just angry, frustrated, anxious and balled-up.

angry at the stack of magazines he never reads.

angry at myself…

want to put my head through a wall. rip my face off.

money stresses, job (or not) stresses, how will we ever afford a baby?, really frustrated and angry with our communication. ongoing sin…

when have i ever done anything unselfish in all my life?

Started the morning with: I can’t stand it here.  I’m not cut out for this place anymore.  I can’t teach, I can’t do anything.

Started the afternoon with: Oh my God I love you Mrs. D and Mrs. B.  I never want to leave you.

How can I feel so much love for a place, a people, and so much alienation at the same time?

I am different from them.  I did legal gymnastics just so I could preserve my self and my job at the same time.  Believe me, I needed a legal cup game to make myself compatible with them. I hide my core from them.  This is stressful, to go to work everyday and feel not quite whole.

And my core isn’t even that different!  Even though my goal is the same, I am approaching life from a different angle than they are.  And even though Mrs.D probably thinks my husband can’t possibly be the love of my life because he’s not Christian, I still love her.

She’s wrong, of course.

I know this.  That he is the love of my life.  I have felt overwhelming sense of passion and trust and security with him.  I have felt that he is a blessing from the God he doesn’t believe in.

But, sigh, I don’t feel that way lately.   I’m very tired of it.  Tired of feeling so critical and grumpy all the time.  Where’s the friendship we had for years?? I can’t find it.

I am like a bulldog brain in a bloodhound’s body: I will search and analyze and pick-apart every possible feeling or thought, and worry the problem (making it sorer), and grab at ghosts… until I find a solution.  I want this fixed, I want to feel the way I felt before again, I want it now.  It is not acceptable to feel this way, it must mean that something is wrong with our marriage, it must mean that I have ‘something wrong’ that I can’t identify and I’ll never be able to and I will always feel not… quite… connected.

I’m trying to learn this: Accept where I am.

I feel disconnected, I feel anxious, etc.  And it’s OK. It will not last forever.  I know intellectually that this is a great marriage, there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me… it’s just not registering in my heart right now.  It’s all a bit gunked up in there.

What always gets the blame?  Zoloft.

Poor little blue pill.  It’s not always your fault, is it?

I got off Zoloft in June.  I had been on it for eons, well, 15 years.  I had tried many times before to get off, and had terrible, suicidal withdrawal symptoms.  Now I’m off, and what a great accomplishment!  Except that I can’t find the nutrition, the supplements or the habits of mind to get out of this funking funk!!

And… drum roll….

•    my new marriage.

I pick up the Blogging-For-A-Better-Writing-Life torch on occasion, mostly in my mind, and then I drop it again.  Who will ever read or care?

But you know what it is?  I express myself most fully when someone is listening. I guess most people do… that’s why they write, “Dear Diary…”

Analyzing the recreant thoughts, digging up the source… perhaps doesn’t help and doesn’t matter. I’m not getting anywhere with that. I KNOW i tend to gather my self-worth from others.. I KNOW i have a hole in my soul from shame and fatherlessness… I KNOW God is my Maker, my Father and my Husband. And all this KNOWLEDGE doesn’t help.

dobson and chapman are writing to the fools who left for no good reason.

I didn’t leave because it got hard, i didn’t leave because it was a mediocre marraige, or b/c i stopped loving him or b/c it was boring or didn’t fit in with my career goals. I’m NOT one of THOSE people. Dobson and Chapman are writing to THOSE people.

the pain is useful for keeping me on God, unfortunately.

and what He is trying to teach me I think is submitting to His will, as Lewis means it. Waiting on Him. Giving him my dissatisfaction with current circumstances, my acute pains. Accepting the fact of what is. (and what isn’t).

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

–Reinhold Niebuhr

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will direct your paths.

Proverbs 3:5-6

If I were to live my life 

in catfish forms

in scaffolds of skin and whiskers 

at the bottom of a pond 

and you were to come by 

one evening

when the moon was shining 

down into my dark home 

and stand there at the edge 

of my affection

and think, "It's beautiful 

here by this pond.  I wish 

somebody loved me,"

I'd love you and be your catfish 

friend and drive such lonely 

thoughts from your mind 

and suddenly you would be

at peace,

and ask yourself, "I wonder 

if there are any catfish 

in this pond?  It seems like 

a perfect place for them."

by Kitaj?