Love Requires Acceptance

One Man’s Obsessions Are Another Man’s Quirks

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / Leave a comment

For the past six months Andre has decided that he will only wear the color blue in a particular hue. Heaven forbid, the shade may not be a Navy blue, dark blue-gray or even Robin’s egg blue. No, Andre’s blue has to be bright, brilliant, and leap tall buildings in a single bound. So today while I was waiting to pay for Andre’s all things blue, the clerk chuckled: “You’ve certainly got a lot of blue there!”

“It’s for my son,” I said with a sigh. “I wish I could get him into something else.”

“Is blue the only color that your son will wear?” asked a 50-ish man dressed from head to toe in black waiting for the clerk to locate something for him.

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“Well blue is his favorite and, yes, it is the only color he will wear. Why do you ask?”

“Sounds to me as if he has OCD,” said the man with a gentle smile.

“Do you know someone with OCD?” I inquire.

“I have it,” the man in black says with a grin. “If you notice I am dressed in all black from my head to my toes. Once in a while I will throw in some gray but for the most part black is what you would see me in every day of my life. In fact, people keep trying to get me to wear color ALL THE TIME.  Friends and relatives keep giving me shirts that are bright red or green but in all honesty they go to the nearest thrift store without ever being worn.”

“Why is that? Why does color bother you so?”

“It isn’t the color per se, it is that I know that in order to keep my anxiety down, black is what I need to wear. If I wore blue I would obsess that I was wearing blue all day long. I might feel itchy because I was so uncomfortable. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on much of anything except the fact that I was wearing a blue shirt. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I think I am beginning to.”

“Think about it this way. Let’s pretend that you see a gorgeous pair of shoes that you have always wanted. An outrageously expensive pair of Jimmy Choo’s. The only catch is that in order to have them you have to wear those Jimmy Choo’s 8 hours a day… and they are two sizes too small. How would that work for you? Sure for the first five minutes you might be happy with them but as your toes began to rub together and cramp pretty soon you wouldn’t be thinking about how glamorous the shoes were instead you would begin to spend your time obsessing about how much your feet hurt. The next morning the thought of putting on those shoes would probably be almost unbearable and the closer the time came to put them on the more your anxiety would rise just thinking about having to put them on. So the question is, why would you start your day full of anxiety when there is no need to do so? Instead, you just go find a pair of comfortable shoes and suddenly both your physical and emotional selves are soothed. That is how it works for me. It is silly for me to try to wear something that is going to totally mess up my day and make it impossible to get anything done due to my obsessing about it.  Who cares if I wear black everyday and why should it matter to anyone else if I do so anyway?”

“Thank you,” I tell him. “You have given me some valuable insight into my son and what you have said makes total sense. You have scratched out another line on THE LIST OF THINGS I HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IN LIFE and for that I will always be grateful.”

At that moment the clerk called the man over. He had been on the phone searching for a particular pair of black shoes for the man and had found them.

“How many pairs do you want?”

“Five”

As I turned and walked away it was then that I noticed…the man wore black sandals out of which popped his painted black toe nails.

“Why black,” I wondered. “Why not brown, or yellow or green? And as I walked back to the car I began obsessing about…why, blue not black or, why, yellow and not green? And that’s when it hit me….none of it mattered…. and neither did Andre’s blue shirts. All that mattered was the I continue to try to seek and relate to Andre in ways that acknowledged the uniqueness of who he is and that I continue to honor those things that made him feel comfortable in his own skin. For in the end the why’s really just don’t matter.

Last night I walked into Andre’s room and headed to his closet.

“What are you doing mom?”

“I getting rid all of your shirts that are not blue. No sense in filling you closet with them is there? We both know you won’t wear them anyway, right?”

“Yep”

“Okay, well if you ever decide you want to wear another color let me know, okay?”

“Sure mom. And thanks for doing this. I feel like you really heard me and even better you showed me that you did. Who cares if I don’t wear red, yellow or green. Who cares?”

Indeed.

 

 

Accepting Yourself

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 4 Comments

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As I work on learning to love myself again; I realize just how much effort it takes. Frankly, it shouldn’t. I am a good person, loving parent and partner, pay my taxes and volunteer. I don’t kick the dog, I praise little kids, and treat people pretty darn well. Yet, somehow, whatever I do or what I say is never enough to erase the tape it my head that says I am not “good enough.” The “maybe divorce” doesn’t help either. My husband’s questionable love for me taunts me with the false belief that if I was really “good enough” I wouldn’t be going through two years of marriage hell when in fact it may have everything to do with him and nothing with me. His fears, his disappointments with himself, his worries that he could die tomorrow and his wondering if this is all there is?

Sometimes I think it was easier to love myself when I was younger. I was naive, granted myself grace because of my youth, and I didn’t have a lot of living and experiences under my belt. With age comes plenty of time to look back over the past and see all that you “should” have done better. All you could have done differently. And as you get closer to death you start thinking about how you want to be remembered and shudder to think of some of the ways you might be.

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As human beings we spend years cultivating relationships. We spend inordinate amounts of our time pleasing others and trying to prove our worth. We nurture those we love and spend time working on issues we feel are important because there are people who are involved that we respect and love. Yet, often we neglect to cultivate the most important relationship that there is…the one with ourself. We forget to take care of our needs, seek out those things that sooth our soul, and refuse to give ourselves the breaks that we grant our friends and loved ones. Finally, I am realizing that the internal relationship we have with ourselves must be maintained, nurtured, and worked on just like the external relationships that we share with others. In fact, we must put more into building the relationship have we with ourself simply because we are 100 times harder on our soul than anyone else. Most often, we are our own worst critics and that criticism that we direct inwards does more damage than anything anyone else could say or do to us.

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When we are in love we love in hopes that it will last forever. When we cultivate friendships we hope that those relationships will be satisfying for each other until our last breath. We accept the flaws that we see in others so willingly; why can’t we do the same with ourselves?

I think it is because we resist acceptance of ourselves because there is nothing we have to do when we truly accept who we are and what is going on in our lives. We think that acceptance is too easy so we attempt to make it harder by telling ourselves we have to change and be something “better.” We have to make ourselves a new and improved version of our old selves to love ourselves and have others love us back. And while change may do us good we still need to just learn to accept ourselves with compassion and love no matter where we are in our journey. No more self criticism and no more beating ourselves up because we should be different than who we find ourselves to be or because we should have behaved differently than we have. If we accept ourselves we don’t have to fix, improve, or do it right all the time. We just have to focus on the here and now and who we are at this moment in time while accepting that we are doing the best we can within the confines of where we find ourselves today. It doesn’t mean that we won’t change it only means that we don’t have to in order to be lovable to ourselves and others.

Of course it is much easier to write all of this rather than live in a way in which acceptance of ourselves is the name of the game. It is hard work. But as we set aside uninterrupted time to spend with ourselves each day concentrating on who we are instead of who we are not; acceptance will creep in slowly until one day we finally understand that we are enough. Period.

So be it!

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Words

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 4 Comments

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We are walking along the cliffs. The wind is blowing. Huge waves are crashing against massive boulders in anticipation of the storm that is blowing in. B huddles deeper into his coat as the air picks up my words and delivers them to the man beside me.

“Everyday, you can choose to love or you can choose not to,” I say to B. “And so I choose to love you today and I will choose to love you forever.”

“That’s nice,” he says flashing that smile I have known and loved for so many years. The smile that I suddenly want to slap right off of his face.

THAT’S NICE?????!!!! REALLY….AFTER OVER 30 YEARS TOGETHER IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT? DON’T YOU KNOW YET THAT…

I am a woman who needs words. I write for a living for God’s sake! I love hearing double vowels, romantic words, and certain letters rolling off the tongue like the sound of an L, which can be so incredibly sexy when you are at the right place in time with the right person. I like hearing sharp bursts of words from children who have found dragons and mermaids and have to tell you all about the experience in 2.3 seconds or less so you see them before they vanish in thin air. I like words that are carefully chosen like a mother who measures cough syrup for her child in order to get the correct dose thus ensuring no harm. I like playful words like tumble and words with double meanings. I like words that are said with a laugh oozing up out of the throat, desperate words that are said while waiting for hot sex, and the words you whisper to a baby as their heads slump onto your chest their eyes fuzzy with Mr Sandman’s visit and almost nearly closed.

I LOVE WORDS!

So what is a woman to do when she is married to a man who doesn’t? Can she be happy without an “I love you too, honey” coming back at her? Can she feel understood and cherished when the words she needs to hear do not come out of his mouth? I’ve lived without them for so long why do I desire them now? Is this what a “maybe divorce” does to you? It makes you word crazy?

I realize to many this isn’t a problem at all. There are much more serious things in the world. B doesn’t beat me. He goes to work everyday. He doesn’t abuse me. He is great in bed…isn’t that enough? I mean…. REALLY…ISN’T THAT GOOD ENOUGH?

How many times I have heard my girlfriends tell me they wished they had a husband like mine….so kind and sweet….and he even does housework!

Why can’t that be enough?

I know many women whose lovers have said all the right words and meant none of them. Better to have no words than lies? Better to endure omissions rather than half-truths? I have no clue… but I do know that often B doesn’t respond with reassuring words and after these past two years of hell I find I want them. I might even need them.

All I know is that without words life is dull…like living in a black and white movie. It’s like eating salad everyday for dinner and skipping the dessert. Life without meaningful words looks like a bare bulb dangling in a stark white room. Its like a warm beer when it is 103 degrees outside and feels like that pit you get in your stomach when a cop pulls you over for speeding.

I want words. I want endearments, I want to know what you are feeling. I am tired of missed opportunities or the absence of words that leave me confused and hanging. Because without the proper words it feels as if storm clouds have entered my head and the disappointment is whipping up the winds that blow through my mind and turning what could have been a gentle spring shower into a raging hurricane. So button your coat and sink even further into it because a storm is coming. And I think it is me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Love Requires

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 5 Comments

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There are times throughout my life that I have forgotten just how fragile love is. And as I look back upon this painful “possible divorce” I have to ask myself the question…did you forget this fact? And in turn, I realize that I must have for it to have gotten to this point. Obviously, our relationship has not had enough of the right kind of soil (genuine caring,spending happy times together), not enough water (kind words, kind deeds) and not enough sunshine (joy, laughter) or else it would have flourished and not died. While it would be easy to write about B’s failings in this area because of the place I am at in our relationship; the fact is that I MUST look at my own culpability in order to go forward either in this relationship or to be at peace with myself. So these are some of the things I have been considering lately in regards to our relationship and my part in its possible demise.

Love requires attention. Lots of it. With all the chaos in our lives and the fact that B and I enjoy different things did I forget the attention that love needs to blossom and grow rather than wither and die? Those golden moments of laughter, a slight touch or a kind voice. Did my missing the bagpiping weekends make B think I didn’t care because I wasn’t showing the kind of attention to something he cared deeply about? Was the chaos of two boys with autism taking over my life making me exhausted and leaving my husband behind?

Love requires trust. I struggle with trust. Always have probably always will but did my lack of trust make me see things that sometimes aren’t there but I acted as if they were? Did it make me question instead of believe? How have my own personal issues that have nothing to do with B contributed to this lack of trust? Have I forgotten how to trust B with my heart and have I stopped believing that he cares what is in it? Have I stopped believing that what he shares with me is the truth because since he hardly ever speaks out, so I then question why when he does?

Love requires honesty. Sometimes I think I am too honest for B. Sometimes I think honesty when it is sharing more bad feelings when good is hurtful and discouraging. I may be guilty of that. Is there such a thing as too much honesty? If I am asking the question then perhaps I already know the answer.

Love requires sacrifice. If I look back on our 30+ years of marriage I believe I did sacrifice certain things BUT the real question is did I sacrifice gladly, willingly and without guilt? That question may be harder to answer honestly because I can think of many times I did not. And did I sacrifice quietly? Did I sacrifice in a manner that B thought better of me as a person or in ways that warmed his heart?

Love requires acceptance. Have I accepted all that has come my way? Have I accepted B’s inability to stand up to his family knowing that there are other qualities that make up for that inability that he has? Have I accepted my sons disabilities in a way that makes love easy for them and everyone else in the family? Have I accepted what B has had to say without always having to have my opinion heard? Have I just listened and accepted upon occasion without making him have to justify his wants or needs?

Love requires courage. Early in our marriage when B would get upset I would say to him “Okay well I will just leave” It is a horrible thing to do to anyone all because I did not not have the courage to sit, listen and look at my own flaws. It takes courage to be married and courage to stay when you want to leave. I lacked courage which I think leads to disillusionment and distrust.

Love requires persistence. That means being willing to look at the areas in your marriage that need work and then take the steps to correct them. This may take weeks, months or even years. Often, over the course of our relationship I have recognized things that I could do to improve things (like not yell so much) yet I did not keep up with the follow-through that was needed to get these things to become good habits. I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the patience. I didn’t have the desire and because of this lack of persistence it has contributed to our relationship floundering.

Love requires change. As our relationships mature and as times passes changes occur. As my relationship with B has hit this rocky road, I look back and see with regret those things I needed to change but did not. We are not meant to be stationary beings and relationships are suppose to be fluid too. I think that I have fought change at times and our relationship has suffered for it and my own growth has suffered too. Reluctance to change in my case has come from focusing too much on the pain on has to endure to make change come about or focusing on what I would have to give up rather than on what I would have to gain if I would just change.

As we have gone through this difficult time in our marriage sometimes I look back with regret because I know that I had forgotten how fragile love is without the proper nurturing and care. Marriage is like a delicate rose and it needs attention if it is to survive. I wish I had spent more time pruning, watering and ensuring plenty of light reached its leaves. Perhaps adding a little less crap would have helped too.

Copyright CLD 4/3/16