Maybell XXV: Moving Toward the Lighthouse

[Maybell]

I could probably count on my fingers the number of times he snapped at me in seventeen years, and half of them were in the last two years we were together. He almost always shut down rather than lash out. The few times he actually expressed displeasure I tried to really do what he wanted because it told me he really meant it. And yes, I did take a TON of responsibility for his feelings. I know better now intellectually, but it's a hard habit to even identify, let alone break.

Which is also why I felt anxious at the idea of his lashing out at me.

On the other hand, lashing out is WAY healthier than bottling for years on end. It feels more honest even when I feel shaken and a little scared. (Fear is a lighthouse!) so that's something.

Where does my speech about his integrity come from? Two years of lying about OW, lying in therapy, making speeches to his affair partner's baby daddy about how the *baby daddy* ought to be a man his daughter can look up to, changing his FB page to keep his friends in the dark about his behavior, not telling anyone we're separated, and signing up for online dating while married. Sigh. Someone tell me what I'm here for???

The Solstice idea was nice. A weight went up with the smoke. I put a little dried sage on the flame too, which is supposed to be cleansing. I'm keeping that idea handy.

I've been reading Harry Potter aloud to my kids since H moved out and we've just started the seventh book. It's the one where Harry has to wrestle with the idea that Dumbledore had dark secrets in his past, and we just finished the scene where Dumbledore's most devoted friend and a malicious gossip-monger are arguing over what happened to Dumbledore's sister.

One of the themes of the book is Harry's inclination to give greater weight to the testimony of the more negative speaker, because he can't believe that goodness and badness can exist in a single person. (I've founf that all of Rowling's books deal with people in varying shades of gray, but that's another post). Anyway, the Harry thing tonight has got me thinking about what my H's side of this situation could be.

I'm really struggling to understand it. Is it because I never understood him well because he didn't express himself in a way I understood? Or was I really awful? But I have my own side to that, and while I acknowledge there were times and ways I was difficult, we both kind of laughed about being pains in our own particular ways. Or is it MLC and a thing that just descended on us? Or is he truly fatally flawed?

Unknowable at this stage.

But the Harry thing is maybe useful in reminding me to keep an eye on the grays in our circumstances. And to watch from a distance without judgment (which I haven't done yet). And to not be like Harry in books 5 & 6, when he was constantly snapping at people.

(I'd really like to be like Fred or George Weasley...)

Anyway, thanks for listening to my ramblings...