Endings, Beginnings, Endings, Beginnings

I am a Work in Progress

I've been virtually silent, literally. I have kept my virtual voice to a whisper for several months. My journal still sits on my night table gathering dust.

I was/am in the process of ending “our marriage,” or do you say, “my marriage?” The papers were signed and filed so it is Final, Legal, done. We/I am divorced. I am learning the semantics of divorce are tricky. I am still stuck in the “we” and it is not the royal “we.” How do you change from saying “our son” to “my son” when we (see?) are still parents? How do you refer to the person you were once married to? Ex sounds so, well, crass. I think that “Former” might work, maybe that makes him like Prince, the man who was formerly known as husband.  And I am no longer known as a Daley, “one of my former’s conditions.” Now I can go back to saying, “Leslie Miller… like the King of Beers.”

It has been a long year. The man I was married to actually follows my blog but I am not sure he actually reads it anymore. I haven’t been able to write about this ending/beginning in my life. I, one who is never at a loss for words, still have so much difficulty verbalizing the emotions that are associated with ending a marriage. The other reason is that my attorney told me to go on social media silence. I will agree that this process is like mourning a death. I stumble back and forth through all the phases of grief and while I believe I invented a few new phases, I am sure that many have gone before me and more will come after me.

The emotional me still grapples with the feeling at some level that somehow I failed. The realist in me knows that this is not true. That’s new for me… I still have optimism but I learned to be a realist. The fact remains that I cannot pin point an event, an incident, a moment in time when the ending began. I once told a friend that marriage is like the ocean, it ebbs and flows with the tide. I mused about this in another blog entry titled "Twitter: A Writing Exercise" so I suppose I have survived a shipwreck. It is not all smooth sailing. I suffer the memories both good and bad. My heart aches still and always will on some level. The friendship that I always cherished is battered, bruised and may not be able to be saved. This man is the father of our/my son. My/our child, is truly the best thing I have ever done in my life and would not be without his father. I just couldn’t be his wife anymore.

I have learned that nice divorces only happen in the movies. Ask anyone who has been through one and they will tell you that there is no such thing… unless your marriage was for legal documentation, you don’t have kids or pets or community property. My attorney told me he has actually written visitation orders for dogs. I never imagined just how ugly things would get. I will not recount the insanity as it would make a public record of the events that I have no need to record. These things are burned into my soul. I am a veteran of the divorce war. Those who have been there know what I mean.

The good news? Each day is truly a new beginning and I am “enjoying the process” as my dear friend Cat would say. I realize I am closer to me than I have been in a long time and I am proud of my journey.

“I am proud of the scars in my soul. They remind me that I have an intense life.”
Paulo Coelho

Cleaning House

My blog is clogged.  My journal sits waiting to be paid attention to, pen at the ready. My knitting needles lost their click and I haven’t been lost in a good book for months. These things are the way I work out the stuff that churns inside my brain, my heart, my soul.  It has happened before on rare occasion. I have reached a place in my life when I am at a loss for words, my creativity has come to a screeching halt because of the internal work consumes all. At times like this I have to clean house. I watched my mother do the same thing… I knew she had something on her mind and she would commence to clean. To seek out every nook and cranny and make it right.

I am my mother’s daughter. I am transitioning, changing my life in ways unimaginable. It has taken every inch of my fiber, my being to grow… to take these steps. And since I am not using my traditional “tools” to cope, I am my mother. Not a bad thing. I am cleaning house. I open a drawer or cabinet and go through it. I find all the lids to the plastic ware and if there is a missing piece it goes in the trash.  I spent part of New Year’s Eve matching socks. Yes, I actually threw the singles away knowing its mate would never surface. I have tried on everything in my closet and sectioned off a part that fits, will fit and must consign.

 

And on those particularly turbulent days I make laundry. It’s not like I don’t have enough laundry to do and I actually don’t like doing laundry. But there is something about doing laundry, the methodical rhythm of finding the bits for the wash. The kitchen towel, the hand towels, the blankets on the couch. Then turning the knob, adding soap and loading. , Next the turn over to the dryer, cleaning the vent, turning the knob. Warm clothes enter the basket… the smell of clean laundry. Then, the folding, matching of socks, and making neat stacks. I do this all without really thinking, I enter a Zen state of laundry. My mind is captured by the method and I find peace. This is the one task that I do mindfully without actually having to focus on being mindful. I acknowledge the other “thought bombs” and let them go, I’m doing laundry.

So my house is almost clean and the laundry is nearly done yet the writing still comes in mad rushes. It is obvious that radical steps remain. Time to change the color and cut my hair. 

Frogging...

Not to be confused with gigging frogs. For all my non-knitting friends, this means that point where you have been happily clicking away on that knitting project, perhaps for hours and then you look down and realize something is just not right. After counting rows and stitches, recounting rows and stitches, you realize this is not a simple fix, you cannot simply unknit a few rows and this is something that crochet hook will never repair. You bemoan the fact that you have not utilized the life line. There it is, the issue at hand, perhaps a gaping hole, or twisted stitches. The decision is yours. 

Do you continue on as if nothing has gone wrong? Or... do you decide to (gulp) frog?  You hear the every increasing loudness of the "rip it, rip it, rip it, rip it" froggy chorus and you have the decision of your life ahead of you... Are you prepared to tear out rows and rows of your meditative knitting?  

Knitting has helped me to put my life together when it was unraveling and now that I have worked on this UFO (unfinished object) for years, I see the dropped stitches, the miscalculated rows. part of me kept knitting along unaware. I have measured and contemplated long and hard. Finally, I have mustered the courage and I am frogging with determination knowing that I each time I start over, I understand the pattern better.  

Tinfoil

By now everyone has read that depression can physically hurt, it can be exhausting, it can cause insomnia, and a multitude of other uncomfortable verbs. Depression is… we don’t ask for it. I know that I am no alone in this. We, the depressives, are actually a rather big club, but we don’t advertise very often. Membership comes at a great cost to us and to our loved ones. Our loved ones feel helpless even when we explain there is literally nothing they can do to make it better. The most they can do is acknowledge that depression exists, and let us know they are there for us if we need them. We can be reminded to eat, sleep or get up, or take our meds; but ultimately, we are the ones who have to make it better by doing what works for each of us in the moment.

Over the years I have learned that my depression is mostly triggered by situations and seasons.  I don’t know if I am the only one, but I can recognize when I am on the road to a depressive period. There is that defining moment after struggling to stay balanced when I know that I have temporarily lost my battle with biochemistry. My mouth goes dry and I taste silvery, wrinkled, tinfoil. Really, no matter what I eat or drink, I return to the taste of chewing gum wrapper only worse metal. I wonder if I’m the only one.

The situations vary for me but the seasonal depression is well, seasonal, and as a result, more predictable. I actually start brushing up on my coping skills when everyone is pulling out their boxes of holiday decorations. While everyone is getting into that holiday spirit (or pretending to be) I am doing whatever I can to wake up each day. My seasonal depression can be sneaky. It might arrive before Thanksgiving, but always before my birthday in December and sticks around well into January. I get the fun of a summer depression too, around the death date of my best friend, which coincides with one of the hottest months in Texas.

On the more normal side, if there is such a thing as normal symptoms for depression, I become narcoleptic, never able to get enough sleep in an effort to just shut it all out. On the flip side, I might have a bout of disturbed sleep, waking up and unable to really go back to sleep, unable to stop the wheels from spinning. Staring at the alarm clock dreading the moments knowing I should be sleeping since I actually have to function during the day instead of pulling the sheets over my head.

So what works for me when I’m in the darkest depths of depression? I read, I write and I take not too warm baths or showers, and now I try to share what it is like to be a depressive. I think that speaking out about it helps me have power over it.  Most people never recognize my depression because I work hard to cope.  I leave my depression outside when I enter work and I literally put a smile on my face because it really does bring calm energy. I mindfully walk, type and breathe. I focus on the fact that the best thing I have ever done in my life needs his Mom and the reason I somehow live through those lonely moments of depression in a crowded room. I know each day my son will make me smile, even through the deepest depths of any depressive day. To see that sparkle in his eyes and to hear his laugh is truly magical healing.

P.S. I read a blog entry by one of my fav bloggers, Jenny Lawson aka The bloggess, about depression: http://thebloggess.com/2012/01/the-fight-goes-on/). She has a Silver Ribbon and is raising funds for charity by offering pendants and buttons with the message, “Never Give Up”.