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Learning and trying to be kind and living my life as fully as I can stand it.

Friday, October 2, 2015

Yes

People are responding to me, via text or Facebook messenger or other older-fashioned ways. The main thing I'm hearing is "Me too."

Me too.

Something is happening here. Let's pay attention.

When I wrote my marriage post (can someone tell me how to link to old posts here? I am computer-challenged) my husband got upset. I could understand his reaction. I had asked him weeks before whether he minded if I wrote about our marriage and he said I should go for it. I think I offered to let him read it before hand, which I didn't end up doing, mostly because I felt like I was so careful to make that post about me, not about him. As if it is easy to separate those two things and people out when you're talking about a marriage. He felt like I'd just written on the internet that he was failing me because I was saying I wasn't happy. No way! I didn't feel that way at all and I was sorry what I'd written had brought that up for him. I was glad I had written it though.

Why? Because I say things out loud. That's always been important to me but more and more I'm seeing it as my calling maybe. Eek. Saying you have a calling feels a little presumptuous but hey I'm on high-dose steroids so I feel like I can do or say or invent anything so let's all enjoy it while it lasts.

I've written about this before I think, though the archives of this blog are like a foggy land of cocktail party conversations drowning in amnesia and I can hardly remember what I have put down and what I haven't so bare with me if you've heard this before. I've written about how having four small children in a row has the tendency to bring out a certain response from other people:

"I thought having one was hard, But I can't say anything to you!"

or

"I'm going to tell my daughter to stop complaining. She has two under four and she thinks she has it bad." (Wow, yeah. Don't tell her that. That will help no one.)

I get it. We all compare and it can be jarring to try to figure out to respond to someone that seems to be doing 4x the parenting you are. It's impossible to even imagine it other than doing some made-up math in you head like "If I took the diapers, the crying, the food on the floor, the whining, the puking, the pinching, the sleeplessness and the emotional devastation of parenting my one child and multiplied it by four. . . I would die." The looks on peoples' faces are funny except for how slightly tragic they can be. And yes, it is that hard. It is hard, hard, hard to have two sets of twins under three. But it has got to be hard, hard, hard to have one or two or three or..I can't go higher than that or I will have an anxiety attack.

And marriage seems pretty damn hard for many people. Most people? All people? I don't know but I'd say definitely most. Not hard all the time and probably some couples and some individuals find it less hard than others. We can lose sight of this because these are hard conversations to have. It's scary to admit when something isn't working. What if it's me? Am I even allowed to say I want to feel happier than this? Feelings get hurt. Communicating with other people is hard. God, SO hard.

I wrote that marriage post because it was true for me. Thankfully, it does not feel true right now so I am enjoying the hell out of that. But mostly I wrote it because when we were in Montana this summer I had a conversation with a female friend, someone I don't know well but with whom I felt an immediate connection when we met a few years ago. Incidentally we met right after my husband and I got engaged, saw each other again at my wedding a year later and then hadn't seen each other until this summer. In the span of those four years I'd gotten engaged, married and had four kids and she'd gotten divorced after thirteen years of marriage. Painful.

We talked about it and when I mentioned how hard the last two years had been for me in terms of our marriage she was surprised. She said she always admired my pictures on Facebook and how happy we looked and wouldn't have imagined we were struggling. Which struck me in two ways. Really? I almost never post pictures of or comments about me my husband and oh no.

I do not want anyone to look at my life and feel worse about theirs. That's not under my control but what is under my control is the ability to tell my stories and say things out loud. I have a gift for that. And because I have seen throughout my life what happens when you open your mouth, put words to a page, create a piece of music or do anything that allows for the connection between us. Those connections let people take another step. Another breath.

Me too. Me too. Me too. I am hearing this from a lot of women. So far it's mostly women but I'd guess there are men out there thinking and feeling it too.

This is hard shit. I think we need a revolution.

5 comments:

  1. At least a revolution!

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    1. Actually YOU are my first anonymous commenter. And I love this comment. At least a revolution!

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  2. So hard. You are very brave to write it all down and to show your face, to not be anonymous. I hide inside anti depressants and survive through complaining at school drop off and pick up. We feel guilty complaining when someone has it harder than us but it's all relative. I am owning my complaining. I don't care if someone else's life is harder. That's their cross and this is mine. Thanks for sharing, brave woman.

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    1. I think you're brave to take anti-depressants when you need them. And I think it's ok to hide and complain if that is serving you right now. You are my first anonymous comment! So strange because I don't know whether I know you or not. And I think it stinks that people feel like they can't complain because someone's life might be harder. You get to complain when your life is hard! I'm glad you're reading and I'm glad you commented.

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    2. You don't know me. I stumbled upon this.

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