That, in and of itself, is not newsworthy. I've tried really hard not to turn Muchness and Light into a journal of my daily activities, though I certainly have revealed more in this forum about my daily life than the average bear might share. (My blog is my woods sometimes, isn't it?)
But I bought new sneakers. They're black with teal laces and trim, plus a splash of hot pink—totally unlike the pink and purple that tend to attract me.
The last time I bought sneakers was almost four years ago. I'd started walking to feel better, taking the first steps toward what would be a 115 pound weight loss. Those metallic magenta Nikes have carried me over at least 3,000 miles. They adorned the major milestones of my last four years, and they were the strange, symbolic foundation for the deep transformations that took place within me.
Three Christmases ago—the last Christmas DH and I were together—I asked for new sneakers. DH bought me a pair of pink and purple Nike Dual Fusion 2s that I picked out. They were exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I told him I wanted.
Those shoes never fit right.
They were too high at the opening, rubbing uncomfortably against my ankles. The toe box was cut strangely, and sometimes my pinky toes would go to sleep.
I never wore them more than a dozen times, always going back to my well-worn metallic magentas.
Those shoes became strangely symbolic of my marriage. The ones I bought for myself, that I wore to protect me as I moved again through my life, were comfortable and supportive. I've never met anyone else who had those same shoes.
The second pair were a gift I picked out—as I always did for gifts for myself. They were something I asked for that DH gave me when he had a reason, but they were never right. And I saw them everywhere on other people's feet.
I have been terrible about self-care during the last year-and-a-half. My 115 pound weight loss is now a net of about 100 pounds. I haven't been walking, let alone working out, with any kind of regularity. My life is the boys and the house and work and school. When I get free time, I am often too exhausted by everything else to even think about going for a lengthy walk.
I'm not eating well or sleeping well. I forget to take my medicine—the mandatory thyroid replacement hormone that will keep me functional and alive. I'm cranky and bitchy from all of the stress that I know is taking a toll on my body, not to mention my mind.
I am busting my ass right now to get through school and still try to work when I can, plus clean the house and do the laundry and sometimes cut the grass. Max and Tricky need attention and time and care, and they deserve to have more than what's just leftover at the end of the day.
So it's me who gets the leftovers. It's Stephanie who fights with herself to get a little care and attention. It's Stephanie who gets lost in her own shuffle and then feels like shit because she barely has the time and energy to touch base with the parts of her who fought so damn hard to unearth themselves from the minutiae that was killing her soul.
But if I don't take the time to care for me, I will have nothing left to give, especially to the boys. I have to constantly remind myself that I am worth my own effort, even if it means I have to put down a textbook or tell a friend no or refuse to answer the phone. Even if it means I have to drag my exhausted, flabby ass from the couch and put on my shoes and walk.
I put on my new shoes over the weekend and took the boys (also in their new shoes) to the local greenway. I did three miles, and it felt good. It felt right. And my shoes didn't hurt my feet.
One foot in front of the other. That's the only way I'm making it out of this. One step at a time.
When I started writing Muchness and Light in late 2010, DH was not happy. I'd been toying with an old writing project, which later morphed into Persona Non Grata, and I'd been thinking for days about starting a blog. I wanted a different outlet to hone skill and craft. I was also in the beginnings of what would become this huge shift in how I saw myself and my place in my world.
Initially, he was hurt and irritated that I hadn't consulted him about it. It wasn't that I wanted to write, he argued, but that he could've helped me choose the blogging platform and the technology that would be best for my project. I hadn't needed his help, though. I was perfectly capable of researching these things and deciding what would work best for me.
For a while, I didn't readily share my writing with him. He would grumble when I did a new piece, seemingly irritated both at what I had to say and that I was saying it at all. Yes, it diverted time and attention away from him and the children and whatever else I'd normally been doing for two hours on any given morning. To delay the laundry or the dishes, to allow myself a little time to get inside my own head and see how it worked, was certainly giving my psyche a chance to flex muscles it hadn't used in about ten years.
I was thinking for myself again. I was doing for myself again. I was still handling everything logistically in our world, but I was changing.
DH was not happy.
In hindsight, our marital problems were really amping up. Of course I knew there were issues—that was part of the reason I was so unhappy. It was very difficult to mend or even maintain our relationship, especially given the enormous change I was experiencing.
Through all of the volatility, I wrote.
As our marriage spiraled out of control, we would fight in the guise of trying to repair our damage. Night after night of emotionally and verbally violent arguments, a constant battering of each other, trying our best to both attack each other and defend our positions. Sometimes I would just sit and take it, letting him yell at me as punishment for the choices I'd made that had flown in the face of our marriage. Sometimes I would yell back, vehemently reminding him of all the ways he had failed me and us, as well. Sometimes when he was especially brutal, I would do my best to disengage and walk away until we were both calmer and more reasonable.
DH never liked it when I disengaged. It infuriated him that I would step out of his line of fire and walk away. That was often when his words would become knives thrown straight at my heart.
Late one night, when it was apparent that he'd worn me down to the point of just taking it, I realized there was no reasoning with him. I was tired of being told I was wrong and said something about going inside to write for a while.
"Your writing is a joke!" he laughed derisively. "No one gives a fuck about what you have to say! Your blog is just your fucking diary about shit no one but you and your friends care about it. You should shut the fuck up while you still have a shred of dignity!"
Make no mistake that it stung like hell. After twenty years together, he knew how to cut me to the core. I questioned my writing, my motivations, my talent, and my voice. Since that incident over two years ago, I have heard those words in my head every single time I have been unsure of this path.
I could tell myself that what I had to say mattered. Sure, it matters to me. It matters to my friends. I have collected a small but loyal readership of people I've never met and never hear from, but I see the web traffic and get occasional messages from random people telling me that something I wrote touched them.
I still questioned it all the time.
Recently I started writing guest posts for DivorcedMoms.com. Given what I know about being both divorced and being a mom, it seemed like a natural extension of what I do here. Plus it would be an additional outlet to tackle some issues and say some things I might not want to constantly float on Muchness and Light. (This is not a divorce blog, after all.)
I submitted my second piece, "8 Things Every Divorced Woman Should Do NOW!" a couple of weeks ago, as part of a suggested assignment on their contributor site. I was thrilled when they not only ran the piece but also featured it that week in their newsletter and on their splash page. I saw the link to the article tweeted and retweeted by the editors.
Someone else was interested in what I had to say.
Two days ago, I received an email from one of the DivorcedMoms.com editors.
Hi Stephanie,
We are thrilled to tell you that your article is featured on mariashriver.com
It a great article and we are so happy to see it profiled. We love your writing, keep the posts coming:)
What?!?
And there it was. Maria Shriver's site had picked up my article and reposted it. There was a link back to DivorcedMoms and to my writer profile there. She (or her social media person) had tweeted the link, which was retweeted repeatedly by strangers. It was on her Facebook page, with comments from women I'd never known saying how much they enjoyed it, how it mattered to them.
After the obligatory squealing and dancing and texting and calls to almost everyone I knew, I forwarded the email to my therapist.
Someone else wanted to hear what I had to say. DH was wrong. I shouldn't have shut up and been quiet.
And I started to cry. As I've admitted before, I sometimes cry when I write. I'll hit some place of emotional truth, and the tears flow cathartically as the tension is released. (Hell, I'm crying as I write this now.)
It wasn't so much confirmation that DH was wrong; it was verification that I wasn't. My voice mattered to someone else, to someone other than me, and it had value even if only for a moment.
I was right to write again. I was right to question my life, then and now, and to work through my issues in the public forum I'd chosen all by myself. I was right to believe that my words held strength and worth and truth outside my own busy, complicated head.
I don't know what path I'd be on had I not chosen this one. In the end it doesn't matter, because this is where I am. It may not be right for anyone else. It may not have been right for DH. But it is exactly where I am supposed to be.
"Maybe it feels the same way," my 13-year-old son math genius said, when I lamented outloud.
"I wouldn't blame it," I replied. "I've done nothing but badmouth it since I was 12 years old."
That's about the time it started. Pre-algebra. I'm okay with arithmetic, even solving for basic variables. But give me rational expressions, and my brain just kind of shuts down. I'll struggle through the homework, think I have it, and totally bomb a test. The problem is that I never really seem to get why I was wrong. For years my math grades were comprised almost entirely of partial credit.
College algebra is part of the reason I never graduated. Only part, I stress, because I know damn well that my choices had a lot to do with it. But when I was already inclined to blow off class and get into some other trouble, it was all too easy to blame my mutual hatred of algebra for keeping me from doing what I needed to do.
I was complaining on Facebook about my hatred of polynomials. I have three friends who are both geniuses (truly) and math teachers: Moonshine, Boogie Shoes, and Mathilde.
Mathilde, who teaches college math, had this to say in the course of our discussion:
It's true that there are many different levels on which one can "get" it, and you can feel like you've gotten it when you still really have a fairly superficial understanding. (It's a bit like the difference between being able to drive a car vs. being knowing how to fix the engine when it breaks.)
Of course I have some professional expertise here, but lately I've been thinking about this on a whole different level as I watch the different ways that my son and daughter approach math. They're both good at it, but they have totally different reactions when they hit a wall. It's really driven home for me how important it is to PLAY with it, look at a problem from all different angles, see what you CAN figure out even if you don't know how to get all the way to an answer. Don't be afraid to fuck it up, because you learn the most from coming to understand HOW you fucked up, and how to fix it. There are a zillion different ways to approach any particular math topic, and the more of them you explore, the more solid your overall understanding will be. I really believe that that willingness to get your hands dirty and engage with it is far more predictive of success than whatever your innate talent may or may not be.
Don't be afraid to fuck it up, because you learn the most from coming to understand HOW you fucked up, and how to fix it. I really believe that that willingness to get your hands dirty and engage with it is far more predictive of success than whatever your innate talent may or may not be.
Best. Advice. Ever.
It's how I try to live every other part of my life, so why the hell would I let this be my undoing? Why would it be okay to let a required math class or two be the one thing that could stand in the way of completing the degree necessary to move my life forward?
Had I graduated from college in 1994 as originally planned, I would've likely gone on to work in my originally-chosen field—Mass Communications. I would probably have still married DH, though we would've been living a different life. I very well might not have had the boys I have, who could only have been who they are because they were conceived in their respective moments. I might have something different and just as wonderful, but it wouldn't be Max and Tricky, without whom I can't imagine my life.
Just because I didn't get what I'd planned, just because my journey took a different path than anyone anticipated for me, that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile or in any way less than what I'd envisioned. In so many ways, I am more fulfilled as a woman and a soul than I ever thought possible.
I have the very real task of learning the skills necessary to get a real job, to take care of me and my boys. I have to relearn a lot of things I should've mastered a long time ago. To choose not to do it is to be ungrateful, again, for the opportunities I've been given and have made for myself.
So I can't be afraid to fuck it up. I will likely fuck it up. But I will choke down the disappointment and dust my hands off and try again. I will look closely at what I did wrong, which variable threw me off, and I will try it again and again and again until I can pass these tests. Maybe not with flying colors, but certainly with far more knowledge and insight than I had when I started.
And on the other side? There's an entirely different life ahead of me. It's not where I thought I'd be, not where I originally dreamed of being. But it will be goddamn good, because I got dirty and fought like hell to make it that way. I'll still struggle with math. I'll still catch my breath at the sight of a polynomial, and sometimes it will remind me of what my intentions had been when I was 20.
Then I'll remind myself that here and now is the only place I can live—not then and certainly not when. And I'll know that I can, because I bulldozed my own walls and powered through to an unexpected and promising future.
A couple of months ago, I met a guy online. We hit it off and agreed to a first date, which turned out to be fantastic. Schedules were a little tough to sync at first, but we did manage to eek in a couple more great dates. He was cute and smart and funny. We had long, engaged conversations and fantastic chemistry. Even though he was clearly into me, I knew pretty quickly that I didn't have substantial romantic interest in him. (I never even got around to giving him a nickname.)
I was mulling how best to go about ending it when the court date came up for my divorce. I was so caught up in that week that I didn't think much about it when I didn't hear from him.
Eventually I did get a text, though, asking how court had gone, how I was, etc. I caught him up quickly, while I was in the middle of working one of my three part-time jobs, and then asked how he was. He finally admitted that he hadn't checked on me because he'd gone on a week-long bender.
Red flags flapped ominously in my breeze. He knew my history of falling for alcoholics, and I knew his history—what he'd been very adamant was an ancient history of non-alcoholic addiction that had been long-ago dealt with. I knew I was ready to end the romantic relationship, but I liked the guy and wanted to be able to be his friend through the hard time he was having. I offered to be a sounding board.
Another week went by with no word from him. I was both busy and not unhappy about having a little distance from it. Then came the voicemail, telling me he had gone on another black-out binge and was hospitalized in a detox unit. He asked me to call him. He texted me the next day, asking if I'd gotten his voicemail.
I replied that I had but that I had to distance myself from the situation and from him.
"You know my history," I texted. "I am clearly an enabler. This is more than I'm willing to deal with right now. It's unhealthy for me and unhealthy for my children, given the energy shift it will create in me. I feel like a cad for not being your friend through this, but I just can't be around this right now. I wish you well."
Alcoholics aren't always, or even usually, the people who drink all day, every day and can't hold down a job. I've never dated a man who sat on the street corner, sipping anything out of a bag. (At least not more than a couple of social times.) My history, however, is peppered with functional alcoholics—those who lead productive lives filled with work and family and friends, who seem perfectly normal to anyone outside the closest inner circle. It wasn't just that they were alcoholic abusers, they were alcohol dependent.
When an addict of any kind begins the process of recovery, there are several paths they can take. Going it alone, private counseling, community-based therapy and support groups. Each has to find their own path.
In my personal experience and through my research for Persona Non Grata, there are two main thoughts about recovery. On one side, the addict needs to give all of their time and energy to recovery, at least initially and for some indeterminate amount of time, in order to stabilize and come to terms with themselves and the immediate consequences of ceasing substance. Different substances—whether alcoholic, heroin, cocaine, food, etc.—will have different effects on biochemistry, and withdrawal can be a bitch no matter your poison. Some addicts choose to immerse themselves in the process of recovery, sometimes to the point that the unavailability they showed their loved ones is just as prevalent even though it's in the name of meetings and sessions and getting better.
There's a second line of thinking, in which the addict has been a selfish bastard for so long that they need to immediately begin rectifying that damage to the people who've paid the highest price for it thus far. It's time to step up and show those people that you really do love them; it's time to start making amends for your asshole behavior of the previous weeks and months and years, balancing them with your own needs and therapy.
Often on the other side of an addiction is an enabler, someone who excuses and justifies and cleans-up and forgives the selfish, destructive behavior in the name of loving the addict. Someone like me. I've been known to give so deeply of myself to maintain the status quo that I would find myself frazzled and exhausted, a shell of who I was supposed to be.
If recovery for the addict includes stopping being a selfish asshole, recovery for the enabler is the time when they have to learn to be a little bit selfish, to take care of themselves before they care for the addict.
It feels completely unnatural.
When you are structured around this idea that "care" means self-sacrifice, you'll do anything for the people you love. Every detail of your life becomes about how you can help this person you adore, how you can make things easier so that they can accomplish their goals, even after recovery begins in earnest. It's all too easy to find yourself still in that pattern of compensating for the addict who has floundered for years.
But isn't that what you do for the people that you love?
If they're young children, absolutely. But even adults who were badly parented or never learned the life-skill of self-care are still adults; they have to be responsible for themselves.
It is hard as hell to turn away from someone you care about, leaving them to deal with the process of recovery without you. You, who has taken care of everything for so long, who has loved them like no other and for reasons and in ways maybe no one else would ever understand... you are abandoning them in their greatest moment of need.
You're a fucking heartless bitch.
As the enabler, you have to heal from this process of addiction, as well. You have to learn to care for yourself and how to devote time and energy to those who really need it, not just those who refuse to do it for themselves.
Given my history, my telling Bender (okay, so I named him just now) that I couldn't be a part of his process not only took my support away and forced him to stand with one less crutch, it allowed me to drop that fucking crutch, too. My hands are free to hold something else. Something more important—myself.
Even though that romantic relationship wasn't hugely impactful on my life, it came at just the right time to remind me that I am important in a relationship. My needs, my care, my wants are just as important as the other side's, even and especially when that other side is addicted.
Being cognizant of this, being fully aware of how necessary it is for me to make those healthy decisions means I have to follow through. To continue the behaviors and patterns when I absolutely know better makes me no better, but also no worse, than the addicts I have loved.
Even after Bender, there is another friend who is maybe in that process of sobriety and recovery. It's likely, though I don't know for sure because I had to make the decision to cut this person out of my life. And it is hard. Every single day, I want to know how they are, to hold them and listen while they talk through what I know is coming. Some days that connection still feels as strong as it did when we met so many moons ago.
I want desperately to reach out, to ask how they're doing. I can't, and it sucks. Some days, it hurts like hell.
They're no more irredeemable than I am. We've both always known that change would have to come from within them, no matter how much support I offered or shoved or emotionally blackmailed them into taking. But taking is not accepting, and I had to stop bashing my head against that beautiful brick wall.
As much as I hope they are taking the time to really face this and heal, I hope I am able to turn and face my own role in my life, my own choices to excuse and justify and encourage—all in the name of love. This time, I have to love me, in the same active way I have tried so fucking hard to love them.
Keeping them out of my life is supposedly the best thing for me. Supposedly it's also the best thing for them, but it smacks of abandonment and dismissal in the ways that feel most brutal to me. I hope to God, every day, that there's a healthy way forward for us, together or not, in each other's lives or not. I hope to hear that they're okay, that they're doing their work and dealing with what has been so long neglected. I hope I do the same.
Above all else, I hope we both can one day see that we are loved, not because of our roles in that dysfunction—not in spite of them—but for the people we are on the other side of the addiction and the history and the hurt.
In 1990, I started college on a substantial scholarship. My life choices got in the way of studying, and I blew my scholarship within a year. I tried, off and on, to finish what was originally a Communications degree, but I never quite got it together. There was a lot of wasted time and money before I finally gave up, choosing to live my life with DH. With the divorce came the realization that I would have to take care of myself long past the point of alimony or child support.
So as of last month, I'm back in school full time, enrolled at a local technical college to pursue a degree in Paralegal Studies. Queen Frostine has said for years that I'd make a great attorney. Given my attention to detail and my dogged curiosity, she thinks I'd be especially well-suited for the mechanics of the law life. In my old life in financial planning, I spent a lot of time reviewing complicated estate and human resources documents, and I thoroughly enjoyed that process. Writing Persona Non Grata brought entertainment law into my realm, and I ultimately finalized my divorce pro se (without an attorney).
Being a paralegal seems like the natural and logical next step.
But being back in school is weird. When I was a college student in my late teens and early twenties, work/life balance was about little more than fitting classes in around a boyfriend or getting wasted. Now at 41, I have not only my schedule of on-campus and online classes, homework, and real work, but also my sons' school and social activities to contend with. And now DH has moved 300 miles away, which means I have the boys for the vast majority of their time. Plus somewhere in there I have to take some time for me, to relax and socialize with my own peers and get recentered so that I can take on the constant demands of this life I am trying to rebuild.
The schoolwork thus far isn't terribly hard, though math is kicking my ass harder than it did when I was 18. The courseload for this first semester includes some pretty interesting (and sometimes infuriating) introductions to sociology, humanities, and the law. All too often I am fascinated by some random thought in a discussion group or textbook and find myself off on a tangent, researching the fundamentals of space law or Goffman's dramaturigcal perspective.
And now with a brilliantly gifted 8th grader who is naturally inclined to the same slacking I was in middle school, I am paranoid about his life choices. I've always said I didn't care what my children did for a living, as long as they were happy. While I know that my prior choices led me to the place and time of having my sons when I did, I am also painfully aware that we are in a financial bind in part as consequence of those choices.
Had I applied myself and finished my degree when that was supposed to be my main priority, my life would be very different. I might be better prepared to handle the financial fallout of divorce in my 40s, but I also might not have had these children. I probably would've gone on to have kids, but Max and Tricky could only be who they are because they were conceived and born at their respective moments in history.
I can't get caught up in what might have been or should have been; I live in the here and now, both as a result of and in defiance of my past. All I can do now is work my ass off to provide better opportunities for my kids but also for myself. This is part of learning to take care of myself in a whole new way.
When it feels overwhelming, I have to remind myself that this won't last forever. In the same way that the boys will age and grow—bringing an end to child support and the necessity of complete financial self-sufficiency—I will age and grow, getting through this process and reaping the rewards that I can on the other side.
Childhood molestation. Parental divorce. Teenage date rape. Abusive boyfriend. Suicide attempts. Morbid obesity and body image issues. Marriage gone horrible awry. Series of unhealthy romantic relationships with unavailable men.
That's the quick and dirty laundry list of the bullshit that led me to now. But that is not me.
Like so many other people, I fulfill a statistic. According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, 9.2% of victimized children are sexually assaulted. 1 in 5 girls are victims of sexual abuse. 3 of 4 children who are sexually assaulted are victimized by someone they know well. 63% of women who suffer abuse by a family member also report rape or attempted rape after the age of 14.
50% of children in America live through the divorce of their parents. Adults whose parents were divorced are 50% more likely to divorce themselves.
10% of high-schoolers are physically abused by their dating partner. 50% of youth who are victims of both physical and sexual assault attempt suicide.
15% of Americans are obese. 6.6% are morbidly obese.
40% of people have maladaptive attachments in adult relationships, driven by the events of their past—with the seeds of dysfunction often beginning in early childhood.
I am not special.
I talk very openly in public and in private about all of these things. I didn't for a very long time. There was certainly a sense of shame about all of it. When I came to the understanding that keeping these things in secret only perpetuated that cycle of shame that never should've been mine, I began to attack these issues head-on and put them into a healthy perspective. They've been analyzed and discussed and dealt with, at least until some other issue arises that is a direct or indirect result of what happened.
Muchness and Light was started, in part, as an outlet for dealing with the transformations that came from that self-scrutiny. Hell, I wrote a book about a lot of it.
But if you meet me in person, I will never offer you my hand and say, "Hi, I'm Stephanie. I'm a victim."
I don't live like that. I don't think like that. Stephanie is not defined by her past, but she sure as hell is shaped by those events.
Sometimes there's a reason to make parallels to something that happened with some new event in my life. Usually it's because there's a problem. Often the root of my problems surround how I crave and strive for intimacy and love from another person. I do have times when I feel unloved and worthless, and that's when the self-analysis can become brutal.
I've written a few times about my sense of worth, both to myself and to the people I love. Regardless of how it seems sometimes, I am acutely aware of my inherent value as a mother and a woman and a soul. I get tripped up in my value to other people, especially when something has gone wrong.
In my mind, as a combination of both head and heart, I have been worth very little to a lot of people in my life. Other people's perceptions and mistakes and miscommunications shouldn't be a barometer of my value, but they often are. And I know I'm not alone in this.
Even people who are in healthy, secure, romantic relationships see themselves in relation to their partner. There's a natural loop of positive feedback—through words and touch and action, consideration and thought and care—that show you how your partner values you. If they are attentive and thoughtful in their approach and recognition of you, if they are engaged with you, the neurotransmitters and hormones responsible for the physical emotion of love are released again and again. You feel closer to, and more secure with, this other person, making you more willing to reciprocate in kind. Then their body is responding similarly, and it's a wonderful cycle of love.
You are important to each other and are showing the other their worth to you by supporting and cherishing and caring for them.
But when words and actions don't match, or don't exist at all, it devalues the relationship. Eventually it begins to undermine the self-worth of one or both partners. If he loves me, he will care for me. If he doesn't care for me, I am unimportant to him. I am unimportant to the person I love, who is supposed to love me most in the world. If that is all this special person thinks of me, I must not be worth very much to him. I must not be worth very much at all. I am worthless.
One bad relationship shouldn't be able to damage your self-perceptions, but rarely is it one bad relationship. There's is almost always a series of events—of romantic, erotic, platonic, and familial relationships—that build upon one another, piling on the sense of lessthanness.
Look at it like an economy. At birth, you're worth $1,000,000, just because you exist. Your parents and family care for you and raise you and help you grow. Eventually you're worth $2,000,000, and you set out into the world, socializing and developing your own interpersonal relationships outside of your family. Your first boyfriend or girlfriend is pretty good; they add $250,000 to your value. Your next one breaks your heart, and you lose $750,000. Now you're at $1,500,000 when you meet your future spouse. They add $500,000. Your marriage adds $1,000,000. Lost friendships deduct $300,000 each. Kids add $5,000,000 each but have constant volatile flux for the first twenty years, so your value is in constant shift.
When you find that you have trauma after trauma, especially when they've happened at the hands of the people who are supposed to love you most in the world, it eventually begins to feel like no one has ever or could ever help bring you back into positive territory. No matter how hard you work to build your own value--$100,000 for graduating high school, $250,000 for college, $1,000,000 for the PhD, and $500,000 for the first great job—you're still constantly trying to overcome this deficit that's been in place and growing for as long as you can remember.
What I want and will say I need (That's an entirely different discussion I'll get into later.) most is for just one person to step up and show me that I matter to them. That I matter at all. Because I was let down so many times, I don't believe in my heart that anyone is capable of loving me. There are people capable of doing it, in general; I know many of them. But of all of the people who have come through my life over its course thus far, it is with rare exception that anyone has ever shown up for me consistently and shown me that I am worth a damn to them.
Even if I am worth $1,000,000 on paper, it means nothing unless someone is willing to barter for it. It doesn't grow unless it's invested. And if it's just used and depleted over time, it will eventually drop to $0. Even the Hope Diamond is estimated to be worth $350,000,000, but it's just a shiny rock in a box until someone actually pays for it.
I recognize that it's not necessarily about me. I am attracted to emotional unavailability, because it is what I have always known. In my own maladaptation, in my own inherent brokenness, I search for people who are just as broken in their own, extreme way that is the polar opposite of my own damage. Even if and when I learn new tools for handling that and making healthier choices, I will still be jaded by my past. I can't forget that these things happened, and they will always be a constant, flashing caution signal as I move forward along my path.
If I build my house on a hill, I can build it with a level foundation. I'm still building it on a hill. There's a strong possibility that, given enough time, the foundation will shift and settle, needing to be jacked back up and supported from time to time. I could always raze the damn hill, but that would require cost and energy to devastate miles of visible landscape to try to forget there ever was a hill in the first place.
My hill is a slippery slope, but I fought my way to the top to plant my rainbow freak flag in the summit. From here, there's a pretty damn amazing view. But it's also sometimes lonely, and I'm tired of looking down and seeing all the people who shrugged and walked away from the clamber, who found themselves unworthy of escalation and therefore made me feel unworthy of their effort.
So, yeah, sometimes I sit my ass down and cry, howling my lamentations into the wind. Far too often it has seemed like a siren's call, bringing a reticent hero crashing into the rocks below; for rescue or marooned companionship, I don't know. But maybe, just maybe, that song will be worth something to someone, someday. And maybe someone else will be willing to fight their way to my summit and join me in surveying everything we've left behind.
After more issues with what I perceive to be the fickle behavior of men, I opened a discussion on my personal Facebook page, asking for the male perspective (although anyone who could see it was welcome to respond).
I explained about my choice to be sometimes brutally honest with men (really everyone) about who and what I am, about getting past the ones who don't interest me or can't keep up with me, and how I then tend to attract guys who are generally as intense and colorful as I am. They'll tell me how much they appreciate my energy and my honesty and my crazy, how I'm amazing and exactly what they've been looking for their whole damn lives, and then flake the fuck out approximately 4-6 weeks later. They will puff their chests initially and tell me how they'll be the best man I've ever known and then just quit trying.
So I asked if they were panicking suddenly or if men are generally liars by nature. I also explained that I wasn't looking to bash men, that I really was trying to understand it.
Several friends, both male and female, chimed in. The consensus was that these men likely believe what they're telling me but that maybe something just changes. Maybe they find they weren't really as interested as they initially thought. Maybe it's just not a good match. Whatever the reason, they generally aren't lying about their intentions or their feelings.
As the discussion evolved, La Bruja shared this:
I dated a bunch of emotionally unavailable men; they pushed all my hot buttons and presented me with a problem that resonated with me and that I wanted to fix! A lot of things helped me quit doing that, and one particular book finally made it click:
It's about adult attachment styles. The hot and cold that an avoidant can (and does) create used to be exactly what sucked me in. And now I don't even notice these guys. I have no idea if this is something that you're experiencing-- the men you describe sound avoidant, in that they come on strong, read you well, say the right things, and then bail-- potentially to pop back up from time to time. At any rate, it was an eye-opening read.
I looked at the book and dug a little deeper into attachment styles in adult relationships. I found a quiz online, for whatever that was worth, but it pointed to my being in the "preoccupied/anxious attachment" camp.
People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to agree with the following statements: "I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don't value me as much as I value them." People with this style of attachment seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partners. They sometimes value intimacy to such an extent that they become overly dependent on their partners. Compared to securely attached people, people who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to have less positive views about themselves. They often doubt their worth as a partner and blame themselves for their partners' lack of responsiveness. People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment may exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, worry, and impulsiveness in their relationships.
Every guy I've ever been involved with will totally confirm that this describes me all too well.
As I dug even deeper, several articles point to my childhood as the root of the problem. Inconsistent parental attachment. Maladaptive. Drawn to fearful- and dismissive-avoidant partners.
Note to my exes: I can classify each of you, too.
After two years of therapy, I know the what, when, and why of my issues. I know the ins and outs of the series of events that led to these perceptions and behaviors in me. Truthfully, that's probably better than most people ever get. But what I don't know is how to change it.
Changing it at all is a really scary thought. While I am not defined by the events of my past, I am certainly shaped by them. Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and neglect left their impact, undoubtedly. I have worked really, really hard to deal with all of those things and put them into healthy perspective. That work is, in part, what led to my writing again, to my open exploration of my life, and to the deep self-awareness I possess as a part of the entire process. That is what has given me the bravery to live my life and to even try to trust and love again when I have every logical reason to withdraw.
If I change the behaviors that are so inherently a part of me, do I change me to the point that I am less than who I am now? Do I somehow lose the muchness I worked so damn hard to find again?
My biggest fear is that I won't be able to love as deeply and passionately and intensely as I do now. I am afraid that I will temper that to the point that I become numb again—which is how I lived my life for far too long. I am fearful that I will lose my dream of the all-encompassing, breathtaking, soul-shattering-and-purifying love that I have wanted most for my entire life.
And now, I'm afraid that that dream is fallacious. I'm questioning whether everything I've worked so hard to attain, what is of tantamount importance to me as a soul, is as illusory as it is elusive.
To relinquish that belief could mean watching a dream die.
But what I also know is that my perceptions are inherently skewed. Right now, I don't know that I can trust them, and that means I can't trust myself. Historically I have placed my trust in the people who least deserve or respect it, and that has shredded my heart time and again. While I may know in my head that these patterns are unhealthy, I don't have the skill set to be able to approach it or think about it in any other way.
Part of me feels like I'm starting all over again, going back to the beginning of this crazy journey I've been on for more than three years. But the truth is that I am light years from where I was then; this is a new milestone on my path that just happens to look a lot like ones I've seen before. There's a weird sense of emotional déjà vu.
So I'll work with my therapist to gain the tools I need to form more secure attachments and to stop attracting fragile cats. As much as I love them and want to care for them, they'll never be able to love me back or care for me in the ways that I need. They're just as maladaptive as I am.
La Bruja went on to say this:
Stephanie, take it from me-- you CAN deal with all of that, past damage does NOT have to define you forever, and once you have addresses these issues in your own life, you simply will not see these men anymore (nor will they see you), and you will start noticing an entirely different type of person, one who wants to have a good relationship with a nice, beautiful, intelligent woman.
And he'll amuse the living daylights out of you by marveling from time to time about how it is that you're still available.
I'll take your word for it, my wonderful friend. God knows I can't trust my own.
I am smart and able and resourceful and determined. I am exceedingly analytical, especially when it comes to relationships and my own role in them. I spend an inordinate amount of time in my own head, breaking down the minutiae of every conversation, every encounter. What did he mean by that? Was there really a disjoint between his words and his expression? What did I do to encourage or discourage him? Why the hell am I feeling this?
Some days it's incredibly loud inside my head. I will replay every detail over and over. (Add obsessive and dogged to that list of qualities.) Hiding behind every memory there is always a ghost, taunting me with the rattle of its chains and reminding me of every time I have been less than perfect.
Truthfully (and with a bit of well-earned arrogance), I do most things I attempt very well. When I set my sights on a specific path, I will follow it to the point of exhaustion, just to see it through. It's the encounters along the way, the people I stumble across and sometimes joyously or painfully into, who help to shape that journey. Because I remember the details of almost everything in my life, it's very unlikely that I will ever forget those people.
Sometimes it feels like competition, but you don't always know the specifics of what you're fighting, or sometimes even that you are. This is why I try so damn hard to be bigger, better, faster, more. If I can create something new, something unique, it is unforgettable in its own right. If I am at the core of those memories, I only have to compete against my own ghosts. When it comes down to it, there's only me to fuck with my own head, and I relish that hard-fought battle more than any other.
I did have a conversation recently with Bounder about this. I talked with him about a specific drama that had injected itself into my world—yet another fragile cat who went totally off the deep end—and how I didn't know how not to attract these fucked up men. He argued that it's the reciprocity of attraction, that in the same way I always seem to be hunting them, they can smell me on the wind.
"Because you are the alpha female, the lioness of lionesses. It's built in somehow, parallel to how you're a badass mom. Same psycho theory...."
If I care about these men, the souls they are beyond any sort of romantic relationship we have, is it wrong for me to be active in that when they are struggling? It's right to do what you can to help the people who matter to you—that's how interpersonal relationships work. And there are a very few whose souls have touched mine so deeply that they could get my attention and help no matter what. Forever and always and no matter what. I may have every reason to tell them to fuck off, but I care deeply and cannot bear the thought of not honoring that.
"You do honor it, Steph, just by trying. You cannot do it yourself. It will always take two."
"I don't know that I even believe that anymore, that there's another one who can be what everyone else so plainly believes I need. So what's my option? Be miserable alone? If I'm gonna be miserable, I'd rather have it peppered with moments of incredible connection."
Bounder says the key is to not ever be miserable alone, to enjoy and thrive in those moments until the connections are there, intentional or not.
"Trust," he said.
"But that means I have to trust myself," I replied.
While I am sometimes too free and quick with my emotions, there are a very few people in the world who I truly love. I am fortunate that I have a list at all, but it can be very hard for me to let anyone in. The list of people I trust is far, far shorter. I have every historical reason for that, certainly, but the ones who have gained my confidence have been the ones who very strongly encouraged me to see something about myself that I couldn't or wouldn't face, good or bad. That's part of why they matter to me and always will.
If I can find people who trust me enough to let me care for them, then I hope for reciprocity. I hope to see my own worth through their eyes, because I can only see my value, really, when it's shown to me.
This is why I asked Bounder and DH and sometimes Absolem and others why I wasn't worth their fight. Every time I think I am, that I have done enough and earned it from them or for them, I get the response that somehow I just wasn't enough—usually while being told I was just too much.
"Who are you not good enough for?" Bounder asked. "Certainly not the drunken cats or your ex or any of them and definitely not Daddy. So who's left? Who do you pale in comparison to? You."
"I pale in comparison to those who've come before me, to those ghosts who can garner more attention that I can."
"Not true. You believe it, clearly, but it's not true."
"Really? If I never say the words I'm not her again, it will be too soon. And, yeah, sometimes I'm not good enough for the drunken cats. I'm not perfect, or even just right. I get upset when I'm hurt, and I let them down. I let you down. I failed you, and so I failed me. If I'd been a little quieter, a little calmer, more compartmentalized and covert with my heart.., if I'd backed down , been more pliant, less selfish, less open about my needs..., if I'd just seen you coming and been able to plan, then maybe—just maybe—you would've been willing to keep the cracks in the walls that let me and the light in, maybe I would've been good enough for you to accept that love and let yourself love me back."
Then I found myself alone and crying in the dark on my deck, sobbing because I am not perfect.
When you are a true perfectionist, everything takes on a gravity that most people can't understand. They can't empathize with how consuming it is to constantly maintain the level of energy required to be not only your best but better than anything or anyone else, how the slightest of mistakes and imperfections can rock you to the core in such a way that it feels like the goddamn universe is collapsing on your head. When it comes to love, your heart is all too likely to be crushed, sucked into the black hole of itself where not even your own light can escape.
But to expect perfection in the realm of interpersonal relationships is a fool's quest. It is absolutely noble to strive for the best, for better than best, but it's dependent not only on my actions but on the reactions of another flawed human. That give and take is incomparably beautiful. For me, it can feel deadly.
One mistake, one minor misstep, and the person I love responds in kind. The first, tiny ripple of incident creates waves and wake of hurt and ache, and somehow I am sucked down by the undertow, berating myself for having chosen A over B, for not having known ahead of time what would come as a result. For being human.
No one is harder on me than I am, and I am a formidable opponent. I am a force of nature. Nothing wreaks havoc on Glamazon Island quite like Hurricane Sass. Somehow I am constantly surprised when I ignore the storm warnings, ignore the windblown red flags, and dive into the choppy, churning waters. It doesn't matter how I move, how perfectly I execute each stroke of arm and leg or each turn of the head as I gasp for breath; a storm like that will eventually exhaust me.
I'll still be berating myself for not being a better swimmer, for not being able to see through the riptide and stay parallel to the shore. Even as I'm drowning.
It's something of an understatement to say that I am an open book.
Everything about me, all of the stories that led me to be who I am now, have been laid bare in the pages of Persona Non Grata and on these blog posts at Muchness and Light. There may be a few other outlets—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—that show snippets of my personality, but generally everything about my past is on public display.
When I meet people for the first time, especially men, I tend to throw all of that out there at once.
"Hi, I'm Stephanie. I'm a lot to handle. You will one day say it's too much and that I overwhelm you. They all do, and I have no reason to think you're any different. Here I am—take it or leave it!"
It's kind of like lobbing a grenade of muchness at them and daring them to take me on.
I hate it when men I care about tell me I'm too much. It strikes a nerve in me, both because it's true and because I warned them. Just once, I'd like not to feel that pang of I told you so that inevitably comes.
But just because I warn someone of what to expect, and how to deal with me when it happens, does that make it okay? Does my glittery Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here sign justify my reaction when they give up hope?
If I taunt men into letting me down, I am culpable, both in giving them reason to turn away and in delighting in being able to find those reasons when it happens. I get a little jolt from pushing their buttons, and I probably try to do it from the onset of salutation. It's like an experiment sometimes, just to see how much it will take before their façade of availability cracks and they scurry to close the gaps before I can get my hooks into them and force them to open deeper and wider than they'd ever imagined.
And that is exactly what I do.
I test men, looking to see who will fail me and how and why. Sometimes I know within minutes that they aren't up to the challenge, and I dust their crumbling egos from my fingertips as I walk away. Sometimes it takes longer, in which case I become more subtle, more unintentionally manipulative in my ministrations. They rarely see or feel it coming, though, as I do seem to have the inexplicable power to sweet talk them into smiling submission. (Dimples and destruction.)
I told Hot Pocket that it's one of Sassafras's superpowers, the ability to hide behind a plume of pretty, swirling smoke until they're so entranced they can't help but stare dumbfounded at the glittery chaos that bats her eyes and nods her blond ponytail as she wishes what she wants for their world.
My girls, the Castration Committee, are the ones who can accept my muchness for exactly what it is, no matter what. They will sometimes call me out for being too much, but they never judge me for it and they never, ever turn away from it or from me. I constantly experience the depths of love from the people who adore me no matter what.
Is it too much to want that same connection in erotic love?
It's unimaginable to me that it won't exist for me, that given everything I have lived and done and seen and experienced, that there isn't a lover who can adore me and accept me and embrace my batshit while they kiss me breathless. I have paid so much, done so much work, to get to the place that I have the ability to love as deeply and intensely as I do, and to do it willingly and from a place of utter awareness and selflessness. Can it really be true that there is no one worth that price? Is there no reward for having worked this hard?
Even asking those questions feels arrogant and makes me think I have so much more work to do.
But I don't want my book to end now. I don't want my stories to end at 40. I want someone, maybe more than one if that's how my journey goes, who will make new stories with me—bigger, better, faster, more! I want someone who reminds me to breathe when I'm so excited that I stammer over my own head, but who also smiles patiently and happily when I tell them for the hundredth time that day just how and why I love them. And I want that to be the same someone who can sit in the quiet with me and let me cry out whatever my heart can't find the words to express. The same someone who can make time stand still and the seas to turn to dust with just one kiss.
It comes back to the idea of expectations, what's reasonable and what's not. Growler and Absolem would advise me to be willing to lower those expectations. Maurice reminded me when I needed it most that doing that will only lead to tears. Bounder reminded me that my expectations can be met in the most painful and unexpected of ways. But Hot Pocket says it exists for me, that there's someone out there who can and will love me like that.
I hope she's right. It feels like she is, like she just has to be, but maybe that's my tragically romantic heart being unreasonably optimistic.
And maybe, just maybe, someone else will get the chance to tell me, "I told you so."
After a conversation with Hot Pocket and my therapist, I finally made the decision last night to go to the Hunter Hayes show at the Fox, just to see if Bounder would show.
He didn't.
It was okay. I'd told HP that I expected he wouldn't. But I knew if I didn't go and give it the opportunity that I would never know what happened. I would constantly be rolling around in the What-ifs.
It's over. It's done. It makes me a little sad that I'm unsurprised by his refusal to show--or even his cowardice at not letting me know so I could at least sell the tickets. But I'm honestly okay.
I don't know what's coming next--or who--but I'm ready. I'm ready to just get on with my life without this constant dark cloud chasing me.
So tonight I'm going out with a new friend. It's a second date. And I'm okay with that, too.
Fate has something else in store for me. I probably won't see it coming, and I'll probably flail about when I feel her hot breath on my neck. (She always comes in from behind. She's like that, you know.) But that's okay, too. It'll happen when it happens, and I'll be better able to handle it with one less albatross haunting me.
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