Thirty-Six

I am slowly coming to terms with my life as I know it now. I realize that I can't change anything around me, I can only change my reactions to it. I can't force someone to hire me, I can't force A to work less hours, I can't force a stranger to become friends with me. I am still trying my damnedest to focus on the positive, and ignore the negative. I am trying to stop complaining about what I don't have, and enjoy and embrace what I do have. So I spend up to 14 hours home alone every day- why do I treat that as such a huge burden, such a torture? Why can't I learn to love the peace and quiet, why can't I learn to fill the hours with the hobbies I used to once love but never had time for? In the basement I have stacks of paperback books I've not yet read, I have several boxes of sewing supplies for the quilts I used to make. Upstairs in the studio A made for me, I have all my art supplies- paints, pencils, beads, colored paper, clay, a closet filled with empty canvases. In a spare bedroom I have my treadmill set up, along with a TV and a pile of exercise DVD's. All the things I always wanted more time to spend on and enjoy when I was working full time. Now I have that time, and I rarely do any of it. The hours pass by every day, and I have no idea where they go or what I did. Am I truly that depressed? I have plants sitting on the front porch that need to be potted. I have Halloween decorations half taken out of storage that I need to put around the house. I have a stack of new recipes copied from cookbooks that are simply gathering dust on the kitchen counter. Why can't I do anything? What is stopping me? There is no one else here but me. No one to control my time, no one to tell me what to do or not to do, no one to criticize me, no one to make me feel stupid. Just plain me, an overweight unemployed childless depressed 40-something housewife. Me, and a clock that ticks away my existence, by the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks. Why am I wasting that time? Why don't I see it as a gift that has been given to me? I have a husband who makes enough money that I can afford to stay home and do whatever it is I want to do. I don't have ANY commitments- no children, no family around. In the months I've been staying at home, I could have created a painting a day, I could have written an entire novel, I could have put away all the old photos into albums, I could have baked every pie known to mankind, I could have spent my time working with a local charity and made a new friend. But I haven't done anything, at all. And I don't know why. I don't know what paralyzes me every day when I breeze through the empty house like a ghost. This house is three stories, yet I rarely leave the main floor. I hover around the living room all day long, ignoring everything else. The cats get around the house more than I do. Some days I don't even turn on the TV, I just sit and stare. Or worse, I sleep the hours away. Most of all, what I feel is shame. Shame because I am wasting this time, shame because I can barely function and I don't know why, or how to change it. Shame because I have to lie to A at night, when he asks me how my day was and I say oh, just fine honey, I had a great day. I think he knows it's bullshit, but he pretends to believe me because he doesn't know what else to say, what else to do. There are a lot of women on my block who stay home all day, I see their cars at home, see them in their yards sometimes, but they all have children. I wonder what they do all day long, alone in their own homes. Are they as bored as I am? Are they watching the clock tick, counting the minutes until someone else will be there with them? Are they just sitting in front of the TV watching Bravo all day long? Most of the houses on my street have a stay-at-home mom. I can't even apply that label to myself. What am I? I hate saying I'm unemployed, because I voluntarily gave up my career to support A with his. In the beginning I used to say I was at home full time working on my art, but that is a crock of shit, as I've only completed two paintings in all this time. So who am I? What am I? What am I going to do with myself as time goes on? I keep applying for jobs, but me and another 100 people apply for each one. What will I do with myself if I continue to be a "stay-at-home" person? I am lost, but I am trying to find my way. I am trying to focus on something, anything, other than being alone. I am alone, but I am surrounded by wonderful opportunities that others would love to have. I just can't seem to get my head around it. Why is it so hard to be alone? Am I making it harder than it has to be? Am I just ungrateful, and whiny? A tells me all the time that I'm spoiled, a princess, but he says it with love because he is the one who spoils me and he does so happily. If I am unhappy, it's my fault, it's in my head, and it's something that only I can fix. But how? Where do I begin? It's been nine months now, of staying home alone, in a new city, a new state. This is my life now. I have to deal with it. Soon. It seems like such a simple thing. I'm not setting out to find the cure for cancer, no one is putting pressure on me. I'm only trying to rouse myself out of this black hole, and paint a landscape of a beach, or read a good novel, or bake a pumpkin pie. How hard is that? And why can't I do it?

Twenty

I have not been blogging lately because I have been in deep, grief-filled mourning for Michael Jackson, and have locked myself away since his death, trying to make sense of his untimely demise. Hah. Sorry, I have a sicko sense of humor, he was a loser and it's all now being treated like a head of state passing away. Makes me ill. No, I'm back from a few days spent on the warm and sunny beaches of Florida, where A and I met up with all of my immediate family. There were a total of eight of us. I managed to act normal the entire trip, although I had my moments, but I kept them all inside. A and my father have become good friends over the years, and they have a lot in common and are very much alike in many, many ways. When we get together with my parents, A and my dad have a tendency to go off and do things together, which in a way I appreciate because my parents always hated X, and he equally did a lousy job of tolerating any time spent visiting with them. But, as much as I am gladdened by my parents' love and adoration for my newer husband, vacationing with them leaves a bit of a sting in my heart. A and I barely spend time together, which annoys me because it is our vacation as a couple as much as it is as a big family. While A and my father went off every afternoon and evening to do manly activities together, I was stuck mostly with my boring but sweet mother and sometimes my snobby sibling and her children. Not to say that I didn't enjoy seeing them. But while I was trying to be a good daughter and sister, I was inside a wilting tree that was needing attention from A. I got very little of it, although one afternoon we did manage to spend a few hours together at the beach, taking in lunch on the water. But that was it. I would sit around with my mother talking, or go shopping with her, or to lunch with her, or trying to smile when my nephews did something funny, or politely listening to my sibling's advice to me about my life. It even got to a point where my mother and I were sitting around doing puzzles out of the newspaper, and I just wanted to excuse myself and go into my bedroom for a few minutes, by myself, but I was too afraid of upsetting my mother so I stayed attached to her hip. There was not a moment of quiet on this vacation, as I was never alone for even five minutes, unless it was at bedtime and by then it really didn't matter anymore. I know A had a good time, and while I inhaled the warmth of being surrounded by a loving family that I only get to see two or three times a year, I tried to exhale and to let it all go and have a good few days. I guess I just have a different opinion of what a perfect vacation is, and it's not having someone in your face every minute of the day. A is not the type to slow down, even on vacation, so he had to be doing something all the time, and usually it was with my father because he is the same way. I am happy to sit in one place for long hours, doing nothing, taking it all in and trying to find a centered place in my mind to throw away all of my issues, at least for a few days. But, short of buying my own island somewhere, I don't see that ever happening. I did come back home with less anger in my heart, less hatred for the world, and I know it won't last, as much as I will fight against it overcoming me again. But I also came back to the great, empty nothingness of my home. A got up before dawn and headed off to work, and I slept a miserable 13 hours, refusing to get up and face the day, back to the old routine. Errands awaited me already today, errands that A was depending on me to take care of because he doesn't have the time, so I spent hours driving about town. Everything I did, every place that I stopped, I felt empty inside, with no thought or joy in my actions, I was mechanical. I am "not living in the moment" as they say on the talk shows. My head is somewhere else, and not focusing on the grocery list as I wandered the aisles of the despicable entity that is called Wal-Mart. I stopped at five places around town today, only hours ago, and I can't recall a single thing about what I did, I can't give you one detail about any of it. My mind is already blank, the pressure of a migraine already building on my first day back home. There are things here at the house, calling out for my attention now that I've returned- the cats, the garden, the laundry, the whole home itself. Today I am doing my best to block it all out, to ignore it for as long as I can. I do not want to load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher right now, and I don't want to wash the dirty clothes we brought home from the beach, and I don't even want to go out in my own yard to tend to my dying flowers, my wilted vegetables, my empty bird feeders. They reflect how I feel now. Today I opened up all the shades in the house. We recently installed two-inch, real wood blinds on all the windows, the expensive ones because A thinks that nothing is too good for his wife, and the last few weeks we've kept them closed to ward off the unmerciful sun that beats down on our house and yard, day after day. Trying to keep the house cooler. But the last few weeks have also kept me shrouded in gloom, in darkness, the blinds closed so tight I can't even guess as to the weather or time of day outside. I can't stand it anymore, I had to have the sunlight in my house, the glare in my eyes, to let me know that yes, it's another day, and yes, I'm still alive. My mother had a long talk with me, about keeping up with my housework and taking care of my husband, now that I'm at home and unemployed. She told me to be a dutiful wife, that's her exact words, she is so old-fashioned. So I will come back to this life now, and I will do what is expected of me, what A needs me to do so that our life runs smoothly. I will vacuum up the cat hair, I will haul the newspapers off to the recycle center, I will take his dress clothes to the dry cleaners, I will water the house plants, I will chop fresh vegetables so we can eat a healthy dinner. But I will not want to do it, and I will find no love in doing any of it, and I will do it with anger and resentment in my heart, and I don't understand why. I love A, but I do not love our life together. It would break his heart in a million pieces to know this, so I still wear my phony smile and I hug him as hard as I can and hold on as long as he'll let me, and while my heart rages, his heart can remain intact and full of love for me, ignorant about the truth, my truth. I do not deserve his love. He deserves a better wife.

Four

I call this blog "My Life Is Okay Now" because this marriage is a thousand times better than the first one, and as a woman in my 40's I am so different, and more in tune with myself, than I ever was in my 20's and even my 30's. I believe my unhappiness is all an illusion, and all in my head, and if I could fight through it I would come out on the other side as the woman I am supposed to be at this point in my life. Instead I feel like an immature, sullen, lazy, spiteful teenager who puts their fingers in their ears and goes la-la-la-la-la whenever a parent is talking to them. I don't know what that means in relation to my life, but that's how I feel right now. Just leave me alone, get out of my room, I don't want to deal with it, you don't understand me, I don't wanna do that....all that stupid crap. I believe that much of it is caused by the chronic, unyielding, numbing physical pain I am normally in. Today, for instance, the pain is so bad I literally can't think about anything else, I can't feel anything else. I can't pay attention to the TV show I'm trying to watch, I can't think about what I want to make for dinner tonight, I can't worry about the load of laundry I left sitting in the washer yesterday, I can't think at all. The pain makes me feel like a failure. I can't clean my house, I don't ever want to have sex, I struggle with my weight, I am constantly in an ill mood, I never smile anymore, I rarely get a good night's sleep, it even hurts to drive my car. It took a long time to figure out what was wrong with me, and now that we know, the treatments seem to be useless and even the pain medication only- sometimes- temporarily makes me feel normal. My husband seems sad when he tells me I'm not the same person since we got married, that I changed completely, but what he fails to understand- or won't believe when I tell him- is that the pain started three months after we got married and that's why I suddenly became a "different person". I read a lot, and an article I stumbled across recently said that people in chronic pain tend to suffer from depression. Makes sense to me, although I'm not sure why it took me so long to put two and two together. My pain is a common one- sciatica- and I hurt my back one day in a very common way- housework. Since that particular day, I've been in extreme and constant pain, despite pain medication, despite lumbar injections, despite physical therapy, you name it. And ever since that day, my feelings of failure and worthlessness and surrendering to the dark hole keep growing. The pain won't go away. I have days where it may be less, but never a day of zero pain. On the "good" days I usually become manic and do too much and bounce around from project to project, trying to catch up. Because of that, a good day is almost always followed by a bad day, and I blame myself because I feel as though I overdid it. On some days, I feel like the pain is simply an excuse not to clean the toilets or walk on the treadmill, and I just tell my husband I don't feel well. He doesn't question it, and he expects it. He's even told me to my face he's just come to expect that out of me now- he doesn't love me any less for it, but I know deep deep down inside of himself he HAS to be full of regrets for being married to me, whether or not he wants to admit it. And I feel disgusting and I feel like a damn pig because it hurts so much to vacuum that I just don't do it, and I don't mop my gorgeous wood floors or wipe down my beautiful granite countertops that I picked out myself. And I'm pissed that I live in an almost half-million dollar house and it's so filthy that I wouldn't let my pet sitter come in without enough advance notice for me to quickly clean the living room and close the bedroom and bathroom doors. My husband has offered to get a cleaning service for me, once a month, once a week, whatever I want. But I'm stubborn and in denial and I've refused because for me that just brings home the point of what a loser I've become. Nothing hurts me more than the evenings where I can't get my fat ass off the couch, and I hear my husband unloading the dishwasher himself- after I've been home all day and he's worked for 12 hours. I do love my husband, I really really do, and I hate myself because I am such a terrible wife and partner for him. He gives me everything under the sun, and not only do I not take care of it all, I am usually in a sour mood when I'm with him. What is wrong with me, why can't I get through this?