  Where did I come from?  Why do I think this way?  Where is God?

I have felt lost in the last year or two, crying because I was hurt when he didn’t think well of me.  I recall the times he told me that my way of thinking is wrong, that my way of expressing my thoughts is wrong and inefficient and is not worth his time.  So I shut up.  I stopped expressing myself to him.  I stopped trying to explain myself and where I was coming from and how I felt and what I wanted.  I gave up.  After all, I did not want to hear that the man I loved thought negatively about me.  I did not need him to reinforce my self doubt.  Why put myself in a position where I knew I would hurt?

Our conflicts became broken records of despair and futility.  One negative word or head shake or rolling of the eyes or fuck you,  and I’m gone.  Out the door.  Out of the house.  Out of the city.  Out of my mind. Out of reality.  Out of myself.  This is the truth.  I’ve been living outside of myself.

Depressed enough to give up my license.  Depressed enough to say I’ll work for minimum wage.  Embarrassed enough to tell him he was right about me being a nurse.  Frightened enough to lie to myself and hide from the truth.  Until the sunshine blinded my insecurities for a brief moment of clarity and WTF-ness.

I didn’t want to be Rainey anymore.  Rainey is not taken seriously.  Rainey is a baby and frail and frustrated and fragile.  Rainey doesn’t know how to stand up for herself and speak her thoughts and commit to decisions or make and pursue goals.  I want to grow up and be L.  I want to make my own decisions and speak my mind and joke in public and cheer loudly at the games and talk about passionate subjects and tell my family what I really mean and not take their shit anymore.  That includes him.  No more shit sandwiches.  No more crybaby.  No more sulking in the corner.  No more caring what they think.

And I landed softly.  I landed safely.  I carefully caress my nursing career in the home of mental health.  And I feel confidence anew.  I am a nurse.  I am helping and learning and teaching and growing.  And God is with me.  The dance of life continues in the next room.  Please join us.  Please take off your shoes and get comfortable for this ride.  We welcome you back.  We missed you. Now get to work.

What I believe is truth in this room are lies inside the other room.  How I perform here is different than what I perform there. The train tracks switch in between and my mind does not always follow.  Which way do I turn?  Which way do you want me to turn?

I’m taking my meds.  I’m writing and sorting and releasing stress my way.  My way may be the wrong way.  Wrong for this family.  Wrong for these kids.  Wrong for my parents and his.  

He tells me the way I should do this.  Live.  Relate.  Speak my mind.  Listen.  Form goals and work toward them.  Parent.  Partner.
He suggests and helps when he notices my confusion and frustration.  He advises me to do what he does, because it works for him, has worked since he was a kid, 12 or 13 or 14 years old.  Good for him to be confident in his habits and confident in his patterns and with his goals reached and processes of getting there.  Good for him to rely on consistency.  Good for him to keep him afloat through the dark ages.

When I was 12, 13, 14, I was watching my parents split up for some unknown reason and placing me in the arms of a stranger without skills to know how to relate with him.  Placing me in a different world, switching scenes without telling me I had to follow.  Changing the expectations and allowances of my pre-adolescent hormonally developing mind and soul and heart.

Choices stripped.  Opinions banned.  Extraction from comfortable and forward momentum.  Forced into unknown and unsupported.  Doubted and divided.  Slapped and insulted.  Stifled and censored.  Ignored and injured.  Where am I going?  Where are you taking me?  What am I supposed to do now?  Who is leading me?  Where am I?

And I ran.  Toward acceptance of the negative sort.  From strangers who barely knew me and who I didn’t have to reveal myself. I didn’t have to hold back my passion.  And I flew.  Into trouble and insecurity of the adolescent kind.  The trouble of who do I like and how do I deal and what if I’m rejected?  Trouble of trying to ignore my home life long enough to feel like I could be happy otherwise.  Pretend to like yourself or don’t and pretend others do.  Release and reject.  Revive sanity temporarily.  Act two roles.  Isn’t that what I was taught?  Be someone you’re not in order to survive?  Be what they want you to be in order to be accepted?  In order not to get hit or hurt or doubt yourself more?  
Don’t ask questions. Don’t lead with ideas.  

 
August 8, 2011  (10 months later)

Full circle.  Right back where I started.  I’m at it again.  The last paragraph is my story.  The only one.  The missing link in my lifetime of sorrow.  No rusted links, only shiny like new, strong as ever sharp, cold metal connections, from my ten year old happy-go-lucky fourth grader to my presently fucked up self.  Breaking hearts and taking names by accident.  The accidental tourist of my own life.  45 years take away ten real good ones and 35 links later, I’m the expert avoider.  Just call me super sucka!

Therapist on board.  Not holding back from the fears thrown at me.  I’m taking strikes until my bat makes contact, until I feel the spark of energy, the mass of force pushing me through the motion by the release of weight off my shoulders.  When I watch the homerun ball soar above us all, it’s arch predetermined by my positioning, and see the open sky smiling, I will know. I will know.

And since I have no idea how that Babe Ruth-esque moment will feel, or when clarification will arrive, I’m grounded in my garden dugout, watching weeds pop up out of nowhere and wishing a giant hand will reach down to pull me up too.