(source)

Whooo-boy, I’m officially tired.  The last week has felt like that annoying commercial of the person trying to swim in a pool filled with caramel.  Everything is going so very fast, yet it seems to take forever.  My brain works overtime during the day, trying to comprehend the many new things I’m trying to cram into it.  I attempt to cram a run into my body in the 40 minutes I have after work and before kid pick up.  Pick ups have me on edge; I take deep breaths before getting the girls from their after-school care.  They are necessary, the girding of the loins so to speak, because Arden is usually angry about something and Lily is usually sulking about something.  Both of them place the blame squarely on the school, but only because they are kind enough to not hurt my feelings by reminding me once again how I screwed up their lives going back to work full time.  Then it’s time to rush home, cram dinner in their tiny bodies that are trying to grow (but not fast enough, according to the pediatrician), and make it to whatever class they are signed up for.  By the end of the night, I’m wiped out and wondering if this is ever going to get easier.

And it will.  Right now certain activities are being dictated to me, and for right now, I’m going along with it.  Once this week is over, I will be able to impose more calm to the current chaos, and I think both of the girls will respond well to having some downtime and perhaps be less grumpy.  I don’t really blame them; this anti-superwoman is pretty cranky herself. 

The positives:  I do love my job.  On a conference call today, all my old coaching skills came back and I found myself leading a discussion with an attorney about how best to position the firm in this particular situation.  It was natural to me, and it wasn’t until after, when my boss commented on it, that I realized I still have most of my brain cells and can occasionally leverage them for other people’s benefit. 

I LOVE working downtown.  I know many people think it’s a drag - the drive, the tolls, the homeless bugging you for your spare pennies . . . but I love all of it.  Well, not the tolls.  I love getting out of the suburbs every day.  I love learning the names of the security guards on the bottom floor of my building.  I love rapidly changing out of my uncomfortable 2.5” heels into my running shoes, and heading out across one of the many bridges spanning the James River, just 2 blocks up from my office.  Or I’ll run up to Broad Street and distract myself with the amazing people watching; the runs go by quickly and my steaming brain, cooked beyond recognition, begins to reset and still in the sweating cage of my skull. 

The honest truth is that yes, I made the right decision, and no, it hasn’t been easy.  There are things going on with the ex that really bother me, but I’m not able to discuss them here and I’m certainly not able to discuss them with him.  At least not now.  Things that bothered me about him during the marriage are now quite huge and ugly; I’m sure he feels the same way about me.  And sometimes the idea that we are tied together, trying to coparent and raise children together for another decade plus, feels overwhelming. 

Add Running Boy’s ex who is still legally his wife and all of their issues and the mixing and melding of our combined four children and you start to get the picture of why, on random nights like tonight, I just want to tell everyone to go pound salt and drink a martini while lounging in bed. 

The silver lining in all this is that after the last two years, I’ve become an expert on myself and my limits.  When I begin to feel like I’m doing and doing and doing for everyone else, I need to reel it back in, back down, sleep more, be kind, be relaxed.  I know that I’ve hit the wall mentally, at least for a little while, and I need to just chill on worrying about everyone else.  This kind of behavior is ingrained in me, so it’s going to be a life-long struggle.  The best I can do for others is to simply state what is bothering me, and what I am able to offer, and move on.  It’s ironic that I was just telling someone I run with to stop fighting so hard and just “be the rock in the stream”.  In other words, instead of walking against the current, trying to envision yourself as a polished stone with everything just flowing around you.  You can observe the water, but it doesn’t affect your position or life.  This kind of new-age crap talk really works well for me, except I can never remember to do it.  It seemed to help the person I was running with, but I promptly forgot it and by the time I got home tonight I was wound so tightly you could have used me as a slingshot. 

I’m ready for better, less chaotic times.  The financial pressure easing from me has been a huge source of peace, but it’s going to take a couple of months for me to catch up and really start saving for a house.  I’m ready to stop finding new ways that my divorce has damaged me or my kids.  I want to make amends and move on, instead of just saying the words outloud and hoping they come true. 

In the long gaps between blog posts, I’m doing things like laundry, running, chasing kids, and making mistakes.  As someone said on Facebook today, “if you weren’t making mistakes, what would you blog about?”  Good point. 

First, and it’s okay, you don’t have to pay me for this advice, but . . . if you have recently struggled with marital issues, separated, or divorced:  DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT watch Blue Valentine.  Though I could appreciate the exceptional writing, great acting and interesting cinematography from afar, I wanted nothing to do with the actual plot.  I felt almost like I had a hidden camera in someone’s house.  Less glamorous than reality tv (I kept wanting to brush Michelle William’s hair) and incredibly less voyeuristic and inspirational than a biography, the movie was two hours of fingernail-pulling agony. 

Running Boy’s 10 second review:  “Why would I want to watch something I’m already living through?” 

Another good point.  While most divorcing couples I know lack the overly dramatic alcohol-fueled workplace rages and random flashbacks to abortion clinics, this one hit far too close to home.  The closest thing I can liken it to is forcing a newly-minted divorcee to watch their wedding video, go through old photos, and read love letters from the early stages of their relationship while simultaneously filing their divorce papers, taking the kids to therapy and considering bankruptcy vs. suicide. 

I spent some time after the movie was over feeling incredibly sorry for myself, my extended family, and mostly my kids.  All the guilt and sorrow I thought had finally disappeared FOREVAH was suddenly back again; this guilt had obviously been eating a lot of carbs and processed foods because the sucker was heavier than the last time it was with me.  Trying to buck off this monster, I wondered whether I would ever feel settled or safe again.  I also wondered whether I would ever be able to trust my feelings for someone, or trust anyone to love me.  In the dark, it seemed highly unlikely. 

Thanks a lot, Blue Valentine. 

Philip relayed the fabulous statistic to me from his therapist that it takes an average of 5 years to truly move on from a divorce.  Great.  Thanks, Phil.  This might explain why, when I thought I was through the worst of it, I realized I’ve barely scratched the surface of the dark pool of damage that still roils beneath my skin.  If I didn’t choose right before, and I hurt someone badly, what’s to keep me from making that same “mistake” again?  It seems to me that divorce drives a few unpleasant points home.  a.) nothing is forever, b.) maybe I’m not biologically engineered to be married, and c.) it’s possible I can never trust my judgment again.  Just sayin’. 

On top of my reservation at the Haven o’ Guilt and Doubt restaurant, I really messed up with Arden this week.  My experience reminded me of a room decoration my ex sister-in-law had:  a weird mirror her mother had given her.  It said, “Mirror Mirror, on the Wall, I am my Mother, after all.” 

It’s true.  We are our mothers. 

There are many things about my own mother that I wish I could emulate.  She actually enjoyed cooking for my crabby, picky ass.  She was a perky morning person.  She liked hanging out with me, and thought I was funny.  There was always some random goody in my lunch bag, sometimes with a note. 

Then, there were things I didn’t want to emulate.  Little things, like not wanting my friends over a the house or me spending the night with them, either.  Her insistence on making my bed every morning.  Forcing me to eat peas.  And sometimes, the way she chose to discipline me. 

Without getting into details, because that’s not fun for anyone, I decided long ago that I wasn’t going to discipline my children with spanking or hitting or slapping.  I didn’t like what it did for me, though yes, one could argue, the fear of my dad beating my ass was quite the motivator in making it home by curfew.  What I didn’t like in my own past and in my close friend’s lives, was watching their parents lash out physically in anger.  There IS a difference between swatting a child on the rear when you need to get their attention, and letting your anger boil out of your pores while you lose control of your limbs and your mouth. 

I’ve found that discipline works best with Arden when I am calm, cool, and detached.  But the other day, something happened.  She did what most teenaged girls do, even though she’s only 6. She screamed into my face. It was some ugly comment or another.  It was like another person took over me, and what followed shocked me.  My instantaneous response to her behavior was something my mother had used as an outlet for her anger many times in the past.  It surprised both of us:  Arden stared at me, eyes wide, and I stared back at her, my eyes even wider.  I immediately pulled her into my lap, apologized, and took responsibility for my actions and my anger.  I told her she owed me the same courtesy, and she turned into me, hugged me and told me she was sorry, too.

This isn’t a gripe about my mother or how my parent’s generation dealt with smart mouths and disobedient children. She did what she thought worked best, just as I am doing the same with my own children.  My dad, though he rarely had to physically punish me, loved running surveillance on me as a teen and busting me for being places I shouldn’t have been.  I didn’t have much privacy, and in retrospect, that was probably ok.  I don’t agree these were the best methods for dealing with me, but they worked for them and that is all there is to that. 

For me, though, letting my anger out in physical ways seems backwards to me.  Just today, I told Arden and Lily that the next person to lay hands on someone else out of anger was getting in REALLY.  BIG.  TROUBLE.  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wondered if they were going to be thrown back at me because I have, myself, acted out of anger.  I just want to screw up my kids in new, different ways:  I know I’m far from perfect but I also know what felt really bad to me growing up, and I don’t want to serve that kind of crappy feeling up on a plate in my own house. 

Now that I’ve flayed myself and walked barefoot across broken glass, I can move on with my week.  I’ve got a fun 3 day weekend at the beach to look forward to.  Let’s hope I can make it without any more gut-wrenching movies or anger-infused mommy moments. 

I’m having one of those nights where the pounding of the rain is a perfect mirror of how I feel.  Table for Pity Party of 1 . . . I think I’m completely wiped out.  I wish it was the kind of exhaustion sleep could fix. 

My list is long right now:  I’m physically and mentally still wiped out from Disney; I am not running well; I just signed away another year of my life on a lease that holds me in the house I’m in (and it is a house I do NOT like); I haven’t seen my significant other alone except once in the last 2 weeks; my kids are also still recovering from Disney and they are a bit difficult to deal with right now; I had a public scene last night wherein I was forced to drag one of my children out of a bowling alley, complete with aforementioned child stripping off her dress for some unknown reason and running away from me barefoot next to the building while shaking her fist at me and standing in leggings and nothing else; I desperately need a vacation but I’m not going to get one anytime soon (by vacation, I mean one where I can relax, and most likely without kids); I’m still smarting over the friend dump but am actually more angry now than sad; I miss my sister and it’s unfair that we live so far apart; and finally, dating someone with kids has really made me aware of how hard it is dating someone with kids.

That’s really gotten me thinking . . . between his child custody schedule and mine, it’s a wonder we can meet up at all, but much of it is done with the kids.  Which then gets me thinking about life with FOUR kids instead of two - his duo and mine.  Combined, their ages are 3, 5, 6 and 8.  Mentally I’m thinking, Holy God, that’s a lot of growing up years left. He’s amazing with kids; I’m satisfactory. In all honesty, I’m struggling - no, flailing - with parenting right now.  I try lots of different tactics, I work hard on myself, but lately I feel like I’m losing the battle and banging my head against the wall with my kids. 

I feel like a big empty glass and I have nothing left to give.  This feeling is familiar and I know it means I need to care for myself a bit more, take it easy on myself, stop running myself into the ground - both literally and figuratively.  Once again, the laundry will wait for me - until Lily tells me, with one hand on hip, “Mommy, I have NOTHING to wear.  Why don’t I have any clean clothes?” 

I took four hours today and attempted to clean and organize my house.  I’ve been on the fence about staying here for quite a while now.  I finally decided to just sign the lease.  This means a couple of things:  I have to ask some men to help me hang some shelves and pictures on the wall (sexist, I know, but I can’t measure anything nor hang anything straight or with the right hardware).  I need to paint Arden’s room, and I need to sand down the spackling I put on my bathroom wall back in, oh, last June.  If I’m going to stay here, I need to stay here.  I’ve been in a state of fluctuation, hoping the stars would align and I’d end up the owner of a very cute 1600 square foot home just down the street from where I live now, all blooming gardens and quaint 1950’s rancher charm.  Instead I will be battling another Invasion of the Camel Crickets and Night of the Living Mold Smell, cooking in my icky kitchen and trying to cram thousands of dollars worth of inventory into my laundry room slash pantry slash warehouse.  It’s all good. 

For tonight, it’s silence and sleep.  I’ve got my final job interview tomorrow and I need to be sharp.  I spent some time feeling grateful about the person I’m seeing, as he completely understands the level of energy it takes - sustained energy - to manage the kids, balance a business, keep the house inhabitable and still have a life outside of them.  He is a runner, so neither of us get upset when the other has to delay a date to squeeze in a run or get up at ungodly hours to meet a training team or run a race.  When I focus on the good stuff, it’s easier to be more patient with the things that provide me short-term heartburn. 

I miss Tricia and Philip tonight. I’d kill to be sipping some gin and juice with Susan, and I could really use a night at a gay bar listening to bad 80’s dance music with Stanley.  I’ll settle for the back of my eyelids.

Codependency (or codependence, co-narcissism or inverted narcissism) is a tendency to behave in overly passive or excessively caretaking ways that negatively impact one’s relationships and quality of life. It also often involves putting one’s needs at a lower priority than others while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others. Codependency can occur in any type of relationship, including in families, at work, in friendships, and also in romantic, peer or community relationships. Codependency may also be characterized by denial, low self-esteem, excessive compliance, and/or control patterns.[1] Narcissists are considered to be natural magnets for the codependent.

(source)

I’ve hated the term “codependent” since I made the fatal mistake of attending a CODA meeting (for the non-12-steppers out there, Codependents Anonymous) more than a decade ago in Raleigh.  Seemed like a good idea since I was already making the rounds of the 12 step meetings, including OA and a hardcore no flour/no sugar faction of OA (think Branch Davidians to the Christian Church).  This was back in the early 90’s and everyone was throwing around the codependent phrase. Codependency was the new black and there was nothing cooler than sitting in coffeeshops or bars (for the non-AA 12 steppers) discussing all the ways codependency had destroyed our lives. 

CODA meetings crack me up to this day.  Nothing like putting a bunch of caretakers in a room together, full of other people and their problems, everyone with an overwhelming need to fix each other.  The best times were when CODA people would hook up and start dating, all the while attending SA meetings.  That unholy union created more work for therapists than 9/11 and the market crash. 

(note:  I believe strongly in 12 step programs, as they have helped me immeasurably at times in my past.  But like anything I’ve done in my life, they are fair game for writing fodder and making fun of the way I used them)

CODA meetings never felt right to me, and I never really understood how I was codependent anyway.  I mean, I loved my friends and my family to the nth degree, and what was wrong with that?  Maybe if people spent more time thinking about the needs of others, the world wouldn’t be such a selfish and cold place. 

At the time, I was still in a fairly dysfunctional relationship that lasted off and on for over 10 years.  Okay, it was fully dysfunctional, but man, was it fun at times.  On a positive note, no other man has ever communicated better with me than K.  Even though there was a lot of lying between us, when we weren’t talking about our (non)relationship we were communicating at a level that even today makes me jealous.  I never felt judged and I told him absolutely everything.  I held nothing back.  I think in his own way, he didn’t either - except where telling the truth would hurt me or drive me away.  Thankfully that was only one small part of his life.  The rest was wide open.  K was not an open person in general and he held much of his personal life close to the vest.  I’m sure he was practicing emotional infidelity with me long before it was a catch phrase.  He told me things and communicated with me in a way that I don’t believe he did with 99% of his girlfriends. 

As I look back from a sunny seat in a place with free wireless, having a good hair day and feeling fairly peaceful, it’s easy to put a love that actively lasted 14 years of my life into perspective.  He was, and probably always will be, the great love of my life.  You can make fun of it or call it fantasy, but I loved him like I’ve loved no other. I also understand that the great loves of our lives are not always the loves we should commit to either. 

I always thought our relationship was so complex, but really, it was amazingly simple.  I made it complex with all of my desires and dreams, and my emotional deafness when it came to hearing him.  I met him when I was young - 14 - and he was older - 22. Most of what I learned in how one expresses love or receives it came from K, and it isn’t all bad.  The rest, well, I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy fixing my messed up ideas of what love is, why I have abandonment issues, why I don’t trust men, or trust them too much.  Why once I bond with my friends, it’s very hard to ever break it, even if the bond is literally tearing me apart.  I can trace back most of my crap to this relationship that began many years ago. 

(break)

Sean told me recently I have abandonment issues.  At first I was thinking, “He totally doesn’t get me”.  Then I realized I definitely do, and one of the reasons - a main reason - I married Mike was because I knew instinctively he would never, ever leave me.  But every other man I’ve ever loved has left me - without fail.  It’s no wonder I struggle to let down my guard these days or preplan for how my head is going to land when the guillotine drops. 

(end break)

To this day, I’m still conceited enough to think that if I love someone enough - if I love them hard enough - if I give enough or if I sacrifice as much as I can - they will do what I want them to.  I’d like that sentence to read:  “If I love someone enough . . . .they will do what’s best for them”, but hey, let’s call it what it is.  We’re all out to get what we want for ourselves, and we like to think that we know better than everyone else what they need.  What I think is best for you could actually be the worst possible thing.  I only play a doctor on tv.  I didn’t stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night. 

With K, I figured if I hung around long enough and was always there for him as much as humanly possible, and let him do what he wanted and listen and not demand, he’d come around to my way of thinking and marry me or at least live with me.  I created a whole life for the two of us without ever looking at his actions and saying to myself, “Get a grip, woman.  He has NO desire for any of this crap!”  Today, K is living out his ideal life - and he lives alone, never having been married.  He has embraced what he calls his selfishness.  I don’t think it’s selfish to do what’s best for you.  He recognized what he needed to work in his life, and he finally hunkered down and accepted his path isn’t going to look like most other “normal” people. 

Unlike me, he never directly lied about what he wanted or what was going to work for him.  Had I taken 5 minutes and looked at his actions instead of his words or my own words, clouding my judgment, I would have been finished with that relationship immediately after college graduation.  His actions were very direct and left little to the imagination.  He threw up a lot of verbal smokescreens, but I am not a stupid girl.  I never have been.  In the back of my mind, I always know what’s going on.  It’s my varying degrees of acceptance or denial that cause me to survive or conversely, falter. 

I’ve come a long way since then.  Yes, I forgave K for the things that happened between us (and there were plenty of bad things to forgive, on both of our sides).  But I forgave myself for being so self-destructive. I started to look at all the things I learned from that relationship instead of focusing on how much damage it did to my long-term view of myself and what I should expect from relationships. 

Am I codependent?  Yeah, probably.  I still have to vigilantly observe my actions because more often than not, I will get stuck worrying about other people and taking care of them while I forget all about myself.  I dated someone last year and I swear, all I did was cater to their needs.  We really didn’t have much in common but I was determined to be the Best. Girlfriend. Ever.  This included Ego Stroking 101, Counseling 301, Parenting 101, Shopping 410 and Housewifery 510.  Frankly, I am the best girlfriend ever - but I do even better when the other person is trying to be the Best. Boyfriend.Ever.  And when what they want is me. 

All of this to say that most everyone I know is in a codependent relationship. My sister is an exception to the rule - as is my friend Laura.  I’m not really sure how they do it but I’m trying - eventually I’ll learn.  For now, I’m trying to keep the codependent gene from passing on down the line to my own children.  I may have learned the behavior by my own experiences, but I’d prefer not to teach it.

And best of all, there are plenty of CODA meetings if I want to get dates for the upcoming free weekends

(couldn’t resist this one:)

I realized today that it’s been a LONG time since I blogged.  Bad me!  Between recuperating mentally and physically from the half, Lily’s birthday and a bunch of work and holiday related stuff, I sort of forgot I had a blog and that yes, writing does make me feel better.  I’m going to do a bullety edition this time around because otherwise it will just be long and boring, instead of bulleted and boring. 

• New Traditions:  Thanksgiving morning, the girls and I ran the Turkey Trot 10k at University of Richmond.  Well, the girls ran a half mile in the kids run - but they loved it!  The 10k nearly killed me, but some amazing things came from that run.  First, I realized I needed to do a lot more hill work.  Running on mostly flat landscapes has made me overly confident in my mediocre running skills.  Theresa preaches hill work - she’s definitely right.  Secondly, the run was admittedly very tough.  I know most of the people running with and around me struggled too.  It was literally hill after hill. Some of it was on trails, which I never run - trails and roads including loose gravel, sand, and large holes.  I was nervous and overly cautious for most of the run.  As I crossed the finish line, I saw that my time was around 1h 6m.  This seems very far away from my goal to break an hour on a 10K run.  However, I posted this later in a running group on Facebook:  “I decided to look up my time from the Monument Avenue 10k. and guess what? my time was 01:08:28. at the turkey trot today - even with hills, walking, and struggling, my time was 1:06:40. that’s improvement, no matter how you slice it. i know i’m very hard on myself - and i know i’m not alone in this - but i can’t thank the people who’ve been running with me enough for providing the motivation (and the “GO FASTER!”) to help me improve.”  Even better, starting a holiday that has been notoriously difficult for me (gotta love holidays that revolve solely around how much food you can consume in one day) with a much healthier approach is something I’d like to continue doing.  The whole vibe of the run was light-hearted and supportive, and you get to run by some of the most beautiful houses in Richmond to boot.  It was especially nice that my parents saw me finish a race, and my kids got to see it too. 
• Lily turned 8 . . . and as much as she’s struggled this year with all the changes, she’s coming along.  She’s starting to make friends at her new school.  She is talking to a professional and she seems to like that.  I moved the house around so that Arden could take my office as her bedroom, and they both seem to be much happier now that they have their own space.  Her birthday party will be simple - a few friends, a movie and dinner, a slumber party.  She’s definitely growing up now.  When she isn’t curled up into me or sharing her stuffed animals with me, she’s rolling her eyes, stomping her feet and making mad faces at me.  I know that the sweetness will slowly be tempered by annoyance and irritation that I am her mom, but right now I enjoy the sweet moments as much as possible. 
• I sucked it up and decorated the house as much as I could.  I am reticent about anything holiday-related right now, but I have to suck it up and fake it for the kids.  The act of putting on the celebration - no matter how forced it felt at the time - was good for me.  I pulled out all the old lights and decorations.  I had help putting up the tree; tomorrow the girls will “decorate” it (this means all of the ornaments will be put on the bottom 2 feet of the tree).  This Christmas will be good for all of us, even if it feels uncomfortable.  There isn’t any extra money for extravagant gifts - in fact, most of my friends will be receiving gifts of the baked kind.  The girls will get one or two things from their father and me. The focus won’t be on what we get, but what we do.  That’s a new trend I’d like to see continue.
• In bigger news, I am hoping to actually buy a house in May or June. My credit should be in decent shape by then.  If I cash in another portion of my retirement (let’s face facts:  unless I remarry, and remarry a millionaire, I will be working for the rest of my life), I should have enough to put down on a house and the payment will be less than the ridiculous rent I pay to live in these palatial surroundings. 

Other than that, it’s just another few days of decorating, cooking, playing with the girls and their friends, and maybe some laundry thrown in for good measure!