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Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Unglamorous Life

Roi calls but no longer leaves messages. It helps me pretend he's never coming home, though I do wish he would answer my email about when I can expect his return with our two week house guests: a man, a cat, and a 2 month old puppy. I know it's coming soon, but suddenly need to know the exact date, the exact hour so I can prepare myself for the coming intrusion. Laughter and meals and chores and stories and petting and admiration of another's animals will be expected. Instead I will probably lock myself in my upstairs office. I'm not sure if I'll be protecting myself, or our guests. Already I've imagined dozens of scenarios over which I snap -- or rather, show that I'm in the exact place that I'm in and the laundry list of reasons for it.

The therapies, the conventional and the not-accepted-by-science/pharmaceuticals, have lifted me up out of the black void, but I am still far from being stitched together. This is partly because one doesn't recover from being splintered over-night, and partly fierce refusal to carry on as I have picking up pieces and patching them together like a teacup dropped to the floor and crazy-glued back together so that life can go on and tea can be served.

The refusal part, it would be bold and glamorous of me if it were of my will, but it's not. It just simply is. There are not enough pieces left to glue together. There is not enough glue that can patch up the holes or make anything that resembles a me. It just can't be done. There is nothing to do with these shards but to throw them into a melting pot, let them churn and boil and surface and soften and dissolve.

I am breaking and becoming at once. 

Last night as I drifted off after hours of restless tossing I heard a man's whisper in my ear. I was not yet dreaming, or rather I was beginning to, but the whisper was outside the dream. "When are you going to go?" I jolted awake and wildly wondered if this was some new form of dreaming I had not ever experienced, if something in neurofeedback had somehow caused it. Exhausted, I drifted again and this time heard a woman, "it was meant to be a surprise". Heart beating violently now, frozen in the bed, in my dark room I began to fear I was at last going mad. I had been dreaming of a giant reptilian tail scraping around a corner behind a doorway, but the whispers were not in the dream, not part of it. The sound was outside the dream, outside my head.

Which wild phenomenon should I label this? A simple trick of the mind because I've been letting someone play around with my brainwaves? Submerged memories coming to surface? Echoes of the subconscious? Spirits? "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato"? Or old-fashioned madness? 

I am breaking and becoming at once. 

I don't know how long I lay there searching the dark, searching my mind, with the little table fan whirring cheerily next to my head, the cat curled peacefully in the corner. I don't know the exact moment I fell into dreamless sleep. I only know that I did sleep, and in the morning there was sun. 

P.S. It might seem that first whisper, "when are you going to go" is an obvious call from the subconscious, yet the feeling I got from the words was in the present tense. As in, what minute or hour was I going to leave that night. 

8 comments:

  1. Briar, I finally had a chance to read back in your blog, and figure out who is who. I like your take on things..especially not being a victim and not getting labeled as co dependent, etc. So much of what I hear at meetings (which are sparse for me these days) is people being called co dependent for doing what any normal, loving person would do. Like if I gave a down and out neighbor a bag of groceries I would be kind, but if I give my addicted son a bag of groceries I'm an enabler. Whatever, I like your blog..and I like it even better now that I know Roi is not your son, and Kyd is not your partner..LOL

    thanks for your comment, I appreciate that you "get me".

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  2. 3 months ago, I had a similar voice come to me. I had finally gotten to the point of getting down on my knees and praying to whatever, whoever, asking, in desparation, what to do about my marriage. The next day, out of nowhere, I heard a soft voice say 'If you can't live like this, then don't'. I don't know what it meant, but I took it for what I needed it to be. 'Permission' to leave. I'm typing this from my new apartment. A place of peace and loneliness and predictability (imagine that from an addict's wife!). I am free and wouldn't change it. Whenever I wonder if I've given up when I shouldn't have, he does something to remind me of the craziness I was living in. It's not easy, in fact it's really, really hard, but it's sane. It's so amazingly sane. I'm breaking all over again as I reflect on the insanity that I was living with, that I was denying. Today though, my life has sanity.

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  3. Lou - I'm glad the "who is who" is all cleared up for you now. :) I am very much of the school of though that much of what we label as "disorders" are responses to crazy situations. And yes, much of what we view as loving behaviors are turned into "enabling" and "codependent" behaviors. It doesn't change the solution, but it does create a subtle and profound shift in orientation and approach.

    For example, how much more supportive could we be as a culture if we stopped viewing codependency as a diseased mind-set. We would be able to view families and loved ones of addicts as those who could use outside support.

    Anonymous - So glad you're enjoying more sanity and freedom. :) May it continue.

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  4. Just keep becoming and listening and know, even in your brokenness, how strong you are.

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  5. Briar I so admire your strength and fortitude and honestly! I enjoy your writing and this post reminded me of this article I read recently. I loved your imagery of the broken tea cup and the gobs of glue, perfectly fitting. Wishing you a good monday...
    http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/06/why-being-broken-in-a-pile-on-your-bedroom-floor-is-a-good-idea--julie-jc-peters/

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  6. MA - Yes, I saw that article too. I posted about it here: http://mamabp.blogspot.com/2011/07/embodying-goddess-of-never-not-broken.html

    Thanks for stopping by. I've just come back from reading over at your place. :)

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  7. Briar, that is so hilarious! That it was from your site. Ha. I'll have to go back and site you for siting it in the first place, I sent it to a friend! I've read incessantly about this topic for months and totally forgot where that came from, thanks for the clue-in. Laughing here...

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  8. ps- thanks for stopping by for a read, it's a blessing to know others are making their way through and lending their kindness along the way. :)

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