Face Down In The Deep End
Ya’ll, I promise you there is a large part of me that wants to write something super cool and super positive and really feel goody. But I’ve learned a lot in these last few years, that sometimes just being where I am and being real about that is what causes the most change in my life and others.
I’ve been divorced for nearly six years (technically only 3 but 3 additional years living separate lives under different roofs) and I’m still putting pieces together about my marriage, myself and my ex-husband. Transparency is hard when it deals with a member of your family because I believe there is an innate protection built in to want to keep their image clean or at the very least, not cause further damage. So, I keep quiet a lot. I stuff down a lot. I share very little with very few people what is really happening in my life where my kids and their father is concerned.
Over the weekend, I listened and watched as my eleven-year-old completely melted down discussing his struggles in his relationship with his father. He said, “Mom, I know he isn’t happy. He might smile sometimes. He might even try to pretend he’s there and enjoying it. But, I can tell. I can just tell. He isn’t joyful. He seems miserable.” There it was. An eleven- year-old describing what six years ago I had put into writing as I was deciding whether to stay or go. I dug deep through my old Macbook to find the writing. It feels very risky to put this out there. It feels raw and vulnerable and scary because I learned that keeping things quiet and behind closed doors was how we did life. I learned that feeling what you feel isn’t okay and seeing what is real, especially when it will reflect bad on the abuser, is punishable almost by law.
Yet, keeping secrets keeps me sick. Keeping things neatly tucked away and only showing you bits and pieces of my heart ache is like only showing you part of my joy. My work is about ALL OF ME. It’s about ALL OF YOU. I know there are men and women struggling. Struggling to make sense of their situations and put into words their experience. So, I’m going to show you my journal entry from that fateful time in 2014. As it so painfully reflects exactly what my middle child was trying to communicate to me the other night.
2014
What do you do when you finally discover that the man you have been with for over ten years is NEVER going to be happy? Never. Not with the perfect job or the right salary or the big house or big car. The moment when you realize that he is never going to look at you with loving eyes, adore you in any way, or love you deeply and passionately….he is never going to stare deep in your eyes and see your soul. He is never going to flirt with you and twirl you around in the living room. He doesn’t like you. He sometimes tolerates you but he doesn’t like you. You are not ever going to get ‘in’ with him. You will never be close. No one is close. No one really knows what is going on behind those eyes.
He is going to be moody and lonely and sad and dark. He is going to walk around the world feeling like he doesn’t quite fit in. He is never going to laugh out loud until his belly aches. He is never going to be gentle, kind or soft with his children on a regular basis. He is never going to be comfortable in his own skin. He is never going to get on his knees and beg God to change him. He is never going to hit his knees and ask God to come in his heart and transform him. He. Is. Never. Going. To. Change. He is going to be irritable even on the most beautiful of days. He is going to seem sad and forlorn on your kid’s birthday and yours too. You are going to surprise him with a romantic weekend away and all the while you will feel like he is a million miles away and forcing himself to be there with you. He will not be present with you. He will never love you deeply or connectedly. Never. He will sit in the car with the family on your way to a fun vacation and be quiet and pensive while you and the kids buzz with excitement and energy and uncontainable joy. You will try to reach out to him, touch his arm, look in his eyes, and he will pull away and pretend you are not trying to connect to him. He will sit quiet and try to tolerate the energy buzzing around him.
You have waited. You waited for four jobs to change, for him to get sober, for his dad to die, for him to make enough money to stop worrying about money, for his health to get better, for life to become less stressful, for medicine to take hold, for him to drink again, and on and on and on.
You waited because the truth is scary. The truth has been hiding behind you all along. When you want something badly enough, want it to work, want the situation to be something other than what it is, when you hope, you hold on. When you hold on you pretend you are strong enough to not let go. You pretend that the pit in your stomach isn’t there, screaming at you to see the truth. You cover up. You lie. Mostly to yourself. You push yourself to be better, to do better, to make up for the gaping hole that is happiness and joy and self -satisfaction and gratitude. You work harder on yourself so you can change enough to adapt. You change enough to hopefully create what you have always wanted. You cry a lot. You pray a lot. You look at your friends and their marriages longingly. You covet the relationships that are strong and loving. You secretly hope they are pretending too.
Then one day you wake up and realize you are too old to pretend. You are too old to want something other than what you want. You realize that your life is going to be exactly how it is right now forever unless you do something about it. You realize that nothing changes if nothing changes. And now the change must come from YOU. The horror sinks in. The reality that you might join the ranks of those women with three kids facing forty and out in the dating world hits you between your saggy boobs. You realize there is nothing sexy about having said kids with said baby mommy body and trying to date a bunch of losers who really don’t want anything more than a casual relationship anyway. Worse, if they are in your same situation then you are facing having to like someone else’s kids when some days it takes everything in you to like your own three devils.
So what is a woman to do? Do you live with what you know even if what you know looks at you with disgust and exposes every single thing you do wrong under his roof? Do you stay even if you have to beg for sex once a month and feel like a cheap whore when sex finally happens because it is missing the one key ingredient to really good love making: connection. Do you stay even when he calls you dumb and tells you to fuck yourself in front of your five-year-old? Or behind closed doors when he screams fuck you and calls you a bitch? Do you stay?
Do you leave? Do you risk having to go to a crappy job with a crappy boss because the one thing you know and love is being at home with your children and to leave would mean you would have to leave that behind?
Because let’s face it, even the crappy old pair of sweats with holes are way more comfortable than the new ones you just bought at the store. When they are laying side by side, no matter how ugly the purple ones with tears in knees are, you are going to choose them over the rough, never worn black pair.
Will comfort win out? You wonder day after day, and each day staying. You wait and watch the signs. Watch to see if that small burst of energy in the morning when he is lively and loving with the kids, will stay throughout the day. And then here comes the ‘down’ and the moodiness and the funk. Each day you find yourself less able to contain your disgust, your anger, and your truth. You realize that no matter how sober you are, how shiny, how pretty, how fresh and forgiving and ready to start again and give it a shot you are…no matter what it will never change the fact that he is not happy. (end of journal entry).
Damn it makes my heart hurt for that woman. I believed it was my job to try to make myself into the person that could make another person happy. I felt much like my 11-year-old, if I could just crack the code, I might be able to elicit a response that I needed and wanted. I turned myself inside out trying to get my basic needs in a relationship met, but to no avail.
Reading this also makes me grateful and proud and accomplished. To see how far I have come since then. To know I walked away, saw MY part in the relationship, cleaned up my side of the street; I stayed single, and I did the work to get to a place where I could truly love me again. What an amazing feat!
Yet sitting with my child Saturday night, it ALL came up. The horror of realizing that this person I was able to walk away from; now my children are having to confront their own feelings about being in relationship with him. They feel it. They are grieving and confused and turned inside out. All of them. I sit watching, holding them, and all the while trying not to make myself completely a villain for leaving them alone with him. To not let that old tape run that says what a piece of shit I am for marrying him in the first place. I stop it all from running wild. I stop it and know deep down, this man is our greatest teacher. Literally. Because of him, I’m building a wildly successful life coaching business. I am a bomb ass mama. I care deeply. I listen. I teach. I admit when I’m wrong. I can see the big picture. I am becoming who I was meant to be because of the depth of pain I went to in relationship with him.
So, can I believe that about my babies? One who is so quickly growing into a young man at 13. Who is so responsible, and bright and intuitive. When he says to me, “mom I only want to live with you. I can’t stand him. He is emotionally and physically abusive. He will not control himself. He blames it all on me.” Can I believe that he is learning everything he needs to know about himself by struggling to make sense of his father? Can I be the mother who allows for the struggle AND listens to him so he doesn’t lose his mind? Can I listen and not lose mine?
My eight-year-old who has learned to hide. He can almost become invisible when the going gets tough. He’s learned to be sweet and amenable and cuddly, all to avoid the effects of stress and chaos. Can I be the mother who sees this, pulls him closer and encourages him to reveal his thoughts and feelings even when he fights it tooth and nail? To remember that just because he is not talking about it, doesn’t mean he isn’t feeling it.
It’s the most excruciating job I’ve ever had. To watch the tears drop from my eleven year old’s eyes. To feel his pain. To hear his real true desires for relationship and deep down know that he will be disappointed time and time again? To feel it cut through my stomach like a knife. And still listen and stay to hear more. Over an hour of truth telling from an 11 year old’s perspective. I was blown away by his insight and heartbroken at his authentic belief that, “I know if I figure out what it is, I can help him, mom. I just want to be there and have it be happy and peaceful.”
Ahhhhhh. There should be a warning on child rearing. It is excruciatingly heart breaking. And equal part beautiful. Glennon Doyle calls that, brutiful. And that is exactly what it is. Brutal and beautiful all at the same time.
I do what I do as a life coach because I believe that we can all change our prospective. I believe that if you are in an awful relationship, it’s possible to burn that house to the ground and make a beautiful life from the ashes. Or stay and build it from the ground up. I believe we all have what it takes inside of us to fix what is missing, broken, and lost. I believe it because I’ve lived it. I believe it because I get the privilege of watching day in and day out, as people completely change their way of thinking, their beliefs, and their lives.
So, today I’m going to choose to feel and believe that my kids are ultimately ok. That they have a higher power who will guide and protect them every step of the way. That their pain, while intensely painful to watch and hold space for, will ultimately bring them in alignment with who they are meant to be on this earth. That providing a space for them to cipher through that pain is my job; and the rest can be left on shoulders much more powerful than mine. That gives me peace amidst all of it. Knowing I’m not alone. I don’t have to do it all. It’s not ALL up to me. I have a tribe of people helping, and when push comes to shove, I believe ultimately, they are up to God.
If you are face down in the deep end, just know that many have gone before you. There is light if you just look up for a minute. No matter how painful your situation, or your kid’s situation might be, there is always room for hope and for change. It just takes a moment of bravery. A second of courage. Just a glance up from face down, and a willingness to see what you have been afraid to see.
Until Next Time,
