Soul Mosaic

I wanted to leave a brief update about the piece I have been working on – Battling Dad. It is a piece that covers about a 12-year period during our kids’ childhood.

It is a period that was incredibly difficult, because it was such a painful layer of life, on top of all the things Ed and I were dealing with in our own lives. In dealing with and confronting Dad, it required wrestling with fear, pulling together courage, and living through the flashbacks and other trauma symptoms. It is the reason I call these years of my life the Warrior Years.

Just a momentary reflection as I write this book:

As I go through this process — writing my life story, then moving forward through the questions, answers, insights, and transformations — in the back of my mind, I ponder what the best structure should be going forward.

While it is not quite time for that yet — I need to finish this first draft — I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do.

But one question popped up today:

What is the first thing I want to say to the reader, at the very beginning, to let them know what this is all about?

And this showed up in my brain as an answer:

“It Happens”

Juggling who does what

Like many, we both needed to work. After all his “meat-grinder” jobs in Connecticut, his RTP software support job was much less stressful. So much so, in fact, that he was the one who covered all the daycare “sick calls.” Now, it was my job that was the problem.

I was working first at a university research lab that was supposed to be “mom-friendly.” For many reasons, that turned out to be a fallacy. After several months, it just kept getting worse, so I looked for another job.

Somehow, I landed a very good one at a pharmaceutical research company. Yes, it was high-stress and fast-paced, managing data review and validation for clinical research trials. It was stressful in a different way than the lab was, but at least I was better paid. I had the skills, so I took it even as it would turn out to be the wrong direction for me, and for what our son would need. But one step at a time.

At the same time that we were learning how to save our marriage, the pressures of parenthood and jobs continued.

Know that “We are THERE”

As children, both my husband and I lived in emotional abandonment. We didn’t know that it was called that, but we knew its pain. Only later, in therapy, would we understand what it was. While we had our physical needs provided for us, our parents were emotionally absent or damaging.

So we were both fiercely determined that our son would never experience that. He could grow up to be one of those teens rolling his eyes later on because we were too loving, involved, embarrassing, or whatever. And we would be fine with that. But he would never grow up feeling ALONE.

That damn water bottle

We sat across from the psychologist and waited for him to be ready to start our session.

5, 4, 3…I started counting down in my head. 2, 1, …and…there he went. Right on cue, the therapist reached across his desk, picked up his water bottle, and started fumbling with the top.

I closed my eyes for a moment as I felt my teeth grit and my jaw tighten. EVERY, DAMN, VISIT, it was the same thing. We’d sit there for several minutes, wasting precious time while he played with that damned water bottle. A glance at Ed told me he was equally fed up.

Well. If this was a marital therapy tactic to get us united about something, it was working. That was about the only thing that was working, though, in his therapy approach.

“If he played with that damned water bottle one more time, I was going to wrap it around his neck!”

Before I resume writing the next entries, I want to share where I am at as I go through this process of digging up my past.

For sure, none of this has been easy. But, in speaking with a friend over coffee this morning, then reading an article that I quote from below, some things came clear to me about why I am glad to be doing this.

The words from then, and now:

For this entry, I will let the words of my journal from that time and observations from now tell the story.

September 5, 1995

We had been seeing a counselor for some time….my husband and I were locked into a struggle we didn’t understand. We sensed there was something going on underneath the obvious issues, but it was elusive and hard to see…

In looking back, the biggest place of conflict usually came up around sex. I wanted it, he didn’t. Which isn’t totally true. I suspect that in most couples, there is no doubt one who is more interested than the other, and they work it out.

But at that point, I just couldn’t understand that. Men were always supposed to want it. After all, looking back, my father was always after me. Here we were, husband and wife, in a healthy place for sex, and yet my husband WASN’T pursuing me. What was wrong? If he didn’t, then that meant he didn’t love me. And by extension, I was no good. So I tried more creative approaches, more focus on methods…everything, and all it did was polarize us more.

What I can understand now is that sex wasn’t the problem. It was the symptom of something else driving it all, and actually driving us apart.