played hookey today and got caught up on paperwork. Well, kinda caught up - still a lot left to do but i HAD to go out for a long run, right? justifiction, justification....
On that long run, i thought about this long conversation I had last night with a friend from the midwest. all this stuff has been rattling around in my head for so long that it's hard to get perspective, but I think things are starting to settle into recognizable patterns.
The first thing I recognize is that W is responsible for her own happiness in a R. If she can only find that happiness alone, there is nothing anyone will ever be able to do to make a R work with her. I am not responsible for her happiness. I'm only responsible to show a willingness to compromise for the good of the R and to show support, friendship, love, and understanding. Have I shown her that? To be truthful, probably not. I thought she needed space, not support, so how many times have I never been there for her? And yet it was okay, in my mind, because she was never there for me. Bad patterns even though we both connect so well.
Second, I think she retreats into her independence as a way of dealing with rejection. I was her first relationship for this reason. And she has retreated again after not getting the attention she wanted from me. That said, I have to ask why I was drawn to her in the first place. Was it this independence? I think it was. And that might mean I have my own intimacy issues. After all, I was content to let her leave town for 3-6 weeks at a stretch and not feel the need to drive out and join her. Will have to think about this more.
Third, she has pushed a lot of blame on me, in her own way. This comes through in our interaction patterns. It's the small things that say a lot. She can justify as much as she wants, but when she moves on and is still unhappy, she'll realize the problem is her. I'm happy to let that go and not feel bad about myself for being generous. The justifications, the infidelities, the lying, the selfishness - why on earth would I let her make ME feel responsible for that?! And yet that's what happened ...
We all owe ourselves dignity and self-respect. Joan Didion had this to say about self respect: "To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent." I don't agree with large swaths of her essay, but this gave me pause. It's time for me to learn indifference.
I sent a poem to a friend, a snippet from "The Deer" by Mary Oliver. Here's the snippet that I sent:
"This is the earnest work. Each of us is given only so many mornings to do it - to look around and love the oily fur of our lives, the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle. Days I don't do this I feel the terror idleness like a red thirst."
I didn't tell my friend the context of this poem. My wife wrote this in a letter to me after she'd begun her master's degree and was trying to justify why she wanted to concentrate on her school work and not deal with a R. It was in the break-up letter. I had never read the complete poem, and on a whim I looked it up. What a surprise to find that the "Deer" isn't singular, but plural - two. What did Mary Oliver mean by this? She describes seeing two deer "like two sisters" that she follows with what's written above - why two? Out of context, as my W wrote it, the snippet justifies self-focus. Selfishness. In context, I think it means something else entirely. It is expanding the boundaries of self. It is a longing for the relationship of oneself to those around us. An entirely different meaning completely. IMO. And isn't it interesting what my wife got out of it - justification.
I don't know. Musings.
I'm still high on this incredible soup I made last night. It was metaphysical. I don't think I've ever made something that offered transcendence, but this did. Could it have been the butter?
