COME ON GET HAPPY

So, the guys I work with like to talk. Occasionally, I hear snatches of rumors regarding myself. Today's rumor made me laugh, as if I wasn't already. My "assistant" told me one of the guys told him I had gone crazy. Crazy, he says, because every time they see me, I am laughing.

And this seems like a departure from the me of the past, the one who they used to occasionally find crying in the back hallway, or with the long face of a sad life. They aren't sure they know this "me", but they like it. "You always look good," says one of them, "but when you smile, you spark. You look much better with a smile on your face."

And I know the reason why I am so happy, and I know I should just let it be, but you know I have to examine it closer. I really search myself to see if I am just acting happy as a way to cover some deeper emotional issues. Really, should I be this happy right now, with what I am "going through", or walking into? I want to make sure this is a real emotion, and not a "masking" emotion. Why do I feel so good? Why am I not hurting more as I walk away from this bad marriage?

The fact is, I was hurting. I hurt for a long time, but the acute pain of letting go already happened for me the past six months or so. I knew it, too, when I was going through it. I could recognize the different stages of grief as they rolled over me, and named them, one by one. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. I think I finally reached that fifth stage, and that is why I can just let it slide right off my shoulders at this point.

I know some of my friends don't understand why I like Dr Phil, but you know, sometimes he says some incredibly wise things. The one thing he said once on his show that I really paid attention to was this: "The time to get divorced is not when you are hurting, and not when you are mad. The time to get divorced is when you feel nothing. That's when you are ready."

I know I held on to this decision for far too long, but the fact is, I really didn't feel nothing until just lately, the past couple of months. I still felt love, I still felt pain, I still felt rejection, anger, sadness and all those miserable emotions that I carried for so long. I still felt the burden and anxiety of trying to hang on to a sinking ship. I know that during the summer I was just trying to stay afloat, so I wouldn't drown. Then, it was time to act, but I couldn't. I was still in the thick of the process, and I still cared about it.

I know there was a point when my Anger began to cease, that I started to head into Bargaining, and I didn't want to. I saw what was happening - I was trying to re-negotiate the terms of affection to be able to stay in it, even though it was so not right for me. During this time, some of my friends became concerned for me, because they have been ready for me to get out for too long. One of them gave me a number of a hotline I could call, to discuss these emotions with someone trained to deal with them.

When I called the hotline, I talked to this woman for about an hour about these complicated emotions. I told her I was ready to start the healing process, and I was wondering how I was going to be able to heal emotionally from the scars I was holding on to. I told her how I kept running to him to be the salve, even though the injuries were his own doing, and it made no sense. "You can't start healing until you get out of it," she told me. "Meanwhile, let's see what we can do to help you feel better about YOU." She gave me some suggestions, and we laughed about them at the time, but you know, it worked. I had to reclaim some parts of myself that I lost to this. And maybe I am still working on that part, but you know, I am closer to "fine" than I have been in a long, long time.

There are no tears about letting go at this point. There is no hurt in my heart, no anxiety about the future. Sometimes, though, there are still tears, not shed of anger or frustration, but of realizations, and expectation of future joy.

Last night, I shed some, unexpectedly. Something magical happened, and I don't know if anyone will really get this, except maybe Jen. I was about to go to bed when it happened. I started chatting on Facebook with an old friend, a former roommate. This roommate and I had gone through some real shit together, and I would say at one point in my life that she was my "frien-emy" (and yes I know you read this, but you have to admit it is true).

She told me to call her, something I would never have done at that hour, but there we were, on the phone, and she cut right to the heart of it. She told me things I never knew, like the true reason she didn't come to my wedding. She told me things we never discussed, like the good she saw in me. She told me how much it bothered her to see me unhappy for so long, and what her perception of my marriage had been, the things she couldn't tell me until I was ready to find my way out. Her words touched me more than my three best girlfriends words ever did, because they were so rare. She and I never really shared those kind of sentiments with each other, but here she was, telling me the value she found in me, and the value he should have seen in me, and what she hopes for me to find out there. I loved her across those phone lines, and I smiled through our conversation, but when I hung up, the tears came hard. How could I have been so blind to have not seen what she saw, in all those years?

But I'm gonna try. My history is my past now, and there's a new future waiting out there. I'm ready for it, and I am not going to look back anymore. So here's to moving on, and here's to letting go, but most of all, here's to being happy.

Come on, get happy....

Questioning Happiness
So, to celebrate my birthday the other night, I met my best friend at a favorite Tex Mex restaurant. Oddly enough, I realized on the way there I had celebrated my 16th birthday there, albeit at a different location, which is exactly half the age I was turning now.
Anyway, afterwards a couple people asked me if had fun. Fun? Not really. It was fine, it was nice, but it wasn't really fun. It got too sad. At the end of the meal, she turned the conversation towards a tricky subject, the subject of my marriage. It really bothers her that I stay married to the man I am married to. Similar words, similar conversations I have with my other best friend as well. I understand what they are doing. They love me and they want me to be happy. They don't understand why I stay with a man who is so wrong for me. I wish I didn't have to talk about it with them all the time, though. It is a real drag and frankly sometimes I think it is really none of their business and not something they should tell me what to do about. I find myself constantly justifying the reasons I stay married with them, which have more to do with perceived need and children than any kind of real happiness or desire on my part. There was a time where I thought I didn't deserve happiness, but that is over. I know I deserve it, but I can't see just splitting up a family, taking my children's security away from them like that, robbing them of some happiness just because I want to be happy. It makes me uncomfortable when other women do that. Sure, I deserve to be happy, but does that entitle me to make pursuit of my happiness center stage, does my desire trump the needs of my children?
So, the conversation ended with my making two points. One, I have read a lot of books, memoirs, that describe relationships much worse. My friend questioned whether I would leave one of those men, either, but I know I would. That is the tough thing about my marriage, because it is all a fine line, a gray area. He doesn't hurt me, he takes care of my children, he just doesn't meet any of my needs. My second point was why does he have to satisfy my needs, that I am getting those needs met, just not through him. I am very careful not to do or feel anything that crosses that marital line, but I have other people that I rely on to fulfill my mental, emotional, spiritual needs, and my physical needs I take care of myself. I don't need him to fulfill these needs and I am okay without him. I just wish he was the one who was doing it, because yes, it would make my life with him more rewarding. Sure, sometimes I wish I could feel certain things in my marriage, like romance, like being wanted, like companionship. It is very lonely without those things. I have learned to live without, though, and I am fine.
But last night I had this dream. When I awoke, I realized that the dream was showing me another life, a life where my needs were being met, and I could see specifically what they were, what those things were I was missing. In my dream, I met up with someone I know. There was a band, and a woman in the band was dedicating a song to her dog that had died that afternoon (which was the preface of my dream, because I had been involved in trying to save her dog), and this man was crying soft tears over her loss. That to me shows tenderness and compassion. I long for tenderness. I am not treated with tenderness and really that is the way I need to be treated, because even though I act tough, inside I am frightened and scared. I sat by him and a movie came on, with Barbara Streisand no doubt, and I was leaning my head on his shoulder, and he held my hand, and we were talking and laughing about the movie, about an article that he had read, about the world in general. I felt true companionship and intellectual curiosity. That is something that I am lacking and that I long for. Afterward, we walked home, and when we got home, he kissed me. It was one of those powerful, passionate, knee-trembling kisses. I remembered what it was like to kiss like that, and it seemed like it had been so long for me, and I have missed it like a person in the desert longs for water at the horizon. Then he left, but I had been drinking out of some bottle of homemade port or something, and thought it would be funny to surprise him, so I wandered to his house and just kind of let myself in. I started feeling nervous, though, because I thought he would be mad if he saw me, so I had started to leave when he came out wearing some silly outfit with chaps that just made you laugh to look at it, and started playing some silly game with me, and we were laughing and chasing each other all up the block.
I tell my husband all the time we need to learn to have fun together, but there is rarely laughter in my relationship, no spontaneous fun. People have this perception that I am serious all the time, but really I have this very goofy, silly sense of humor that just needs to be tapped into to bring it out. The more comfortable I feel, the more amusing I can be, and when I am happy, I am just darn hilarious. It is ironic to me that people tell me all the time I am too serious and I need to laugh more, because I think about how I used the be "The Entertainment" when I was in school. My friends would bring me to parties and drive around with me just to hear the stuff coming out of my mouth and laugh.
So I woke up from this dream to a baby crying, and got back to my life of taking care of others, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I thought about the way I felt in the dream, and how I want those things for my life, I want it to be real.
Interestingly enough, I had another similar conversation the day after my birthday, while out geocaching with some girlfriends. There is apparently a hot studly single geocacher, and my friends have talked about introducing us before, and I know what they were up to. We had kind of a funny conversation yesterday, where I told one girl, Elisa, that we should come up with a way to introduce this guy to Becky, a friend with us who is single (and very attractive). She kind of talked around it for a minute, and then said "Actually, Keely, Rhonda and I were hoping to introduce him to you. We wanted to set you up with him." I said "Well, I understand that, but there is a little problem with that" and showed her my wedding ring. We all laughed, and then I told Becky that Elisa and Rhonda were trying to give me the hint that I needed to get rid of my husband. Becky said "oh, that seems to be the general consensus, doesn't it?" and they all laughed. I thought it was a bit funny because Elisa and Rhonda don't know the half of it, but Becky does. I have cried on Becky's shoulders a lot about my marriage. She was there for me during a time where things were really difficult. She never told me what to do. She only helped me deal with it emotionally. Anyway, while Becky and I were at a geocache, we talked about it some more, and I told her a little bit about the conversation I had with my best friend. Becky said she kind of agreed with my point about needs and happiness, that she feels that way and that is why she doesn't have a man in her life and isn't really seeking one, because she is able to fulfill her needs otherwise as well, and happiness is a little overrated anyway. "I mean, who is really ever truly happy anyway?" she asked.
I don't know the answer to that one.