Dignity and Grace

Thoughts on “Maybe” Divorce

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / Leave a comment

images-6

“As you become more attached to yourself you will become less attached to the outcome,” my therapist says with a smile.

Sometimes I wonder about this statement. Although it seems true enough as I continue this journey of the “maybe divorce” sometimes I wonder if this attaching to yourself, this honoring your self and your desires, really means at some point that you just dial back the caring…maybe you just begin to not care anymore because the fight for keeping your marriage has cost you too much personally. Your anxiety has increased to the point that everyday you wake up wondering “if this is the day.” And while once I believed that this thought might kill me, now, sometimes, I just wonder if it would be a relief for it is difficult to live with a man who no longer loves you the way he wants to and the sadness plays out like recessed shadows etched deep into his face.

I know when this began two years ago I felt like the world was coming to an end. It seemed as though my heart was being ripped out of my chest and I couldn’t sleep at night. After all this time my anxiety about divorce and what it would do to my children has decreased but is it because I am working really hard on integrating all aspects of myself and discovering more about who I am or is it because I am shutting down? Perhaps I see the train wreck in the distance, so I move away, because I don’t want to witness the carnage firsthand. I also don’t want to deal with the repercussions that it might have on two boys with autism and one with mental health issues much less the fact that four of my children are adopted and have already suffered so much loss in their young lives.

And so I continue to work on myself. To find corners of sunlight and to open the shutters wide to let the sunshine flood into my life. I work to make myself more aware of what I am doing and why I am reacting in the ways that I do. I am practicing ways of building up my resilience and incorporating peaceful ways of thinking as a habit that I can rely on to keep me centered. And I am trying to learn not to allow negative self-talk rule my head and my heart even though it still wants to.

images

So if this work, if all this trying to find better ways of attaching to myself, is going to make me wiser, happier and more peaceful; I am all for it. For I am becoming a better me and I am finally doing all of this psychological work for greater self understanding of what makes me tick.  And if the “maybe” divorce comes to pass I think I will be in a much better position to retain my own dignity and grace during the process. And for me, that is what is important.

So be it.

images-13

Disjointed

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 4 Comments

imgres-4

Not suppose to disagree. Somehow he thinks if he expresses himself that is the way it will be and no one should disagree with him. Express thoughts = big damn parade with balloons, dancing unicorns and me bringing up the rear with a banner reading “Anything You Want Honey. You Expressed Yourself. YEAH!”

All these years of being denied what he wanted because he refused to share now it must be his way. If he shares he is doing his part. No consequences. Period.

Excuse me. That’s not the way it works. You can’t say, “I am committed to you but the deep love is gone but I hope that maybe I find it again” and expect me to jump up and down like a cheerleader. “GOOD JOB, B!” waving my pom-poms around. I have the right to say FUCK YOU, which I haven’t because I am trying to maintain dignity and grace, but I just might.

It’s hard to lay in his arms at night. Both of us holding each other sweetly but tightly like we are each other’s life jackets trying to save ourselves from the waves washing up upon our relationship threatening to pull us apart. The safety of your arms no longer feeling as big and strong as I remember. And we both talk about the pain that is pulling us under and your words don’t seem to have the meaning that they did in the past.

images-5

I try to remember that you are hurting too. I try to remember that this isn’t easy for either of us and that it is hard to find love again when two people are so scared, miserable from being scared, and unsure of the future. I try to remember that I KNOW WITHOUT A DOUBT that you would save my life, risking yours, if I was in peril. But I’m not sure about our marriage, which is in peril, for it seems you will save yourself and not us. And I will be left on that life raft floating all alone.

But still knowing all this, knowing that we still have something even though it is hanging by a thread, this morning I want to kick you in the balls hard enough to drop you to the ground the way you have dropped me. To kick you so hard it would be difficult for gain your breath so you felt like the air was sucked out of you just the way I feel you have stolen the oxygen directly out of my lungs. Would this showing grace and dignity I want to embody in my life? Perhaps it wouldn’t but this morning I am not sure I care.

End of story. Today.