Change is difficult and gradual. Slowly I am becoming the person I think I would like to be. My life is filled with good things, a comfortable place to live, good and sufficient food to eat, more clothes than I need, and adequate interesting activities to fill my days. Still the underlying stress of uncertainty and impending change challenges me to overcome habits I have developed over the years in coping with stress.
For the most part, I have stopped using food to deal with feelings of stress and have been able to maintain a weight closer to what my ideal weight should be. I still have a few pounds to go and should be doing more walking to take off those last pounds. It's hard to get myself up and going; so often my get up and go just appears to have got up and gone.
My other coping strategy, a lifelong one, is more difficult to deal with. As a child, I would scratch the bridge of my nose until it bled and when the wound healed and a scar formed, I would scratch off the scar and again scratch until I bled. I don't know why I did this but it really annoyed my mother. The scar on the bridge of my nose is still there but now, I pick at the hairs that grow on my upper lip and on my chin until they bleed and form scars and when they heal, I start all over again. In 1982, at the suggestion of a friend, I began going to a salon at the old Eaton's store to have the hair on my upper lip electrically removed. The operator was newly trained and in a burst of over enthusiasm one week, she removed too many hair in one session and I developed a long lasting infection on my upper lip on the left side. Since that time, I have had recurring problems with ingrown and infected hairs on my lip and chin and in response, find myself daily picking at the hair on my face and the bumps of ingrown hair to try and remove them. The result is often bleeding and scars and a face that is constantly in the process of breaking out or healing. Somehow this reflects how I feel inside about myself.
Sometimes I feel great and other times, I remember all the times in my past when people treated me badly and I end up bashing myself. My husband, in the last years, as he was going through the stages of cognitive impairment and then dementia, was one of the offenders that affected me the most. His sisters didn't help. Those days are gone but they still haunt me. How I would like to be rid of the ghosts of the past. I will probably never be totally rid of them but hopefully, the bad memories will fade and be replaced by good experiences. Old scars mainly hurt when they're disturbed and we all have scars.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Why?
Why did my husband marry me? I married him in order to be able to get a job so I could support my child. I was fired from my job because I had a child so marriage seemed to be the only solution. Apparently the people of the town where I was teaching thought so as well because there seemed to be a fairly active movement to get my husband and me together. I was continually informed "what a great catch" my husband would be and the couple I boarded with actually took steps to discourage the young man I was dating and facilitate my husband's efforts to date me.
When my husband, with a reputation as a confirmed bachelor, proposed to me two months after I was fired from my teaching job and two weeks before I was leaving town to spend a year in Toronto attending library school, I accepted his proposal but didn't believe he would actually go through with it. I expected that in a few months he would have forgotten all about me. When I look back now, it wasn't me he was so attracted to; it was what I represented for him. He was looking for a home, a family and a social life of his own, he was looking for freedom, and marriage to me would be the gateway to what he wanted in life, particularly as I already had a family.
He got what he wanted out of marriage in spite of his mother's and his sisters' efforts to take it away from him but I had hoped for a closeness and a sharing in the long run that we never achieved. My husband always carried within him a deep seated sense of unease and unworthiness that kept him from enjoying life to the fullest and interfered with the intimacy of family life that we should have been able to enjoy. He couldn't trust me and so I couldn't trust him. I kept waiting for things to get better and then they got worse.
Last week we talked about the relationship between him and his sister, his only surviving sibling and the fact that he never hears from her. It's too late for her to change, he said, and for him, it was also too late to change. He did change in many ways, but some things he was simply unable to change. We do have choices in life but sometimes, too many doors have closed and choices we have made in the past limit us so severely that we can no longer choose the things we would like to choose. Of, course, theoretically, change is always open to us, but practically, we don't make the effort that would be required and we stay the course in spite of the fact that it may be the worst thing for us. How strange, how sad.
When my husband, with a reputation as a confirmed bachelor, proposed to me two months after I was fired from my teaching job and two weeks before I was leaving town to spend a year in Toronto attending library school, I accepted his proposal but didn't believe he would actually go through with it. I expected that in a few months he would have forgotten all about me. When I look back now, it wasn't me he was so attracted to; it was what I represented for him. He was looking for a home, a family and a social life of his own, he was looking for freedom, and marriage to me would be the gateway to what he wanted in life, particularly as I already had a family.
He got what he wanted out of marriage in spite of his mother's and his sisters' efforts to take it away from him but I had hoped for a closeness and a sharing in the long run that we never achieved. My husband always carried within him a deep seated sense of unease and unworthiness that kept him from enjoying life to the fullest and interfered with the intimacy of family life that we should have been able to enjoy. He couldn't trust me and so I couldn't trust him. I kept waiting for things to get better and then they got worse.
Last week we talked about the relationship between him and his sister, his only surviving sibling and the fact that he never hears from her. It's too late for her to change, he said, and for him, it was also too late to change. He did change in many ways, but some things he was simply unable to change. We do have choices in life but sometimes, too many doors have closed and choices we have made in the past limit us so severely that we can no longer choose the things we would like to choose. Of, course, theoretically, change is always open to us, but practically, we don't make the effort that would be required and we stay the course in spite of the fact that it may be the worst thing for us. How strange, how sad.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Change
These last six years have been a time of tremendous change for me. My mother died, my husband's sister and her husband, who had been such a large part of our life for more than twenty years, died and four days after his sister died, my husband fell, went to the hospital and never came home again to live.
I sold my house, disposed of much of my furniture, bought some new furniture, bought new dishes, new bed linens, new towels, new tablecloths and new curtains. I bought a new car, moved to an apartment, made new friends, lost ten pounds and got rid of much of my old wardrobe and replaced it with clothes two sizes smaller. I changed my hairstyle and got a perm and am trying to rediscover who I am, now that I am no half of a partnership but just me, alone, doing my own thing, eating what I want, when I want, sleeping when I want, getting up when I want, listening to the music I want to hear, reading what I want to read, occupying myself with the hobbies that I want to enjoy, engaging in the activities that I enjoy and socializing with the people I want to socialize with. My, that is a lot of I's and wants.
In marriage, my husband's interests and wishes seemed to come first and it was easier to accede to his idea of how to live than to insist on doing things my way part of the time. I feel like a pillow that has been sat upon too long and finally is returning to its own shape when the weight that kept it down disappears. Maybe that isn't how marriage should be but somehow, that's how it became. So many things were not open for discussion and eventually, there was not much left to talk about except "What would you like for dinner today?"
I had hoped for more sharing in marriage, but when you have been betrayed by those closest to you, as my husband had been, it's hard to trust and without trust, there can't be much sharing. The outward man presented to the general public and the inward man who lived with me were so different from each other as to be almost unrecognizable. "Free to be me" was something my husband never felt. Where he is now in the nursing home he is totally accepted just as he is but there is so little left of what he was. He feels loved and loves the staff in return but he is very tired. Sometimes we get a smile out of him but mostly he seems miles away from us. Our granddaughter dreamt she saw him walking. When I told him, he got tears in his eyes. The tears come to him as quickly now as the smiles. We're losing him in bits and pieces and there's no returning, ever.
I sold my house, disposed of much of my furniture, bought some new furniture, bought new dishes, new bed linens, new towels, new tablecloths and new curtains. I bought a new car, moved to an apartment, made new friends, lost ten pounds and got rid of much of my old wardrobe and replaced it with clothes two sizes smaller. I changed my hairstyle and got a perm and am trying to rediscover who I am, now that I am no half of a partnership but just me, alone, doing my own thing, eating what I want, when I want, sleeping when I want, getting up when I want, listening to the music I want to hear, reading what I want to read, occupying myself with the hobbies that I want to enjoy, engaging in the activities that I enjoy and socializing with the people I want to socialize with. My, that is a lot of I's and wants.
In marriage, my husband's interests and wishes seemed to come first and it was easier to accede to his idea of how to live than to insist on doing things my way part of the time. I feel like a pillow that has been sat upon too long and finally is returning to its own shape when the weight that kept it down disappears. Maybe that isn't how marriage should be but somehow, that's how it became. So many things were not open for discussion and eventually, there was not much left to talk about except "What would you like for dinner today?"
I had hoped for more sharing in marriage, but when you have been betrayed by those closest to you, as my husband had been, it's hard to trust and without trust, there can't be much sharing. The outward man presented to the general public and the inward man who lived with me were so different from each other as to be almost unrecognizable. "Free to be me" was something my husband never felt. Where he is now in the nursing home he is totally accepted just as he is but there is so little left of what he was. He feels loved and loves the staff in return but he is very tired. Sometimes we get a smile out of him but mostly he seems miles away from us. Our granddaughter dreamt she saw him walking. When I told him, he got tears in his eyes. The tears come to him as quickly now as the smiles. We're losing him in bits and pieces and there's no returning, ever.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Living in Limbo
I'm married but I don't have a husband, or is it that I have a husband but I'm not married? It's strange, this living in limbo, neither married or single. I asked my husband many years ago why he married me and he said, "I don't know." (It's something he says quite frequently now.) I suppose at the time it seemed like a good idea. He wanted a home, a family and a social life of his own. Marriage would provide those things. Unfortunately, he didn't want anything else to change.
Change brings change, you gain some things and lose some others and in his case, he lost some of his family connections. Some of the family connections that he lost had been very damaging but he regretted losing them all the same. His brother-in-law had warned him before his marriage to beware of his sister and her husband as they were likely to cause trouble, and they did. Now, 46 years later, my husband and that sister are the only surviving members of the family and they have had no contact for most of our married life. The last contacts we did have were not pleasant. In three days this sister will be 90, surely a cause for celebration, but we are as dead to her. How sad to live so long with such venom and bitterness against those who should mean the most to you. Whatever happened in their growing up years on the farm must have left scars that cannot be erased. My husband remembers only the good of those years and she remembers only the bad. Who will go first? What legacy will they leave the next generation? We don't live to ourselves and when we try, it doesn't go well. May their souls rest in peace at the end.
Change brings change, you gain some things and lose some others and in his case, he lost some of his family connections. Some of the family connections that he lost had been very damaging but he regretted losing them all the same. His brother-in-law had warned him before his marriage to beware of his sister and her husband as they were likely to cause trouble, and they did. Now, 46 years later, my husband and that sister are the only surviving members of the family and they have had no contact for most of our married life. The last contacts we did have were not pleasant. In three days this sister will be 90, surely a cause for celebration, but we are as dead to her. How sad to live so long with such venom and bitterness against those who should mean the most to you. Whatever happened in their growing up years on the farm must have left scars that cannot be erased. My husband remembers only the good of those years and she remembers only the bad. Who will go first? What legacy will they leave the next generation? We don't live to ourselves and when we try, it doesn't go well. May their souls rest in peace at the end.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Healing And Transformation
Sunday, April 3, 2011. Our Adult Education class at church discussed healing today. Several people in the class had experienced major healing in the past, myself included. Two aspects of healing that I hadn't given much previous thought to were the transformation in thinking and attitude that takes place in you mentally and emotionally when you go through an experience of healing. You are never the same person again afterwards. I knew that but just sort of accepted that's the way it was now. When I was offered healing, I remember wondering how my husband would react to the changed person I would become when I was healed and once more myself. However, I had a young child to bring up and I wanted to be there for her.
When others talked of having a similar changing experience, we decided transformation was a part of healing. That brought us to the question Jesus always asked before healing someone, "Do you want to be healed?" I always found the question strange because I assumed that naturally someone who was sick or disabled would want to be healed. Not necessarily! We all knew people for whom sickness was so much a part of their identity that they would not be able to bear to give up their sickness. They were aware that becoming healthy would involve change and they preferred the sick identity and the special privileges it bestowed on them, or seemed to.
My husband, as the second youngest in his family, was bullied by his mother and some of his older siblings. His father died when he was 14 and he had a great fear of being deserted by his family if he displeased them, a fear that turned out to be well-founded when he took the major step of getting married and leaving his mother to live on her own. His sister told him that this action on his part caused his mother the same grief she had gone through when her husband died 22 years previously. (There are probably some Freudian implications there but that's another story.) She subsequently stopped talking to him for 10 years and one sister and one brother never talked to him again.
When his oldest sister, who was talking to him and depended on him to look after her, died, he fell and bruised his hip after coming home from her viewing and the next day had a stroke that put him in hospital and resulted in permanent placement in a nursing home, although it wasn't a major stroke. It seemed to have something to do with her death, with unresolved guilt for wanting to have a life of his own, and with an unwillingness to change his thinking to accept that what his family did was wrong and they actually did do these cruel things to him without him deserving to be treated badly. The messages they had given him over the years had been so internalized that when there was no one left to criticize him, he ended up punishing himself on their behalf.
To be healed would have involved accepting a view of his past that he found unacceptable, changing and transformation that was too overwhelming to contemplate. And so he is dying, bit by bit, no longer able to walk, stand or sit upright without assistance; unable to lift a morsel of food to his mouth, unable to hold a cup to drink and hardly able to suck a straw. Voodoo spells couldn't have destroyed him more effectively, but it was all done so subtly, under the guise of love; a deadly love indeed! His time, I fear, is short but oh, it didn't need to be like this.
When others talked of having a similar changing experience, we decided transformation was a part of healing. That brought us to the question Jesus always asked before healing someone, "Do you want to be healed?" I always found the question strange because I assumed that naturally someone who was sick or disabled would want to be healed. Not necessarily! We all knew people for whom sickness was so much a part of their identity that they would not be able to bear to give up their sickness. They were aware that becoming healthy would involve change and they preferred the sick identity and the special privileges it bestowed on them, or seemed to.
My husband, as the second youngest in his family, was bullied by his mother and some of his older siblings. His father died when he was 14 and he had a great fear of being deserted by his family if he displeased them, a fear that turned out to be well-founded when he took the major step of getting married and leaving his mother to live on her own. His sister told him that this action on his part caused his mother the same grief she had gone through when her husband died 22 years previously. (There are probably some Freudian implications there but that's another story.) She subsequently stopped talking to him for 10 years and one sister and one brother never talked to him again.
When his oldest sister, who was talking to him and depended on him to look after her, died, he fell and bruised his hip after coming home from her viewing and the next day had a stroke that put him in hospital and resulted in permanent placement in a nursing home, although it wasn't a major stroke. It seemed to have something to do with her death, with unresolved guilt for wanting to have a life of his own, and with an unwillingness to change his thinking to accept that what his family did was wrong and they actually did do these cruel things to him without him deserving to be treated badly. The messages they had given him over the years had been so internalized that when there was no one left to criticize him, he ended up punishing himself on their behalf.
To be healed would have involved accepting a view of his past that he found unacceptable, changing and transformation that was too overwhelming to contemplate. And so he is dying, bit by bit, no longer able to walk, stand or sit upright without assistance; unable to lift a morsel of food to his mouth, unable to hold a cup to drink and hardly able to suck a straw. Voodoo spells couldn't have destroyed him more effectively, but it was all done so subtly, under the guise of love; a deadly love indeed! His time, I fear, is short but oh, it didn't need to be like this.
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