Category — marriage

Oh, hi there! Where have I been since Thursday? Well, I’ve been cleaning like a crazy woman. I’ve also been thinking, with a concerted effort towards not thinking like a crazy woman. Results were mixed.

A long time ago, in a land far far away, I believed in soul mates and fate and fairy tales and happily ever afters. My evidence for these theories? My very own happily ever after. The wasbund and I were meant for each other; we were meant to be together, I was fated to meet him and marry him and live happily ever after. The philosophical and the personal fit in a neat box, tied with a pretty bow. We all know how that worked out for me.

When your marriage ends you largely set your philosophical concerns aside. There are property divisions to negotiate, broken hearts to mend, and the immediate and practical concerns of such a momentous change overtake anything abstract. The mere emotional processing of the split and the circumstances that led to it were more than enough to deal with.

So now that my poor little heart has some fresh pink skin where the wounds once were, and I face the likely possibility that love lies waiting beneath the last few frosts of early spring? Those philosophical questions tumble around in my head and heart while I’m cleaning out my oven and mopping my hardwood floors.

The whole idea of soul mates comes from Greek mythology; the story of humans roaming the Earth with four legs and two heads and getting too big for their britches, inspiring Zeus to cut them in half to force them into humility. So the story goes that we spend our lives searching for our “other half”.  It is a very nice story, despite a little gore, and it certainly resonates with the human condition…

I also think maybe it’s a huge part of the problem, the idea that we are half-beings searching for wholeness and completion. It is the kind of story that the wasbund’s wife would have loved and cherished and clung to.

This girl doesn’t feel like a half. She feels pretty damn whole, thank you very much. She would love to have a man in her bed every night, she would be very happy to cook someone’s dinner while he mows the yard, she loves to love and wants very much to exercise that part of herself.  She would still have a pretty sweet life if she never had those things, though. Wistful, sure, but lost and lesser than? No.

Still, I cannot let go of the belief that love improves us; it calls us to a higher self and offers us  joy and comfort that make us greater than we were without it. Even the possibility of love has already made me lighter, softer, less likely to throw things and yell at pe0ple. Well, a little, anyway.

The idea that there is one perfect mate for each of us is one I always ascribed to. Now that it has become personally inconvenient, I wonder- is there really only one right answer to the question of mate selection? Or are there only so many different kinds of puzzle pieces, thus meaning that any number of people might fit together well enough? Or is it a mix of the two- that there are people in this world that we are supposed to love? Supposed to love and lose? Supposed to love and keep?

So what about free will? I’ve long subscribed to the theory that love (as in the verb) is a choice, that we decide to nurture or starve our relationships. Do we exercise that free will independent of fate? Is it fated that we will exercise our free will to maintain or destroy the bonds of love? Does fate merely open the door, and we walk through it or decline to do so of our own free will?

Can it really be as easy as finding someone who delights you, that you share common values with and feel a strong attraction to and deciding to make something of it? Does your success or failure result from fate or free will, or a mix of both? Can you create your happily ever after?

I guess all of this philosophical meandering comes down to one very real and concrete question: how do you know when it’s right? How do you know when to surrender and give in and allow your heart to give your logical mind a run for its money?

If it comes down to an emotional and ethereal knowing, that scares me. Because I didn’t think that there was any more certain knowing than what I once knew. But as it turns out?

I didn’t know a damn thing.

On Facebook this afternoon, I posted a status update that said that being nice was too hard and that I’m giving up and rockin’ the naughty list for the rest of the year.

My father’s sister (the Other Aunt), posted the following response:

“Cath, you were brought up being nice, you can’t change because your to nice anyway.”

In the moment I read that, my general malaise tipped over into white hot rage.

I’ve said this here before, but I will say it again. Whenever I was mean or nasty, whenever I argued or dissented or allowed my legendary sharp tongue to get me in trouble as a little girl, my mother would utter one of her favored parenting phrases:

“My job is to raise you for others to love.“  Sometimes it was prefaced with “I don’t care if you hate me“, but there it is.

She raised me for others to love.

Not to love myself. Not for me to love others. Not to be happy, healthy or productive.

I was raised for others to love.

So guess what? So guess what that message turns into? That earning the approval of others is more important than honoring your own feelings, that winning the game by winning their love is more important than anything else.

That you’re nobody till somebody loves you.

That’s why I’m upset. Not because I miss David. Not because it’s awfully lonely to go from even a miserable marriage to the endless string of worthless evenings that are a part of the single life. Not because I’m not strong enough, or not EVEN because I’m ready for love again and can’t find it. (I’m not.)

I’m miserable because a part of me still believes that rotten, awful trash.

I’m nobody till somebody loves me.

Oh, goddamn it. I’m thirty years old. I own a home. I’m pursuing an education. I have a promising career. I have the most incredible friends one can ever hope to find. My life is full. I am whole.

But that little girl, the girl in her ruffled panties and polished Mary Janes who just wants to do what she wants to do, and reacts with rage when her wishes and needs aren’t met?

She wonders what is wrong with her.

She wonders why a boy who could not grow up, who left her for someone else when things got hard, didn’t love her enough to make it work- she wonders what is wrong with her.

That little girl thinks that if only that boy loved her enough, he would have been able to grow up and be a man. She thinks that him not loving her enough is a reflection on her, on something broken and disgusting and untouchable about her.

The grown up me has a hard time chasing that thought away, because he knew me better than anyone else ever has, and maybe ever will. That knowledge inspired him to throw me away like yesterday’s trash, turning our thirteen years together into a consolation prize and a sham. Or at least that’s what he told her.

I know, I know. His problems are his problems, and I am neither the cause nor the solution. But his voice, his voice. Her voice. “I didn’t love you enough to do these things for you” “My job is to raise you for others to love”. It’s maddening, and there is a part of me that just wants to do anything and everything to drown out those voices.

I am somebody. The love of others is only a part of why I am somebody- I am somebody in my own right. Whether I ever find love again.