Saturday, September 7, 2013

Keep on Keeping on

**This is an old post, but I really liked what I had to say in it, so I'm posting it*

It's mother's day today.  While I am annoyed (and slightly disappointed) that we will spend this mother's day (and several more) just celebrating our own mothers instead of each other (due to the ever-present not-being-pregnant thing), I'm grateful that at this moment in time, I still have my mom.

I've been doing some really deep work lately, it's gotten really intense.  I am *so* glad that I've connected with my counsellor and feel safe exploring the dark places of my soul.  The question that came up lately was "why are you preventing yourself from achieving what you really want?", I attempted to argue that it wasn't *ME*, how could *I* be preventing myself from moving forward.

Like always, there was a knowing look and a gentle push to get deeper into myself.

And then there was an... "incident" a week later.  A small thing really, a mistake in my calendar, hardly a big deal (I was an hour late to a party due to a typo when I entered the event start time), but I simply went over the edge with myself.  I realized that I do not like myself very much.  This was hard to hear, especially because I think that people see someone completely different (self-confident, happy, smart).

It took me nearly a week to forgive myself for it.  I started to dismantle the rage and fury I felt at myself, and how underneath it all was this place of horrific pain.  I was able to take apart the really horrible self-talk that was going on.  It took an excruciatingly long time.  I ended up having to back off because it was just too much.  It's incredible difficult to look in the mirror and realize that you hate yourself, and with every fibre of your being, and that you've spent the past 25+ years of your life trying to cover that up.

It's where the harsh judgement, weird control issues and uncomfortability with things come from.  The internalized homophobia is still absolutely rampant (although on the outside you would *never* suspect, because I know what to say and keep hoping that if I repeat them enough that I will internalize it all).  It's where my body issues come from, where a lot of my struggles communicating my boundaries, even understanding what and where my boundaries are.

I dumped this all on the floor for my counsellor and I to piece meal it all out and it was hard, it hurt, but it was so good.  She understands.  She promised that it would get easier, that loving myself will take time and energy, but worth it in the end.

We are our own worst critics, and now I have to remind myself that I am being TOO critical.  It's also given me a new lease on my snap judgments of others, I have a new understanding of what it means when judgements are a reflection of how the judger feels about themselves.  The things I was hyper critical of in other people are things I struggle with myself, how deeply I am uncomfortable in my own body and life.  My crabby comments about what people eat expose how critical I am of the kinds of foods I put in my own body.  My judgements over how people dress expose my deep uncomfortableness with my perceived inability to dress myself in what I want to wear.

I know I don't walk alone in this, I've read enough blogs and had long 3am conversations with co-workers about this kind of stuff to  know that I'm not alone, that these struggles do not exist just in me, but in many many many people.  It's nice to be reminded that we are all together in this, working on a shared human experience.

Teamwork. Or how I learned to work with my wife instead of against her.

Here in the 'burbs on the west coast we had a bit of a blow-up a couple of weeks ago.  Some financial stuff that went unchecked, some long-term burying-of-head-in-sand, which culminated in hysterical sobbing and angry stares and some very tense moments were I tried not to break things (I SUCCEEDED!).  I never pretend marriage isn't messy, certainly not MY marriage.  You are innately attracted to the people who will push YOUR issues to the forefront over and over and over again until you actually deal with whatever you're supposed to be working on.

All that counselling paid off when I didn't walk out of the apartment and immediately file for divorce when this shit went down.  It is Ugly.

I take responsibility for the part that I played (knowingly remaining ignorant of the situation) and J took responsibility for her part (refusing to deal with the situation in the first place to prevent the Ugly), and we worked together and solved it.

And the funny thing is, I've already mostly forgotten about it already, it is not what immediately comes to mind when someone asks "so how was your vacation?" (this occurred during my 3 week vacation that I had from work).  We processed it (with much teeth gnashing and tears), we addressed the problem (figured out what kind of financial mess it was and how bad it really was), and then found solutions to that mess.  We worked together.  It's solved.

It was HARD FUCKING WORK to do this, to accomplish this.  It was hard not to want to shake my wife and yell at her and say "WHAT THE HELL'S WRONG WITH YOU?!" and it would have been much easier if I had flat out refused to take responsibility for my part in this.

It was kinda neat to see how this all panned out as well, since being unable to deal with money was one of the reasons we were pushed into seeing our counsellor in the first place, which then was pushed to the back burner until we had dealt with some other underlying things first, and when we were ready and had the ability to deal with it, it reared it's ugly head.  We saw, we dealt, we conquered.  I feel like we can do ANYTHING now!!  It was a tremendous boost in confidence to see how well we work together and how well we play off each other.

J started back to school this week.  I spent the previous week cooking like a madwoman making freezer meals so we don't starve when neither of us have time or energy to make dinner.  We're solid until November, I swear.  Last week I could not get another THING into the freezer.  It was kind of awesome.

I'm trying to figure out what I want this blog to become, mostly because it was meant to document and record our experiences in trying to become parents, but maybe I'll just focus on US for the moment, documenting our emotional journey towards whole, authentic personhood (good grief that sounds incredibly silly), which will morph into parenthood.