I read an earlier thread where somebody said "everybody wants to be Cedar's husband."
I told D H this. Deadpan, he said: "Everybody but Cedar's husband."
Remember the story about him kissing me in my sleep? And I kept teasing him about it? And he said: "Whatever, Cedar. I thought you were the dog."
:O)
That's amore.
As our circumstances, bodies, minds, change and grow, to make sure we cherish our relationship and take it to the next level with us.
I think not necessarily take it to the next level with us. I believe there will come a time in every relationship, not only in our marriages or friendships, where the purpose in it has been met. It isn't so much about growth, like some of us get so stuck on our spiritual growth, as it is about challenges met and challenges coming and not even having time to stand up, let alone make sense of things most times.
We are here on purpose.
What we do matters. Whether it seems to or not, whether we ever know it or not, what we do matters very much, I think.
Maybe, everything we do.
If the time of a relationship is past, I think we can not save it, but only destroy it, or ourselves, if we try to find a value in it that is no longer there because we have to focus our attention on whatever is embroiling us, next. The thing is, there is no way to know where the cut off occurs. Just like I am always so surprised at what happens in my family of origin around the concept of shunning. Though I felt so ashamed at first, soon enough, I could see the patterns in it and realized it was just something my family does, and has always done.
So, the relationship problem there was mine, in the sense that I certainly did suffer from having been shunned. That part was true. What was not true was that I could ever have changed patterns determinedly set up by my mother.
Never, in a million years, would I have been able to change those patterns.
What I can do though, is understand where I am being weakened by their actions and encompass that understanding into my concept of self.
Whatever you guys. I am getting beyond myself here, again.
I do love my people. That is true. But it is also very much more true that they like to hurt people, and that includes me. It has to do with power over and internal versus external locus of control and all those things I do need to work on...but I cannot advance in company with them.
Even to think of them is a painfilled thing, for me.
***
Copa posted about something her M said once that was so perfectly right: "I haven't left you, yet."
That is the way of a long marriage, I think.
The trick is in knowing which thing is anger and which thing is real and I don't know how to do that, either.
"I haven't left you yet."
I have never forgotten that.
***
Maya taught me that, too. In one of her interviews, Oprah asked how she could stand where she stood, given her upbringing and her race and her sex and her poverty and prospects. And Maya said: "I am here on purpose."
And she said: "If I might actually be somebody someday, maybe I better stop smoking cigarettes and cursing." And she said: "I did stop cursing."
:O)
When asked how she could know that feeling of here on purpose so unshakably, Maya's response was that a religious person had told her to say, "God loves me." And he required her to say it and say it until she believed it, until the voice in her roared it out without fear that it might not be true.
And for Maya, and for all of us, that changed everything.
That is what we need to do, too.
All along, I was patterning. The patterning was the feeling of not being enough, that if I did this, if I did that, it would be different. The reality of it all, is in Maya Angelou's quote about loving yourself. For both of us. If I am projecting that I am not enough within myself, how could I be that for him? If he has never learned to love himself, how could he see and know what it is I am asking for? If he was never shown as a child this language of love, how could he speak it?
Yes I really like this, Leafy.
I agree.
It's like sincerity guides us correctly, but having not been treated sincerely, we have to balance our ways in.
Again, for me, this would have to do with internal, versus external, locus of control. The places I am weak, my D H is roaringly strong. The ways and places I am strong
I never once suspected existed.
Living with my D H made me...well, I don't know. Values clarify, in a way. There are so many things I do very well
but I was raised being condemned for them. One of my mother's favorite sayings: "Just don't think, Cedar."
Such contempt on her face.
I can see it to this minute.
The difference now is that I see her through my eyes, and not myself, through hers.
So I can see the wrongness in it, and I can see the hurt to me and can see too, how cheap was the thing my mother bought herself with my heart's blood.
Turns out I think just fine; very well, in fact. Not always the same as everyone (okay you guys ~ pretty much, as anyone) else, but that is fine. We can't all be perfect like my mother.
That is the standard, of course, when we have been abused.
That the abuser is perfect and you are not.
How Maya stood up: Here, on purpose. All of it means something, whether we can see it or not.
I read somewhere once that "at the touch of Eternity, we will know."
I shall take him into the cabin in the woods and work with him. Gently, yet firmly. He needs to know that he has done the best job he could do for his children, that their addiction is not his failure, it is their choice. He needs to know that he is enough.
This is very beautiful, New Leaf.
I love it that you are thinking of you and your D H in this way. I knew there was deep affection there, just in the way you found him so sweet and funny and outrageous and frustrating.
Ha! Good, good, good for you and D H.
He will be so surprised.
What will you let him do for you? This is a piece of where we get, when our children have been troubled and we have refused to nurture ourselves or accept nurturing from others.
We are so alone, and so strong, because if we are not, we might cry, forever.
And then where would we all be?
But you are here with us now, Leafy.
And that will make all the difference.
It is the language that is so different, with men and women. We get to go all mushy and gushy, to turn ourselves inside out with expressing sorrow and grief, while they have been taught to be pillars.
I think that's part of it Leafy? But I think it goes deeper than that,
and I think we believe it, too. They are the men. Certain rights and privileges accrue. They are the fathers. Certain rights and privileges accrue. When things go very wrong, not only do the men feel they have betrayed themselves as males and fathers and protectors but
so do we.
What in the world was I ever once listening to anything my D H said if he couldn't get us (me and my children, that essential bond that happens between a mother and her children) from protecting the babies I birthed to successful adults?
That was very much a piece of things, for me.
It was a piece for D H too, only in a different way.
Back in the beginning, when not one, but two children were so outrageously troubled and we could not figure out why? We would secretly accuse one another of rotten genetics.
And eventually, that stuff all came out, of course.
And there was my stupid family. And how uncomfortable am I now.
Oh, roar doggone it anyway.
Chinese swear work Hung Fuey.
Where is my Chinese waitress.
I hate being wrong.
In my own defense, I will say that bad tooth alignment runs on D H side of the family while my family all have very nice teeth.
I think it brings him back to the horrors of his childhood.
There was a thread on P.E. about traumatic events with our kids keying into childhood trauma. Everything gets lumped together. Each time a trauma happens, we are socked with old trauma/new trauma/ predicted trauma and are frozen in place. We numb out just to function. When we numb out, that most recent trauma too is stuck onto the unrecognizable, undecipherable mess of prior unresolved trauma.
And we walk around like that until one day, we break.
During all of the craziness, hubs had major health issues. He went further inside of himself to protect himself. It is hard for all of us, this aging thing. Especially for men, losing strength and vitality. Add the complexities of adult children with problems, what a brew.
Yes.
Recognizing how unpredictably horrible are the things, the repeated traumatic things, we have survived is a first step to regaining our self respect, I think. That is what we lose, when we cannot help our children. We are so invested in them, in the pain and the loss on so many levels.
I am so sorry this has happened to all of you, and to all of us. We will just do the best we know, then, and that will be more than enough.
I just tell my kids all the time that we love them.
Sometimes, they sneer back.
I don't care.
***
The Esther Williams piece is what it is to be female. That is the wonder in that piece, and maybe, in all art. See the patterns, how everything makes patterns. That is in there, too.
And the fear of intimacy, at the end.
This was perfect, Leafy.
Thank you.
There is such generosity in the Esther Williams woman figure when she is able to perform without self consciousness, without wondering how it looks so much as knowing how it feels.
Very nice! I really liked this piece, and I loved the music, and the humor and generosity. I loved the generosity in it the most.
I loved the turtle, and the swimming that could not possibly be beautiful but it is.
I feel very much like a woman, now.
No shame, to be as we are.
Beautiful, in every smallest or even, awkward thing.
No pretense.
***
I would like to learn to surf.
That was beautiful. I could feel the sun and the water, and the men, testing their strength in the sun.
How beautifully correct that you included this for us.
:O)
Thank you, Leafy.
Cedar
too funny, you guys.
