Fearing Fear

I've been preoccupied lately. My eldest daughter, who's dealing with a relatively recent diagnosis of bipolar spectrum disorder has begun experiencing psychosis. She spent a few days last week in a psychiatric hospital. A day after her release, she called me, whispering that people were watching her.
I handled her hospitalization just fine, thank you very much. I swung into action, organizing my other kids, rescheduling appointments and interviews, all so I could race to the city a few hours away where my daughter is at school.
I met with doctors and psychotherapists and social workers.
After two days, I came home to rest and my husband took over, driving to the city and meeting with doctors, etc.
He returned her to her apartment when she was released. She was eager to get back to school and to her life. And then, just one day later, came the call and a clear indication that the psychosis was back.
Back upstairs to re-pack the bag I had barely unpacked. Back onto the highway.
And this time felt different. I was able to put on a calm face for my daughter but I felt terrified. Terrified that I was going to lose her to her conviction that she was a "burden". Terrified that this disease will transform her, that the potent medication will steal this beautiful, smart, talented, open-hearted girl from the world.
I reached out to friends – desperate for someone to listen to me. I felt an ocean of tears just behind my eyes that seemed blocked. I, a confirmed non-hugger, needed a hug.
And I noticed something.
Fear terrifies people. 
Though all of my friends mean well – and I'm blessed to have really good people in my life – only some can hold our pain. And the ones who can hold our pain have learned to do so because they've learned to hold their own. While all of my friends offered up reassurances, only a couple could just listen without trying to convince me that she'll be fine. And those friends felt like a port in my storm.

A woman posted a comment on this site yesterday. It's rare that I censor anyone but the snake-oil salespeople who insist their potion will transform our errant spouses into repentant Romeos. Even if what someone has written is inflammatory, I hit "publish" because I trust you soul-warriors to rally to each other's defence and because I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to work through our responses to those who insist we're doormats or pathetic for staying. What's more, occasionally we're offered an insight into the thinking of an Other Woman.
But this woman had nothing to offer other than two sentences of ridicule so I didn't click "publish" because I knew that my immediate response would be to tell her to go fuck herself. I'm in no mood to listen to her boring old clichéd bullshit.
But then, driving home today from helping my daughter through this latest episode and meeting with her doctor yet again, I was mulling over my friends' response to my fear and how it was those who've been in dark places themselves who were best able to be with me in mine. I was thinking about the matter-of-fact empathy of the doctors. And I was listening to a podcast with one of my favorite poets/memoirists Mary Karr who was talking about how she's learned to be kind to herself because, she said, it's impossible to be compassionate with others if we haven't yet learned to be compassionate with ourselves, and it's impossible to be gentle with ourselves, to accept our foibles and our "peccadilloes" (her word, which I love)  without accepting our own.
And it hit me that this low-blow commenter is terrified – of facing her own grief, of facing her own fear of failure, of accepting her own peccadilloes. I don't know her whole story. But I know that nobody would spew such cruelty without deep self-loathing and a deep fear of facing it.

It takes courage to face our fear.
That's what we're doing here every day. Sometimes we move inches, sometimes miles. Sometimes we can't see that we're moving at all. But make no mistake: Showing up, day after day, and working through our fear is brave.
Showing up for others in their dark places is brave.
Because we can only show up and hold another's pain when we're able to hold our own.

The Rift that Keeps On Giving

My husband likes to think that the rather painful episode of infidelity in our lives, also known as "Are you f&^#$%g kidding me?" is "over". As in, "aren't you over that?" And "besides what happened, what have I ever done wrong?"
And while I would love nothing more than for it to be "over", I'm increasingly recognizing that I'm not sure it ever will be.
The thing with infidelity – ie. a "trust violation" – is that it completely alters your world view. Irrevocably. So though you might be "over" the event – for example, you know longer cry in grocery stores or at the site of a certain late model Jeep Liberty – you're nonetheless never really over it.
Case in point:
My husband and I are currently suffering through the longest renovation project in history. I've been a pretty good sport about it, in light of the fact that I thought our house, except for the leaking roof, was just fine. But he wanted his dream house, blah blah blah. And so, here we all are, ousted from our bedrooms, sleeping on couches, breathing in drywall dust and basically living in what feels like a falling-down frat house.
I finally cracked, just like our plaster ceilings and pretty much everything else in our home, on Saturday. I had asked my husband to print off something I needed for a work project. He forgot. He remembered to do the reno stuff that day...but not the thing I had asked.
Roughly eight months of reno-resentment, together with the slowly receding resentment of his decade-long sex addiction, combined to create a nuclear-level explosion of anger.
He, as usual, was surprised when I pointed that it never, EVER seems as if my needs matter.
Though I didn't actually see his eyes roll, I could sense them.
And then, "when are you going to get over that?"
And I knew exactly what he meant.
When are we going to be able to live in a world in which those horrible years of emotional abandonment and physical disinterest no longer color everything that happens now? When am I going to be, quite simply, "over" it.
The short answer?
Never.
Not because I hang on to the pain. God knows, I've done everything I can possibly think of to move myself out that horrible dark place.
I've forgiven him in that I've come to a place of understanding how he was able to commit such marriage-killing acts and not actually think of them as such. I'm worked hard to try and understand that he used sex as self-medication.
But that doesn't mean that I can erase it from my memory. And whether or not he intended to hurt me doesn't mean a thing when the end result is pain. If you step on my toe accidentally, my toe doesn't hurt any less.
I'm trying. As he is.
But infidelity does indeed seem to the be the rift that keeps on giving...

Why Your Thoughts Are Lies

If you're anything like me (and since you're reading this blog, I suspect you are), you've spent hours (days, weeks, etc.) of your life trying to make sense of heartbreak. From the first boy who broke your heart to the last,  you've likely hashed over every spat, shared intimate details with girlfriends, written pages of diary entries, moaned, wailed, gnashed your teeth...
And my guess is that most of what you thought, said, wrote and wailed was a bunch of crap.
Why do I guess that? Because our thoughts lie to us.
They say things like: He cheated because you've gained weight. They tell us he cheated because we nag. They suggest he cheated because she was prettier. Richer. Smarter.
Or they tell us he cheated because she's sexier.
Or, the stake in our heart, he cheated because we're unlovable.
And then, those thoughts insist, the best years of my life are over. I will never be happy again.
Utter and total crap.
And yet, how much time do we spend with these thoughts? We let them into our heads and, if we don't shoo them away, they snake their way into our souls where they slowly poison us with their lies until we don't even recognize ourselves anymore.
Consider this: You don't have to believe these thoughts. In fact, I'm strongly recommending you don't. I'm recommending that you kick these thoughts to the curb and ask yourself a simple question if even one of these thoughts tries to ring your doorbell and convince you to let it in: Do I know this to be true?
Of course you don't. None of us ever knows why another person does anything. Most of the time, particularly with cheaters, they don't even know. It takes heaps of therapy and baring of the soul to get to the bottom of such dishonesty and devastating behaviour.
What you do know, and what you can trust is that, if you're reading this right now, you're okay. You're alive. Good. You're functional, even marginally. Good. And you are okay.
And that's all you need to know right now. All the rest – why, how, what for? – can wait for another day. Or forever.
Right now, just be okay for this moment. then the next. And the next... Until okay becomes good and good becomes better and you realize that all that drama – all that self-torture – was your lying thoughts.