Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Hidden Pictures, Unmarked Exits

When left on my own to process, eventually I can come to terms with pretty much anything. I think this is the same skill that makes me a writer, the same skill that I'd be using if I were in politics. It's finding the story, creating the spin, bringing the facts together to make a pretty picture.

Unfortunately, reality sometimes intrudes.

Every time Paul and I hit a really low point, where I'm pretty sure we won't be able to make it, after a couple of days of reflection and waiting on my part, I look up and see the way out of the trough. It's a well-lit, obvious path, and I wonder that I didn't notice it earlier.

Then we try to talk again, and I realize that my pretty pictures, my ladders up out of the low places are fictions created in my mind, the mind that so desperately wants to believe that we can do this, we can fix this, we can continue on - if not as before, well, at least tolerably well. And he never understands what he's doing that's hurting me so.

5 comments:

ccw said...

(((Sarahlynn)))

Yankee, Transferred said...

(((hugs)))

Psycho Kitty said...

Damn it, I wish we lived closer. You know, the whole "call me whenever you want" thing still applies. I mean it.

Sigh. Sometimes everything being hard just sucks. A lot. One day, no matter how things turn out, it will suck less. I promise.

Sarahlynn said...

Thank you all. I'm really doing OK. I can't explain exactly how or why it helps so much to write things out here. Somehow it's very much more satisfying than just putting my thoughts in my pain journal.

Do normal people keep notebooks they only write in when they hurt a lot? I've never been a regular diary/journal-keeper, but I've kept a pain journal since I was 14.

deb said...

Hi pulling out of lurk mode. First, congratulations on Ada. She is beautiful, just like her Mom and big sister!

I don't know what is going on with you and Paul, but I do know that between my older son being diagnosed right around the second child was born, things were very rough on the marital front, so there is part of me that just wanted to reach out to you. I suffered another three years before things came to a head.

We had many obstacles to overcome, but our marriage wound up being better for it.

Not that we still don't have our moments and not that I don't have my moments of thinking back on that time and still sometimes get angry at the way my husband chose to behave when I was pregnant & vunerable.

It is my hope that you will come out of this better people and better marriage partners, if that is possible. Ellie and Ada deserve to have happy parents.