I'm Sorry

I have never known emotional pain like this before.

I am about to give myself permission to totally and completely lose it because of how painful being separated from my husband and children is.

The separation hurts my skin. It hurts my eyelashes. It hurts each hair on my arm. It clutches my throat. It makes my neck spasm. It makes my eyes burn because there are tears that need to come out but too many were spilled yesterday. Are my tear ducts empty? How can I not be crying right now?

Four people who were a family are not a family today. There is my husband, always so angry, always so impossible to please, always so impossible to pacify, who is reeling so hard from the absence of family that he asked me to give him a list of things to change so that I’ll come back.

There’s 9 year old Daughter A who is a carbon copy of her father and doesn’t hesitate to scream at her parents. “I know you two are getting a divorce,” she yelled at her dad a few days ago, “just go ahead and say the word!”

There’s 5 year old Daughter M who is a carbon copy of me. She’s already observing, already scanning for danger and already people-pleasing. And if she still can’t avoid trouble despite her best efforts, she resorts to tears.

And then there’s me. The wife who felt completely demeaned when she was screamed or hissed at. The wife who felt like she could provoke yelling just because the look on her face was wrong. The mother who had horrible guilt for letting her daughters see her cower. The mother who lives in a different house now and knows she can’t come home without fear setting in.

I am a wreck, such a wreck that I can’t believe I don’t blow wide apart leaving a gaping hole where my heart was. And sprinkled in are the oddest pieces of comfort and oddest pieces of woe.

Pieces of Comfort
- 2 friends from long, long ago got in touch with me on the same day
- An older coworker abruptly came into my office, read me a passage about shedding or old skin to make room for the new and told me about her 2 painful divorces
- A younger coworker came into my office to ask me why I was on disability, and I decided to be honest with her. I told her that it was due to an eating disorder and anxiety. Then she confided in me that she was having very bad problems with an eating disorder and anxiety, and we both talked about how dysfunctional relationships seemed to be driving the problems in both of us. I felt a sisterly bond that has me crying tears for her but at the same time bowing my head in gratitude for the fact that she chose to come talk to me.
- A maternal coworker gave me a CD of beautiful hymns arranged on the piano, and when I started playing it in my office, the day’s tears finally did come.
- Yet one more coworker told me that there had been abuse in her first marriage and started to detail it. I’m the only one at work she’s ever told.

Pieces of Woe
- I continue to chase after those empty promises
- Codependent thoughts come at me like a serial killer with a butcher knife
- Everything I see reminds me of what life should have been, could have been or everything I see shows me what life is now.

One of the worst parts of today was when a man I work with just looked at me and said, “I’m sorry.” In two little words he pared everything down to the sheer sadness of it all. Yes. I, too, am sorry.

Ashes Everywhere

I’m having trouble concentrating at work today. My husband’s heart is breaking over our temporary separation, and my heart is breaking for him. I wish I hated him, but I don’t. It hurts very much to see him cry with his head in his hands. I would carry him right now if I had strength for both of us, but I don’t.

Later…

I went to an Ash Wednesday service with two friends. I was able to see the ugliness of all of my sins, the damage I’ve done to other people, the suffering of my family, the way I’ve turned my back on God.

It was almost like my previous post was a prayer to see Satan working in my life, and in church today, I was able to see it. It was horrible. I knew God loved me, but I thought he looked upon me and the people touched by me with great sadness. I sensed the master of lies and saw how empty his promises were.

I took my rosary into the church with me, and as soon as I got there, I saw that it was broken, like my relationship with God is broken. I’ve been praying for contrition. Perhaps this means I have it. I wasn’t going to receive Communion anyway, but I had to leave the sanctuary early because I was crying so hard.

And All His Empty Promises

At my therapy group last night, one of our members was talking about her relationship with a married man. You know the type. He claims he can’t stand his wife but then goes on a vacation with her, he says they aren’t intimate but then she ends up pregnant, he says over and over again that he’s going to leave but doesn’t. My fellow group member knows that she is nothing but the other woman and that her only future with him is as an unpaid paramour. She also feels terrible guilt about how her behavior is damaging the marriage of another woman. And yet she talked last night about how much of a hold the illicit relationship had on her and how negatively it was affecting her life.

“I cannot describe to you how totally unfulfilling that relationship is for me. I know he’s never going to leave his wife, I hate what I’m doing to his wife, but every day I want to get a text or an e-mail from him that makes me believe that he cares about me. So if I haven’t heard from him, I get really anxious and I text or e-mail him. And then there’s just this cycle of anxiety that I go through as I wait to hear from him the next time…”

I had never had the idea before to look at my life to see if anything was unfulfilling. I gave my life a quick glance and didn’t like what I saw: unfulfilling, unfulfilling, unfulfilling. I felt sick and pathetic. How could I not have seen how much time I spent in unfulfilling ways before? And looking at those parts of my life, why was I hesitant to change in some areas?

My favorite part of Catholic baptisms is when the priest asks the witnesses, “Do you reject Satan…and all his empty promises?” and we say that we reject him. When I was examining my life recently, that was all I could think of, that my unfulfilling behavior was driven by Satan’s empty promises.

Empty promises. I have trouble thinking of anything more terrible than reaching eternity, only to realize that I had led my life guided by the evil one, the master of lies. What if I could see the horrific, demonic driving force behind all of my bad decisions? Would I still make them? No. But I can’t see the full terror of the evil one. As much as I want to treat Jesus as my king, I chase after the empty promises.

I want to be saved by Jesus Christ. Part of me wishes that I were a Southern Baptist so that I would know that I was saved already, but the other part of me realizes that I would ruthlessly question whether I was truly saved or not. As a Catholic, I am supposed to become contrite for chasing the empty promises, confess my sins and repent. Right now I’m still struggling to attain true contrition, and I ask for Mary’s help with this nearly every day.

Empty promises. Has life really come down to this? Ever since I found my personal relationship with God in 1995, I thought I had been pursuing Christ’s promises. Mary’s promises. The promises of saints and popes. The promises of prominent Christians in my life. The promises of God my Father.

I can’t handle the thought of being a slave to the beautiful weaver of deception. I prayed a rosary yesterday, and as unworthy as I feel, I will pray another one today. The rosary is my lifeline, and I feel like I am a lost soul. Jesus, Mary, I’m reaching out to you. You can’t let the evil one have me. Give me contrition where I have no contrition. Help me to make a full confession. Help me to change. I cry out to you from the core of my being, where there is no peace of Christ, only turmoil.

M. Nole's Dream List

At the end of my therapy group this week, one member advised a member struggling with codependency to write a Dream List if she's tempted to e-mail or text the toxic man with whom she's involved.

I decided to write out my own list, and I thought it would be hard to come up with a neat and tidy list of even 10 dreams. I started writing, and within 3 minutes, I had gone past the number 30. I will be adding to this, but here is the beginning of M. Nole's offical Dream list.

1. Score well on the LSAT and be accepted into law school
2. Become a very good, ethical lawyer who helps people
3. Write a nonfiction Christian book
4. Get off of all pain medicine and be completely into AA again
5. Be active in Al-Anon again
6. Write a Christian novel
7. Have a popular spiritual blog
8. Devote myself to special Catholic prayers and especially to the Virgin Mary
9. Evolve into a saint
10. Make a pilgrimage to Lourdes or Rome
11. Be someone who does kind, spontaneous things for others
12. Make a charitable gift to honor someone special every month
13. Write a fiction novel
14. Create Catholic folk art
15. Learn to make rosaries
16. Join a good Protestant Bible study class
17. Go to Daily Mass
18. Have true contrition for all of my sins
19. Have my daughters when they become adults) feel like I was the best mother in the world
20. Be involved in a ministry (presently working for a ministry does not count)
21. Belong to a book club
22. Subscribe to an audio book service and listen to new books every month
23. Become a Facebook addict and play with my BFFs
24. Open a Christian art store in Midtown
25. Become a positive thinker
26. Become a humanitarian
27. Give generously to my church
28. Use my gift for spiritual writing to change lives, or even better, to save a life or a soul
29. Expand my for-profit resume business
30. Expand my resume ministry (free resumes to single parents and low-income clients)
31. Be on the board of a charity
32. Make enough money for my children to go to college wherever they can be accepted
33. Look like a million bucks well into my 40s and 50s
34. Lead others to the Catholic Church or to a belief in Jesus Christ
35. Infuse hope into other people with my ability to write fearlessly about my emotional and spiritual struggles
36. Resume my service work of intercessory prayer and pray for someone else's needs every single day
37. Realize when I'm 65 years old that I have lived a full, full life
38. Have every one of my friends to feel that I am the most faithful, supportive friend they have - because it's true
39. Make enough money to get manicures
40. Live in a small but adorable house
41. Take more creative writing classes
42. Write a screenplay for a movie about John Calipari

A Gift For Me

Yesterday I had a realization about the career move that I need to make. Off and on, since I graduated from college in 1997, I have regretted not going to law school. During this period of reflection at my parents' country house I have begun frequently thinking about my "missed opportunity" quite a bit. I have all the traits that good attorneys have; why did I think I wasn't smart enough to get into law school? I didn't even try. I bought one LSAT prep book at 22, thought the test looked hard (um...duh!) and gave up on the idea.

When I saw my psychologist on Tuesday, we were talking about my strengths, and she suddenly said, "You would make an excellent lawyer." I asked her about trying to start a new career in 4 years, when I'll be 40, and she said, "You'll be 40 anyway. Do you want to be 40 with a lucrative new career or 40 on a career path to nowhere?"

BOOM. I'm going for it. I'm going for it! I'm ordering LSAT practice books from Amazon tonight. Sometimes the wonderful Lord makes his will crystal clear, and this insight was like looking at the clearest, freshest spring water in the world.

God is telling me to apply to law school. God has given me something to look forward. Has God ever directed you toward a career in this way? I would love to hear about it if you have a story to share.

Please pray that if it's truly God's will for me to go to law school that I will be accepted. I only want what he wants, and this time, it's almost like he's holding out his hands with a gift for me to take at any moment.

I'm accepting it and saying thank you right now.

He Will Ask

Roughly a week ago, my husband asked me to leave our home. He called my mother and said (I’m paraphrasing based on her memory), “Come get her. I can’t deal with what I have to put up with anymore.”

My mother was not about to make a 70 minute round trip on a late Sunday evening, but by Monday my bag was packed, and my father drove me to my parents’ house in the country. The last time I stayed with my parents, from September to 2008-October 2008, I was on sick leave from work due to anorexic eating and severe anxiety. My visit with my parents was like being rehabilitated at a California spa. I was eaten up with fear and guilt, yet I was lovingly cared for in every way imaginable.

When I went outside on their wrap-around deck, I was touched by the beauty of the pond, the butterflies and the dozens of hummingbirds who gathered to drink my mother’s homemade nectar. In an effort to stop my dangerous cycle of starvation, my mother made me every food I could think of that didn’t turn my stomach, and several times a day I was treated to organic vegetables fresh from their country garden. I was given gourmet coffee in the mornings, almost total control over the television and rides to all of my medical and psychological appointments.

Yet I was miserable. I was humiliated by the fact that I had collapsed at my job from anorexia and had been sent home by the Executive Director, ordered not to return without a letter from my physician stating that I was fit for work. I worried constantly about how my work projects were being handled in my absence. I worried about whether my husband loved me. I worried about whether my daughters were happier with me out of the house or, even worse, if they were indifferent.

As I find myself at my parents’ house again, this time in the middle of a wet, grey February, I feel relief. I miss my husband, but I don’t miss being screamed at. I love my husband, but I don’t miss giving him quick, forced apologies so that my children won’t hear him yelling at me. I want my husband to have the supreme happiness that I have always dreamed of having for myself, but I don’t think that either one of us can have it right now if we’re living in the same home. In other words, being basically thrown out of my house has given me a sense of tranquility that came suddenly, harshly and as a complete surprise.

I have marriage counseling tomorrow. My priest will find out that I am staying with my parents. He will find out that I’ve realized the only way I can recover from anorexia and anxiety is to spend time away from my husband. He will find out that my husband calls me several times a day to tell me that he misses me and ask when I am coming home.

My priest will ask me, “When are you going home?’

And I will sit in his office, nervously pinching myself with my fingernails as I do during every session, and say, “I don’t know.”