Distraction

I am feeling distracted today which is no help at all to writing test plans, project plans, or new code. I decided to write down some of what’s distracting me in hopes it will help clear things up for me. I’m also going to make myself go for a walk over to Powell’s to pick out a book to give to one of my SMART readers, who “graduated” from the program this year.

More bad news at work today. In addition to my director’s mother dying last week a co-worker’s brother, who has been battling brain cancer, is in the last stages of his life. He’d gone into remission for a while and things were looking incredibly positive for him. They found another cyst in his brain yesterday. Today he had a few lucid moments and in them asked to have his breathing tube removed, to not replace it should he stop breathing. After receiving this news I sat for a few minutes doing loving-kindness practice for my co-worker and her family.

I think the biggest part of the distracting disquiet is that I believe AM is angry at me and feeling like I’m ignoring him, “pushing” him out of my life. That I was sick for two weeks probably doesn’t measure in much to his feelings. Aside from being sick, I do admit that I have been keeping communication with him down a bit. I’ve been angry with him and rather than confront him about old decisions that cannot be fixed now, I’ve just been trying to work on being present to how things are now. Some distance has helped me from falling into venting that anger at him, merely complaining about the past.

I told Hogen that when I try and pull away the anger and the many times I felt deeply disappointed, I’m just sad. Putting in the garden was bittersweet in many ways, bringing up a lot of that sadness. Sweet because it felt really good to make some progress and the yard, having it look nicer. Bitter because I kept running into tangible evidence of projects, ideas, tools all just set aside to rust and decay. So many instances where an investment of time, if not money, was made only to be abandoned after the initial enthusiasm wore off.

It hurts to remember the many times I questioned this approach, said that I think things should be done in a different order, or at least continued. Most times I was given a list of reasons as to why it was OK that things weren’t progressing how I’d hoped they would or assurances that things would be different, but then weren’t. A lot of times it felt as though my priorities didn’t really matter in the overall scheme of things and that either his priorities were more important or that he had put the priorities of other people ahead of mine, of us.

For some reason it hurts more when I’m holding some rusted tool in my hands that had meant so much to have the year before that spending money on it couldn’t wait until there was actually money to be spent. However, it apparently didn’t mean enough to be put away for the winter so it would be in good shape this spring. I’m not sure why I feel the hurt and anger so keenly when there’s some material reminder around, but there it is.

Broken stuff, broken dreams, broken hopes, broken promises… And the overwhelming feeling that I should have done something differently earlier. At times it feels like every rusted and/or broken thing I find around the house and yard is just further evidence of my complicity, my fault. I feel tremendous shame around all of it.

It isn’t useful at all to dwell on decisions I made then and it is even less useful to direct anger at AM for the decisions he’s made over the years. It doesn’t actually fix anything at all in the present and in the long run only hurts our chances for maintaining some kind of friendship. Nor would any of it change that a fundamental instability in my relationship with AM was my trying to force my sexuality to go the direction I, we, wanted it to go.

Right now I’m finding it challenging to reach out and foster our friendship, although I am trying. It hurts really letting myself feel the deep sense of disappointment I tried hard to ignore, feeling that I didn’t matter enough & that other priorities were more important, and recognizing, mourning the loss. It has been incredibly painful deciding to direct the movement of my life towards my priorities without him, to agree with him that it was time for us to end our marriage.

During my sessions with GM she and I have talked about how we would have eventually hit this point, the need to end my marriage. Last autumn I was still trying to find a way to “figure it all out”, feeling that if I just worked harder at the problem I could fix it. When AM responded to my distress by saying he thought we should end things I was surprised, it was not the direction I was going. After talking with him about it I agreed he was right.

I’ve wondered a lot if he’d be less angry with me if CK wasn’t in my life right now. If he saw that I was without a relationship and struggling more would it be just as easy to be angry with me?

It isn't that I begrudge him his own hurt and anger. I can only assume that just as I am feeling the full impact of the loss and the pain around examining that loss, he is going through the same process in his own way. It would be entirely unreasonable for me to expect him not to feel hurt and angry as well. I guess it just hurts a lot that he’s angry at me.