keeping things separate

[insanely long post warning - written over 3 days from Sunday through Tuesday]

It is a beautiful day here. The weather is about as perfect as it could ever be. Went for a walk at lunch.

My mind is going about a hundred miles an hour. I wanted to declare this an "emotional growth free week".

I am considering the various elements of my life. I am not satisfied right now with my life. I am not where I had planned to be, I am not where i want to be, and it is making my awfully dissatisfied.

I hope that I can keep my dissatisfaction with my life separate from any issues there may be with Smitten.

In no particular order:

• I want the property settlement done
  
• I want to be in my house
  
• I want my daughter back
  
• I want my son's trials with school to become settled
  
• I want my credit cards and other debts paid off
  
• I wanted to have done a trip to Montreal and Quebec City by now
  
• I wanted to have some tickets and rooms booked for two music festivals I want(ed) to attend
  
• I want my holidays and travel plans more solid (money is the key issue)
  
  
• I want to not be triggered by almost everything in my life for some piece of repressed anger bullshit
  

i am so fucking sick of all the everyday activities that trigger anger and upset from my life with stbx-Mrs_C. here's an example:

Smitten is filling up her water filter jug - one of those Brita things. It makes me think about how she uses it to fill her coffee maker and to fill her ice cube trays. I think it must make better ice-cubes. Which makes me think of stbx-Mrs_C giving me shit for not making ice-cubes properly.

Yes - you read correctly - not making ice-cubes correctly.

stbx-Mrs_C would give me shit for not making ice-cubes with hot/boiling water because she had heard somewhere that boiling water first gets rid of the gases in the water and will make them clear.

when she made ice without boiling water first it was OK because "well, i'm just in a hurry this time"

yeah - ice-cube flashbacks

how's that for a mood changer?

i am just so goddamned vulnerable to being freaked out by things at all times i have no idea of what to do. i have no reasonable filter with which to decide whether i am just a nut case myself now, or whether i actually have anything to be uptight or concerned about in my current life and relationship.

that's one of the reasons i have to write it down. because i can't separate reality from paranoia. i am still hypervigilant. i am still waiting for it to crash on me. i am still waiting for Smitten to be the same kind of freak that stbx-Mrs_C is. I'm still waiting to bolt and run.

----

i try to keep an objective idea of what is what in my head and on paper. i am good at ignoring my emotions and feelings. did it for a lot of years. what's a little while longer?

the difference now is that instead of repressing or denying my emotions and feelings i am trying to live them and feel them.

i just don't always act on them. i try to honour the validity/realness of the emotion without necessarily concluding that the emotion is grounded in or attached to fact or reality.

it's a feeling. the feeling s real. it provokes or causes a response in me.

it's like shadows in the dark. the fear of the shapes is real whether the threat is real or not. it's like a nightmare - it can still bother you even if it exists entirely in your own head.

----

i know that i think that Smitten is gorgeous.
I know that on many occasions she turns me on a lot.
i know that sometimes i'm just kind of shut down sexually - then she doesn't.

my head feels, and my emotions seem to feel, but my body just doesn't quite get in tune. i've known for some time, and have discussed here, how i couldn't perform sexually after stbx-Mrs_C would rip into me. same thing here - if something has jolted me hard enough - and it can be really small little things (and that pisses me off) - the equipment just won't work, or work right.

sometimes i'm just filled with a swelling song of joy when i see her. it's pure and it's wonderful - it's beautiful like she is. sometimes i'm just completely pulled back and in to myself.

----

i raised how i felt about the picnic in the park with her.

i told her that i had the impression that plans were a little more tentative than they turned out to be, and that i felt that she had dismissed my suggestion (daughter's suggestion) and had not been collaborative in her decisions - and that i had realised after talking to her that her plans were more set than my initial impressions - that my impression had been based on the tentative language she had used in raising the idea with me (how does that sound to you? does that sound like something that could work? is that something that could come together? what do you think?).

i asked her to use more definite language when she had a definite plan, eg: i want to do this... would you like to do this too? i am thinking this - are you good with that plan? these are the things i have in mind...

she asked me to reciprocate by asking her if some proposal was definitive or was open to modification.

----

she told me that she was going to agree to change location at first, but then decided not to because she had a plan. she said that in her previous life she had always ended up changing her plans based on what others wanted and then not getting to do it her way.

i asked how that squared with her always being the one to make all the decisions on how things worked.

she said that she stopped doing things she wanted because her husband, while he would do whatever she proposed, would always do it less than enthusiastically and that after awhile she just stopped doing stuff he didn't want to because she couldn't bear the disappointment of his unenthusiastic response. that she would then end up planning and co-ordinating things she actually didn't want to do. and that grated on her very much.

that she had been trying out an assertive behaviour on me. that she felt safe enough to be assertive with me.

i can relate to such a statement. i am trying out being assertive with Smitten. being kind of pissy with her and voicing my objections on a relatively immediate basis and saying things like "yes, i am getting very defensive" are new behaviours for me. in the past i would have either apologised for getting my back up or would have said "i'm not getting defensive" and then have folded right there.

----

i talked about my need to have friends. that i needed to make time to develop some friendships. about who some of my possible friends might be.

i have none

not really

i have my one friend, the artist, but that friendship is a little strained as a result of bad propaganda being directed at his wife by stbx-Mrs_C (they see each other when son goes to visit their son [good friends])

i have people that i have known for a very long time, and some who were friends, but the relationships lack some of that essential quality that moves them out of the occasional lunch zone and back into the *friends* column.

i will work on a few of those.

----

i have told her that i want to make sure that i am a solid and stable individual, and that subsuming too much of my self to our relationship will not be good in the long run. that i have to be fully formed as an individual, not just as a partner in a couple

----

i haven't broached the not every night phone call thing. she's strong but she's weak.

not weak - fragile - in many ways

she has spent most of her life with just herself to rely on. she has compensated for many things in her life by being a little brittle. by covering for the fact that she felt so alone by being the get things done, in control person.

she always had the car, she always pulled the booze, she always had the smokes (she smoked when younger), she always had the money and her shit together.

under that shell is someone who is still the child who was essentially - well not just essentially - was abandoned by her mother as a teenager - after her father had already been absent - after her mother had already left her to her own devices for most of her life (latch-key kid extraordinaire) (but being left alone is probably a good thing given the fucked-up'dness of her two siblings after having their mother more present in their lives).

----

Smitten's Mom was quite the piece of work.

Without going into the huge explanation, her mother was hypercritical of her kids.

I have observed the results in Smitten's sister G. G is always worried that her best is not good enough - always bringing out one more plate of food, always apologising that what was brought out isn't good enough - her house isn't clean enough - isn't decorated well enough - keeps a special set of sheets that are only ever used for guests that are only used a few times so that the sheets are always new enough, blah, blah, blah.

Smitten's Mom flat out told Smitten that she wanted her to not think she was anything special because she didn't want her to have a high opinion of herself - because she thought Smitten might get uppity because she was attractive.

Smitten's Mom worked evenings and Smitten was left to fend for herself from a pretty young age. All the way to doing things like the household grocery shopping and other pretty adult behaviours.

When she was 16 Smitten moved out because she couldn't cope with being around her Mom. The guidance counselor and vice-principal at her school told her she would fail and drop out of school like all kids that tried to move out at that age - that she'd never make it. After a year of working full time and going to school she decided to move home. Her Mom told her she was selling their house and moving away. That Smitten had already proven herself capable of looking after herself and would be fine.

She was on her own.

----

So you see, one of the worries that I have is that Smitten's mother was a lot like stbx-Mrs_C and her Mom - without the whole beating and abuse thing...

being as all this stuff is multi-generational

except Smitten hasn't ever followed through on being a bag after we bump or disagree.

i will get panicked and worried that she is is pulling a stbx-Mrs_C and then it doesn't happen. there will be a minor bump - which, with stbx-Mrs_C, would have precipitated a major blow-out. with Smitten the blow-out doesn't happen.

she doesn't bring stuff up or torture me with the past. so it's different. i hope that after awhile i won't trigger like i do now.