Anyway, the problem should be fixed by Monday, God willing, and I'll update you on some new developments. Meanwhile, call me today or Sunday night if you get the chance. Excited to share what happened to me in group this week!
Friday, May 30, 2008
M.I.A.
Hey, I haven't disappeared. I just told anyone in group that is also part of the book study, that I am having computer related issues. The fan in the computer is turning off randomly and then the computer shuts down to protect itself. Gee, that sounds like every relationship I've ever had!
Anyway, the problem should be fixed by Monday, God willing, and I'll update you on some new developments. Meanwhile, call me today or Sunday night if you get the chance. Excited to share what happened to me in group this week!
Anyway, the problem should be fixed by Monday, God willing, and I'll update you on some new developments. Meanwhile, call me today or Sunday night if you get the chance. Excited to share what happened to me in group this week!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
On Swallowing a Bomb
I was thinking yesterday about something that has really been bothering me since last January. It's weird. I don't know why I'm waiting until now to write about this because, even now, I'm not completely clear on why I feel the way I do. Maybe someone else has felt the same way and has some insight.
Last year, after my husband's third polygraph (failed the first two), I was presented with ALL of the truth about his acting out behaviors. For me, this was a good thing. I was able to decide for myself whether, after knowing everything, I wanted to continue in the relationship or walk away. Obviously, I chose to stay.
Here is what is bothering me. Part of the information that came out of that third polygraph was that my husband had a real live affair within the first two years of our marriage with a girl/woman he went to college with. Her name was T, and she was known by the guys in the dorms as "the roach." I still have no idea why they would call her such a thing, but that is how they referred to her.
T was sort of plain looking. She was just a little shorter than me, very thin, very pale, freckles, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, smoke stained teeth. She probably went unnoticed a lot in a crowd, because her personality was sort of absent too. I tried to be friendly with her a few times when I would visit P's college, because I wanted to get to know his friends, but there was this impenatrable force field around her that didn't allow me to get to know her at all.
In the time P and I dated, I saw her a few times at parties and over the course of a weekend for a wedding we were invited to, and then we drove out to see her and another college buddy when they lived in Florida and we lived in Texas. I knew that she and P had been sexual when they were in college. P and I weren't married or even seeing each other at the time when that happened, so it was something that I was willing to look past because it was part of P's past. Everybody has a past, right?
Finding out about the sex between them after the polygraph was a strange experience. I was in the parking lot of the local supermarket, picking up a dessert to bring to the friend that I was going to visit moments later. I had left an email message for P that the polygraph results had come and showed deception on one of the questions. He called me over his lunch hour and said, "I have to tell you something. Remember how I told you that at that bachelor party, I kissed T? Well, it was more than that."
I stood there in the parking lot with a grocery store bakery layer cake in a yellow plastic bag hanging off of my arm, getting the news that he had in fact cheated on me, on my cell phone. I tried to strong arm our preschooler into her carseat, while cradling the phone between my ear and my shoulder, at the same time balancing the chocolate whatever-it-was so that it didn't lose all of it's icing.
"Hold on" I said. I set the cake down on the front seat of the van, buckled up the protesting four year old, and said to our son, "Watch your sister!" I clicked the door locks shut, and watched the van from about 20 yards away. "You want to tell me this NOW?! I'm going to D's house for lunch this very minute. How the f--- am I supposed to compose myself by the time I get over there?"
I snapped the phone shut and forced my body into the van. My son had the "oh, sh*t, mom's mad" look on his face. All I could think of was, "How am I going to pull this off? How am I going to look like I didn't just swallow a ticking bomb? How am I going to put on the "everything's just fine" expression?
But I did. And I wore that expression for two straight hours while we sat talking about the school district, and our other children, and how well our boys get along together, and their new trampoline, and their bedroom renovation, and what a great summer we were going to have together. And that bomb just kept jumping around in my stomach, threatening to pop out and onto the table for D to see. But I just kept holding it back.
Then we drove home. And the bomb just stayed there until I could finally speak to my husband again at 4:30, when he would be driving back over to his mother's house. And finally, my insides exploded. "HOW COULD YOU!!!" But not for the obvious reason, although that was one of them.
How could he? How could he have slept with THAT woman? How could he keep that secret from me for 17 years? But most weighing on my mind was how could he have kept me a slave to my own shame over the affair that I had had (when he was in anorexia mode), when he had done the same thing? He kept saying to me every time he would act out, either emotionally, or m-ing or ex-ing, "At least *I* didn't go outside of our marriage!" HOW COULD HE let me keep punishing myself for my own affair? How could HE shame me over the same thing he was guilty of?
I quickly justified my sin, "I was at least *lonely*, you were just *alone.*" (Sidenote: what I did was horribly wrong, and I will never condone nor defend what I did. It was WRONG. I was WRONG.)
But that is just how I came to find out. Afterward, he also told me that when we went to visit her and P (a friend) in Florida, that he laid there that night, m-ing, reliving the memory of cheating.
Believe it or not, THAT was the day I came to understand that he was an addict. The day that he admitted sleeping with HER. Please don't misunderstand me. I've made it clear before that I am not "all that." Physically though, I am certain that I have more going on than she does. I know that sounds horribly vain, and I realize that physical attraction is only one aspect of a person's makeup. BUT, my husband didn't want her for her personality that night. He wanted little more than fifteen minutes of her time.
I know, that was a long way to go to get to my point, but bear with me. It's almost over.
What is concerning me is that, my anger towards her was so fleeting. It lasted about a minute or two, relatively speaking. Even now, I can't really muster up a whole lot of feelings when I think of her sleeping with him. I could probably still invoke some anger for all of the people he's had emotional affairs with. I won't, but the point is I might still resent some of their behaviors with my husband, where I'm willing to give her a free pass. I just don't understand this.
One of the reasons I've come up with is that maybe the emotional affairs bothered me more because they were ongoing and they were based in feelings, and could have easily been based in love. Whereas, the physical affair was a one time equivalent of getting an itch scratched, although I do understand that it is not as simple as I make it sound. But the physical affair didn't drag on and on with drama. It was very cut and dry.
Another reason I think it may have bothered me less is that it didn't mess so much with my already low self esteem. Maybe I felt superior to her in the looks department, so I wrote her off as being "less" than me. God forgive me if that is the case.
The last reason I can think of is that I have been characterizing her lately as a sex addict. My husband told me that she certainly acted like the other female sex addicts in group and that he would classify her as one, having been with her several times. But, my question is, is the crazy codependent in me feeling sorry for her, thereby forgiving her for committing adultery but not completely forgiving all of the others that didn't commit adultery.
So anyway...that's where my head's been lately! Forgive me for rambling.
Last year, after my husband's third polygraph (failed the first two), I was presented with ALL of the truth about his acting out behaviors. For me, this was a good thing. I was able to decide for myself whether, after knowing everything, I wanted to continue in the relationship or walk away. Obviously, I chose to stay.
Here is what is bothering me. Part of the information that came out of that third polygraph was that my husband had a real live affair within the first two years of our marriage with a girl/woman he went to college with. Her name was T, and she was known by the guys in the dorms as "the roach." I still have no idea why they would call her such a thing, but that is how they referred to her.
T was sort of plain looking. She was just a little shorter than me, very thin, very pale, freckles, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, smoke stained teeth. She probably went unnoticed a lot in a crowd, because her personality was sort of absent too. I tried to be friendly with her a few times when I would visit P's college, because I wanted to get to know his friends, but there was this impenatrable force field around her that didn't allow me to get to know her at all.
In the time P and I dated, I saw her a few times at parties and over the course of a weekend for a wedding we were invited to, and then we drove out to see her and another college buddy when they lived in Florida and we lived in Texas. I knew that she and P had been sexual when they were in college. P and I weren't married or even seeing each other at the time when that happened, so it was something that I was willing to look past because it was part of P's past. Everybody has a past, right?
Finding out about the sex between them after the polygraph was a strange experience. I was in the parking lot of the local supermarket, picking up a dessert to bring to the friend that I was going to visit moments later. I had left an email message for P that the polygraph results had come and showed deception on one of the questions. He called me over his lunch hour and said, "I have to tell you something. Remember how I told you that at that bachelor party, I kissed T? Well, it was more than that."
I stood there in the parking lot with a grocery store bakery layer cake in a yellow plastic bag hanging off of my arm, getting the news that he had in fact cheated on me, on my cell phone. I tried to strong arm our preschooler into her carseat, while cradling the phone between my ear and my shoulder, at the same time balancing the chocolate whatever-it-was so that it didn't lose all of it's icing.
"Hold on" I said. I set the cake down on the front seat of the van, buckled up the protesting four year old, and said to our son, "Watch your sister!" I clicked the door locks shut, and watched the van from about 20 yards away. "You want to tell me this NOW?! I'm going to D's house for lunch this very minute. How the f--- am I supposed to compose myself by the time I get over there?"
I snapped the phone shut and forced my body into the van. My son had the "oh, sh*t, mom's mad" look on his face. All I could think of was, "How am I going to pull this off? How am I going to look like I didn't just swallow a ticking bomb? How am I going to put on the "everything's just fine" expression?
But I did. And I wore that expression for two straight hours while we sat talking about the school district, and our other children, and how well our boys get along together, and their new trampoline, and their bedroom renovation, and what a great summer we were going to have together. And that bomb just kept jumping around in my stomach, threatening to pop out and onto the table for D to see. But I just kept holding it back.
Then we drove home. And the bomb just stayed there until I could finally speak to my husband again at 4:30, when he would be driving back over to his mother's house. And finally, my insides exploded. "HOW COULD YOU!!!" But not for the obvious reason, although that was one of them.
How could he? How could he have slept with THAT woman? How could he keep that secret from me for 17 years? But most weighing on my mind was how could he have kept me a slave to my own shame over the affair that I had had (when he was in anorexia mode), when he had done the same thing? He kept saying to me every time he would act out, either emotionally, or m-ing or ex-ing, "At least *I* didn't go outside of our marriage!" HOW COULD HE let me keep punishing myself for my own affair? How could HE shame me over the same thing he was guilty of?
I quickly justified my sin, "I was at least *lonely*, you were just *alone.*" (Sidenote: what I did was horribly wrong, and I will never condone nor defend what I did. It was WRONG. I was WRONG.)
But that is just how I came to find out. Afterward, he also told me that when we went to visit her and P (a friend) in Florida, that he laid there that night, m-ing, reliving the memory of cheating.
Believe it or not, THAT was the day I came to understand that he was an addict. The day that he admitted sleeping with HER. Please don't misunderstand me. I've made it clear before that I am not "all that." Physically though, I am certain that I have more going on than she does. I know that sounds horribly vain, and I realize that physical attraction is only one aspect of a person's makeup. BUT, my husband didn't want her for her personality that night. He wanted little more than fifteen minutes of her time.
I know, that was a long way to go to get to my point, but bear with me. It's almost over.
What is concerning me is that, my anger towards her was so fleeting. It lasted about a minute or two, relatively speaking. Even now, I can't really muster up a whole lot of feelings when I think of her sleeping with him. I could probably still invoke some anger for all of the people he's had emotional affairs with. I won't, but the point is I might still resent some of their behaviors with my husband, where I'm willing to give her a free pass. I just don't understand this.
One of the reasons I've come up with is that maybe the emotional affairs bothered me more because they were ongoing and they were based in feelings, and could have easily been based in love. Whereas, the physical affair was a one time equivalent of getting an itch scratched, although I do understand that it is not as simple as I make it sound. But the physical affair didn't drag on and on with drama. It was very cut and dry.
Another reason I think it may have bothered me less is that it didn't mess so much with my already low self esteem. Maybe I felt superior to her in the looks department, so I wrote her off as being "less" than me. God forgive me if that is the case.
The last reason I can think of is that I have been characterizing her lately as a sex addict. My husband told me that she certainly acted like the other female sex addicts in group and that he would classify her as one, having been with her several times. But, my question is, is the crazy codependent in me feeling sorry for her, thereby forgiving her for committing adultery but not completely forgiving all of the others that didn't commit adultery.
So anyway...that's where my head's been lately! Forgive me for rambling.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Finished!
Well, I finally finished Step Seven. Yay! I think I may have been taking a long time doing this Step for a few reasons. One, and probably the biggest one, is that finishing Step Seven means I am on to Step Eight. Making my list of the people I've harmed and becoming willing to make amends to them all. At this moment in time, it seems like an insurmountable request. I don't know where I am going to summon up the strength to do this.
See, it would be easier to do if there were any effective communication in my family of origin. I just picture myself as Lisa Simpson from the sitcom "The Simpsons" giving my letter to my sister (played by Nelson Muntz) and the trademark, "HA, HA" coming out of her mouth. This is the part in the show where I walk away from Nelson wondering why I even bother, dragging my saxophone behind me.
Looking at it now, I can see why I would dilly-dally and not try to go barreling into Step Eight. Being the laughingstock of "Springfield" isn't on my list of "things to do" this year.
Another reason I think it took so long was that (again) I was aiming for perfection. I wanted my prayers to be perfect. I agonized over them, writing and rewriting, as if God was my ninth grade English teacher with a penchant for red pens. Have I learned nothing? I really need to be saved from myself.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Prayers Please
Oh, hey everyone. I haven't posted in a while. I will probably post more next week as I finish my Step Seven. I'm almost done. I've got about eleven more defects left to pray over. At the rate of two a day, I should be done by the time group rolls around next week. Yay!
I was just wondering if I could ask you guys to pray for me this weekend (and for the next eight weekends in a row). I begin working the 36 hour shifts for my private duty lady starting tomorrow morning at 7am. I am very nervous about being able to physically and emotionally handle this. I realize I should have prayed more before accepting this responsibility, but of course now I'm struggling with having agreed to do this. The good news is that this is not a permanent situation. It is short term while a coworker recovers from shoulder surgery. The bad news is I'm cramming an entire full-time job into the span of one weekend. For the next eight weekends. Does the word "unmanageable" mean anything to me???
I was just wondering if I could ask you guys to pray for me this weekend (and for the next eight weekends in a row). I begin working the 36 hour shifts for my private duty lady starting tomorrow morning at 7am. I am very nervous about being able to physically and emotionally handle this. I realize I should have prayed more before accepting this responsibility, but of course now I'm struggling with having agreed to do this. The good news is that this is not a permanent situation. It is short term while a coworker recovers from shoulder surgery. The bad news is I'm cramming an entire full-time job into the span of one weekend. For the next eight weekends. Does the word "unmanageable" mean anything to me???
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Thermonuclear Reaction
Okay, just a warning...I am having a meltdown of biblical proportions today. End of days type of a meltdown. The kind of conniption that is only rivaled by Godzilla's wrath on Tokyo. I want to chew people up and then spit them back out. Once all of the time zones catch up to a wakeable hour, I'm going to make a phone call to help me get my sanity back.
I'm having a really tough time with my son, A (aka Spike). He's taken on the bad habit of lying lately. It's like you can't rely on anything he says, from where he's been to what he's had for breakfast. Also, he's just been downright defiant.
Our most recent "match" began on Friday. This part is absolutely ridiculous and I am embarrassed to even write about it. I came downstairs in the morning to an freshly opened box of Golden Grahams. No big deal, right? Well, I said to A, "Could you do me a favor? Can you please not open any more boxes of cereal until we finish the other *five* that are open? I don't want them to get stale and subsequently get wasted." The reply, "Sure, mom!"
Monday morning, I'm looking for cereal for my daughter. Open the closets, low and behold, *all* of the open boxes of cereal are gone! Wow, either someone was really hungry on Saturday and Sunday or my intelligence is being underestimated by a sneaky 15 year old.
Yesterday, I was cleaning out the garage and getting the recycling together. One of the paper bags tore open and spilled out onto the floor. A paper that was folded up so small that it looked like a cube caught my eye. On it were instructions for hacking passwords off of any computer that runs Windows.
Spoke with A, he did take all of the open boxes of cereal and hide them in his bedroom. He didn't like those flavors, so he figured he'd get rid of them himself. Nice try!
Asked him about the instructions I found in the garage, and he says, "Okay, that was me. Do you want me to tell you whose passwords I have so they can change them?" Hello, that is not the point! You cannot unring a bell! Now that you have the knowledge of how to get anyone's password, it doesn't matter if we change our passwords a hundred times, you can just summon them up anytime you want to!
After that discussion, I moved on to an incident that happened about two weeks ago. I was going upstairs to get my pocketbook so that I could leave for work. I heard A telling my other son T, "Don't worry. Mom will never find out." Then T said, "I am really nervous about this, A." Asked him what that was about. That was because my husband was running a virus scan on the computer and T was nervous because he had downloaded *porn* onto the family computer. My son A had removed it prior to the scan to save T's behind. Yeah, 13 and 15 year old kids looking at this smut. I nearly had a stroke!
But of course, the boy with an answer for everything says, "I don't see why you are getting all upset about the porn. These people are paid actors. Nobody is forcing them." I went into an absolute tirade about the correlation between porn actors and a history of sexual abuse. He just sighed and gave me the "you are so stupid" look. Then he tells me of the "married couples" that are doing this for extra money. Yeah, "it must be true because I saw it on the internet" reasoning.
I have *so* had it! I am ready to smash their computer to bits this morning! And it's not even 8am yet!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Humbly Asking
Well, I'm working on Step Seven lately and "humbly asking." This has really been good for me, so far. In the process, I've been learning a lot about myself and the condition of my spiritual life, which, truth be told, was never in such great shape. But it's getting better.
I've always had difficulty asking for things, partly from feeling not worthy, partly from feeling that I will be turned away for asking. Most recently (yesterday, in fact) I was speaking with a coworker at my private duty patient's house and told her that I was probably only going to continue my employment there through the end of the summer because I need health insurance for my family. She said, "Just ask her to pay you through the business account and you will automatically be offered benefits." I already know that I won't be asking. Thanks anyway. It's just *way* out of my comfort zone. I would sooner give up my job than ask. How self defeating is *that*? But that is my modus operandi, and has been for as long as I can remember. I sit and I wait for my employer, my parents, my friends to offer me the things that I need.
Interestingly, I will ask God for things that I need. But, the problem starts when God doesn't answer affirmatively or efficiently enough for me. Then, I start taking matters into my own hands and really make a mess of things. Instead of waiting, I grab my life back from Him with a "You're no help" attitude and sit and sulk with my back turned like some kind of toddler, until I muster up enough courage to go back to Him with an even bigger mess than I started out with. I cannot tell you how many times up to this point I've had to go back and rework Step Three! And still am.
I do see God working in my life, though. I know He will not leave me. It is very comforting to know that God is always the same, unchanging. He's always good. He always wants me back, even when I think I've really blown it and He couldn't ever forgive me.
Hopefully, He'll remove the pride or impatience first. But even if He doesn't, I need to remember that I'm in Good hands.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
I had another strange dream the other night. The house I live in (in real life) is on a major road in our town. A natural barrier of trees exists between our house and the road. It gives us some sense of privacy and also suppresses the noise from the road. In the dream, I was tearing out all of the trees (with my bare hands), even though I knew this would allow all of the passersby to see our house and, ultimately, into our lives. I can't remember why I was tearing up the trees, just that I was very determined to do so. When I was finished I remembered feeling satisfied, but that was quickly squashed by the overwhelming feeling of "oh my gosh, what have I done?"
There were two ways I interpreted this. The first was, I am becoming more transparent. I'm allowing people to see what's really behind those trees that took many years to grow. Removing the trees also helps me see the road, too. Facing the reality of what lies beyond the walls I've erected to protect myself.
The second way I interpreted this was that by keeping this blog going, I am risking my own anonymity and that of my family (I am not the only person living in the house, after all). I do worry about this sometimes, especially if any friends or family members that don't know about my h's addiction were to find this blog mistakenly. Guess I'd have some explaining to do.
After pondering this for a few minutes just now, I think the first explanation is more fitting. The feeling of digging out those trees with my own two hands coupled with the fear of whether I would actually like the new landscape or not makes the first explanation a better fit.
I'm expressing myself very metaphorically lately, at least in my dreams.
There were two ways I interpreted this. The first was, I am becoming more transparent. I'm allowing people to see what's really behind those trees that took many years to grow. Removing the trees also helps me see the road, too. Facing the reality of what lies beyond the walls I've erected to protect myself.
The second way I interpreted this was that by keeping this blog going, I am risking my own anonymity and that of my family (I am not the only person living in the house, after all). I do worry about this sometimes, especially if any friends or family members that don't know about my h's addiction were to find this blog mistakenly. Guess I'd have some explaining to do.
After pondering this for a few minutes just now, I think the first explanation is more fitting. The feeling of digging out those trees with my own two hands coupled with the fear of whether I would actually like the new landscape or not makes the first explanation a better fit.
I'm expressing myself very metaphorically lately, at least in my dreams.
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