Marin’s Boggle Blog

There are aspects of time that still elude me after all these years I have lived. To an extent I tell time and decide how quickly it is passing by marking the moods of others in my immediate life. I live from mood swing to mood swing in persons I know and can often tell – if the person is cyclical enough – that better times or worse are in the offing. I’m not sure if that is a purely feminine trait (to survive in the world at large and to please a potential mate who will protect and provide for me and my offspring) or if it is my personality type that makes me this way.

For example, lately I have noticed that when my partner is at his grouchiest and seems poised to make my life miserable, that what comes to my mind first is not how to confront him, but how to appease and please him. I find myself cooking his favorite food, picking up things he has strewn about and in general thinking of his immediate welfare. I have no clue why I do this. It is nearly totally unconscious. It has taken me years (and coaching from my soulmate) to begin to notice it.

Perhaps I do these things because I really do believe that if a person is not comfortable that confrontational behavior lurks nearer the surface as irritation mounts for extraneous reasons. It stands to reason then, that there is something to be accomplished by attending to the “little extras” in a person’s life. Then you can be sure you are dealing with them and not their discomfort alone. I am not exactly confrontational by nature so why people allow life’s irritations to get the best of them is lost on me except for how to use that trait in others to my advantage.

I don’t know if meeting the needs of others this way is best, or even actually helpful in a relationship like the one I have at present. Perhaps making sure the other is comfortable is counterproductive. Perhaps a confrontation is what is needed. I can’t think of any way to make sure other than to try it both ways…

So next time I might just let the creature comforts slide where they may.

May is upon me… I don’t really know why May has always been my favorite month. I believe it really has little to do with the fact that my birthday (and my father’s) are in May. It actually has much more to do with the warmth and brightness and the firm hold that spring first, and then early summer have later in the month. I function far better in a bit of sunshine. May transitions the world around us to longer and sunnier days.

Many important events in my past are linked to Mays. Graduations, acceptances, impregnations, and travels of importance have often been in May. Of course, there have been May’s with negative events in them as well, and last May was one of those. I have survived the year. I have… come out alive, with my heart in shreds, but alive nonetheless.

I have no idea where I am going or why right now and for the first time in my life it seems disturbing to think that is true. I feel desperately that I need a direction and a plan and yet I cannot make one…

A certain someone reminded me the other day that I once told him I had just drifted in and let things play out in my life rather than truly taking charge and making them happen. But, I wonder whether that was true or not. Have I been fooling myself about how I make things happen? Have I had plans that I just didn’t acknowledge? Maybe so. I surely do feel lost without a plan now, and since I’ve never “made” one before… I have no clue where to begin.

There have been some new developments in my on-going problem. First of all I must say again what others have said; namely, that in life, no matter what happens time goes on. It’s not really that time changes anything, but rather that things settle in ways that are totally unexpected when they first become apparent or quite surprising for other equally unbelievable reasons. For example, whoever would have thought that for all my ranting and raging and desire to stop grieving and move on that really all I had to do was to be faithful and to have patience, which is what my answer to prayers about my dilemma seemed to be telling me was the key.

My love has not changed one bit. Well, that’s not exactly true… It has become far deeper than I ever expected because I thought it was as deep as it could possibly be before! Just goes to show how little we know about ourselves, our capabilities, and the future we have in store each day when we awake. My love has deepened, and intensified. I still want the same things I have always wanted from the person I love who was estranged. Yet while those things seemed to have gone to a place far, far beyond my grasp ever again while I was in my days of greatest apparent distress, they now tease about my head like a butterfly looking for a place to light. Maybe here. Maybe there. Maybe today! Maybe tomorrow.

I am happy just to have them flit about and I try not to grasp at them to pull them near. That would only frighten them away. You see, my estranged one’s love is as fragile as a newly born butterfly and – like that tale we used to hear in childhood to keep us from trying to capture those ephemeral creatures – if I touch its wings it might die. Thus, I have learned to speak to the butterfly and it listens if I don’t shout. I know it enjoys – perhaps craves!  –  my virtual presence each day, and the joy of that knowledge is sustaining after all. The future is still beyond my ken, but it seems clearer each day and my dreams loom ever larger than before in ways and with possibilities I feel deep in my heart, but cannot express with words spoken or written.I dare not touch the butterfly’s wings, you see. Not yet. Not until it lights and invites me to.

End of installment Ten…   

The book Dewey is really quite good. The author, Vicki Myron (with Bret Witter) relates the tale of Dewey with a style like that of Pearl Buck, Agatha Christy or Urma Bombeck. That is, she writes with the wisdom of one who can impart occasional nuggets of truth about daily life because she has studied in the greatest human nature laboratory of them all - the Small Town of the countryside, Any-country, planet Earth.

There are bits of wisdom and insight in each chapter that bring me up short with their amazing applicability to my own circumstances of late - Now, as I have referred to it in this series.

For example, today I read these choice words:

“A hero of mine, Dr. Charlene Bell, says everyone has a pain thermometer that goes from zero to ten. No one will make a change until they reach ten. Nine won’t do it. At nine, you are still afraid. Only ten will move you, and when you are there, you’ll know. No one can make that decision for you.”

It makes perfect sense, but I’ve never heard anyone actually verbalize it this way. It explains why my aunts stayed with their alcoholic and abusive husbands, and why one of my best friends finally divorced long after her children were both grown and her husband had actually mended his philandering ways and settled down as a faithful and caring partner.

My aunts either never got over their fear or never built up enough pain to reach 10. My friend had had enough over the years and reached her change threshold when everyone else believed she had finally gotten what she had faithfully waited for. No indeed! She made a major change because … it was time.

I believe all of these women were/are happy about how things turned out. My aunts all outlived their husbands by many years and spent their latter widowed days in peace and loving surroundings with their children and grandchildren. My friend has a new marriage and a new life with a wonderful husband who loves and cherishes her and probably will forever, just like she always dreamed it would be.

It most likely also explains why I rather suddenly but without hesitation applied to Harvard, and also why I stay put here for now where I am. Those actions and decisions are not so diametrically opposed as they seem at first glance when seen in the light of the wisdom of that passage above. Maybe I’m … still only at 9.999999999 on my pain thermometer for this stage of life’s circumstances.

There was one more passage I read today that is applicable to another chapter of my life a few years back: 

“I guess my final answer is that when everything in my life was so complex, when things were sliding in so many directions at once and it seemed at times the center wouldn’t hold, my relationship with Dewey was so simple, and so natural, and that’s what made it so right.”

I would substitute my soulmate for the name Dewey, but otherwise it seems quite like my own assessment of my life then. This also needs more meditation, but this is the … End of Installment Nine.

The book I am currently reading is titled Dewey. It’s about a library cat in a small town in Iowa in the 1980’s. I admit that I probably chose this book the other day when I was at the bookstore because my cat had just gone missing a few days previously. I couldn’t resist, though the kitten on the cover looked nothing at all like my Tigger. (Now; Installment 3)

It’s a fairly good book so far. Today I read these words… “one of the worst things about bad times is the effect on your mind. Bad times drain you of energy. They occupy your thoughts. They taint everything in your life. Bad news is as poisonous as bad bread.” Then the author goes on to explain that Dewey served as a wonderful distraction from bad times and a distraction was just what the doctor ordered for the community there in those lonely Iowa plains.

I do believe that distractions are not only important, but essential to survival of the spirit sometimes. I use work and have used work for many years to distract myself. It certainly helps and is usually “productive” in other ways as well. Like providing a livelihood and a vital sense of worth and usefulness to mankind and the furthering of society, culture - what have you…

But, there are disadvantages to using work as a distraction. The main one is fatigue when you use it in the volume that I do sometimes! When twelve-hour days six to seven days a week are the norm you know you are probably overdoing it. Or, at least that’s what my colleagues tell me. I tell them I’m not sure yet. (One colleague corrected that to say, “You are not DEAD yet, you mean.”)

It would seem that if you hit yourself on the head enough times with a hammer that eventually the pain will be lessened if only in the sense of becoming familiar, or a habit or something expected rather than endured under duress. My personal pain comes and goes and I’m not sure that work helps relieve anything at all. Work is a great distraction, but when it is done the pain returns and I think in the long run it is the fact that I have become familiar with that pain that takes away the original sting of it.

More thought is needed, I’m sure, but this is the …

End of Installment Eight

Over the past two years or so I have gained and then lost weight. Again. I have done so very slowly, which was my design. However, people have begun to notice now as the loss has finally become a significant amount in relation to the previous me and people mention it to me almost daily. I don’t find this a particularly good thing, but it neither helps nor hinders my progress. My mind is made up to continue this way. For now at least, and Now is all I have.

I lost weight once and then gained a lot back and… Well. Let me explain.

My history with regard to my weight has been that I am basically an emotional eater. Like many academic achievers of both genders I tended to eat more before examinations and even more after every drop in my grade point average. I ate when I was extremely unhappy to try to cheer myself up. I ate when I was extremely happy because deep down I didn’t really believe I deserved happiness. I had to seize the moment, so to speak, so I used to celebrate my every triumph and every defeat with a Hershey bar or a Fudgesicle.

I was a skinny child and not a fat teenager (though I thought I was…) and I was not overweight to any degree for any length of time until I passed thirty-five. I stayed away from overweight by dieting occasionally as most women do, but I never dealt with the real problem, of course. Furthermore, I forgot the real meaning of the word diet, which is the sum total of what any organism eats on a regular basis.  What most women and the multi-billion dollar diet industry refer to as dieting is actually simply following a lowered calorie regimen of one sort another, usually for a specific time period. When the original eating pattern (the personal diet) is resumed, the weight eventually returns.

After thirty-five some things happened in my life that made the cycle of up and down turn into a rather permanent up and up. Let’s just say I was quite unhappy with my life and, therefore, with me. Like many women, my concept of myself was (still is?) quite bound up with how I thought others perceived me and small rejections loomed large during that mentally difficult period.

By the time I came to my senses about whose opinion of me I should believe, I had become sick and the extra weight I had carried around for a while contributed to the condition. To make a long story short, at age 56 I found I needed to have an operation and after that ordeal I made some decisions about myself.

I decided first of all that I wanted to go back to school and get an advanced degree. I also decided that I didn’t want to be fat anymore because I deserved to be my childhood me again. So over the next two years or so I lost 50 pounds, and was accepted at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

One more wonderful thing happened in my life about that time. My soulmate found me. For a while my newfound self and my life with a soulmate was the best thing that had ever happened to me. But, … people change (as I said in Installment 1) and some change faster and more often than others.

I cannot really say that my soulmate changed so much as I can that circumstances changed my soulmate. It ranks now as the largest disappointment of my life. There have been other huge ones, but… I did not count on this one at all. The promises were all different! The dreams were all larger than life and now all is in rubble at my feet.

When things began to unravel some time back, I began to eat again for the same old reasons. The weight started coming back for the same old reasons. Ah well.

But, this time I was lucky in several ways. To make another long and private story very short, I came to my senses with regards to my eating habits. It helps always to be able to control at least one aspect of your life and since all else was (is?) spinning out of control, I decided to take better care of me.

I tell people I’m not on a diet and I am not. At least, not the way they would think I meant if I said diet. I eat what I want whenever I want, I simply keep track of all of it and set a daily limit. Some use portion control and others use calorie counting, but it is all the same, really. It means monitoring everything that goes in and making new habits that last forever or longer and not for that “specific period of time” of the usual low-calorie diet.

I don’t know how much longer my resolve will last, but I’m okay for Now. Nothing lasts forever they say, as you know. I believe there are more parts and pieces to this aspect (especially with respect to my grieving which began this series) that I need to explore, but this is the…

End of Installment Seven

Not a day goes by that I don’t ponder to some degree what has happened to me and doing so brings plenty of pain and confusion. Why do I continue to love so deeply while grieving for what I have lost? Some days I feel mostly defeat and despair. Others I feel anger and frustration. At times I am also euphoric and confident about the future, though it seems on logical examination that a happy ending for me in this state is the least likely of outcomes. But, … logic in relationships isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I sometimes feel that I am the only one of us (my estranged person and me) who feels this way, and some days I know I am not the only one, but mostly I feel that the other in question here has no reason at all to feel as I do as they have passed beyond this point totally. Why not? They are not the one left behind! Nothing more to feel about for them because they have left the building! I cannot be sure which state depresses me more at the end of the day.

At the head of my bed sits a small glass elephant. Her name is Amy and she represents hope. In fact, she was given to me by the one I grieve for with promise and hope in mind. She was to serve as a reminder of a special future based on our soulmateness and mutual past. At least that was my understanding of the gift.

That special future we dreamed of seems farther away than ever just now, but each night when I go to bed Amy is waiting for me. Her crystal luster never fades and her proud trunk never changes its position, never sags, never droops downward in submission. Her head is neither bloody nor unbowed.

Amy holds my faith in that special future. She guards it and keeps it bright for me. I have to believe, in part because Amy does, that things will turn out right.

I know that saying right perhaps means I have abandoned my own personal dream, for who knows what is “right” in this case. Not I, and not the one I grieve for though we probably both feel we do know and what we “do know” is probably vastly different for each of us right now.

I do still have my dreams about what I want the future to be like someday. So far I cling to them and why I do is as puzzling to me as it is to my counterpart. Rather than call myself stubborn I prefer to think the quality is steadfastness or loyalty. Stubbornness is one of those negative qualities that can creep further into the negative and become controlling, vindicitive, or vengeful.

Finally, there is the added fact that my love and affection for this person from the very beginning seemed to come from a source outside myself. It was always with me and I simply became aware of it at that fateful point in time. How can a love that’s always been there fade? I believe it cannot.

End of … Installment Six