I’m Average; You Probably Are Too

Oct8

File Under: What I’m Learning

I assume I am average in everything. Thus- what works for me should work for most. Turns out, neither of those things are true.

This is a shame for everyone who isn’t me, because I am unusually resourceful and high functioning. Call me a braggart if you want, but the professionals I have employed to help me navigate the recent upending of my life have had to tell me this and I’ve had to learn it. I was not a quick study. My eldest hit me with it as well: “Mom, you are the most functional person I know, And because you are so functional and you think you are average, you think that what works for you will work for everyone else. But the truth is that not everyone’s calculations, raw materials, values, damage and proclivities are in the same balance as yours.”

I understand myself and my life as mostly made of small practices and habits and I cultivate those carefully (from what I eat to how I listen, to how I get daily tasks done, to how I think.) And because I am average and so are you- cultivating practices is also how you should also address a life situation with which you are unsatisfied.

When Hot Swede got sick, I was desperate to have my partner return to connection and wholeness, even in the midst of multiple difficulties. I assumed that if he adopted a smattering of my practices he would start to feel better, and that caused a lot of irritation for Hot Swede. I was overwhelming and distressing. It caused me desperation because I did not understand why he would not do the things that I knew would help.

I have done this to my kids. To be fair, as their mom it is my actual job to give them tools, scaffolding, and practices. It is not my job to parent my husband. Nevertheless, it is called “nagging” by my children and “suggesting” by my husband. They don’t like it and don’t do the things. Apparently, other people address their problems differently, which is hard for me, because I see them struggling with things that I have under better control and I want to ask them, “Is your way working? No? THEN TRY MY WAY” I am told this is not how it works. (It should be how it works.)

This should not have taken me this long to begin to learn this, but it did, and I am clearly still struggling with it. The harder lesson for me is that the people I love have to figure shit out on their own and I can only walk alongside them, if they let me. This truth gives me mental and sometimes physical hives.

Some people hate advice when they are in a pickle, whereas I seek it out. If something is unsatisfactory, I want to be told how to do it so it will suck less. (Ex: I told a new therapist that I didn’t need her empathy as much as I needed her to point out where I was wrong. She has brutally done just that.) But I guess others don’t like ready solutions, or are very experiential learners who have to learn from their own slow and painful mistakes. *shudder*

This lesson is a work in progress for me- two steps forward, one step back. Turns out, I am an average learner.

Notes from the Surgery Lounge

Sep30

The angst is the same each time I am here. There is no relief. The surgeries are each more serious than the last, and the prognosis less desirable, but I have become more accustomed to being in the liminal anticipation of seeing what they find and waiting for what they miss. So it feels the same.

It is a trauma, and human, to hold up our life as two pillars and then be chief witness to Paul’s trials and try to hold up the roof as he falters. The fractures it is causing in me are deep and fine. None of us will be the same after this. I am asking whomever is in charge of these things for long periods of peace and a couple handfuls of joy. I toggle between anger, fear, and sadness for my children, my husband, his natal family, and myself.

I assume life will be hard. I am not surprised by this, just unwilling to take this path at this time, and a little heartbroken. I have lived with death in my periphery for decades. Some label me a pessimist; I call myself a realist. It motivates me to not waste a day. When Paul proposed to me in my dorm room, I said “Yes.” The very next thought in my head was, “And one day, one of us will leave the other.” The best love songs are the ones that nod to our temporality. Therein lies the aching poetry- that love can be too big for the lives that hold it.

Cancer is an accelerant, consuming the small kindling, catching any fray in the sheathing and turning everything into a conflagration, while you stand surrounded and bewildered, holding one bucket of water.

It strips you of pretense and identities and leaves nothing but your values and the deepest stories you have told yourself (many of which will turn out to be at least a little false) It will change everything, and I mean everything. It took the marriage I thought I had almost immediately, leaving me unmoored, isolated and bereft of my person, even as he sat across the table from me, even as I cared for him and was scared for all of us.

I am the person without the tumors, but my health is different. I am gaining weight while eating less, I have hives and headaches regularly, I don’t sleep or digest well, my memory is shot, I am grayer and I cry with a frequency that is very new to me. It has strained my children and their worlds, especially the youngest, who still lives at home without the buffer of her older siblings.

And yet…

And yet, 9 months into this nightmare that no one would believe if they knew the whole story, we have learned things, good things, things we will carry forward for the rest of our lives. I am grateful for them, even as I beg to not be given any more wisdom.

But that is enough for today. They wheeled him away from me at 7:30am and it is now 5pm and I have not laid eyes on him.

Lit for Paul by Tom at Notre Dame Cathedral.

The Ugly True Thing

May23

One thing I’ve learned is that Paul and I do not process the same way. His latest CaringBridge post makes me angry. It is true. It is also true that there is still hope, but the path is narrower and more harrowing.

I honor that he wrote it. He needed to and I am relieved he didn’t hold it in his body.

This is a new thing he is struggling to learn- that the bullshit, very male, Midwestern tendency to shove down the big feelings is not the move. It is a pathway deeply worn in him. The muscular lack of self-empathy he developed to make it possible makes me fucking furious.

If someone talks about one of my loved ones the way he talks to himself, I will fight them bare knuckled and with no training- but I can’t reach inside him and throttle that voice that speaks to him 24/7. He has to decide to unseat it from its throne of lies and then he has to learn how.

This is an exposure too raw for public consumption- too intimate to share. Why would I share the ugly bits of this nightmare to our friends? Because I love you, and something will come for you or your beloveds. Its a plea to those of you who shove your feelings down and isolate yourselves- you will make it so much worse. You are denying the people who love you the chance to cloak you in healing love and peace. That hurts them. And if you believe as I do, that people carry the light of God into the world, you are separating yourself from God. And that is my actual definition of Hell.

I have a role in any shift he makes towards openness. He has been mine longer than he has not, and I have woven tight patterns with his. He was my Gibralter and I celebrated that about him- reliable, unmoving in storms that bowed me, able to show me the way out of my dark spaces. When he showed big emotions, my first reaction was to judge them as immature, overwrought, unattractive. On the occasions they are hurtful, he is be responsible for that. But they are also a symptom of deep underground seas of caustic emotions that he has kept dammed up, of which I have recently become aware. I am horrified and saddened by this discovery. And in reflecting on my initial judgements, I see that I inadvertently reinforced the lie that his feelings were not acceptable outside of himself.

I am practicing letting that first response go by. I am learning to not shy away from his emotions, as long as they are expressed in bridled ways that don’t hurt. I am trying to be an anchor in those moments and hold space for him to feel without me trying to intellectualize it away. I am not a very good anchor yet. I hope I can become steady enough that he can trust me enough to lean on me. I am learning not to cloak myself in his feelings. They are his, not mine, but I can help him carry them without taking them over as my own.

I don’t want to learn these things. Learning new things when you are 48 is hard, and this kind of learning only comes out of struggle and necessity.

His post below is hard for me, but it is good that he wrote it. I hope he will add the truth that he can heal, is worth healing, and can live today. And I hope his people will remind him of those things. They are hard to keep in focus.

Paul’s CaringBridge Post

Love, Despite Efforts to the Contrary

Jul29

I didn’t want to fall in love. Fresh out of a long distance relationship on life support, I wanted freedom, space, and a chance to be unattached- for the first time in my adult life. I didn’t want you. Okay, I wanted you, but I didn’t want to love you.

Three weeks after our mutual interest was acknowledged, I was in trouble. I knew you for two years as a fellow student in my major- not studying in the library, screwing around in piano class, playing Frisbee on the lawn. But as soon as I got close enough to smell your laundry soap, I couldn’t get close enough.

I fought it. I told myself your earring was ridiculous. You weren’t a serious student and what did that say about your ability to make the most of life, which demands more grit than does college? You were newly released from a 4-year relationship that had run its course and you were ready to sew some oats; everyone around you could feel it. You would, rightly, not be serious about me and, if you did fall for me, you would be fickle and lose interest before long.

To protect myself, I held this picture of you in front of my mind’s eye every day. I believed the intellect had a big say in who I would “choose” to love. Love is too impactful to be left to the heart. Yet, while my mind raged against it, ringing alarm bells that I wasn’t ready for this, you couldn’t possibly want it, I was being a silly ass, there was no way I wasn’t going to get hurt- my heart, body, and soul were quickly losing their protective armor and becoming the terrifyingly vulnerable things that they are in love.

I was mad. You asked me what was wrong and I told you that I was falling in love with you and it pissed me off. And then I may have listed my reasons why- to your face. You looked at me and said, “I love you too.” That was it. There I went, over the precipice, never to return, still a little miffed by my lack of control.

This partnership is the greatest blessing of my life. The faults my “clear-thinking” mind found in you turned out to be trivial or wrong. You took the earring out when you changed careers. You are a capable and skilled man and you work harder than most people I know. Most of all, you are true- loyal to us and devoted to the family we’ve grown. You are a better match for me than I ever imagined and I love you without reservation. Finally.

Happy Anniversary, Hot Swede. I know how you love public displays of affection. But since you won’t hold my hand in home improvement stores, I’m putting it here. Tee hee.

Getting the Girl You’ve Got

Mar6

End table- really, I have no idea what graphic to put here, but isn’t it purdy?

The other day, Hot Swede and I were having a discussion about end tables (titillating, I know,) when he started in on a story from his boyhood.

He told me of a six-year old Cute Swede, playing alone in his parents’ basement, wondering if the story about the boy crying, “Wolf!” was true, if people would come running if he cried out. So he laid himself out, limbs akimbo, and screamed for help. It worked! Dad came running down the stairs, and after assessing the situation, became very angry.

It was my first hearing of that story, and it made him utterly charming. What a nice thing- to discover an amusing new detail about a treasured companion I know so well. For those moments of the telling, he was new to me, and I was as smitten as ever.

Happy V.D.!

Feb11

I dislike Valentine’s Day. I won’t say “hate” because my mom taught me that “hate” is a very strong word reserved for murderous dictators and steamed zucchini. It is a common rant during the first half of February. Considering the numbers of bitter people who complain about the day, I am a little flummoxed as to why it continues to be such a commercial success. I’m going to blame idealistic young women and the men who want to get them in bed.

I like love as much as anybody. I like romance. I like adoration. I like Hot Swede smiling in the candlelight. I like chocolate (dark, at least 70% cacao.) I am not jaded when it comes to love. But since my youth, I’ve found V.D. tiresome. (The double entendre tickles my personal fancy. Indulge me in the spirit of the holiday.)

For one thing, there is all the expectation, the joy killing expectation. A big part of romance is spontaneity. Doing something lovely for someone because you are motivated by your affection for them, not because it is Feb. 14 and, well, if you don’t come up with something wonderful, she will be disappointed and sulky and your life will be unpleasant for awhile. That isn’t romance. That is a pain avoidance mechanism.

Then there are the traditional gifts. For women, collections of cheap chocolate in expensive boxes are de rigueur. What is the point of giving a woman who is barely hanging on to her 6-week old weight loss resolutions a pound of chocolates? It is not nice. The worst part about the actual confections are the mystery fillings. The cheaper the chocolate, the more mysterious the filling, oozy viscous creams are common, and while the white is suggestive, the pink is off putting. Is that penicillin? My other favorite filling is toothpaste. Delish.

The worst possible V.D. gift is the teddy bear. This one makes me cringe. As far back as middle school, I remember girls getting teddy bears from boys and thinking, “If a boy ever gives me a teddy bear for Valentine’s Day, it’s going to be hard to act pleased with it.” Lucky for me, I never had to face that scenario. (Not bitter, I promise.) A couple things are wrong with a teddy bear, but the first one is that it is a gift for A CHILD, and a young one at that. Grown women with jobs and children, advanced degrees and mortgages, women who have yearly visits to the gynecologist and wax their own moustaches, these are not women with any use for a teddy bear.

The other problem is what you do with it on Feb 15. You can’t chuck it out or give it to the puppy because it was given in the name of love. So what, it sits on a bookshelf next to Brothers Karamazov? You can’t put it in the glass cabinet, next to your collection of hand-turned bowls. It will most likely just sit on your dresser and gather dust.

For men, (hmm, what do men get.) If they’ve manage to successfully run the obstacle course for a successful V.D., they likely get something non-commercial (I hope) and right in line with what they like. If they picked the wrong restaurant, or didn’t remember that their partner hates red roses, good luck guys. Maybe there’s something good on Hulu.

So what are reasonable adults to do on Feb. 14? If you have éros, well, enjoy that without the burden of Valentine’s drama. If you have agápe or philia, plan a date for some time in the next couple weeks. Have a nice dinner; write a letter, give a hug. Celebrate with trappings that honor the loves in your life, not the seasonal section at Target. Me, I like a bar of dark chocolate, peach colored roses, and nothing is as sexy as a scoured kitchen sink.

Sometimes I Sleep

other times, I pretend

Tag Archives: love