Doors Closed

Friday, December 28, 2012


I spend a great deal of time trying to puzzle through my relationship with Terrance.

On nights like this, when he has called me a selfish and miserable bitch and I follow him to tell him that he has my full attention and what does he need which causes him to tell me through clenched teeth and bulging veins to leave him alone, I wonder why I stay married, why we stay married.

I do not claim to be innocent. I ignored him as he comes moaning into my bedroom, seeking my attention. This is because he does this constantly. He moans, he groans. He tells me that he thinks his chapped lips mean that he has cancer, or that his stomach ache is an ulcer. He interrupts what I am doing to make me look at the cut on his foot, or ask me to put a band-aid on it. While moaning.

This drives me fucking crazy.

Then he stands in front of the television. Like a three year old.

I do not give him the attention he craves so he, like a toddler, amps up his requests for attention.  Then, like a toddler, he storms and rails against me. Unlike a toddler, he knows my soft underbelly and rarely holds back.

He uses the words I use to describe my mother: Narcissistic, self involved, selfish. Why does he fucking put up with me?

The truth is that I don't know.

The other truth is that since 1991 I have been building my walls against his disapproving anger. I insulate against the punishment, the disappointment, the litany of words that describe what I am not for him.

I have deadened my reactions to him because the alternate would be to live on tenterhooks. This state of being is not conducive to attempting any kind of normalcy.

The other mind fuck is that I can no longer tell you if it is him, or if it is me or if it is neither. I have no grasp of what is real in this relationship. I do not trust what I see nor what I feel. I certainly don't trust the person who has told me that I am neurotic and have low self esteem for 21 years. I recently asked him to introduce me to the person he thinks he is married to since I have no idea who this person might be. She doesn't look like the person I know internally.

Goodness knows that the person he presents to the world in no way resembles the man with whom I live.

So many of these doors are closed and I have no energy or desire to open them.

Doctorem

Wednesday, December 19, 2012















Something arrived in the mail last week.


I am not yet ready to write about the murders of children in Connecticut. Suffice it to say that I have cried more than I can quite understand. Emily has been comforting me as I weep. I do not like for her to be my comfort, for it is not her job in the world. That is my job in her world. Yet, those events broke something in me. Perhaps it is because I have loved and taught children just like those children. Perhaps it is because I am now teaching young teachers, just like those teachers.

All I know is that I continue to cry, even now writing this.




Chip off the old Baleful

Wednesday, December 12, 2012


The drive home tonight after I pick Emily up after school:

Emily: "Eli asked me if I knew the reason we celebrate Christmas and I said "I dunno - gifts? Trees? Family?" and he said "NO! We celebrate the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ!" so I just shrugged and said..."Uhhhhh......OK."

Me: "Was Eli upset?"

Emily: "Yeah, he was getting all stressed about it. Then I started to giggle and he asked me what I thought was so funny so I told him "Easter." That is when he asked me if I knew what Easter was all about then proclaimed "Our savior rising from the Dead!" That is when I said "Do you know what my Mom and I call it?" and he asked me what, so I told him."

Me: "Oh, no......"

Emily: "Zombie Jesus. I thought his head was going to explode he was so angry. I asked Eli if Zombie Jesus needed to eat braaaaiiiiinnnnnssssss and he just didn't think it was funny at all."


Me: "I'm not sure you are going to be invited over to have pizza at Eli's house anymore."


Incorrigible

Sunday, December 09, 2012


I had been watching the men working on the lot across from my office for quite a while. There was a house there that suddenly one August day .....was not.

















I thought not much more about it. These things, houses and people, come and go. One is best served to not resist the flow of the tide, but rather observe and remember.

















I settle into the flow of my days, of classes and students, of new names and faces. I settle Emily into her new routines and smile to myself as she begins to socially blossom. My smart ass sense of humor flows directly through my daughter. This does my heart proud.

By the beginning of December the work men come back to the lot across the street.






































I am getting tired, although I dearly love my job and the students.

Later that night, I am leaving my late class. The sun has already set and it is getting cold. I walk towards the parking lot.

I watched the men pour the concrete that day. The tug of longing to stick my finger in the rough, cold cement and make my mark surges up, a remnant of childhood.

I look around. Surely, no one will stop a professor on the way back to her car. It will just look like I dropped something and bent down to retrieve the errant object.  My finger touches the concrete. Still damp and rougher than sandpaper.

D.................R............................
















My giggle erupts after I finish, snap the picture and walk elegantly back to my car.

I remain incorrigible.


 
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