Moving Forward

For some reason, being ill always affords me a clarity of mind, an ability to understand things and put things in perspective--and being felled by this little kidney stone's been that impetus. What I think happens to me in these situations is that I slow down enough to pick up the minute pieces of life-experiences and put them together, like putting together a puzzle. This time, all those pieces have created a picture that makes a great deal of sense, as much as it looks a bit like a road map for the future....

It started with this: aside from the kidney stone, I'm in excellent health. Yeah, I can use a bit more B and C vitamins, as well as some zinc, but I'm hardly deficient in anything. My immune system's really good. And, oddly, since the stent's been in, the swelling in my left ankle, that I used to have at the end of every day (which all the dr's had chalked up to "poor circulation") has abated. Which makes me think that I'd had a problem with that kidney for some time now--and that I should be even more healthy once the stone's removed...

So what do I do with all this health? First, I've got to get my weight under control or else I won't have my health for too much longer. Besides, I'm not ill, so there's no reason--other than lack of enthusiasm for the prospect of working out--for me not to get in better shape.

And I want to be thinner, so that I look younger, so that I can find someone who wants more out of life than being quiet and hiking up hills....



Since my birthday, I've been thinking a great deal about adulthood and family and what it means to be in the middle of middle age. I realize that for many, many years I was in the Pit of Despair, and unable to do anything, because no one in my family, among the people who are supposed to "love" me, considered me to have any worth. I'd gone thru Smith College, graduated with highest honors and it meant absolutely nothing because I didn't have "any old job" (to quote my father) and I'd been divorced again....

And I realized why I ran away from marriage and family for so many years. Marriage and family did not mean love--they meant Manipulation, Cruelty, and a living Death.

Yet I kept wanting to be married--and deep down I kept wanting a family.

I held on to "childish things" like dolls and acting like a child in part from post-traumatic stress disorder (wanting to go back to a happy time--ptsd freezes you in a particular time) but also because I deeply wanted children.

Acting like a child was a way of articulating what I could not say: that I wanted children so I could stop being a child.

But, in the past year or so, I've struggled to stop being a child and become a grown-up.

Actually, it's been since I've realized that I've built an entire career from nothing, and owned it, that I've realized that, in spite of the ptsd and being stuck, I've managed to become a grown-up.

Maybe I was when I graduated college--or I would have been if I'd had love and support. But I didn't. I was put down and stayed in childhood, where there was some safety.

Now that I feel like a grown-up though, those other grown-up things that I've been denying myself because I felt I wasn't entitled to have them--marriage and a family--are things that I feel that I can have.

But they will take planning.

Whenever I mention planning anything to S.E. I get all sorts of excuses and hemming and hawing and I see in him a desire just to drift along...

My ex-husband was a big one for drifting along. He never wanted to talk about, or plan anything. I couldn't bring up talking about family--and he seemed so adamant not to have a family. The only one who pushed us on the family thing was his mother--because she wanted grandchildren. It wasn't about us having children, it was about having children for her. Which didn't seem right to me. So, we kept drifting along, and drifting along, until he'd made up his mind about things...

So, all this drifting along with S.E. isn't acceptable. But it's difficult to pull away from him, because he's been there for me. He's like family. But he doesn't want to create family.

I met L.B. four years ago, when he was the age I am now. His eldest daughter was graduating high school that year. She's got one more year of college now. And I wonder, for me, where's my family? He's hardly the family man he pretends to be, and yet he has it all. I think what I see in him pisses me off enough to question what I don't have, and that I want more. If a lying hypocrite like him could have a family, then how can I be such an awful person who shouldn't have a family?

This makes me see that I was never such an awful person that I should shrink away from wanting to have a family. I wasn't such an awful person that I had to run away from the daylight life and hang out in that strange underworld I'd discovered. I was made to believe I was an awful person, that I was crazy, that I was unwelcome in the world that everybody else lived in. That I was smart but a loser who would never make anything of herself....

None of that is true. My family's been wrong all along. They are very cruel people.

I am, though, a planner. I'm not someone who does well just drifitng, waiting for serendipity to make "it" happen (whatever "it" happens to be.) In many respects, I had a plan when I left my day job and started to build my career. I consciously went different places, introduced myself to people, emailed people, called some as well. What was I doing? I was laying a foundation for what's going on now, for what's paying the bills and adding to my accounts.

So, now, I want to make a plan for the future, for getting older and having a good life.

S.E. doesn't care about that, doesn't want to plan anything.

and I've gotten to where I see that it's just not going to work in the long term with him. That hurts, and I feel like I've wasted my last childbearing years hoping he'd change his mind. But that's not going to happen....

So, now, it's about planning the next step. No, I can't plan how it's going to happen--that's not how the planning part works. The planning part works by scouting out the right places and showing up.

That's something I didn't do when I was younger--plan well to try to find the right husband. I didn't plan it, left it up to serendipity, and ended up with the wrong person. (then again, you don't necessarily go fishing for good husband material among people who are unwell.)

So, I'm scouting a little bit. And I'm thinking of strategies--that's not particularly conscious as it is unconscious to a degree. Maybe at some point, if I really feel the need, I'll do what one book I read years ago suggested: ask friends for help.

I don't know though. Perhaps just being more conscious of things, and showing up at The Right Places might cause some sort of change.

But things have to change.

The way I see it is: if I was able to build a career out of nothing, I can certainly find a decent man who wants to create a life together, not just drift along.

I can't drift without purpose, without anything that's going to make life have meaning. That's just not me.

We'll see what happens.