I feel happy to be able to have people in my life that are different than me.
It seems that as I get healthier, the map of my soul becomes more clear.
I am no longer running on fumes and values. Fumes and values helped me create some beautiful things, especially family and relationships. It drained me, however, and left me feeling empty and unfulfilled, directionless.
Having people not exactly like you requires an expansion and health that I haven’t had before.
I’ve felt mostly threatened by people who were competent. I realized how little I was achieving of my own competency. People like that, successful and accomplished, reminded me of all my brokenness. Even my successes of staying married, building a home, transitioning to a much more sustainable and healthy way of living, building small communities of people everywhere, supporting our adult children and nurturing them, understanding how to do that well, studying that, it’s all felt worthless at times, like I’m hiding and settling.
These are the feelings that are at the bottom of the list of emotions that Kay uses in therapy. It’s called various things, the Human Emotions Frequency Scale is one name. Essentially emotions like despair and hopelessness are at the bottom, moving toward death. They are worse than anger and sadness, worse than pain, hostility and resentment.
Think about that.
Fear and despair are worse for your body than anger and hostility.
I used phrases alot about feeling like I was dying, feeling like death.
I was right.
I was dying. We were both dying, and our collective death would have created death in our family. I would have had to then struggle to recover myself as well as create an entirely new life with the ripples of divorce never ending.
So I’ve moved from death to life, from despair to hope and peace.
On top of all this, I’ve had significant physical health issues, to the point of partial disability.
My soul has been dying slowly and so has my body.
My story is one of recovery from the brink of a life extinguished to one of hope and fullness. The journey has come with a cost. The cost has been my life diverted from the pursuit of other endeavors, other accomplishments, other ways to help people.
However, if one of my reasons for living, a core purpose and value is to help others, maybe this story and what I’ve discovered and synthesized will help others more than anything else I could have done.
Now the challenge: where do I begin? Where do I start to share what I’ve learned and am still learning? How do I share the truths I’ve uncovered while still being a student of my own life and the beauty of this incredible world around me.
What are the best form factors for that story and those stories? Podcast? Books? Blog? All of the above? And art… visual art that I so want to get back into. I hope to utilize the garage for some large art spaces.
So that’s today. Today feels like another new beginning. This summer has felt like a time to do some work for the business and also rest. Just reflect, enjoy the summer, enjoy growing a garden and realizing that fruit. Enjoy being outside. Enjoy the warmth, the season of vibrant growth and expansion that is summer. Feel that in my own soul. What does summer look like for me? Embrace it and live into that rhythm. I don’t know that we’re supposed to do all the things, all year round. So what does summer look like as a human? Is this my season of growth like nature or of rest and pleasure?
Piper Small, you’ve let me express myself without fear in all my angst and frustration and despair, hoping to find nuggets of growth in the journaling process.
Finally, I have too many things laying around, too many projects I want to get done, too many directions.
This week, I want to start narrowing things down and create action plans. Create some things on the side that I want to explore and enjoy when I have a minute and have the urge to feel distracted, but then, have the big things that I’m working on constantly in small, steady steps. I am going in too many directions. I have too many interests that will create a dissipated life.
I’ve done well at managing my ADHD over the years, but tools now like my iPhone can distract and reduce that effort. The Omega 3’s are helping a lot so I feel more hopeful about the ability to focus if I choose to. It will be up to me to do that work, to focus at the expense of a more relaxed life.
So this week, the goal setting and hopefully that means a time of discernment and reflecting on how things feel as I lay them out to explore.
Finally, again, I feel the desire to connect with Jay and stay focused on growing our marriage. We have for the first time the opportunity to be healthy together. I don’t want to miss out on that. I’m willing to invest in that relationship above all others. That feels like gold, an investment in a bank account with a high rate of interest.
I used the analogy the other day that a family is like a house. If you have kids or parents, you have a family. The family structure is like a framed-in house. The foundation is down and the basic frame is up. That’s it though. That’s all those relationships that occured guarantees you.
The quality of the house and how it’s built, up to you. Whether you want to be in the house, up to you. How well-made the rest of the house is, up to you. Is it safe? Up to you. Inviting? All you. Beautiful? You again. Permanent? You.
So yes, we inherit a great deal from our family of origin and then, if we go and create another family. There are things beyond our control. There is however, a great great deal completely in our control.
That’s where I’ve focused my life. Building that house. Building that life of relationships that then become together a thing of beauty.
I’ve worried about this effort. I’ve worried lately since the kids have moved away and I’ve been surrounded by more family dysfunction, that my efforts have been lost. That all we did, it was beautiful while we were together and they were young, but now, it’s drifting away. We are not in proximity and so we’re losing that.
I think there is a little truth in that, but mostly, no. It’s not gone. Our kids want to be with us when they can, when we come over. They also want to be independent and in their 20’s. They don’t want to check in and chat everyday. We helped grow really healthy kids. Part of that is fierce independence. That means less apparent connection. It’s not what’s really happening though. You have to look for and use other measures to determine what your family is like, not just massive amounts of time or communication. Alot of communication might mean they’re too lonely or bored or don’t have the means to entertain themselves in other ways.
So lots of thoughts today as I ponder next steps and what drives and moves and motivates my soul.
*****
When you just sort of have a shitty day.
You’re tired of all the struggled. You are better at seeing yourself and realize you’re just weary. You take some time in the afternoon and try to read a book you enjoy and listen to music. You have afternoon beer. You finish getting ready for the party for your mom-in-law. You spend a lot of time getting ready for the party and gifts, etc.
You’re sort of tired of it all. All the planning and coordinating, all the checking in with people, seeing how everyone is doing. Trying to navigate it all. It’s tiring, yeah.
I wish I felt super comfortable with some people in my family. It seems there is a wall with most everyone. I guess that’s normal to some degree.
Mom called today to check in. She was wondering if she gets any mail. I told her its just medical stuff and I pay all the bills. She isn’t getting any mail yet. I told her I was hoping she could do a letter to tell people where they are. Maybe they can start working on that. That’d keep her busy and also give them more people to come visit or whatever. I don’t know.
I found it depressing. My nephews are struggling and I wanted more for them than where they are. They were both really hurt in all the divorces and affairs and the mess their parents made. They were caught in the middle and are both full of alot of anger. They were and are still sensitive boys. They cared and care. It got really ruined in them and they both use substances to cope (as I sit here w/ my second beer and cigar).
I guess it just all is heavy. Work is heavy. It just feels like this boulder we’ve been pushing up a hill for almost 25-years. It’s paid our bills, kept us in town I guess, but we’re so weary. I’m so weary. Jay’s stressed all the time. We’ve just never gotten a lot of breaks it seems. Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with us fundamentally. We do some things well, like relationships I think, but we just struggle with other things.
I want to be a happy couple. Jay wants these big deals to close so we can move ahead. We both feel stuck.
We had a good talk in the car yesterday coming home. We talked about our relationship and the past. We talked about the years I had contempt for him, and he was difficult to live with.
We talked about success. We talked about what it looks like to accomplish something.
I wonder sometimes about our ability to succeed. There are times I just feel we’ve had too much to recover from to also succeed financially. We’ve spent thousands of dollars on counseling and my medical care. We haven’t been able to save in any meaningful way the last 10 years. We’ve made no progress on our retirement funds.
Yeah. I feel pretty down. I’m just trying to feel it and move on, hope tomorrow is better and do better with the body and self-care.