Wimp or Warrior?
I have been neglecting posting because I have these half drafted posts that I have not finished with. They, I guess, will appear sometime. In the mean time my life has been dumped upside down and given a good shake.
How do I know if this is just the next step in my journey? A time to move on, to take my beliefs and my passions to a new location and peoples. Is this new place really where *I* am supposed to live? This place I have no interest in being? I feel I've seen it all in two or three short visits, and little of it interests me.
Should I instead be holding on to the reins with both hands and pulling for a halt with all my might? Should I be fighting for my 'life'? Is now when I am supposed to stand up and fight for what I have? Small and unnoticed as it is I have found comfort in the last few months. I have been supportive. I have been giving and giving and little of it has been for me... directly. Though my childrens lives affect me directly and their actions have a direct effect on my life. When you are living your life with so many others your small movements can create ripples you never considered. This is the period of my life when THEY come first. Not to say others don't have consideration, but that WE decided they *need* someone to keep them in front to help drive them and steer and use the peddles they can't reach yet.
Is it really time to move on? Now when I feel things are just starting to look positively interesting? I'm not one who feels compelled to follow the straight and well traveled path. I like foraging on ahead and seeing new ground and looking at what those other people over there are doing. So asking for advice is not going to work. There are few to ask. I need to decide what *I* think. What I want is approval. I'm not going to get it. I don't approve of where HE wants go and HE doesn't approve of wallowing in the mediocrity that he sees as awaiting him here.
OUr paths seem to go different directions at this point. As a family though we only have one "vehicle". I don't want to step back and let him take the wheel. I can't read the map and see the road ahead as anything other then a tedious detour from the course we have been taking. I do not want to leave the company of our fellow travelers. Many have been with us since we first took breath. I am afraid that without the support they offer so freely, and with gladness of our company, we will toil and rut and our journey will be less. Less what? Well Less just less.
Reading historic accounts of the populating and exploring of North America I had no respect for those women who were displeased with their husbands choice to move or change careers and so made his life miserable. I don't see myself as one of those prim and proper ladies who turn their nose up at things or people who look messy or don't meet with their standards. I picture Princess Alberta sitting in her train car the only time she was in the huge chunk of the earth that was named after her, thinking it was too dirty, to unkept, to wild to warrant her notice. Why would she not be curious? How could she be so disrespectful? I wasn't there, so extenuating circumstances and historians interpretations aside, it seems she didn't much bother with or care about the place named after her. So now I see what they may have felt. These women history books pooh pooh for being so inflexible. Having a life, friends, family, support, and looking into the future they were comforted by what they saw happening in their lives. In their familiar places. I can now sympathize with those long ago women who had no reason to travel into uncharted territory. Who saw no joy in the discovery or newness. They might have been just as pleased as I am with how things were going for them. They may have been just as uninterested in what the new land had to offer. New Tiny Cities. I wonder how many of those women ended up in the same Tiny City we are considering and helped it to grow and develop into the very nice place it is now. Did they build for themselves a comfortable life and not regret the one left behind? Can I?
I will in no way try to infer that I am a 'princess' or pioneer, Tiny City is well developed and pretty cosmopolitan for it's size, but what are my thought processes? What are the thoughts going through my head? What is there in that new place, the lifestyle I imagine there, and what I see as a great way to live that I can not hold onto a happiness of moving there? My thoughts will not allow me to feel happy about going to this place and living my life there. My husband wants to move to this place not me? "I can NOT find interest in the Tiny City that is not so far away". There is nothing in me but a huge longing to be here, to not miss out on the action I have been following with such intensity. I do not want to move from my mother -more on this later- or take my kids from the Gran and Grandad, Uncles, and Aunties. I have felt like there was a building up of good things for the last while and I don't want to loose the momentum. I can't say to my husband "I worked so hard to get where I am now." Because he has worked very hard too in a more direct way, in a physical way, in a hard, fast, and furious way to help us have the money for a happy life. He has proof of his work. I feel unable to say"No" to him on this.
I have been observably passive and have not seemed to be very active at all. Mostly because I have been ruminate on what life for the kids should be like. Making the choices I think would put them in a position to have the best chances to succeed, finding friends that are loving and committed -not necessarily to us, but to the lifestyle I think would work best- and they are very very supportive. It is ever so hard to find friends that share a similarly unconventional lifestyle. I felt coming up to this year that we could soar and live/learn *with* others and really create some growth as far as options available and build a cohesive group of self learners with which we could move on to explore some very exciting things. I felt on the Cusp of great things.
BUT -can you read that as a big but and not me hollering- BUT I wanted the Daddy Man to come on the journey with us. To explore how his life could be dominated by his passions and not the incessant grind of work-your-ass-off-to-make-millions-for-someone-else, but a cool and sweet 'HIS way' of life. I was trying to open his eyes up to the opportunities on the path less traveled. I liked watching him ponder over what he could do "What would I like to do with my life? What of my skills are the most enjoyable to me? Who do I like to work with?" and so on. I liked seeing him letting go of how things 'aught' to be and looking at what could be. Asking himself what it could be to follow his own path. I want him to make his choices with an open mind and perform his life's work in the way that best pleases his sensibilities. I wanted him to join us in our lives not change everything. I wanted him to see how much fun we were having and come with us. He seemed so unhappy and unhealthy and to not be exploring or thinking beyond what was necessary.
Now this is me yelling- I JUST WASN'T EXPECTING IT TO SCREW ME OVER IN THE PROCESS. My own fucking mouth can be such a bitchy piece of work sometimes. Isn't that the way it goes though. "I want you to be free as long as it doesn't effect me in any untoward way." Blasted circle of... what fate? irony?... whatever it is that seems to have turned about to shout that I should leave well enough alone if I'm not prepared for the consequences. Well that part is also quite pleased -now this is ironic- that someone listened to my advice. That he is thinking he has found what it is he wants to do.
If I was my husbands Mom instead of his wife, that has to move with him to this Tiny City, I would be quite proud of him and be helping him and supporting him. As it is I've been bitchy and uninterested in him and depressing and, well, pondering what life would be like if I stayed and he went. Not seriously thinking of divorce, when feeling sane and sober, but it does give me a sense of comfort to know that option is open if I feel it is best to run and flea back to my familiar places. If we didn't have kids I might even look at it seriously but If I didn't have kids I wouldn't be where I am presently. He still hasn't joined us in our lives. He hasn't acknowledged our chosen path as having importance or value. perhaps I should bold that sentence? Yes.
I have been observing the children of my friends. I am in love with so many children right now. They are a joy. I am attached to my childrens attachments. Isn't life about finding people to live with? I spent several years on the periphery and have seen how they are growing and in the last year getting to know many of them and they are all just delightful people. I don't want to leave them and miss seeing who they are and how they change as the time goes by. I don't want to leave the sheltering nest of the Association of the Parents and Children. I really like the fact that Dads are involved. One of my concerns was that my children would be surrounded by the bevy of females and as wonderful as that is children need experience with good male role models. We have some different kinds of Dads too. I like it my boys won't feel quite so overwhelmed by the lack of Guys and Guy influenced activity. I have spent too much time with men who don't think outside their circles or don't think at all.
Over all I think that this has been a huge reminder -a slap in the face with a 2x4 kind of reminder- that I should really start appreciating what I have and stop taking things for granted. My Guy and Kids are healthy and happy for the most part. They like spending time with me and I with them. My Husband is a good man I can live with him he hasn't given up on living with me yet(big pluses in our instant gratification/ perfectionistic society). I am not a complete social idiot, though my foots in my mouth often enough. So I can make new friends for me and the kids and maybe I can introduce something new that can help the folks in Tiny City in some way. Maybe those folks have what I have been looking forward to creating here or something I didn't know I wanted. I just don't want to let go because I know I can not recreate the relationships I have here. No one in Tiny City will remember my kids as they were when they were little ones. No one for a long time will really care if we stick around or not. It takes years to create close friendships. Here I have people to mobilise in case of tragedy. There it would be the help of charitable people helping a stranger, not a friend, not family, not the sweet little kid they know so well.
I just don't want to let go.
So fucking hell. What? I will spend the next few years making friends with people I don't intend to grow old with, I don't intend to live with longer than is necessary, as I want to be close to family and family is here. That is why we had made the decision to stay here. It seems like such a waist of time. Of this lives time. Will my disinterest create a lack of participation there. Am I going through a needed mourning period? Am I dramaticizing for some reason? I am stubborn. Sometimes stubbornness is for good reasons, sometimes it is to balance out the scales of my life, sometimes it is miss guided need. All I know is that instead of planning for this year coming up and getting the most out of our summer I have been agonizing about this decision for the last month and a half. I keep trying to convince myself the move will be good for us. That I should embrace this new beginning. Take hold of the reigns and go for it. Then I feel the emptiness those thoughts create and stop trying to convince myself of something I'm so unsure of and start agonizing again. I can't see what this move will bring.
Tiny City seemed a cool place back when we lived in That Small Town. I could look forward to living in one of those turn of the century character houses, you know2.5 or 3 story homes with lost of space. Well we went and looked at some. I don't want a molding basement. I don't -as the resident handyperson- want to spend valuable kid life time fixing shit by myself. I no longer have interest in it. I want to pair down responsibilities not create huge ones.
He never has seemed interested in being part of my life, my friends or family....
Last summer or spring or perhaps it was the new year in '05 I wanted to spread out and find new ground, my feet were itching something fierce. My loving honey convinced me it was a bad idea for many reasons such as my Mother couldn't take us moving, it would severely worsen her already shaky health. So we made a deal that we would stay here and buy, when able, a piece of land somewhere so I/we could exercise our itchy feet and travel there when we could. A little piece of BC or a piece of an Eastcoast Island. I completely reformatted my mind. Very seriously took a hold of my brain and rewired it. The funniest thing happened. I started to let the little roots I had grow. Let them free of their tentative hold of the few people close to me. I let them spread and take hold of the terra and connected with other roots. Small tendrills of affection and camaraderie...
Crap I just realized that we are each others products. The things holding us back the most are self made. He helped me grow roots I helped him pull his out of the mucky ground they had been stewing in.
Circles circles
Running round and round
Am I continuing on to the beginning again?
Or is this a staircase?
If so, heading up or down?
Spiraling
You ever have one of those dreams where your sitting down for a test but you don't know what it's for so your not sure how to answer the questions? All your sure of is that somehow your doing it wrong and that someone will disapprove and fail you though they all have expectations of your successfully completing it their way.
I'm at the chalkboard writing. white on black. words and numbers scrawling. everyone tense and whispering and no one who knows the way or even what the problem is. No one to help find the answer. So I just keep writing.
I have an independent nature. I have a very dependent lifestyle. I want everyone to like me even if they don't agree with me. As a child I was so intensely afraid of not being liked or people thinking I was stupid that I never really learned how to share myself in a healthy manner with any sort of confidence. I felt my way through life. I remember writing reams and reams of seemingly disjointed thoughts. It was easier to communicate in short sentences, my mind moved too fast for the hand. And now I look back, I read from what little survives of what I wrote and discover it's poetry. As a child I lived almost outside myself because who I was was not compatible with school. No one showed me I could be strong without being contrary that I could agree to disagree. I could never relax unless alone it seemed. Perhaps that is why I spent so much time alone. Perhaps that is why I find it so important be relaxed now. Important for me and for my kids. It has become part of my persona to relax and not get stressed out unless there is a darn good reason and I can't control or adjust to the stressor. In this case it seems a monster of my own making.
One of our cats has developed an hugeness of catty proportions. Bluntly he is a bit of a fatty. SO when I'm relaxing in bed reading or thinking over my day before rising and he hops up onto the bed and walks along it to step ever so pressingly upon me and settles down on my chest for a good snuggle and in hopes for a pet. The weight is almost comforting. As during those times I have a visible presence an explanation for the huge weight I feel pressing down on me. He comforts me with his sweet furry warmth. In the way only a cat pimping himself out for his next meal can. The honesty of cats and dogs is so refreshing. Until you realize it's all a show for food, love, and a bit of worship. Still there is honesty.
During the summer vacation Husband had in July he explored options for his career. Thoughts of starting his own business. Much of it started with using the capital in our house. I blindly helped him brainstorm not thinking about what a move would entail. He mentioned an old idea of the kids and I living at the family farm for a while. Years ago when we lived in That Small Town the farm seemed great. Things have changed. The farm seems a place of loneliness and desertion. I need people who I am comfortable with and who give me confidence in my life. Rural farm life so far from the city scares me now. So when he mentioned that as a way to reduce expenses while getting a business up and running I held my tongue hoping the idea would pass. It did I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I feel an internal panickyness. There is a place inside that can not relax that has fear and loathing and wild eyes, nostrils flared without the ability to feed fresh air through my lungs to my brain. No relaxing here. I want to drink, get rip roaringly drunk to drug that incessant voice of panic. I loose myself in mindless watching of movies and television. Zuma my brain into a numbed stupor so I don't have to think or make decisions or worry. I fed this idea to free Daddy Man from the confines of peoples expectations and now I just want to slip things back a short ways and vegitate. Slow things down.
Three days after the idea -occurring to me and my expressing it during a long drive late at night trying to keep the conversation moving- three days later he told me I had five days to decide if it was a go or not. Then the day before the five days were up he cornered me. Phoned me on my way out the door. Five kids roasting in the van while he badgered my "I don't knows" with signs of wanting to give his notice at work. Asking me if I will give up my veto powers. My powers to tell him no I don't want this. When all I wanted was his free choice he was asking me to give up mine. I told him to do what he thought was best. So he gave his notice. Power struggle has ensued. I am passive aggressive if I understand it to mean what I think.
Why would he seem so strange to me now? I guess I expected him to act with foresight. To plan. To research for hours. To make arrangements for a secure move in this new direction. Not a slamming around of our lives. This feels too rough. I keep searching for new ideas. Don't want to crush his dream. Don't want to ruin his happiness. He is so sweet to me and the kids. Then I want to punch him in the face. Where the fuck does that come from? I Love him very much, but he has created a lack of trust. Plus I'm mad. He moved to fast. Left few real chances for communication and was a pussy where he could have been strong. I asked he take a leave of absence instead of quit. He said it would feel wrong. "It's not how he worked." "If he new he had to go back to work it would affect his judgment or ability to work or make good choices." or something else like that.
He knows I don't want to move, that I support his choice and can live happily in cooperative or rental housing while we both figure out what to do. He is expecting capitulation. Stupid fucker has even told me as much. He even seems anticipatory towards my capitulation like he will be winning some game I'm not playing. I don't like what I'm seeing in him right now. It creates discomfort. Like there is some side of him I have been ignoring looking at for fear of having to see him. Then I wonder if it is my imaginings and me creating something that is not there so as to find an excuse to stay. Stupid heart strings. This winding about like a thread on a loom makes them so ungainly and disruptive. If I had a cold heart lacking much confusion of strings I could snip when and where necessary. Blasted Lovey Dovey Man. Makes life so complicated and delightful and painful. Stupid stupid heart too many complications.
I think I would like a punching bag. There is absolutely no reason for me to hit this man but I really want to beat the shit out of something, as an expression of my frustrations. The only thing around here that needs to be destroyed requires the use of an axe. I think the using of and axe is something like the driving of a car. One shouldn't risk either when mad, and never when enraged.
He has said that if I don't like it in a year or two (another agony is that it started out as 6 months to a year and is now more along the lines of two years) well he said that if I don't want to continue living there we can move back. Well crap what the hell does that prove? What does that say? Why the fuck can't I say I don't like it NOW right NOW before we even get there? Why do I have to stew and have my life torn apart only to have the remnants put back in my hands after complete annihilation.
This city has been my home since I was small. I look back on a lot of years of unhappiness and many of joy. Small girl climbing snow when this city had snow-dumping winters. There has only been one good snowy winter since I became an adult. I was born on that hill over there on the extreme other side of this metropolis. I was wondering where to leave my remains. Cremate them and spread them around a little here a little there?
He loves me but does not participate in my life. He tells me I'm brilliant when I manage to steer the conversation to something that I find interesting for a short time. He thanks me for helping him become a better father but won't sit and chat about why I am choosing this way or that in my parenting practice. Is it his decisive masculine nature? Or is it creative manipulation of me and my life? I suppose that's what trust is. And faith. I have little faith in abstract things like Gods and ghosts. He seems as distant to my reality.
If I have to choose between a fight and capitulation... am I a wimp or a warrior. Both choices require strength and backing down. Compromise. How can one compromise over hundreds of Kilometers?
Perhaps this is just a big whining session and I just need to experience life in Tiny Town to see there is something to be offered there. Perhaps I'll look back and all this worry will seem silly.
One can always hope.
TeeBuckOutLoud
How do I know if this is just the next step in my journey? A time to move on, to take my beliefs and my passions to a new location and peoples. Is this new place really where *I* am supposed to live? This place I have no interest in being? I feel I've seen it all in two or three short visits, and little of it interests me.
Should I instead be holding on to the reins with both hands and pulling for a halt with all my might? Should I be fighting for my 'life'? Is now when I am supposed to stand up and fight for what I have? Small and unnoticed as it is I have found comfort in the last few months. I have been supportive. I have been giving and giving and little of it has been for me... directly. Though my childrens lives affect me directly and their actions have a direct effect on my life. When you are living your life with so many others your small movements can create ripples you never considered. This is the period of my life when THEY come first. Not to say others don't have consideration, but that WE decided they *need* someone to keep them in front to help drive them and steer and use the peddles they can't reach yet.
Is it really time to move on? Now when I feel things are just starting to look positively interesting? I'm not one who feels compelled to follow the straight and well traveled path. I like foraging on ahead and seeing new ground and looking at what those other people over there are doing. So asking for advice is not going to work. There are few to ask. I need to decide what *I* think. What I want is approval. I'm not going to get it. I don't approve of where HE wants go and HE doesn't approve of wallowing in the mediocrity that he sees as awaiting him here.
OUr paths seem to go different directions at this point. As a family though we only have one "vehicle". I don't want to step back and let him take the wheel. I can't read the map and see the road ahead as anything other then a tedious detour from the course we have been taking. I do not want to leave the company of our fellow travelers. Many have been with us since we first took breath. I am afraid that without the support they offer so freely, and with gladness of our company, we will toil and rut and our journey will be less. Less what? Well Less just less.
Reading historic accounts of the populating and exploring of North America I had no respect for those women who were displeased with their husbands choice to move or change careers and so made his life miserable. I don't see myself as one of those prim and proper ladies who turn their nose up at things or people who look messy or don't meet with their standards. I picture Princess Alberta sitting in her train car the only time she was in the huge chunk of the earth that was named after her, thinking it was too dirty, to unkept, to wild to warrant her notice. Why would she not be curious? How could she be so disrespectful? I wasn't there, so extenuating circumstances and historians interpretations aside, it seems she didn't much bother with or care about the place named after her. So now I see what they may have felt. These women history books pooh pooh for being so inflexible. Having a life, friends, family, support, and looking into the future they were comforted by what they saw happening in their lives. In their familiar places. I can now sympathize with those long ago women who had no reason to travel into uncharted territory. Who saw no joy in the discovery or newness. They might have been just as pleased as I am with how things were going for them. They may have been just as uninterested in what the new land had to offer. New Tiny Cities. I wonder how many of those women ended up in the same Tiny City we are considering and helped it to grow and develop into the very nice place it is now. Did they build for themselves a comfortable life and not regret the one left behind? Can I?
I will in no way try to infer that I am a 'princess' or pioneer, Tiny City is well developed and pretty cosmopolitan for it's size, but what are my thought processes? What are the thoughts going through my head? What is there in that new place, the lifestyle I imagine there, and what I see as a great way to live that I can not hold onto a happiness of moving there? My thoughts will not allow me to feel happy about going to this place and living my life there. My husband wants to move to this place not me? "I can NOT find interest in the Tiny City that is not so far away". There is nothing in me but a huge longing to be here, to not miss out on the action I have been following with such intensity. I do not want to move from my mother -more on this later- or take my kids from the Gran and Grandad, Uncles, and Aunties. I have felt like there was a building up of good things for the last while and I don't want to loose the momentum. I can't say to my husband "I worked so hard to get where I am now." Because he has worked very hard too in a more direct way, in a physical way, in a hard, fast, and furious way to help us have the money for a happy life. He has proof of his work. I feel unable to say"No" to him on this.
I have been observably passive and have not seemed to be very active at all. Mostly because I have been ruminate on what life for the kids should be like. Making the choices I think would put them in a position to have the best chances to succeed, finding friends that are loving and committed -not necessarily to us, but to the lifestyle I think would work best- and they are very very supportive. It is ever so hard to find friends that share a similarly unconventional lifestyle. I felt coming up to this year that we could soar and live/learn *with* others and really create some growth as far as options available and build a cohesive group of self learners with which we could move on to explore some very exciting things. I felt on the Cusp of great things.
BUT -can you read that as a big but and not me hollering- BUT I wanted the Daddy Man to come on the journey with us. To explore how his life could be dominated by his passions and not the incessant grind of work-your-ass-off-to-make-millions-for-someone-else, but a cool and sweet 'HIS way' of life. I was trying to open his eyes up to the opportunities on the path less traveled. I liked watching him ponder over what he could do "What would I like to do with my life? What of my skills are the most enjoyable to me? Who do I like to work with?" and so on. I liked seeing him letting go of how things 'aught' to be and looking at what could be. Asking himself what it could be to follow his own path. I want him to make his choices with an open mind and perform his life's work in the way that best pleases his sensibilities. I wanted him to join us in our lives not change everything. I wanted him to see how much fun we were having and come with us. He seemed so unhappy and unhealthy and to not be exploring or thinking beyond what was necessary.
Now this is me yelling- I JUST WASN'T EXPECTING IT TO SCREW ME OVER IN THE PROCESS. My own fucking mouth can be such a bitchy piece of work sometimes. Isn't that the way it goes though. "I want you to be free as long as it doesn't effect me in any untoward way." Blasted circle of... what fate? irony?... whatever it is that seems to have turned about to shout that I should leave well enough alone if I'm not prepared for the consequences. Well that part is also quite pleased -now this is ironic- that someone listened to my advice. That he is thinking he has found what it is he wants to do.
If I was my husbands Mom instead of his wife, that has to move with him to this Tiny City, I would be quite proud of him and be helping him and supporting him. As it is I've been bitchy and uninterested in him and depressing and, well, pondering what life would be like if I stayed and he went. Not seriously thinking of divorce, when feeling sane and sober, but it does give me a sense of comfort to know that option is open if I feel it is best to run and flea back to my familiar places. If we didn't have kids I might even look at it seriously but If I didn't have kids I wouldn't be where I am presently. He still hasn't joined us in our lives. He hasn't acknowledged our chosen path as having importance or value. perhaps I should bold that sentence? Yes.
I have been observing the children of my friends. I am in love with so many children right now. They are a joy. I am attached to my childrens attachments. Isn't life about finding people to live with? I spent several years on the periphery and have seen how they are growing and in the last year getting to know many of them and they are all just delightful people. I don't want to leave them and miss seeing who they are and how they change as the time goes by. I don't want to leave the sheltering nest of the Association of the Parents and Children. I really like the fact that Dads are involved. One of my concerns was that my children would be surrounded by the bevy of females and as wonderful as that is children need experience with good male role models. We have some different kinds of Dads too. I like it my boys won't feel quite so overwhelmed by the lack of Guys and Guy influenced activity. I have spent too much time with men who don't think outside their circles or don't think at all.
Over all I think that this has been a huge reminder -a slap in the face with a 2x4 kind of reminder- that I should really start appreciating what I have and stop taking things for granted. My Guy and Kids are healthy and happy for the most part. They like spending time with me and I with them. My Husband is a good man I can live with him he hasn't given up on living with me yet(big pluses in our instant gratification/ perfectionistic society). I am not a complete social idiot, though my foots in my mouth often enough. So I can make new friends for me and the kids and maybe I can introduce something new that can help the folks in Tiny City in some way. Maybe those folks have what I have been looking forward to creating here or something I didn't know I wanted. I just don't want to let go because I know I can not recreate the relationships I have here. No one in Tiny City will remember my kids as they were when they were little ones. No one for a long time will really care if we stick around or not. It takes years to create close friendships. Here I have people to mobilise in case of tragedy. There it would be the help of charitable people helping a stranger, not a friend, not family, not the sweet little kid they know so well.
I just don't want to let go.
So fucking hell. What? I will spend the next few years making friends with people I don't intend to grow old with, I don't intend to live with longer than is necessary, as I want to be close to family and family is here. That is why we had made the decision to stay here. It seems like such a waist of time. Of this lives time. Will my disinterest create a lack of participation there. Am I going through a needed mourning period? Am I dramaticizing for some reason? I am stubborn. Sometimes stubbornness is for good reasons, sometimes it is to balance out the scales of my life, sometimes it is miss guided need. All I know is that instead of planning for this year coming up and getting the most out of our summer I have been agonizing about this decision for the last month and a half. I keep trying to convince myself the move will be good for us. That I should embrace this new beginning. Take hold of the reigns and go for it. Then I feel the emptiness those thoughts create and stop trying to convince myself of something I'm so unsure of and start agonizing again. I can't see what this move will bring.
Tiny City seemed a cool place back when we lived in That Small Town. I could look forward to living in one of those turn of the century character houses, you know2.5 or 3 story homes with lost of space. Well we went and looked at some. I don't want a molding basement. I don't -as the resident handyperson- want to spend valuable kid life time fixing shit by myself. I no longer have interest in it. I want to pair down responsibilities not create huge ones.
He never has seemed interested in being part of my life, my friends or family....
Last summer or spring or perhaps it was the new year in '05 I wanted to spread out and find new ground, my feet were itching something fierce. My loving honey convinced me it was a bad idea for many reasons such as my Mother couldn't take us moving, it would severely worsen her already shaky health. So we made a deal that we would stay here and buy, when able, a piece of land somewhere so I/we could exercise our itchy feet and travel there when we could. A little piece of BC or a piece of an Eastcoast Island. I completely reformatted my mind. Very seriously took a hold of my brain and rewired it. The funniest thing happened. I started to let the little roots I had grow. Let them free of their tentative hold of the few people close to me. I let them spread and take hold of the terra and connected with other roots. Small tendrills of affection and camaraderie...
Crap I just realized that we are each others products. The things holding us back the most are self made. He helped me grow roots I helped him pull his out of the mucky ground they had been stewing in.
Circles circles
Running round and round
Am I continuing on to the beginning again?
Or is this a staircase?
If so, heading up or down?
Spiraling
You ever have one of those dreams where your sitting down for a test but you don't know what it's for so your not sure how to answer the questions? All your sure of is that somehow your doing it wrong and that someone will disapprove and fail you though they all have expectations of your successfully completing it their way.
I'm at the chalkboard writing. white on black. words and numbers scrawling. everyone tense and whispering and no one who knows the way or even what the problem is. No one to help find the answer. So I just keep writing.
I have an independent nature. I have a very dependent lifestyle. I want everyone to like me even if they don't agree with me. As a child I was so intensely afraid of not being liked or people thinking I was stupid that I never really learned how to share myself in a healthy manner with any sort of confidence. I felt my way through life. I remember writing reams and reams of seemingly disjointed thoughts. It was easier to communicate in short sentences, my mind moved too fast for the hand. And now I look back, I read from what little survives of what I wrote and discover it's poetry. As a child I lived almost outside myself because who I was was not compatible with school. No one showed me I could be strong without being contrary that I could agree to disagree. I could never relax unless alone it seemed. Perhaps that is why I spent so much time alone. Perhaps that is why I find it so important be relaxed now. Important for me and for my kids. It has become part of my persona to relax and not get stressed out unless there is a darn good reason and I can't control or adjust to the stressor. In this case it seems a monster of my own making.
One of our cats has developed an hugeness of catty proportions. Bluntly he is a bit of a fatty. SO when I'm relaxing in bed reading or thinking over my day before rising and he hops up onto the bed and walks along it to step ever so pressingly upon me and settles down on my chest for a good snuggle and in hopes for a pet. The weight is almost comforting. As during those times I have a visible presence an explanation for the huge weight I feel pressing down on me. He comforts me with his sweet furry warmth. In the way only a cat pimping himself out for his next meal can. The honesty of cats and dogs is so refreshing. Until you realize it's all a show for food, love, and a bit of worship. Still there is honesty.
During the summer vacation Husband had in July he explored options for his career. Thoughts of starting his own business. Much of it started with using the capital in our house. I blindly helped him brainstorm not thinking about what a move would entail. He mentioned an old idea of the kids and I living at the family farm for a while. Years ago when we lived in That Small Town the farm seemed great. Things have changed. The farm seems a place of loneliness and desertion. I need people who I am comfortable with and who give me confidence in my life. Rural farm life so far from the city scares me now. So when he mentioned that as a way to reduce expenses while getting a business up and running I held my tongue hoping the idea would pass. It did I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I feel an internal panickyness. There is a place inside that can not relax that has fear and loathing and wild eyes, nostrils flared without the ability to feed fresh air through my lungs to my brain. No relaxing here. I want to drink, get rip roaringly drunk to drug that incessant voice of panic. I loose myself in mindless watching of movies and television. Zuma my brain into a numbed stupor so I don't have to think or make decisions or worry. I fed this idea to free Daddy Man from the confines of peoples expectations and now I just want to slip things back a short ways and vegitate. Slow things down.
Three days after the idea -occurring to me and my expressing it during a long drive late at night trying to keep the conversation moving- three days later he told me I had five days to decide if it was a go or not. Then the day before the five days were up he cornered me. Phoned me on my way out the door. Five kids roasting in the van while he badgered my "I don't knows" with signs of wanting to give his notice at work. Asking me if I will give up my veto powers. My powers to tell him no I don't want this. When all I wanted was his free choice he was asking me to give up mine. I told him to do what he thought was best. So he gave his notice. Power struggle has ensued. I am passive aggressive if I understand it to mean what I think.
Why would he seem so strange to me now? I guess I expected him to act with foresight. To plan. To research for hours. To make arrangements for a secure move in this new direction. Not a slamming around of our lives. This feels too rough. I keep searching for new ideas. Don't want to crush his dream. Don't want to ruin his happiness. He is so sweet to me and the kids. Then I want to punch him in the face. Where the fuck does that come from? I Love him very much, but he has created a lack of trust. Plus I'm mad. He moved to fast. Left few real chances for communication and was a pussy where he could have been strong. I asked he take a leave of absence instead of quit. He said it would feel wrong. "It's not how he worked." "If he new he had to go back to work it would affect his judgment or ability to work or make good choices." or something else like that.
He knows I don't want to move, that I support his choice and can live happily in cooperative or rental housing while we both figure out what to do. He is expecting capitulation. Stupid fucker has even told me as much. He even seems anticipatory towards my capitulation like he will be winning some game I'm not playing. I don't like what I'm seeing in him right now. It creates discomfort. Like there is some side of him I have been ignoring looking at for fear of having to see him. Then I wonder if it is my imaginings and me creating something that is not there so as to find an excuse to stay. Stupid heart strings. This winding about like a thread on a loom makes them so ungainly and disruptive. If I had a cold heart lacking much confusion of strings I could snip when and where necessary. Blasted Lovey Dovey Man. Makes life so complicated and delightful and painful. Stupid stupid heart too many complications.
I think I would like a punching bag. There is absolutely no reason for me to hit this man but I really want to beat the shit out of something, as an expression of my frustrations. The only thing around here that needs to be destroyed requires the use of an axe. I think the using of and axe is something like the driving of a car. One shouldn't risk either when mad, and never when enraged.
He has said that if I don't like it in a year or two (another agony is that it started out as 6 months to a year and is now more along the lines of two years) well he said that if I don't want to continue living there we can move back. Well crap what the hell does that prove? What does that say? Why the fuck can't I say I don't like it NOW right NOW before we even get there? Why do I have to stew and have my life torn apart only to have the remnants put back in my hands after complete annihilation.
This city has been my home since I was small. I look back on a lot of years of unhappiness and many of joy. Small girl climbing snow when this city had snow-dumping winters. There has only been one good snowy winter since I became an adult. I was born on that hill over there on the extreme other side of this metropolis. I was wondering where to leave my remains. Cremate them and spread them around a little here a little there?
He loves me but does not participate in my life. He tells me I'm brilliant when I manage to steer the conversation to something that I find interesting for a short time. He thanks me for helping him become a better father but won't sit and chat about why I am choosing this way or that in my parenting practice. Is it his decisive masculine nature? Or is it creative manipulation of me and my life? I suppose that's what trust is. And faith. I have little faith in abstract things like Gods and ghosts. He seems as distant to my reality.
If I have to choose between a fight and capitulation... am I a wimp or a warrior. Both choices require strength and backing down. Compromise. How can one compromise over hundreds of Kilometers?
Perhaps this is just a big whining session and I just need to experience life in Tiny Town to see there is something to be offered there. Perhaps I'll look back and all this worry will seem silly.
One can always hope.
TeeBuckOutLoud
posted by TeeBuck at 9/10/2006 12:30:00 p.m.
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