too beautiful not to reblog…
real life
originally posted to drafts folder 30 July 2014
there’s nothing like opening the mail to find just under $17,000 (usd) worth of unpaid invoices for your child’s healthcare waiting for payment. It’s not lost on me that I am blessed to be doing work I love for an employer that I admire and is stable within the industry. More importantly, provides healthcare that covers the kidlets and me to the tune of well over 6-figures each year.
I keep all of my blessings in mind as dh and I continue to navigate marriage counseling, life and our individual needs.
posted to drafts folder march 1, 2014
the sound of the driving rain against my office window reminded me of the way the water hits the shower door. As if begging for our attention as you kiss me, leaving me breathless and thirsting for more.
it’s hard to believe that it’s been so long since we’ve been together in those moments before we part yet again. I realize that last year, was a unique year for the two of us with travel schedules that synched up more often than not. this year, well now this year is different for an entirely different reason. isn’t it?
and yet, it doesn’t make me miss you any less. it doesn’t make me not long for the sound of the water…no. if anything the longing permeates throughout my being
….and or saved in the drafts folder in order to write more later. the next few posts are likely going to reflect this habit of mine.
posted these image quotes to my drafts folder 4 February 2014. (side note: three days before D-day.)
I was going through very regular and arduous chemo treatments every other week and unlike previous treatment plans, this round was kicking my ass. There was surgery at the end of December and the healing from that was taking longer than I expected. I had once again brought up the subject of counseling to dh, testing the waters if you will, again. And again, he wasn’t interested at all. And even went as far as to say he wished I would lean on friends and my therapist for emotional support because as he said at the time “it’s not in my wheelhouse, you know that.” I admit that in that moment, I already knew who I could lean on, even from three thousand miles away, I was just hoping dh would be the one.
On this particular day, it had been several months since we’d seen one another in real life and yet he had found a way to connect with me that I had come to look forward to. He would leave me a daily greeting the moment he went to his office, knowing that I would wake up to a voicemail from him every day had become the highlight of the two months he’d been doing it. It may seem small or insignificant to some, maybe even most people, and of course horrible to those that don’t approve/agree of our mutual admiration society. But to me, especially to me it was his way of giving to me, what I needed at the time.
Outside of the guilt and the remorse, and yes, there is guilt and remorse. There is also love. I recall starting this post with the three images below because the words resonate and because regardless of who you are, who you love and who loves you back, it’s different for everyone. it’s nuanced. it’s flawed. and it’s messy.
this is the weather out my way today and it makes me deliriously happy. truly. rain is appropriate for any mood when applied with the right perspective.
today is marriage counseling day as well as a day when we have the quarterly check-in with the aba program manager for our son as well as a myriad of his other providers. it’s during these when dh and i are completely in-synch. when it comes to parenting; whether our neuro-typical kidlet #1 or our quirky kidlet #2 we are a team. most of the time i’m the qb and he’s the point-after kicker, it’s just the way it is. that said, we are so good together when it comes to our kids, that he nor I take that lightly. it weighs heavily in our decision making as a team, as a family and whether or not we remain married.
for a variety of reasons related to having a child with special needs; ours is a family that has availed itself of counseling and therapy in that regard. dh has never pushed back or resisted when it comes to our kids. not when our oldest suffered a medical trauma that has had lasting effects and certainly not with our youngest and all of the nuances that comes with therapy, support systems etc. to answer some people’s question around staying/leaving: this is a large reason why neither of us, that’s right, it’s a choice either one of us can make, it’s a big reason neither of us has left. believe it or not, together, as parents we are a good team. we recognize what each of bring to the table in terms of strengths as well as tolerance level for particular activities and or situations.
if dh would have invested and leaned in, as he has as a parent, over the last 13 years when it came to us as a couple i’d like to think we wouldn’t be where we are right now. but we won’t know that, will we? no. he has always resisted and flat out refused to do any work when it came to us, whether together, with counselors, mediators, self-help books etc. steadfast in his determination. even all of those years ago, when his affair with a then colleague turned into a full on love affair and we hired a mediator to form a parenting plan in preparation for a divorce, even then dh refused counseling. of any sort. even as we worked to rebuild our marriage and family when he ultimately decided to stay; counseling to address what got us to his stepping outside of our marriage in the first place was never part of the plan. until D-day 6-months ago.
and then it was suddenly “let’s go to counseling” because in his mind; since counseling is what i had been asking for all of these years if we go to counseling “it” would be fixed. to dh, who is a very good and well-rewarded engineer, he sees our marriage as a project, complete with a gantt chart, deliverables and milestones. if you check off a box then it’s forward on a timeline. but real life isn’t a project plan, gantt chart. especially when you add the complexities of emotions, feelings, childhood histories (and for one of us, sex abuse as a toddler) and a shared, past history into the mix. i recognize counseling is incredibly difficult for dh and it’s selfish of me to not have more patience as he works through understanding and internalizing that emotions are very real and very important to people. to me.
when dh had his affair(s), he was safe in knowing that i didn’t want our marriage to end. but i also had to take ownership of my role in what led him to a relationship outside of our marriage with a colleague that he fell in love with. a big problem is that we never worked on repairing our relationship when he decided to stay in our marriage. instead we let life become the priority and when we had kidlet number 2 everything else but the kids, our careers and our community service took a back seat.
dh never expected me to stray. hell, i never expected it of myself. and now that i know what mutual desire, emotional connection and emotional intimacy is, the question isn’t whether or not i can go back. i can’t. the question is do i move forward with him and we do the heavy lifting together knowing that nothing is guaranteed and it’s a crap shoot. or, do i move forward, alone, and forge ahead.
someone asked if our counselor or my dh knows about this blog. all three therapists (our mutual marriage counselor which dh chose, his therapist and my own therapist) know of this blog and one of them has commented here and there. they all know that i also have a nsfw tumblr and dh knows i have a couple of blogs but only has access, that i know of, to my professional blog, the one i get paid for.
i’m happy because it’s been brutally hot for the greater pacific nw over the last month. unheard of. cold, heavy rain is refreshing to me and while today is going to be a tough day all around. it’s also a good day because it’s a new day of fighting the good fight for our son, together.
as i’m sure my fellow bloggers, complicitgrace and thewomaninvisible , can attest to, as well as understand, last week at work was brutal. while a (current) survivor of the round of layoffs as well as one of the project leads at the global company my career is tethered to, there is the aftermath to deal with.
the aftermath of assisting those impacted by job eliminations but those that have survived and frankly, those of us on the project team as well. believe it or not, it’s hard to switch back to “normal” given the size and scope of what we just undertook. and we did it without outside consultants or hired guns (think “up in the air” starring mr. clooney above) which can really, suck. there’s nothing like being the one to have to notify a colleague, neighbor, former lover (not me but my colleague inadvertently was assigned to deliver the news to a team that included her first ex-husband!), etc. that they no longer have a job. even with a severance package that is generous, it’s crappy work. and a bit of you dies inside each time.
darling husband has known i was on some secret project for the last 9-weeks. it’s come up during our counseling sessions due to the inordinate amount of stress and some of the medical complications that my treatment has encountered as a result of that stress.
yet on the day of the actual milestone not one word of good luck, thinking of you or don’t worry you will get through it. instead he asks me to remember to pick his shirts up from the cleaners and to pick up a baby gift for one of his co-workers. and yet, he wonders when we sit in our counseling sessions how i can say “you just don’t get me”. i swear i wanted to scream and walk out the door. but that’s too easy. i know some folks, specifically a vitriolic troll, are always saying why don’t you leave and the reasons are numerous and complex. likely the same reasons dh hasn’t left either. yet.
so in practice of what we’ve been coached on in counseling, i tell dh what i need in that moment and for that day. and was clear that if he couldn’t provide it, i was going to reach out to my long distance friend for the reassurance and emotional connection he provides me. if even for a moment of solace. it’s the first time dh has acknowledged that maybe our son gets his autism from him because while he can see that kind of connection is important to me, he doesn’t understand why emotions are important. of course, i don’t have to reach out to “him”. when i finally log in to my laptop at work the first message that comes through is a silly limerick and a simple sentence telling me to take a deep breath, let it go and know that he’s thinking of me. and so it goes…
is me is really me 