Out Loud

Good morning A, and welcome back from Maine!
I hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable long weekend with the man. It's nice to get away mid-summer like this. I wonder, is it hard to say goodbye or is it normal, now, to get back to your "regular life"? I have been thinking about you and your relationship with W, this long-distance thing that I imagine can be very difficult yet maybe really freeing and exciting at the same time. You must never get bored with each other. Do you fight? Do you wish it were different/more? When I was in college in Oregon and all of my boyfriends seemed to come from England, I remember writing once in my journal "Some say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but I think that's a load of shit. Distance makes the heart forget." (Wow, profound eh?) Yet, here I am in the 11th year of my marriage, and I could really, really use some distance.

Which would be why I'm sitting down to write this morning, despite the facts that I don't really know what I want to say, or how to start, or even if I'm in the mood to write. I just feel as though I should; I should say this out loud or release it, at least, into the cyberspace between us so that it's not sitting, festering in my head.

What a difficult time we are going through, J and me. Since M moved back into our house in late February, things have changed so much. This isn't to say that it's anything new - things are always changing with us. Actually, what I should say is that things are always staying the same with us. That is our problem. We continue to go to counseling and I think we have great moments of working effectively on issues between us, but for the most part, we are stubborn people who don't communicate well with each other at all. Our patterns reemerge, it seems, no matter how hard we try to change them; no matter how many new ideas MC (our counselor) throws our way, they are all transient. We become very proud of ourselves when one of them is successful - pat each other on the back and tell each other what a great job we are doing, growing together - but in the end, it always comes back to this: I am who I am and he is who he is. I have finally begun to explore the idea that maybe we're just not good for each other. Maybe this just wasn't supposed to work. Should it really be this hard? Should it really be this painful and challenging? Should I really feel like I'm holding on for dear life all the time?

Since M has moved back, the challenges have mostly centered around him and the relationships between the three of us. He is (and always has been) so headstrong. Stubborn and argumentative and angry and bitter and confused and, oh yeah, 15. He and I don't get along any better now than we ever have; we have awesome moments, days even, together, don't get me wrong. He can make me laugh like crazy. I think he's smart and interesting and very, very creative. But he's so volatile that I can't count on any of these things at any given moment. (Is that the 15 part?) One moment, literally, we can be laughing and talking and connecting; within seconds he can be angry, ugly, shut down. And I will sit there, in all honesty, thinking "What in hell did I just say/do? What just happened?" I think I'm pretty intuitive; I'm good at sensing vibes and being able to put a finger on the issue, usually right away. But with M? Rarely. I have to weigh every word out of my mouth for potential damage, which you know is not exactly my forte. I am terrible at thinking before I speak and it's the kiss of death in my relationship with M.

Apart from that though, is the issue of "discipline", for lack of a better word. I seem to be completely ineffective in this realm, for the most part anyway. Again, we have our moments. Simple requests like "can you put your dirty laundry in the hamper?" can become arguments about why I have to control everything that happens in his room. Larger concerns, like "You'll have to get a job and keep your GPA up if you want to be driving this fall" become major conflicts about how we bought C a car, how she didn't have to have a job or get good grades.

Yes, I know that most of this is the fact that he's a teenager and I don't really question the normalcy of the situations. What has become our biggest problem is that I have allowed J to get in the middle of it to such an extent that I now no longer have any credibility; M no longer listens to me. He questions anything and everything I say, where he questions nothing from J. He doesn't argue with, or challenge or confront him. He simply does as he's asked, usually the first time around.

I think the way it has happened is this: in the beginning, J took the lead on discipline because that is in his nature. He's a controller. He also wanted this family to be our family, not a step family, and he thought that he should take the part of father, regardless of biology. I have never necessarily agreed with this, particularly when it comes to C and me. I have always thought that he should be the first contact on issues with her. But I acquiesced to his beliefs about M, mostly because it was easier than arguing with him about it, but also because I quickly learned that it kind of worked for me. If I couldn't get M to do something, I just played the "J card" and voila! It got done. I would defer to J in any situation when M started to act up and he (J) would willingly step in. Now, five months into this new living arrangement, it's all I do. I hardly ever deal with him beyond the first phase of an argument; I almost immediately turn it over to J and watch him work his magic. Then, of course, I lay into M with "why won't you listen to me like that?" when I know the answer perfectly well. Why should he? He knows he doesn't really have to, I guess.

The conflicts between J and me now, today anyway, are about him feeling like he's in the middle of it all and me feeling like I can't do anything right. Everything I read (and I say I, because he won't read self-help resources) suggests that biological parents should deal with their own children, regardless of the family makeup. I have tried to have this conversation with him but he tells me he just can't do that. He has to step in when M is being out of line. And then I defer, again, because it's easier. On occasion, usually after a big blow up, we agree that he will play no part in discipline or decision making with M, that I will handle it all. That always lasts about a week until I just can't take the conflict anymore and ask for help. And to be fair to myself, I think J ends up relieved when I ask because biting his tongue is usually killing him. It also separates us, painfully, from each other. We stop talking about everything else, it seems, when we don't communicate about M.

A couple of nights ago we had a huge blow up about this and this is day 2 of not speaking to each other. There is so much anger and tension between us I can't even think how to break through it, nor do I know if I really even care. I said things in the argument that are hard to take back, like "I'm just done. I don't even care about having a happy marriage anymore and I'm done wasting money on counseling when all we ever do is revert back to the way things have always been. It would be fine if you just moved out." Things like that, things that stick in a person's head even after make-up sex.

And, per usual, he shut down completely. We talked a bit yesterday after the big argument and, again, I said "Let's just leave everything with M up to me. You just back off of him totally. I will take care of everything that happens between us and we'll figure out how to do it together, just M and me. You can stop feeling like you're in the middle and I can stop feeling inadequate." We left it at that (but still not speaking to each other - that part about "why don't you move it" is probably a bit of a roadblock) but I know it's just the beginning of another cycle unless we get some serious help. M and I happened to have a really good day yesterday but no doubt, there's a storm just around the corner and now I have to face it alone.

Did I really mean the things I said about being done with my marriage? Sort of. On some levels. Do I want to f up JJ the way I've f-ed up M with divorce? Absolutely not. I don't ever want to make JJ move from this house (I've never known more of a homebody in my life). I don't want to disrupt his life in any way, to risk having him become the same distant, brooding, depressed stranger called his brother. I don't want to work full time and never be home and worry about financially being able to keep the house and all of that. But the part about being alone? That sounds awesome. The thought of removing this tension from the house, of removing the tension that runs between J, M and me constantly...that sounds wonderful.

Sometimes I daydream about moving away when JJ is gone. I dream about just packing up my car and going to Santa Fe or Minneapolis or Austin and starting a whole new life, just me. God only knows how or why I pick these places - I've never been to any of them - or what I would do upon arriving. If I never have a full time job as long as I'm married, exactly what do I think I'll do ten years from now? But those things don't concern me in my fantasies. I just revel in the possibility of being ALONE. Not married again, not having wild sex with a 20-year old kid, not exploring a lesbian relationship late in life with some southwestern artist in Birkenstocks. Just me, just ALONE. Sometimes it's all I crave and I think I will explode if I don't get it soon. The details of how that is all going to work out are not important right now.

These days, to be honest, B, my alone time is spent on the floor in my closet, where if I close the door and press a sweater up to the crack, I can achieve total darkness and relative silence. I can sit there for a very long time some days. I sit and contemplate whether or not I'm crazy; will my alone time that comes to me in this fantasy future be in an institution? I try medication after medication - for depression, for anxiety, for ADD - nothing fixes it. I go to counseling almost weekly and I have brief periods where I think I'm feeling healthy. But then it seems to close back in on me when I'm not expecting it and I can't breathe again. I become the raging Mom, the awful wife, the distant and unresponsive friend who stands outside her body and wonders "Who is that? I'm here. Can anyone see me? Can anyone else tell that that isn't really me?" But I can't stop her, I can't even slow her down. She goes like a wind-up toy until she's done and only then can I step back in, and only to do damage control.

I can't tell J this. I haven't even really told MC. Some days I want to; some days I want to tell the entire world that I think I'm crazy, really crazy. Not crazy like I'm a mom with three kids in a marriage that is difficult and a step family and a job and I'm overweight and sometimes there are money issues and my parents are alcoholics, the way every woman is crazy sometimes. Not like if I just sit down with a good book and a glass of wine I can calm down and start it all over again tomorrow. But I mean I'm scared sometimes that I won't be able to get up and do it again tomorrow, that I won't be able to turn on the light and leave the closet one day.

Am I normal? Probably. Do you remember the book "Goodbye Without Leaving"? If you remember, I didn't really love it, but I'll tell you, it speaks to me every day. I think every woman feels this way. Every woman wants to know what would have happened had she not...whatever. Every woman is afraid she can't hang on some days. I know this. I have probably convinced myself that I have disorders I don't have. But I also know that I drink too much, I eat too much, I don't take care of my body; I probably over-medicate to some extent. My daydreams of being alone are not occasional, they are constant. (By the way, two things: I have no intention of leaving my kids for any reason at all; the fantasy is definitely in the future. And two, I am not suicidal in any way either.)

There...I said it out loud. I do feel a little lighter but I am still here, still married to J, still not talking to J, still wishing I could hop a plane to the east coast and sit across the table from you, late into the night, reminiscing and reconnecting and feeling alive again. And now it's Monday morning and I have a list of to-dos a mile long, and I have to actually live my real life for now. JJ is, for some reason, glued to Good Morning America (Jennifer Hudson was singing, that explains it), M and C are still asleep...it's overcast and cool, which is kind of a nice change. I am going to leave the comfort of the computer and attack the day with a positive attitude; send me some white light.

I do hope you had a wonderful weekend and can't wait to hear from you upon your return. Love you lots, A