On Self Sabotage

On Self Sabotage or the Hollow Ring of Ultimatums 
06/07/24

Youngest and eldest birth children

It was obvious as it was happening, as I was in the midst of it, doing it, and now as I see the outcome, the results in such a silly, common-place way, standing on the fucking scale. It was the day, the days, the events leading to this outcome, the tiny thrill the day before upon reading that I'd just reached my lowest weight, the pressure I'd placed on myself to dip under 170 for the first time in how many years (I can't even remember how long it's been . . . too long . . . 170 the new 150, the new 145). What's in a number, right? Did that doom me to self-sabotage, to undermine myself?

Finding so many tasks, so much busy-business, so many reasons not to work on the novel-in- flash, which was my stated number-one priority, so many impediments to finishing it. Well, I didn't dip under 170, did I, or work diligently on the novel? Not now and apparently not when I was working on that initial memoir back in 2017 either. Not if the NOOM app holds the truth of the matter within it's data mind, as the same app is now telling me I had just reached a "new" low, a lower low than in the previous years. So, we're (meaning, I am) inching up on close to ten years now since I was last where I am now, in terms of poundage in any case, and who knows, perhaps in terms of progress on completing a book as well.

I do remember many months of feeling as if no progress whatsoever was being made on the memoir, that memoir, the GRAY one, months of binge watching a serial about foster kids that I found so compelling at the time, I was doing that sinful thing . . . watching TV during the day! Which is like day-drinking, only worse I think, and doing it alone, in hiding, with the blinds closed to the street. Likely I was binge eating at the same time. Seriously, of course I was. And quickly turning off the TV and hiding the evidence of whatever I was stuffing into my face the minute I heard Bob pulling into the driveway or garage. Was he still working at the time, not yet retired? Yep, that's exactly what I would have been doing.

Carolanne was just off to college, gosh that seems like a decade ago; oh, that's exactly what it was. And now she's back home again after ending one chapter of her New Year years, though I imagine she will likely soon begin another, without Peter, her partner of six or seven years. 

Am I that bad this time round? No, I am not. Not sliding so far down, in terms of depression, binge eating or TV binging or any obsessive behaviors. There has been a lot of gardening in extreme heat (I blame climate change for that, and having inherited a very poorly maintained back garden in this most recent house move). Nonetheless, my treading-time behaviors do slow progress, for what I want to accomplish with my goals for my writing, my spirit and my health. But I am doing better, that must be said. Shall I credit the time spent with Lisa, the depression and binge-eating disorder counselor I acquired since writing the memoir: I imagine the Vyvanse helps too . . . 

Concluding I would benefit from a deeper dive into therapy of some sort. I should ask Lisa's advice about that. Perhaps a spiritual mentor or coach of some kind. Perhaps ask Jan as well. I don't think I fully understand the ways in which I am stuck; perhaps talking it out will help. It can't hurt. My balance and stamina have improved with Zumba. And I am getting closer with the flash novel. And yes, I think, I fear that on some level it could be crap. The bits I've sent out to lit mags have thus far all been rejected, but I do feel that I must finish it, if only to prove to myself that I can. 

I need to stop giving myself ultimatums. That doesn't tend to work well for me. Perhaps it doesn't work well for most people. Aren't ultimatums a form of threat in that they come with an implied threat, an attached "or else," which isn't clear or even stated, and thus in the end they ring hollow, meaningless, and they tend to come one after the other, ringing on and on in the hollowness. The hollow ring of ultimatums. I like the sound of that for a title. Instead I hope for a more organic flow of process for myself, with progress stemming from progress, task from task, accomplishment from insight. Not quite sure what I mean, yet, but hoping it will become clear as time goes on. Halfway into this new year, my 70th year, my big year of change, so there's still time for an epiphany, which is different than an ultimatum isn't it—yes, please. 

A I lay falling asleep, I circle back to my feelings and failings as a woman, wife, and in my body. What I believe I'm not, have never been, may never be. Beautiful, desired, the person I see when I dream behind my eyes. Boo-hoo, big gloopy crocodile tears, to be meted out in flash fiction sized doses to anyone who cares to read them or hear them, which I imagine isn't very many, lol. Get over yourself, D. Seriously, isn't it about time, past time. 

Why have I always imagined I had something to prove, firstly to myself, I suppose, and to my father, then to any male surrogate. Now I think it's mostly just me, me and my belly. I have made babies, you know. It's had an impact on my body. Is that a copout, a lame excuse for the shape of my body? To some degree, but not totally; no man can claim it. And they are fine babies; I'll say that for them. And why do I find tears welling up in my eyeballs as I write about my body and the process of growing and pushing out babies? It's complicated, right? There's the biology of it, sure, and the way it limits us and gives us this ability only women have (and not all women), and also how rarely it's acknowledged that it really is a big deal, bringing life into the world and nurturing it to the best of your ability, even if sometimes you falter, as we all do, we all do.

It's most surely not nothing, all of it, the process, the role, the ongoingness of it, the eternalness of it. Including the ones that weren't literally of my body—sounds archaic I know—stepchildren, which my stepmother claimed don't exist as a construct in Germany when she disavowed any such relation to my sisters and I. I gave important parts of myself for and to all of them. Did I lose parts of myself in the sharing and the giving, the living and the experiencing? The body bears its marks, as does the mind, the spirit, the intellect. Other women seem to waltz through it pretty well unscathed. Do the children (now adults) know, understand, appreciate all of that for-de-rol? Somewhat, little, not at all, I've no idea. I've carried my extra luggage around for decades, a lifetime if I'm honest. Would I trade an enviable basketball baby birth for my old-school set of leaden suitcases if it meant altering anything about the babies I ended up with, which I imagine it inevitably would, that being the nature of devil's bargains?

As the Beatles sang in their last recorded song, the love we take is equal to the love we make. Perhaps that is so. It's a nice thought. 

What the world (meaning me, of course) needs now is a little more will power, right? That's all it takes. Just say no to that spoonful of peanut butter, to finishing off that loaf of bread, to eating after 9:00 pm. Full stop to mindless eating. Full stop to mindless frittering of time to mindless tending of objects that clutter the environment, to organizing drawers, garages, sheds, flower beds. Which kind of makes no sense, because if it's mindless, you can't stop, because you aren't aware you're doing it. It only works if you're never mindless, in which case you would never be mindlessly eating . . . 

Do better. That's all I can do. I will do better. I want to. I do. I am not all bad all the time, clearly. Sometimes I write under the line (these words were originally written in a ruled notebook, fifty cents each during the back-to-school sales), sometimes I write over the line, sometimes I even finish something. I can do this. Sometimes (like right now) I write too small!

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Middle birth child

Birth kids and sisters' kids under wedding arch on occasion of third marriage in 1997

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The Gilded Shackles of Marriage

06/21/24
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I am sad, more sad, tired too, and it's only six in the morning. I've been up for an hour and I'm ready for this day to be over, like my big fat lie of a life. Writing, pretending, all of it: I am no one, nothing, a puddle. I have no one. I am a useless, empty thing. I know that these words aren't true, that I am many things, that I have done many things and that it's that I now sense their relative insignificance and lack of meaning or that they only have the meaning I ascribe to to them, which is true of most accomplishments, for most people, and that on occasion others will join in celebrating my accomplishments because they align with their own goals for themselves or desires. 

What the fudge or fuck: I can do or not do, be or not be. It makes little difference. Of course this is true. It has always been true, for anyone and everyone. That's the thing of this life, this living business, isn't it? People carry on doing or not doing, or they don't. Mostly I do, but right now I feel broken, realizing how many years, three decades, thirty years, of my own will and often foolish longing, I've yoked myself to a man who could never find his way to love me as I am, could never find his way to see me as I am, could never do much of anything to help me, for he couldn't do any of those things for himself. Dear God, why? He couldn't feel at all, could he? We have lived in mutual numbness and neglect and I didn't see it, or I did of course, but chose not to.

To have no one to talk to about anything matters to me. To never know what, if anything, matters to him. To have no one see me in my own home as I want to be seen—with a kind, loving, accepting, forgiving, eye. To never to known, cherished, desired, wanted for simply being who I am, faults, strengths, vagaries, flights of fancy, all of it. I look in the mirror. I see it, in flashes, sometimes full face. And I want to cry. It's right there, God damn it. To have had no curiosity about what I'm thinking, feeling, doing, wanting, needing, not to wonder whether I'm hurting or why, all these years, these nights when I couldn't sleep, the midnight hours when I lay awake staring into the darkness, loneliness so thick I often raised my hands above me to slice through it with my fingers, not that he ever noticed. To feel as if my feelings, my heart, have had no place on his list of priorities, or his to-do list. 

To have had countless conversations that contained only single words, responses to questions: a noun, a verb, a yes or no. How do you feel? What do you feel? What's up with so-and-so? How are you feeling? Should we talk about this?  I don't know. I don't think about such things. I'm not in touch with my emotions. I don't access my emotions. I'm not much for talking about that kind of stuff, or for talking in general. Sorry to disappoint, sorry, sorry. There is no there, there, no deeper understanding or connection desired, required, ever. There never was, I know this now. I have known it always, yet avoided the knowledge, thinking it couldn't be, that I only needed to dig deeper, to love harder, to be patient, empathetic, compassionate. I have been a fool, living this uncomfortable lie, pretending it was comfortable, allowing myself to feel sorry for myself, to wallow in my lonely marriage as the bargain I made, my lot. 

No more, I say this, I mean this. I really do. Can I do this? The Golden Handcuffs, like civil service, as they say, with the eventual promise of the pension and lifetime medical and dental insurance. The gilded shackles of a long-term marriage, with the safety, the sense of security that comes from having a partner at your side, even one who only provides the appearance of partnership—a literal body, without many of the benefits others must assume come with the role. I can live comfortably on my own money, my own assets. I have the benefits of those golden handcuffs, the pension, the insurance. I don't need the marriage for that. Though I've appreciated what our combined incomes have allowed me to do for the children from my prior two marriages. Is that why I've stayed for so long. Money? I can't let it be that. I don't love that for me. Is it that I don't want to be branded a three-time loser at marriage and this would be my third divorce. Is it that I loved him once, in ways I didn't love the other two? That hit a nerve—just typing the words brings tears. I used to believe I couldn't leave him so long as the thought of my husband with another woman would fill my heart with jealousy, would wound; which is perhaps a poor reflection of love or chemistry, but still, I knew I would suffer and I didn't want to trade one form of suffering for another . . . with the passage of time and the blinders removed from my eyes, I just want to be happy, I just want to find peace of mind in my own home, in my own bed. I don't want to be lonely in those places where I spend the most time. To do otherwise is insanity. And I now believe I'd be okay if he were to find happiness with someone else. I may still love my husband, but I don't love how he makes me feel or how he loves me. 

The small lake (some would say pond) near our cabin in Arnold, CA