Someone Else's Life

Most days it feels as though I've woken up in someone else's life. I don't recognize my surroundings or the people I interact with. Everything and everyone is new.

The constancy of being a mother, a parent is gone, far off in the distance. I suppose this must be something like what happens when your kids leave the nest, except I am the one who has left what was left of "the nest." What family I have is a long way off.

My former colleague and friend is no one I recognize. She's not the person I thought she was.

I don't suppose I've ever felt more alone.

But, even still, I am here. Me, myself, and I. I keep on reframing this as my golden opportunity to return to being the me that I neglected when I was swept up into the narcissistic vortex of my ex. His all demanding world meant that there was no me, by default. I didn't really exist. I only mattered in so much as I was there to do what he wanted or demanded, it was never about me.

And maybe this is where I wake up in someone else's life. And that someone else's is my own. I suspect that my own life feels foreign precisely because I haven't been here so much. I haven't lived the life I'm meant to live. Somehow I must find the courage to get back to owning my own life and make my way through all this weirdness to the new day.

Beauty from Wounded Space, One Day

Sometimes, oh-so-unrealistically, I think that I could handle the narcissist and all his shit, if it weren't for the havoc he disseminates like some sort of metastasizing cancer to my entire world. Especially, now, I need support. I need friends. And there he is dropping poison into the waters of my friendships. He means to destroy me. Punish me. Teach me, a lesson. And of course, there is always abuse by proxy. Getting my own friends to pressure me to do whatever-the-hell-it-is-that-he-wants-me to do--for whatever ridiculous purpose he might dream up--so that he can ultimately, control me.

Lately, the dark pessimist in me measures time in terms of which friends, I lost at which point in time. As in, oh August--that's when I realized the estrangement betwixt Michelle and I. Oh, September. That's when he got to my friend, Jenn.  

Somehow, right now, I don't seem to have the energy to counter the narcissistic propaganda they all seem to choke down like cough syrup.

I know I'll bounce back, eventually--just now I need time to devote energy elsewhere.

Nonetheless, it is a shame. I could use the support of my friends now, especially. But, I know eventually, the true ones will come back around. The truth will come out. And it is important for me to let go of my feelings of betrayal by them. They don't know better. They are manipulated--the exact same place I was for 20 years or so. How can I expect them to see through stuff any sooner? I certainly, didn't.

And so, I do my best, to let go. Forgive. Not take it, personally. They don't get it, really. 

Instead, I cling to hope in the words of John O'Donohue about said friends. I cling to the idea of beauty emerging from the wounded space, one day.

For Lost Friends

As twilight makes a rainbow robe
From the concealed colors of day
In order for time to stay alive
Within the dark weight of night,
May we lose no one we love
From the shelter of our hearts.

When we love another heart
And allow it to love us,
We journey deep below time
Into that eternal weave
Where nothing unravels.

May we have the grace to see
Despite the hurt of rupture,
The searing of anger,
And the empty disappointment,
That whoever we have loved,
Such love can never quench.

Though a door may have closed,
Closed between us,
May we be able to view
Our lost friends with eyes
Wise with calming grace;
Forgive them the damage
We were left to inherit;

Free ourselves from the chains
Of forlorn resentment;
Bring warmth again to
Where the heart has frozen
In order that beyond the walls
Of our cherished hurt
And chosen distance
We may be able to
Celebrate the gifts they brought,
Learn and grow from the pain,
And prosper into difference,
Wishing them the peace
Where spirit can summon
Beauty from wounded space.

-John O'Donohue

Loss

At least more days than not, it feels as though you have lost everything. The rhythm of the waves of loss can crash you down, dragging you out to sea in the undertow.

Intermittently interspersed on other days, you chart a little progress. A sense of doing a bit better seeps in. Mild hints of a new rhythm take shape—like the faintest shadow of a six pack emerging on the abdomen of an obsessive gym rat. The new habit of passing the kids off through school numbs the pain in your heart, a little bit. Somehow, it is easy to imagine them merely spending a few nights at a friend’s house away from you. Until the dog looks around, whining for the children that play with her and all the kid chores remain undone—little post-it note reminders call your bluff in your pretensions--your life is not the same, and never will be.

You live in a small apartment, now.

You look out the patio door at an apartment advertising sign.

You share your kids with someone who doesn't love you anymore and maybe never did.

You sleep alone without somebody next to you snoring or talking in his sleep.

And while the sleeping alone part might be an improvement over the nights of hearing him talk out loud while he dreamed of their lovemaking, as he moaned her name again and again, you still miss the comfort of lying in another's arms. You miss having your Other--your someone.

Being forsaken is hard. Difficult.   

And moving forward, of course, the predictables are hard—the anniversaries, the birthdays, the Christmases, and the Thanksgivings—all the events and celebrations, sometimes with the children, or without, sometimes alone—now you relate in your grief to the presence of an absence.

The predictables are difficult, but the unpredictables pummel, blindsiding you, catching you off guard at just the wrong time.

Taking your 13 yr old son to the Symphony—it’s not the Symphony, but rather the drop off at evening’s end, where the strangeness of it all punches you in the gut. You pull up to your house and your boy scrambles out of the van to run inside as you fight the same inclination, the automatic default habit of turning off the engine and walking inside to tuck him into bed like you’ve always done. Instead, the boy you pushed out of your own body is walking away from you and the air is catching in your throat and the drive home is fostering the need for tiny windshield wipers on your eyes.

Even the house--your own home--seems to mock you. Looking at the trim--that you begged him to help you paint--that you spent weekends painting alone for months, you are struck by the fact that it remains unfinished. Mimicry of your unfinished relationship. The house seems to stare back at you, looking into your soul. The windows clearly, wondering what-the-hell you are doing in backing up the van and driving off.  Even the burgundy Bougainvillea—that he would not let you have for so long—that he always resented because its flowers might drop into the pool—that you fought so hard to have—feels traitorous as it cloaks the house in beauty and continues to grow skyward, as if there could be something, anything, not entirely dead in the world in all of this loss.