Seeking Settlement

Hello, B,


Hmmm...raining. It's beautiful here - cold and crisp (they actually said that on the news) and sunny. Not that I've been outside. But I can tell from my window. Sounds like a delightful evening planned with your various reading materials and wine. I might join you when I get home from book club this evening.

Not only have I not left my house yet today (it's almost 3) I have hardly left my couch. I did have sort of a valid reason, though. We are reading Eat, Pray, Love for book club tonight and I had to finish it. Yes, I've already read it, but that was months ago, so I committed to read it again. I had over half of it to go this morning, so I parked my butt on the comfy couch in the super-sunny living room and read....for almost four hours.

Now, having sat relatively motionless for so long, my muscles have practically atrophied and I have no energy whatsoever, for anything. It took everything I had to go upstairs and put makeup on. Thank God I had already taken a shower and dried my hair this morning; I don't think I could have managed all that right now. As it is, I'm ready to go (but I'm not leaving for another two hours) and I'm sure there are things I need to get done, I'm just not really sure what they are and I'm not really sure I care.

I know you haven't read the book so I hope you don't mind if I talk about it for a minute here. (There's nothing I can "ruin" really, in case you do read it.) You may remember that the first time I read it, I mentioned that it had really touched me and made me think differently. It was very inspiring. It was no different this second time, except for the fact that it became painfully clear to me how little I have done/am doing with that inspiration (and all the other inspiration in my life, come to think of it). I can't even tell you how many self-help books I have read over the years; I won't even pretend to erase some from the list that maybe aren't technically "self-help" - like this one - because, frankly, they all are. I mean, you can't pass off Dr. Phil as anything but mentally medicinal (even if he is a crackpot) but sometimes I think we try to wrap this s**t in brown paper bags and act like we're actually reading literature.

What I got from this reading was the realization of how profoundly unsettled I am in my life. That's the premise of the author's decision to take her journey but I didn't tune into that the first time. I finished the last chapter today and was a little taken aback by how obvious my lack of inner peace is. How could I not have seen that before? Not just in reading this book before, but before today? Before now?

Yes, I probably do have some kind of clinical depression and I bet I do have a chemical imbalance and I most likely will benefit from these new meds. However: (and I do mean to put a colon there, even if it's not exactly grammatically correct) how will medicine settle my mind? How will medicine help me to find peace in my marriage, in my relationships with my kids? In all this reading, and therapy and counseling I do, I have never once actually sought inner peace, that blatantly. I keep reading, or going into that office and spewing out my day to day frustrations with life but I never really have a goal. I never feel much different afterwards and I don't do anything about any of it between readings or visits, either. If I'm not actually talking in the counseling office, or physically reading the book, I'm not working on me at all. I just keep going back to my daily insanity - as you reminded us a day or so ago, the repetition of the same behavior in an effort to achieve different results.

I'm not saying I need to drop everything and run off to India or wherever. I have no idea what my journey should or can be, only that I really, really need to take it. Yes, I'm inspired in the moment, this afternoon, since I just put the book down. I've been here before. But something today is so heavy, Barb, so much more urgent and a little scary. I can't keep living this way, day in and day out. It occurs to me that my marriage is truly, literally, falling apart and I'm doing nothing to stop it. In fact, I'm quite sure I'm aiding and abetting its demise. I keep passing it off with excuses like "All couples go through rough periods", "It's hard to stay connected when you have kids", "That's just the way we are, the cards we've been dealt", and my personal favorite, "I'm not mentally healthy".

In reality, all and none of those apply, to some extent. They're all true, sometimes, for some people, even for us, sometimes. But honestly? It just comes down to the simple fact that I live with a stranger and I can't find one single good reason to stay married apart from the kids.

I said it.

There is nothing about our relationship that feels right. Nothing. We don't talk, we don't argue, we don't parent, we don't laugh, we don't have sex, we don't do anything to change it. It's so much easier not to - every time we attempt a conversation about the way things are, we get in a raging fight that's so full of ugliness and bitterness and unforgiven resentment that we end up literally not speaking for days on end. And then some moment comes where, apparently, it's all over and it's all ok and back we go, head first, into our insanity. I guess it's comfortable here. It's much easier to say "Oh, when the kids are gone, we'll fix this" or to pretend that going to a counselor once a week is actually doing an iota of good, than it is to start the storm, ride it out and see if there's still a village left when it's over. Neither of us seems to have the energy for that kind of battle; today I'm painfully aware that not having it will mean the end of everything. And it will still be unsettled.

There won't be any kind of closure to this kind of dissolution. This won't end with a bang; it will most likely end with a note on the kitchen counter when I'm in my 50's and I just take my coat and disappear. There won't ever be a resolution, I won't ever be able to let it go. That's a lot of what Gilbert talks about in EPL, letting it go. That won't be an option if I don't do something now. I'll be 95 years old and I may be long gone from here, but it will not be over. That's how we do things around here. We just keep doing but nothing is ever done.

No wonder I can't shut my brain up at night and no amount of red wine or Ambien or talking or writing can make me still. I haven't been still since...I'm not sure...ever. I bet I've never been still in my whole life, because I'm so busy looking for the answers I don't even stop long enough to hear any of them. And they're probably flooding in all around me - probably always have been - but how would I know? I'm already onto the next question, the next quest. I haven't got time to listen, for God's sake, I have too much to say!

And with that little burst of revelation, I have to go. To Book Club, which I love, even though everyone is going to have hated this book, because they're all fairly devout Christians and all the hocus-pocus spirituality is going to be way more than they can handle. But, our meeting is at a good Italian restaurant and even though I'm driving, I can probably have one glass of wine. And, I have to remind myself, my book club loves me because I'm always the one who offers a perspective that no one else sees before I bring it up.

Thanks for reading and hopefully we can catch up verbally soon.
Love, A