"An Exact Replica Of A Figment Of My Imagination"

Maybe I shouldn't be reading this book right now.

Maybe it is "courting" sadness.

Maybe I should be slapping a smile on my face and focusing on the positive.

But that is what I have done my whole life - package away grief and be a "good girl" and not make others uncomfortable.

Suck it up and solider on.

So I am reading it.

And I am BAWLING (ugly faced, mascara running bawling).

And I am laughing.

At things like the "dwarves of grief" which I excerpted here.

It is a woundingly lovely memoir of grief and loss.

It is like an anthem to grief.

A tribute to loss.

I am filled with love for this sweet woman who lost her full term son, Pudding and her willingness to bring us in to her heart and world and share him and her grief with us. It is so intimate... so generous. I love her honesty and I love HER for laying herself bare. I cannot BELIEVE she GOES there. That she remembers this (hasn't blocked it out, is willing to expose it) and will recreate it on the page. Then the fact that she can do it so deftly and lyrically and doesn't use language to distance and protect but to invite and draw in. I am in awe of her writing and her spirit. It is humbling because I am so aware of how out of my grasp this feels - for so many reasons.

But can I just say that if you have ever LOST someone or grieved or suffered, her story (Elizabeth's and Edward's story) will resonate with you. It is so HONORING and tender toward loss and suffering.

I will leave you with one small excerpt from page 132:

"Of course you can't out-travel sadness. You will find it has smuggled itself along in your suitcase. It coats the camera lens, it flavors the local cuisine. In that different sunlight, it stands out, awkward, yours, honking in the brash vowels of your native tongue in otherwise quiet restaurants. You may even feel proud of its stubbornness as it follows you up the bell towers and monuments, as it pants in your ear while you take in the view. I travel not to get away from my troubles but to see how they look in front of famous buildings or on deserted beaches. I take them for walks. Sometimes I get them drunk. Back at home, we generally understand each other better."

I am not trying to make too much of my sadness or to compare it to hers - or yours - but I AM grief stricken over Mr. M's relapse. I feel like 23 years of grief and loss that I have been stuffing are throbbingly present right now, welling up and overflowing after YEARS of being denied. I am facing the LOSS that has accompanied Mr. M's repeated binges and disappearances and thefts and absences and job losses and abandonments (of me and the kids), not to mention the terror of if he would live and how I would be able to provide all by myself. This time as I stop denying and honestly look at my loss and pain, I have come face to face with the fact that I don't know if I have it in me to do this again. I am heartbroken and tired and grief-stricken. I might end up having to get a divorce. This will be a death of sorts - the death of a marriage and of a dream and of the future I THOUGHT I would have. (I KNOW I will have a wonderful future with new dreams, but this one will have died.) If I don't get a divorce, I have to face the fact that in 5 or 10 years (or in 10 minutes), it is highly likely Mr. M will relapse again and I will be blogging these EXACT same thoughts and shock and betrayal and abandonment all over again. Only this time, I will be 47 or 52.

I feel GUILTY and "BAD" writing this because I feel like in Recovery you are "supposed to" think positive and practice acceptance. But although it may not SOUND like it, this grief I am allowing myself to feel IS acceptance. I am accepting myself - warts and all. I am accepting the reality of my past 23 years. I am accepting that if I stay with Mr. M, my future will likely (not certainly) include relapse. And as sad as it feels, it feels kind of good - as I have mentioned - honest.

I am afraid if I am morbid and sappy and negative, YOU might not like me. But then I think SHEESH!!!!!!!! What is the freaking POINT of this blog if I have to be a people pleaser here too?!?!?! For goodness sake, this is my blog and no one has to read it if they don't like the way my mind works or don't like me. I do MORE than enough people pleasing and tap dancing in my off-line life to last a few lifetimes. So HERE... here on my blog, I will run the risk of not being YOUR definition of 'healthy' or wise or loving or accepting or positive or "in recovery" or "Christian" or whatever.

This is MY issue, no one else's... but I started realizing I wanted to edit what I wrote to be more uplifting and inspirational, humorous and insightful - whatever. Then I thought "THAT is not true" to where I am right now. It is not true to me and therefore it is unkind to me. So if someone were to visit and read my blog and not like it or me then I need to LEARN to tolerate my discomfort with that. If that is you, it is OK. You are allowed to not like me or my writing or my emotional place. I am not super emotionally ok with that. But I am not OK with Mr. M's drinking... and JUST like with his drinking, I am POWERLESS over you & your opinions and my life is unmanageable when I fret about it and try to control and manage your opinion of me. So I will ask God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (you visiting or not visiting my blog, liking or disliking my blog, liking or disliking ME), the courage to change the things I can (Me and only me) and the WISDOM to know the difference.

Proverbs 31:30

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”- Proverbs 31:30

Although it is true that “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”, I find myself often wanting to always be honey when the truth sometimes lies in vinegar.  There is nothing wrong with compliments and kindness. But there is a thin line between compliments and flattery, between being kind and being a people-pleaser. Scripture is clear about the difference. “Charm is deceptive.”  This seems more a challenge than a condemnation. Can I strive for more loving truth and less deceptive charm?

When I am in line at the grocery store and glance over at the newsstand, I see 87 magazine covers showing me what beauty is and is not. Perhaps it’s the glorious model already back in her pre-pregnancy jeans even though her baby is just 9 minutes old.   Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, maybe it’s the pop star photographed in her bathing suit looking like a *GASP* size 10 while the tabloid headline screams that she is obese. Even if we don’t pick up those magazines and read them, they still creep into our subconsciousness.

There is nothing wrong with being beautiful. In the Old Testament, It was Queen Esther’s beauty, that God used to save the Jews.  It’s the value we place on it, how we use it, and what other areas we neglect when we focus on our beauty that are more God’s concern.  What is beautiful to Him is a woman who fears the Lord and finds her confidence in Him.

Eeyore Here

Last night I said I was choosing to be a Tigger. Today, however, I am pure Eeyore... eating thistles and living in the gloomy place. I am on my pity-pot again.

Just when I had decided to get a divorce and end my alcoholic marriage - and was grieving it, but feeling hopeful (don't get me wrong, in my grandiosity, I was still blaming myself for ruining Mr. M's life), I got an email back from a known Christian author on divorce & remarriage. Here is his email and my rainbow of responses:

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HIS EMAIL

"Thank you for sharing your difficult situation with me. From what you say, you have been suffering for a long time.

As you know, the Bible does not say anything about addiction, and drug use is not listed as a ground for divorce. His addiction has clearly caused him to neglect you in all kinds of ways, but it is difficult to know whether one can call this deliberate or not. However, even if you accept an entirely medical model of alcoholism, and regard your husband as sick and incapable of supporting you, the fact that he has denied the problem and refused treatment for so long makes him at least partly responsible for his addiction and for the neglect which this addiction has caused.

But now that he is finally in treatment, wouldn't it be perverse to divorce him just when he is getting straight?... Either way, you have the space of time during which to put your life back together. During this time you should make a decision, but not one which makes him into a victim.

At the end of treatment, you may assume that he will be clear of alcohol, and so if he then chooses to start using this or any other drug, it will be entirely his own choice. At that point you would be able to clearly say that he was continuing his neglect deliberately. Given the many years you have already suffered this, you may decide that this would be, for you, the point at which your marriage can't go on.

If this is so, you should warn your husband, preferably in writing, that the first time he touches alcohol after his treatment (whether or not he becomes 'drunk') you would leave him with view to divorcing him. Although this sounds very harsh, it may be that this kind of ultimatum may help him resolve to quit completely.

As I say, I have no useful teaching on this from the Bible, and this suggestion comes merely from myself, albeit based on Biblical principles.

God be with you at this difficult time."

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MY RAINBOW OF RESPONSES

A) What are the odds he will really get "straight" this time??? and

B) Perverse? Isn't the definition of "perverse" telling your wife and children that you love them and are going to quite drinking and then drinking again over a 20 year period?

I really like & agree with this point!

However, doesn't every alcoholic ALWAYS feel like the victim, all the time - any time they have to suffer the consequences of their actions? (For example, this last bender, when he spent all Christmas week drunk, it was MY fault, because he was depressed, because I didn't include him in all my family's Christmas festivities, not his choice, because he had driven the children to a public place drunk and high and then PASSED OUT in front of 3,000 people!)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Need I even clarify why I am laughing???)

Might one think that after 20 years of this sh**, I possibly:

1 - have given him every ultimatum in the book?

2 - believe it IS deliberate neglect?

3 - am already at the point where my marriage can't go on?

4 - want to leave him NOW with the view of divorcing him?

No it doesn't.

See "HAHAHAHA" above.

Yet even knowing all this, it threw me into a funk of despair because I just want everyone to applaud and agree and even help. (My tap-dancing, people pleasing again.)

On top of this, my 17 year old - whom I'll call "Drummer" (he marches to the beat of his own drum, that one), came to me last night with tears brimming in his eyes. Although he knows it is time for divorce and although he knows it was dad's choice, he is still heartbroken and he still can't help thinking that I am quitting!!!! He wasn't trying to be mean and he knew he wasn't being logical, but that was how he was feeling.

Gloomily,

Eeyore