Friday, January 22, 2010

Emotions




Some time ago I thought Plutchik's wheel of emotion [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emotions] might provide some inspiration for my blog. Just to see if I had visited every emotion and to tell stories from the wheel. I am having some difficulty with my "packages" so today I have decided to address contempt which lies between boredom and annoyance and can escalate an emotion between rage and loathing. This is what I feel for Neil in a nutshell. Interesting to look at the opposite side of the wheel where opposite rage we find terror and opposite loathing we find admiration. The reason I feel such contempt is because during the course of our relationship he intimidated me with terror, I never felt this negative emotion toward Simon because he did not. I feel anger toward Neil for what he did to me, forcing me to submit and not respecting me. On the other hand when asked to recall what attracted me to him in the first place it was admiration. Not love, I now realise, but admiration for his accomplishments in life. Thus our relationship began on an uneven basis with him intimidating me, and me admiring him. So perhaps it is natural that as things came along to challenge our partnership, already feeling intimidated I gathered the strength not to submit, but as contempt took over, to actually leave.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Package #1

I'm not sure if this was in the original bunch of packages, but there is a package that seems to include a bricks and mortar home and aspects of financial security. My parents were reminding me today about how they had to sell their house when my dad re-trained, and we all moved into a rented apartment. How much I craved a house. I used to draw pictures of 'A pritty house' with a front door AND a back door.


They felt guilty about having taken me away, and when they became slightly more prosperous started looking around for places in a much inflated market. One time apparently I fell so badly in love with one of the houses they looked at that I threw up when they decided they couldn't afford it.
Still later when a student I tried to create a homely environment, and fantasized about buying, yes owning my own home. I was put off by my parents who clearly thought I should find a man to do this with. So I married Simon, and imposed this dream on him. He finds property ownership a slightly dirty prospect, but it did not deter me from desperately trying to change his mind for about 10 years as the property prices crept up.
And then, after the divorce I took the short cut with Neil. A house and another baby. My dreams come true. Except they didn't.
This morning a (hippy-ish) thought occurred to me. Maybe the universe it trying to tell me something, I am not, and will never be a home owner. What should I look for as an alternative to this. What precisely is the lure. This is what I came up with so far:
(1) Some sort of dislike of having to pay rent and jump to the command of a landlord
(2) A feeling of security of "owning" or working toward owning a piece of realestate. I actually liked having mortgage that I could see going down each month due to my own dilligence and a beautiful house to live in.
(3) Stability of a place to truly call home.
Perhaps I could invest in something else, or a property I did not live in, and become a kept woman of some sort so I didn't have to worry about a landlord either. Be a housekeeper or gamekeeper or dogkeeper or something so my work was my home.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Loving the unlovable meets the love that dare not speak its name

This has been going on for 2 years. It has never been a transactional sort of arrangement, but just this week. I receive a gift. An unmarked CD of songs that apparently remind him of me. How romantic. I find a time when I am all alone driving and relish the message that it brings. But wait. All the songs, it turns out one by one, are trans-global tales of Hapless females being done wrong by dirt bag philandering males. This isn't how I see myself or how I wish to be seen. It is, if I let myself think about it, somewhat demeaning. I am, if not crushed, strangely unsettled, unconsoled, and disappointed.

Then tears prick my eyes at the thought of just how compromised I have become, that I would yearn for human contact, appreciation, love, being fully willing to return it to someone who cannot do the same for me.

Yet to be given this, this offering.

He urges me to tap my feet to it, and not read too much into it. I guess there are people out there who don't really listen to the lyrics of songs.

I recall a time almost half a life ago, when a fellow at work developed an admiration for me. He was a good looking young chap, and he too had a girlfriend and he too expressed his pent-up, unexpressable emotions by sending me a tape of songs. Loving those who cannot love me back has been a theme of my life. Played out in return, in these instances, by a love that dare not speak its name.

Friday, January 01, 2010

Post (traumatic) Script

I left, I did it. I put all my stuff into storage^ and I fled the country. The sleepless nights I was having over the unbearable weight of leaving my beloved home evaporated, and suddenly I could live with it. Although my life savings are still tied up there.

I am living with my parents on the other side of the world, part working, part recouperating I believe, I feel like Anne Frank scribbling in an attic room.

Simon has let me bring Connor for a protracted stay. However Simon is back in the Psych clinic having split from his partner of 3 years (coincidentally)

I am still fantasizing about true love with my ex of 23 years. He feeds it but has no intention of leaving his wife. And anyway he is in another country, further away now. I'm sorry about this one, but I have to be honest, since this blog is becoming my online diary.

By and large I have disengaged from my life to survive. I don't dare take a good hard look inside my mind, because when I do this is what I see....








Little tightly wrapped packages, they're not labelled, but I know what's in them.

See! this one is packed full of reflections on what happened with Neil and what that has done to me ... all my deepest darkest fears, that he manipulated me, was never faithful to me, converted me to his wrong way of thinking, abused me, abused my child, and is now trying to sabotage our financial future.

Here, this one contains the damage I may have done to Connor through my divorce, through working too many hours, through being stressed, indulgent, inconsistent...

Still another contains the ghost of Simon and our 16 year marriage. Will he try to get back with me? control me? Am I responsible for his illness? for him? What about all those years? were they happy, how do I account for them?

Then there's Ex23. This is possibly the only one I can unwrap with any clarity. It probably needs to end, but I am not ready to end it. I like it. He makes me happy. I am deluded.

Then there's one containing THE FUTURE. By the end of this decade I'll be in Menopause. With a teenager.

Ooh look, this little one is my health. Gone in one year from master's athlete, to hopeless cripple who can't run across the road. Terribly bereaved by this loss of capacity. Getting flabbier, floppier, more unfit.

Yet on the surface I am a survivor, a funny, sanguine, magnanimous, good daughter, attending to her career, bravely accepting single mother hood, forging ahead.

^I think my life is in storage