I have trouble asking for help. I had the misfortune of being labeled as "gifted" in a time when that meant "already knows some basic skills before entering first grade," and it translated, in my mind, into "should not need help with anything."
I do, however, need help. If anyone knows of a retreat house that takes in people for longer stays (preferably with scholarships or sliding fee scale), an intentional community that would welcome a guest for three months, someone with an extra room to rent, someone who needs a reliable housesitter, or any place where a woman can live inexpensively but safely and with dignity, please drop an email or leave a comment.
I'm middle-aged, animal-friendly, non-smoking, non-drinking, and allergic to artificial fragrances, tobacco, and woodsmoke. I'm quiet and need a place without a TV but enjoy the sounds of live people working or playing. One room would be enough, with or without meals. Gifts I can offer the household include cooking, chores, music, tutoring, moments of inspired goofiness, and listening. I won't be high-maintenance--will do my working-through-things outside the home.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Some days
Some days I feel stuck and scared. I can't imagine life away from my home and dogs. I'm afraid to go out on my own. I remember the episodes of major depression, the feeling of being stuck in a noisy apartment, the fear of being out alone at night in a city.
Then something shifts. A friend sends information about a contemplative order that takes visitors for long stays. I google "bike trailer" and find something that is not expensive and could make life without a car much easier. I find myself looking forward to the challenges of the days ahead.
Trust in God, my soul, for I shall yet praise...
Then something shifts. A friend sends information about a contemplative order that takes visitors for long stays. I google "bike trailer" and find something that is not expensive and could make life without a car much easier. I find myself looking forward to the challenges of the days ahead.
Trust in God, my soul, for I shall yet praise...
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Logistics
I need to find a place to stay for a 90-day separation. I want to spend it in recovery work, in healing from wounds and griefs I will not describe here, and in giving time and space to the gift I have always put last: writing. Physical problems (short of disability) caused me to leave my job recently, and would narrow the choice of jobs I can take, and in this economy, it would be hard to get a job even if that were my focus. I am not eligible for unemployment or disability benefits.
I have a gift from a friend and a tenuous promise from my spouse, and the two together might get me through, if I am very careful and nothing goes wrong and the rent is low enough in a reasonably safe place. Spouse has the job where the house is, and needs the car because there is no bus here. That gives me the interesting opportunity to try out a sort of urban Walden experience: the simplest possible life in a society that values affluence and views poverty as shameful and healing time as selfish. (Of course, Thoreau never mentioned that he spent a lot of time at home or having dinner with the Emersons. He didn't say much about starting a forest fire by accident, either. There is a certain amount of fiction to his account, and I, who am going to be living the facts, am not reassured by his omissions and elisions.)
I'd be eligible for inpatient treatment for a couple of conditions, were it not that my insurance policy is elegantly written to exclude them. If I had $35,000 at hand, I could pay for the treatment myself, but instead, I'm trying to cobble together an equivalent on my own for less than 10 percent of that. If I make it, you bet I'll write the book.
The bittersweet irony is that the depression, anxiety, and OCD that have blocked my path for decades are now enough under control that I'm not eligible for treatment or disability for them--and if I tried, I'd have to give up the things that have worked over the last couple of years and go back to the things that didn't work, which cost far more and leave me hamstrung by side effects.
I wish there were still beguinages. They were a great institution: women living in community with some rules but with temporary vows rather than permanent ones. They'd be a great place for women coming out of painful relationships and learning to live on their own, for those trying to change habits and learn new life skills. We have nothing available anymore for women who are not eligible for welfare, but not financially independent, and who are not in immediate physical danger but who are ill with stress or hurt in body and soul to an extent that makes it difficult or impossible to work for awhile. YWCAs took some of that role for awhile, but few have lodging anymore.
I have a gift from a friend and a tenuous promise from my spouse, and the two together might get me through, if I am very careful and nothing goes wrong and the rent is low enough in a reasonably safe place. Spouse has the job where the house is, and needs the car because there is no bus here. That gives me the interesting opportunity to try out a sort of urban Walden experience: the simplest possible life in a society that values affluence and views poverty as shameful and healing time as selfish. (Of course, Thoreau never mentioned that he spent a lot of time at home or having dinner with the Emersons. He didn't say much about starting a forest fire by accident, either. There is a certain amount of fiction to his account, and I, who am going to be living the facts, am not reassured by his omissions and elisions.)
I'd be eligible for inpatient treatment for a couple of conditions, were it not that my insurance policy is elegantly written to exclude them. If I had $35,000 at hand, I could pay for the treatment myself, but instead, I'm trying to cobble together an equivalent on my own for less than 10 percent of that. If I make it, you bet I'll write the book.
The bittersweet irony is that the depression, anxiety, and OCD that have blocked my path for decades are now enough under control that I'm not eligible for treatment or disability for them--and if I tried, I'd have to give up the things that have worked over the last couple of years and go back to the things that didn't work, which cost far more and leave me hamstrung by side effects.
I wish there were still beguinages. They were a great institution: women living in community with some rules but with temporary vows rather than permanent ones. They'd be a great place for women coming out of painful relationships and learning to live on their own, for those trying to change habits and learn new life skills. We have nothing available anymore for women who are not eligible for welfare, but not financially independent, and who are not in immediate physical danger but who are ill with stress or hurt in body and soul to an extent that makes it difficult or impossible to work for awhile. YWCAs took some of that role for awhile, but few have lodging anymore.
The familiarity of a strange land
Everything looks the same on the surface, yet all the meanings have changed.
I have experienced this before. When I let myself remember all my childhood, this was what life felt like. I felt very blessed to have a partner who supported me through the strangeness, and kept telling myself that. What I couldn't let myself see was that the same patterns were playing out in different ways in the very relationship I was depending on to get me through the pain of losing my family to denial.
There was another level of denial. I could not let myself see that my marriage had all the fault lines that split my family of origin apart. Denial had kept me alive through childhood; it kept a rickety marriage running until one day, that fell apart, too.
My faith in God was pretty flimsy all along: in the language of recovery, I had made another person my Higher Power. Now, the only thing left to trust is the idea that there is a God who can help me change, and the steadfast love of dogs. Sadly, it looks as though I will have to leave them behind for awhile.
Spouse and I have agreed, with the help of our therapist, to take a 90-day separation to work on our own issues and then take some time to figure out whether we can start a new relationship. More on that in future posts.
I have experienced this before. When I let myself remember all my childhood, this was what life felt like. I felt very blessed to have a partner who supported me through the strangeness, and kept telling myself that. What I couldn't let myself see was that the same patterns were playing out in different ways in the very relationship I was depending on to get me through the pain of losing my family to denial.
There was another level of denial. I could not let myself see that my marriage had all the fault lines that split my family of origin apart. Denial had kept me alive through childhood; it kept a rickety marriage running until one day, that fell apart, too.
My faith in God was pretty flimsy all along: in the language of recovery, I had made another person my Higher Power. Now, the only thing left to trust is the idea that there is a God who can help me change, and the steadfast love of dogs. Sadly, it looks as though I will have to leave them behind for awhile.
Spouse and I have agreed, with the help of our therapist, to take a 90-day separation to work on our own issues and then take some time to figure out whether we can start a new relationship. More on that in future posts.
Silences
There's so much to say, but it's identifying, so I choose not to say it here.
There's so much I can't say because it's not mine to say.
I can say this: these days, I lead an apparently normal life and dream of earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, because so much of what I tried to believe in has turned out not to be true, and the truth is so painful.
After more than two decades, I find that my primary relationship was a commitment on my side only. Many fears have turned out to be true, and all the hopes have proven false. What's left is the fact of having spent nearly half my life with, and given up any hope of having a family for, someone who was both profoundly ambivalent and deeply dishonest about the ambivalence. He is now honest about the ambivalence and about many things he had kept hidden. I see now why I was angry without knowing why.
The truth sets us free. The truth is not ever guaranteed to be comforting. I'm not sure yet what the freedom is for.
There's so much I can't say because it's not mine to say.
I can say this: these days, I lead an apparently normal life and dream of earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, because so much of what I tried to believe in has turned out not to be true, and the truth is so painful.
After more than two decades, I find that my primary relationship was a commitment on my side only. Many fears have turned out to be true, and all the hopes have proven false. What's left is the fact of having spent nearly half my life with, and given up any hope of having a family for, someone who was both profoundly ambivalent and deeply dishonest about the ambivalence. He is now honest about the ambivalence and about many things he had kept hidden. I see now why I was angry without knowing why.
The truth sets us free. The truth is not ever guaranteed to be comforting. I'm not sure yet what the freedom is for.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Two wry thoughts
1. This all came about because I got off antidepressants, which were giving me serious brain fog, and became strong enough to refuse to be silenced. Remember the joke, "no good deed goes unpunished"? When a system is unhealthy, no growth goes unopposed. (Please note: I do not consider myself to be a healthy person stuck with a sick one, nor am I The Victim. It is very seldom that simple.)
2. Trust me to be doing this in the depths of a recession and at the beginning of a flu pandemic. (Note to self: work on timing.)
2. Trust me to be doing this in the depths of a recession and at the beginning of a flu pandemic. (Note to self: work on timing.)
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Times change
I closed my earlier blog, Dancing Through Doorways, at a time when I needed to concentrate on matters closer to home. In a sense, I closed the door to the blogworld in order to tend my own home. Now I am opening a door and looking cautiously into a changed landscape.
Over the last year, I have devoted much time to healing work and much more time to the effort to save and heal a marriage that I had considered the central and most solid thing in my life. My spouse, AB, and I have been working together in couples therapy, discovering a lot we didn't know and some things we really didn't want to know. To my surprise and deep sorrow, we are now planning a temporary separation which will begin sometime in the next couple of months and last at least three months. We do not know what we will choose after that.
After more than two decades of an intense and absorbing partnership, I'm trying to remember how to dance alone. It seems like a good time to rejoin the larger dance of the blogging community.
I welcome comments (though I will moderate them). I will not discuss the problems in our relationship here or in email: the focus will be on my work, which is to live differently and reconnect to the larger world.
Over the last year, I have devoted much time to healing work and much more time to the effort to save and heal a marriage that I had considered the central and most solid thing in my life. My spouse, AB, and I have been working together in couples therapy, discovering a lot we didn't know and some things we really didn't want to know. To my surprise and deep sorrow, we are now planning a temporary separation which will begin sometime in the next couple of months and last at least three months. We do not know what we will choose after that.
After more than two decades of an intense and absorbing partnership, I'm trying to remember how to dance alone. It seems like a good time to rejoin the larger dance of the blogging community.
I welcome comments (though I will moderate them). I will not discuss the problems in our relationship here or in email: the focus will be on my work, which is to live differently and reconnect to the larger world.
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