Haven’t written here in a minute. I think it’s mainly because it feels like wasted time lately, not because readership is lagging — I write because I love to and not just to be read — but mainly because I am plumb out of inspiration at this juncture.
By “this juncture,” I refer to the several unrelated points joining to make up this specific time in my life, this resulting rut of sorts, whether it continues for the next few days or even months. Ever had a time when you just don’t have any idea what in God’s name He is doing in your life?
You think you should go one way, paying attention to all of the signs, but then it results in a dead end; you have followed said signs that resulted in dead end only to be pulled back to square one with another sign. I have never had trouble following signs in my life, so this is troublesome for me.
I have no creativity to share, no optimism to impart, not even the tiniest morsel of any recent day that has held an poetry, metaphor or uplifting note. I have no insight anymore, and it’s vexing to say the least. I thrive on parables and everything being interrelated. This concrete thinking — gotta make it to tomorrow thinking only about the mundane and mapped out, with no deeper meanings hidden in the puzzle — is tedious.
You see, I have a cheating husband (again), very soon to be ex, that has not yet moved out and, despite his being given deadlines, has made absolutely no effort to do so. How does one do this repeatedly to his family and continue coming “home” everyday? I guess the better question is, how is a woman so apathetic or her self-esteem so low that she would allow him to continue cohabitating with her and his children? And so begins the spiral of incredulity over my life events in recent months.
Living with a known cheater is like living in hell. And allowing him to live alongside your children, even though they are his own, is worse. The awkwardness is beyond any I have ever felt. The paranoia is excruciating. He seems to accept his fate of being relegated to ghost status in the house, flitting about like an invisible presence that notes what we are all doing at any given moment and staying abreast of our comings and goings. Does he believe his presence is a protective one? Surely not.
I do not know how he can stand feeling himself the bane of my existence, and it is all I can do to keep peace in my own heart and force myself to resist staring him down and sending haughty glances all day. It leaves me feeling worse about myself than I already do, mentally sending someone into oblivion. Has there ever been another woman in the history of wives that has had this problem — where the husband that previously seemed to want to lead a different life with someone else is now fearful to strike out as he fantasized? It feels like he is buying time to strategize, to choose his course, and I feel stupid for allowing him to do so on my time.
These are the days, I think, when I subsist on my children’s presence and knowing their health and happiness are the only things in life I truly need; on homecooking meals for those I love…and knowing rain and cold weather are on the way in November. It seems that it is not enough to be feeling my life a personal hell, but must I also experience it physically?
GOD, please come, November. Maybe this rut is just as much the heatwave blahs — the summer melancholy we get in the South when the temps have been too balmy for too long, and I’m suffocating under oppressive humidity, and tired of feeling like I need a shower again right after I step outside. (Unfortunately, I inherited my father’s sweat glands.) I am, after all, an all-out autumn-winter soul, and the summer season, with most every day in the mid- to upper 90s here, is increasingly too much to bear each year.
So all these factors affect my mood and further depress my outlook. The only respite is good fruit and my kids’ presence filling the house while school is out.
So the only conclusion that I can arrive at for now is simply to enter downtime, to chill, to stay put, and to rest in God seemingly doing nothing. Maybe that’s just what we are supposed to do sometimes. But it is achingly frustrating when you know this is the only life you get to live and, despite that painful fact, you are forced to find the road in a misty fog or, worse yet, just sit and wait for the haze to burn off.
So if you’re a regular, forgive my lack of contribution for the past couple/possibly next couple of weeks. Too much has happened to stomach so far in 2011 — a repeatedly cheating husband (who will not move out and move on so that his family can), impending divorce and, especially, the death of my father — and I just don’t think I want to proceed any further into the year. By that, I don’t mean that I won’t be pulled along by time, but simply that I don’t have the energy right now to even make suppositions, to continue grasping the strings of hope that have always before pulled me along but now only wear me out, or to even move from this very spot where my feet are neatly tucked under me and my dog is beside me.
I’m letting go of some balloons of hope right now, if nothing else, so I can just feel firm ground under my fearful feet again. Who needs dreams when you simply need to learn how to cope? And who wants to hold to balloons of hope anymore once she realizes that life is indeed half chance, that many of us may never see any reward past developing our inner selves to move past bad things and push forward to happiness in SPITE of bad people? For today, I just can’t see it, but I know that is truth.
When I’m feeling more hopeful, I’ll go ahead and start my new year’s resolutions early. However, hope cannot exist here again for any of us until he is gone. The kids will definitely breathe easier, too, when a stranger whose shady behavior and pathological lying have made him foreign to us now is no longer living in our midst and invading our space. He will lose his power to pull on their heartstrings and quit trying to selfishly reinstate himself to a place of respect. And it will be nice not to have to be constantly reminded of this sad situation anymore when I no longer see his face on a daily basis. When that will be, who knows? But, for now, until I am free to move on, I’m cocooning and just holding onto my sanity until he goes. This is no good for any of us. In the meantime, kicking out my children’s father with no place to go doesn’t sit well with my heart, even knowing that he chose this himself. So I continue straddling the gap of good conscience and my well-being.
Sorry for the rant. I’m sorry to say I feel better after writing it. I will make a return to ~*grace*~ and ~*positivity*~ soon but just wanted to be honest and relatable at “this juncture.” God, how I hate that term.
