Swimming

Have I ever mentioned that I used to swim a lot?

It took me awhile to learn. Once I did, I got better in the lake at summer camp...enough that I could not just learn the rowboat, but the sailboat and water skiing as well.  I sucked at water skiing, fyi.

When I was about 9 years old, I would walk to the local pool on my own and spend the afternoon. 
Then we moved to Colorado and one of the neighborhoods we lived in early on had a summer swim team and I was convinced to join.  I swam back stroke and never learned how to properly do a kick turn without getting water up my nose.  The summer I was on the swim team I was as blonde and brown as was possible.  My hair turned green from the chlorine.

I kept swimming into high school and college.  Just for me.

After I broke my ankle, I went back to swimming because that was all I could do.

I made sure all my kids could swim.  I have spent hours with three children attached to me in the pool.

In the past few years, getting into cold pools has been harder for me.  I don't know why, aging?  Arthritis?  Common sense? 
But a few weeks back I was at wits end and had the fortuitous discovery that a local pool is heated.  Not the pool closest to me, but not too far away.  I have managed to go swimming many times in the past little while and it feels like coming home.   I have been so unfocused since the break up.  Swimming has helped.

As much as I love running, swimming was my first love and it's still there for me.  I can swim and feel better about life. I don't even pretend to attempt a kick turn though.  The scene of some old lady dying at the end of the pool would traumatize the young swim lesson kids.  When I am in the pool I am nine years old again, hoping adult swim doesn't happen any time soon and wishing I had brought a dime for an ice cream sandwich.

Blank

*filed under things I can't blog*

What happens when you have spent the past almost 30 years doing things for others, taking care of others, prioritizing others...when nobody has been doing that for you?  I wake up some days feeling blank.

A friend who just ended a long standing career in academia said she feels the same.  Just blank.

We are both trying to build new lives, but can't see ourselves in the crowd.  I am trying to do things I like, but I'm no longer really sure what I like.  I know what my kids like and I know what the men in my life liked.

I enjoy things, but there are big empty gaps right now.  I am trying to discover what I want to do.

I think this happens to moms a lot but it is not only the realm of the mom. My sister has written for others for years and has found she has trouble writing for herself.    We give ourselves to others because that is what we do.  What happens when the others are done.

I am searching.  I find joy in small things, but don't have any long term plans for myself.  I never have.  Plans for myself have always included someone else and now I'm realizing I have to make plans for me alone. 

I think I need suggestions.

Four years

Four years ago Mark made a choice to step out of our lives for good.  I had been basically single parenting it for quite some time at that point.  The change in our circumstances was, unfortunately, not that great.

I have said so much about Mark in the subsequent years.  Our lives together, raising children, dealing with autism, job losses, depression. One does not start a life together thinking about how terrible things could get.  Things just get terrible on their own.

I miss Mark.  I miss his dark humor and his intelligence.  I miss drinking whiskey with him in the evenings after our divorce when we could still talk for hours.  I remember he explained a thought he had about politics and political stances.  I thought it was brilliant, but I can never remember exactly what he described.  I told him to write it down, but that was one of the last times I saw him.

I was one of the last people to see him alive.  The kids were the last.  I will never know what pushed him to take that final step.  The bill I handed him very early in the morning?  The eviction notice I found out about later that day?  I don't know. He was so troubled and so helpless.  All I know is that the intervening years seem both very long and very short.  When I think about it too much, the exhaustion sets in.

Mostly, though, the days are days and the nights are nights and the children are growing up and I am growing old and he is gone and I miss him still.

Humiliation

We all know the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

But when you are mourning a relationship I think there is an extra stage. Humiliation.

When you have shared your deep down secrets and spent years with someone...you have given a lot of yourself.  When it's over, there can be a deep shame.  I remember how divorce felt.  Shame was a huge part of that.  Infidelity leaks onto both partners involved.  My grief over Mark's death did not include that humiliation stage, just the end of our marriage.

Luckily I'm not dealing with infidelity this time.  I am dealing with the shame of apparently loving someone who did not feel the same way.  There is no real answer except to ride the feeling and let it go when it passes.

I don't think I have ever read or talked about this feeling, but I think it is probably common.  Every now and then I flush at the thought of having been so vulnerable.  It triggers my flight or fight response.

I wish I had something pithy to say about this, but I am still processing.

I'm back

Awhile ago, on another forum, I posted about my "Somebody worth knowing" journal.  Many of my readers rose to defend me "You have always been worth knowing" and I appreciate it.  I think I wasn't entirely clear, and I definitely wasn't fishing for compliments!  So I am going to try again.

I think I have been an okay friend to people and am raising my kids as well as I can.  I have not, however, always felt self worth.  I really started that journal as a challenge to become the best me I can become. So I learn to feel that I am someone worth knowing, who has value.

A man I knew puts little orange dots on all his art supplies and anything he doesn't want to lose.  I used to tease him about it, but I understood.  He valued his tools enough to not want to lose them.  They were worth looking after. 

I have a small orange dot tattooed on the back of my wrist as a reminder.   I am worth looking after.  When I got the tattoo, it wasn't about him, but about me. A reminder that I need to look after me.

So I am looking after me.  Despite my overwhelming sorrow and panic this past week, I know who has my back. I also know I have done what is best for me and the kids.

This new blog is going to be a continuation of my paper journal.  I may even include some of my essays in the file marked "Things I can't blog."  People have often complimented me on my ability to talk about the hard stuff that many avoid discussing.  I want to think about and write about the hard stuff.  Maybe this is a way for me to continue the journey that started with the words "Somebody Worth Knowing."