Gave It Some Thought

Okay. So I have been remiss...
I am feeling VERY dark. People I thought I knew turned out to be VERY different. And so I write...

"Maybe it was turning forty that turned him around. He woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and realized he was losing his hair. And suddenly there was this little paunch where his stomach used to lie flat.
He looked around at his life and thought, "How did I get here?" He looked at his wife and wondered who she was. And was that HIS teen aged daughter?? Not possible, not possible at all.
Digging through the old file cabinet in the "office" he found some old photographs of himself, long hair and bloodshot eyes, throwing up a peace sign. That was him, not this balding, middle aged man who lived in a house of strangers.
He would go to work and watch all the sweet young things pass in and out of the office and realize he was not a candidate for their attention. When he had become good old Jack??
And then there was Chastity. Chas with her long blonde hair and tight skirts. Her shirts straining across firm high breasts and long legs ending in spiky high heels. He would watch her rushing down the halls of the office, skirt cupping her ass and wonder what it would be like to hold that ass in his hands... what would it be like to part those full luscious lips with his tongue and taste that sweet young nectar?
So one warm spring afternoon he took a shot. He knew her marriage sucked and she was miserable, she had told him details a girl tells an old friend (emphasis on old here). He would never forget that shocked stare when he offered her a little romance in her sad life. He would never forget the rejection and the overwhelming feeling of failure as she backed away.
And his wife would never forget the phone call from Chas's more than a little angry husband.
He only hoped his daughter would forget the sound of the gun when he pulled the trigger spraying his brains all over the nice neat bedspread his wife had just laid out that morning.
Yeah life sucked. But that wasn't his problem anymore. And neither was aging."

Mood Swinging

It's strange to see the changes. In my last post I was happy and optimistic. Now I am somewhere else, and I am not certain where that place is or why I am visiting it with such passion.
I look at my relationships as well as those of people around me and I wonder how we survive. All so different with small similarities that make us cling, however briefly, to one another. Do we fall in love with others because we see ourselves in their eyes or because we don't??? And if sameness attracts one to the other, is that a kind of narcissism? And what happens when one grows to the left and the other to the right? If we are attracted to the differences why do some people feel challenged to homogenize their partner, to make them the same? Are we afraid of the differences, threatened by what we don't understand?
Can one mistake in a relationship truly destroy it? Or is the error, the accidental moment, the breath of a lapse of judgement just be a first crack? Does the crack grow wider unaided by us, or does it require additional strikes of the hammer to make it urn to a chasm that can't be crossed?
Does everyone have little pieces of themselves that they hide from others and perhaps even from themselves? What is my secret? If I find out will I be able to accept it or will I be overwhelmed and swept away into an abyss of ...what??

Epiphany

Friday night I was stressed. I spent 2 and a half days in training half agreeing with the subject, half ridiculing it. Trapped in a meeting room for hours with my co-workers, whom I genuinely like. But I am absolutely awful at being "trapped". Wanting to run, feeling the pavement slip beneath my feet while I race to accelerate to a speed where I could lift off.

Not long after I got home from work I had another long drawn out argument with my older daughter whose behavior challenges me daily as a parent, a grandparent, a person. With a pounding headache I decided to lay down for a little while until my husband got home from work. He, too, had been trapped in training all week.

I was feeling pretty down when I heard the bedroom door open and opened my eyes to see him standing at the foot of the bed. It's hard to put that moment into words. In literature it would be something of an epiphany. Suddenly, looking at the love and concern in his eyes I felt all my stresses lift away. "Come lay down with me." There was nothing sexual about this. Just the warmth of two people drawing comfort from one another. We didn't talk about why we felt so crappy. It wasn't necessary. It was enough to know there was someone you could rest your head on and put the rest of the world away for a little while.

Over the past few days I have thought about that feeling a lot. There has been a shift in our relationship, which was always good. But there seems to be an added dimension now. We will have our 5th anniversary in June. The passion has always been a constant in our love, and of course we are friends. But this is something bigger and I don't really have a name for it.

My first marriage was a nightmare; ten years of a jealousy so profound it drove me crazy. I couldn't talk to anyone, go anywhere, write anything, think anything without explaining why. Sometimes "why" is just "because". As a "writer" it was horrible for me. Everything I wrote was examined under a microscope for possible signs of infidelity. I learned that if you are pushed hard enough, accused often enough, you sometimes respond by fulfilling those fears. That's not an excuse, anymore than my youth was an excuse, but it certainly was an indication that things were not and never would be good in that relationship.

I thought long and hard before marrying again, walking away from some relationships that had disaster written in bold red letters on their faces. I never thought I would be willing or able to handle the give and take of a marriage again. I was free and it was good. I could hog the whole bed, watch tv until dawn, go on a trip anywhere I chose, talk to a bum on the street if I felt like it. I could go back to school, work anywhere and anytime I wanted to. If I chose to wear spike heels and a blouse cut down to my belly button or a torn flannel nightie that was fine. Marriage would surely mean giving that up. I could put my most private thoughts on paper as journals or works of fiction and not be questioned about my inspiration. I could take photos of cowboys, rock bands, homeless people pissing in the street and it was my choice. There was no room for that freedom in a marriage.

But my husband has not only embraced my not perfect body, my quirky behavior, my sometimes irrational ideas, but the parts of me that fly free, the independent me. He celebrates me and I have found I can celebrate him as well. We are individuals who come together like a well designed puzzle.

Thanks G-d. I'll continue to try to pay attention to the road signs.