We headed home from the beach today via Portland.
I think events that occur on a consistent basis are a good way to see where things are at in life, sort of a baseline check-in point, however unintentional. I remember both girls made a comment about that, that they sort of view Christmas that way each year which I didn't realize until this past holiday season.
We've been to this house on this beach three times now. Our first was in the fall of 2016 and we have friends join us. At that time, I didn't feel I could do a week alone with Jay. I needed someone else here and there was the added benefit that they're just really cool people.
Last year, we came in September of 2017 and things were still strained. It seemed we were getting along better but the business was still freefalling with employee changes. It was cordial and many fun moments were had, but not warmth that I wondered if it would ever arrive.
This past week, we connected. It started rough, but in sort of the way our lives often have been: miscues, misunderstandings, resentment, lack of connection. I was beginning to wonder if I could really do this for a few more decades, let alone a week of vacation.
But something deep shifted. It really does help a relationship when two people, not just one, are getting serious help. Jay having his bio dad show-up and start attachment counseling in the same week, just wow.
So many, many things have been good. I've wanted so much for these other things to not matter, for emotions and connection to not matter. But it turns out, it's everything.
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We stopped at IKEA and surprisingly, we had conflict. We went with the intent to look at office furniture for our new business space. By the time we reached that department, I found myself triggered in multiple ways. We ended up eating lunch and talking and crying together over all that has transpired over the last ten years especially.
IKEA kind of represents a lot of what wasn't working in our life together, especially since the kids went to college. The pain felt oppressive as we sat and processed. I found myself confessing again how much I have contemplated a separation period, simple unsure what to do anymore with the gaps and lack of connection we constantly experience.
To step back from that place I've landed puts me in a new land and a new framework. it's somewhere I had camped out as a means of defense almost, a place where I could say that I have not given up on myself and my future. I'm realizing I'm tentative. I think Jay would like to move on quickly to our new future as things change and improve. I feel deep wounding when I move around in my soul that somehow will have to be named and healed first. I want there to be some kind of witnessing to what has happened, not an erasing. I'm ready and wanting to forgive and have my dream of a better life together become a reality. I'm realizing it is going to be a process, not an event.
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So now we're back in town and back at home. I took alot of beauty and connection back with me, the best kind of memories: being with someone that loves you, being outside, being with a dog, being with yourself.
I no longer obsess over strange things on vacations: our schedule, gift-buying, prepacking to leave as soon as we get there (so it's easier when we leave??). I don't know what all that was about, but I know it all revolved somehow on not being comfortable in my own skin and with any of my friends or family.
In some ways, I've never had a vacation like this before. I'm going home surprisingly rested. Oh, so this is what it feels like to come home from an actual vacation. Got it. Ready for more of the same.