Recovery

Most people know I was sick this week.  Not too sick, but sick enough to stay home and do nothing.  I lost my appetite Sunday night when I came down with it.  I'm still sick, but about 65% well.  That's not bad.  I still can't smell anything, so perfume is a waste, I can't taste anything so I eat only when my stomach tells me I'm hungry.  I didn't get a cough, and drinking Sleepytime Throat Tea seems to have worked magic.  Well, that and my friend Meg's (the soothsayer of her Japanese village) magic potion of Japanese herbs.

Being sick gives you a lot of time to feel sorry for yourself, but as you start to feel better you recognize the signs of "better".  The sore throat goes away, body aches are gone, sinus congestion a little less.  You move into recovery.  I expect this is the same as with divorce.

It is the worst in the beginning.  Knocks you off your feet like a sharp blow to the gut.  You can't go out because you might "infect" everyone with your sadness, so you hole up at home.  You remove yourself from people who are just nosy and hide.  At least I did.  I have.  I am.

When I first separated a year ago, I told people I was coming down here to look for a place to buy for our "winter getaway".  I got a few quizzical looks.  I never told my parents anything at all.  As far as they knew, I was still in Washington.  When I would call them, I made sure I knew what the weather was like in my hometown because I knew they watched the weather and made sure I was up to date on what was going on with my kids and faked like I was still there.  They never knew until I decided to tell them.  Shocking I know, but I was trying to pretend everything was fine, so as not to worry them.  Like when I feel a cold coming on, I pretend I'm not getting sick, until it slams me down and I can't deny it anymore.

As the three month trail separation drew to a close and I knew I would have to move back to Washington, I knew I wasn't ready to go back.  I had just started feeling at home.  I had just started to make friends.  I didn't want to leave.  It was the first sign that I knew I was getting stronger, but not fully recovered.  I was just starting to see a glimpse of the person I wanted to be, the person I wanted to become, the person I was.   As I rounded the new year, I started to pack up, trying to face my life and hope that the month in Hawaii we were supposed to spend together could salvage the marriage.  Sadly, it was a relapse.  It was like working out when you  had pnemmonia.  (I can't seem to spell this word and I'm not sure why the spell check isn't correcting it.)  I wasn't ready yet.  I went from sleeping alone for three months back into our shared bed and it seemed so...intrusive.  My marriage was sick, I was sick, and I was trapped in a cycle of denial, anger, and self-pity with no medicine I could take to cure it.  Like a cold, it had to run it's course.  Sure, we did counseling, but it was like taking aspirin.  It helped in the counseling office, but once we left, like aspirin wears off, the symptoms came back.  Both of us were in this endless cycle of learned behavior. 

Over years of living of learning what the "correct" response was when my spouse was angry, upset, sick, hurt, whatever... I just couldn't break the pattern of my own responses.  Even though I knew that we weren't communicating like two partners walking beside each other towards the same goals in life,  I wanted to get well.  For years, I wanted us to "get well".  I would have done absolutely anything to get healthy.  You can't do it alone.  You move through this life and do what you have to do on a daily basis with spurts of fun and recreation.  But the truth and reality, is that we have to work, we have to take care of our children and be responsible.  It's not easy.  So often I get asked how I managed to raise such great kids?  How did I do it?  Did I have a choice?  I did what I had to do.  We all do.  Mostly.

One thing I've realized as a mother is that there wasn't one day that I had the thought..."What can I do today to fuck up my kids?"  My kids were normal kids, they weren't perfect.  Neither was I.  Every day I did the best I knew how or was equipped to do to get through the day and be a good mother. I used to tell my kids when they would tell me that they hated me, that they should take it up with their therapist when they grow up. We all have issues.

Was I a good wife?  I thought I was. I loved him.  I was in love with him.  I did what was expected and I supported my husband and we had sex regularly.  Was my ex a good father?  Yes.  But it was the same for him.  We were ill-equipped to be parents so young, but we did the best we knew how to do at the time we were doing it.  Was he a good husband?  At times yes.  It wasn't all bad.  But like a cough that never seems to go away, we got used to it.  The dance.  The way things were done.  We each had our roles and we played the part in public and in front of the kids.  But the actors in this play were real live people with their own private thoughts and feelings.  Feelings that were never discussed, or dismissed when they were.  Like the virus that lives inside you that finally germinates to a full blown flu.

The virus in your marriage can come and go.  You can fall in and out of love many times over the years.  Marriage is hard.  Sometimes it's like an infection and you can't ignore it and have to take antibiotics to make the problem better.  Counseling, if administered properly and in time, can heal you.  I dragged my ex to counseling many times.  but if you don't take the medicine you won't get better.  Dragging is not willingness.

As the years pile on and the symptoms remain the same, sometimes you just sigh and say...I always get sick at Christmas.  This too shall pass.  I can mask it with Theraflu or Dayquil.

One day, you look in the mirror and you don't recognize the person you've become.  The lines around your eyes, the extra ten pounds you've put on...you've been sick a long time, let yourself go, and AGED.  All the while doing what you had to do, ignoring the sore throat and the runny nose because you had to keep going.  You had kids to finish raising, laundry to do, dinner to cook, sport practices to drive to.  You realize you are dying...and you have no time left to do the things that were the hopes and dreams you had as a young girl.  All the romance novels you read and fantasized over, all the adventures you would take, all the novels I would write....real life is real life, not many of us live in novels. 

And yet...you keep going.  Giving.  Giving up.  Losing yourself, because who are you if you aren't a wife or a mother?   The kids all grow up and leave.  You are left in a big house staring at each other at a loss for words. You become the couple in the restaurant that look around and eat their dinner in silence because there is nothing to say.  You are in your own head with  your own thoughts because its the only private place in your whole world that is yours alone.  Because everything else was given to, or belongs to, someone else.  Your hopes, your dreams, your youth, and your life.   And then something begins to happen...you either accept that you are dying, or you fight for your life.

I fought for my marriage, I fought for it for 20+ years.  Like a cancer that has metastisized,  I began to lose hope for recovery.  When I finally gave in...finally took my last breath in the marriage...he wanted me to live.  He was ready to fight.  I was just tired.  People have asked me, "Why?  You have been together forever, how can I throw away my family and marriage like this?"   He looks like the victim.  I am the criminal.  He was finally ready to take the cure and fix our marriage.  But it was far too late.  The cold went from mild to severe and finally dying...complications of pnemmonia.  (sp? still can't spell it)  People are shocked, people are talking.  But like a death, the loss never goes away, but the pain of the loss can heal.  He is not the only one who suffers.  My kids are not the only ones who are losing what they've always known.  I suffer too.  I fought a losing battle in my marriage.  I left because I wanted to live, I couldn't trust the old medicines of counseling to work anymore.  They never worked before, why would it work this time?

I had to try alternative medicine.  I moved away from everything I've known for 48 years.  My children, my friends, my parents, my husband, my  hometown....I fought... I fight to recover.  I fight every day for strength and for mental health.  I rely on a strong support network of friends and family that get it.  I write, I blog...

I'm certain it sounds selfish to say that I wanted something more.  It was.  It is.   I didn't leave a healthy marriage.  The marriage was not about us.  It was a structure in which we raised our kids.  It wasn't a marriage built upon mutual respect.  It was a kingdom of one king and no queen.  I was the lady in waiting.  Waiting for 27 years for it to get better.  It never got better.  When the one who finally realizes he's out of chances when he had a million, he wants his marriage...it's over.  The love is gone.  And there is no recovery. 

It's really hard being the one who left and feel so misunderstood.  I feel sick, and I'm tired.   But as I sit here and type and look off my balcony at this beautiful sunset, with my dog sleeping next to me, I know that I am getting better.  I feel better, I don't cry as much, I am not as lonely...I am in recovery.   I feel 65%...better, and as I heal, as my family heals we all will recover.