Well.
It was a weekend.
That was possibly one of the worst, most shockingly surprisingly didn’t-see-that-coming weeks in recent and past memory. Yeah, really spectacularly awful.
The whole sexual harassment stuff really laid me out. I didn’t know what quite to do. I was determined to not dwell on it or let it take me down, make me feel super depressed and helpless like I used to all the time. However, I also realized if I didn’t do some processing, I’d bury it and it would come back later.
I talked with a friend that’s a therapist as well as the nutritionist. The idea of setting your intention of how you want to go through something makes a big difference. So I will go through it fully and process it, but I’ll do it on my own terms. I’m not going to be thrashed around and laid out and feel completely helpless. I might have bad days, tired days, scared days, crying days, but I won’t ever give up or be anything other than resilient.
So that helped quite a bit actually. It made me less freaked out about how to handle this. In general, stay strong on self-care and moving forward but don’t try and avoid whatever feelings wash over me as time passes.
I especially don’t want to feel isolated and fragile. That’s been important to me from the few minutes after it all happened, and I got my wits about me.
When we were talking, I started crying. I realized I’m going to lose a friend, someone I’ve worked with for a long time, over seven years. Once he leaves, we might not ever see him again. It’s really hard. I’m angry for what he did on so many levels. I wish life wasn’t so hard.
*****
I’ve been reminded of how much trauma can be isolating. Going through this with Jay, it’s just a lot of stress. It doesn’t really bring you closer together. It makes you feel like you’re just messed up and that’s not a great feeling.
I told him on Saturday that I didn’t know how much I could support him. I said I felt if we could just not freak out on each other, that’d be pretty good. That’s what we’ve mostly maintained.
We talked some about business stuff last night, and he admitted to being selfish. He just kept pushing and things didn’t get really better. He didn’t want to sell and wanted to find someone to do it. I did it and when our partners failed, I’d pick it back up again. It seemed important to me to hear him say that. It also makes me feel I can be honest with what I did wrong. I haven’t felt like I could do that until I understood where he stood and viewed everything.
He said one of the hardest things was I was always critiquing him. I said I felt he was running out business like an engineer, and it often wasn’t working. I felt immense pressure working around him with his style. He agreed he had done that.
I am pretty sure things are better but ultimately, he’s an incredible engineer and a decent business person. I wish he could focus more on the product side and development, but that’s not what we have going right now. I stepped out for our sanity and my health. We either shut it down or ride this out.
We had a part-time developer in the office for a while doing some coding. He said that it’s really hard to find good architects and Jay is one of them. He said it’s a waste of his time to be running around dealing with heating ducts and venting. I agree, but then who does it? I did all that kind of shit work for years and still do. It seems like you have to make enough money to pay people to manage that kind of stuff, people who like it and are happy to get paid to do it. So it is what it is, hopefully not forever or past this year in a significant quantity. Right now, it’s a lot. Jay is dreading the week this week. I’m just going to try and do my thing and not get too distracted or knocked off my game.
*****
I was feeling pretty down this morning so decided to go work out. That helped a ton. I really need to do that every day in some fashion.
I also was trying to be more grateful and felt like God gave me an idea on organizing all our stuff here. We come into the living room and stuff just gets dumped by the front door. I had this idea to put a desk in the girls bedroom. I can store all these bags and such there that come in with me in the front door. I can also start to separate the art stuff from the writing. It’s just clogged everywhere and I feel stuck. So that felt really good and made pretty significant headway into making that happen.
I started to actually dream a little bit about travel, our house, getting art on the walls, making things more like how I’d like in my life and future. I haven’t felt like I could do that. I imagined going back to college.
I talked in recovery tonight about letting go of some of the responsibility I’ve felt for my mom. It’s been a huge stress the past two years to get more involved in her life and try and help out. It’s meant I’ve had to be closer to her craziness, both of them. I’ve done it, because it’s the right thing to do but it’s cost me.
It feels healthy to let myself start to dream regardless of what’s happening around me in other people’s lives. I don’t know what’s coming, but I want to keep taking steps in a better direction.
*****
I talked today some about struggling with feeling invisible. I’ve just raised two incredible kids. I’ve started a multi-million dollar business. I’m still married. I’ve survived basically pelvic cancer w/ the type of endometriosis I’ve had. I’ve helped keep two extended families functioning and connected. I’ve stayed in decent shape and continued to learn new things.
It seems significant, but I often struggle w/ feeling it’s just not recognized or matters much. It seems our culture doesn’t place a value on what I spend much of my time doing. I don’t know how to shake this.
Today though, felt like some kind of breakthrough w/ all the organizing I did and planning for new spaces to create and have stuff I need. It really does. I sit and stare at the walls a lot and want them to be just what I want. It feels like stalking relationship of sorts. I want them to change and be what I want which I don’t fully know yet what that is.
It is nice to be loved. Jay said he watched me on Find Friends today to see what I was up to. I wasn’t doing well this morning with all this stress of work and my crazy/crappy/sort of better life. He was glad I was at the gym that long. It’s nice to be this loved. Don’t ever forget that.
I’m going to organize some of my week this evening and I REMEMBERED THE NAME OF THAT TIME MANAGEMENT BOOK. So I’ll brush up on that some. One of his big things is to fully analyze anything you plan to do and be honest about all the small tasks that it will take to get that one big task done.
Now that I realized I got these awful headaches the past week due to bringing in wood and a basket w/ black mold, I will have to bring wood in first to the basement then upstairs. We’ll see how that goes. For now, there is a fire burning in the fireplace and I love it. I like the dark nights; Jay does not. Not the first thing we don’t agree on.
*****
With the moving of desks and stuff, did more purging of more cards and papers. Endless almost, really. I just kept saving and saving and saving not unlike all the other women in my family have done (and some men). It’s a huge flashback to an older time of life, that’s what letters and cards definitely can do. I saved quite a bit and through away more than I saved. I found a lot of cards from my brother from over the years. He sure has tried. It would have been a lot better if his wife didn’t hate us. As a result, that just ended anything substantial. At least I’ve been able to be part of the girl’s lives in some small way. I sure had good aunts that did that for me.
I threw away a LOT of thank you notes and a lot of birthday and Christmas cards. I have a lot of duplicates, cards from the same people. I also found some gems, like the one from KT’s ex-boyfriend’s mother. It was just a charming note, thanking us for how caring and open we were, and welcoming. They said that KT was a real bright light in their lives after the divorce between her boyfriend’s parents.
It’s things that that that make me determined to continue on the path that I’m on. I’ve been putting people first more over myself which has been changing. But I don’t want to stop my emphasis on reaching out to people, putting them first, writing letters and cards, doing good things. It’s more in balance now, but it’s still a big part of my life.
Curtain for Lion King; Spokane, WA