Last Saturday I didn\u2019t have any human contact all day.\u00a0 I typed a lot of journal, played a lot of solitaire.\u00a0 Washed a bunch of dishes.\u00a0 Dumped a puzzle on the table & started turning pieces right side up.\u00a0 I finished Wildfire at Midnight and started a biography of Crazy Horse.\u00a0 I own the book, but I can\u2019t have read it before, and it\u2019s too difficult to keep going.\u00a0 I started The Middle Window last night.<\/p>\n
\u201cTomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day unto the last syllable of recorded time. and all our yesterdays light fools the way to dusty death.\u00a0 Out out brief candle.\u00a0 Life\u2019s but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.\u00a0 It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.\u201d\u00a0 I memorized that as an adolescent, thinking I knew what it felt like.\u00a0 The truth is I had no idea.\u00a0 That passage from MacBeth is such an accurate description of despair.\u00a0 It\u2019s the full-blown version of \u201cthat twilight feeling<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s exactly how I feel.\u00a0 I ask myself if I really know that that level of despair is based on reality.\u00a0 And something inside me says \u201cNo, it\u2019s not true.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s how you are feeling and that\u2019s a combination of emotional exhaustion, \u201ccompassion fatigue,\u201d the ongoing battle with PTSD, the pain of helplessness in the face of Eleanor\u2019s suffering.<\/p>\n I think \u201cIf Eleanor weren\u2019t living here, I could have had the kind of life I was hoping to have living in this house.\u201d\u00a0 I would have been able to scatter seeds and see the birds…\u00a0 but then I would still have been battling attachment trauma, and I would not have her support.\u00a0 It\u2019s like the work with Erica, sometimes it\u2019s so painful I wish I had never started.\u00a0 But I had no choice.\u00a0 Why did I have no choice about working with Erica?\u00a0 Because I had to get down to the bottom of what\u2019s causing my suffering.\u00a0 I had no choice with Eleanor because I love her.\u00a0 That\u2019s the great learning I got from these past weeks of pain.\u00a0 That I really do love her very much, that I am capable of loving in such difficult and painful circumstances, that this is what love is.\u00a0 Some hard thing that you do, not some nice thing that you feel.<\/p>\n I wonder about typing up what I wrote about despair and love for a blog post.\u00a0 I get that little IRNK feeling that suggests that I am bragging, an old old voice.\u00a0 Actually, I\u2019m telling the truth.\u00a0 Because of early trauma, because no matter what I did I couldn\u2019t make my mother happy, I internalized a belief that I am not loving.\u00a0 This is the first time that I have seen that how much pain I\u2019m in tells me how much I love.\u00a0 And the fact that we both want to stay in connection with each other is one of the first times I have found out what it feels like to repair a major break in an important relationship.<\/p>\n I think this is how Jesus loved us.\u00a0 He came to teach us and show us what compassion and forgiveness were, and he accepted a painful death because that was a consequence of his revolutionary teaching.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t \u201cdie for our sins.\u201d\u00a0 Unlike me, he had had the experience of a loving god and that gave him the strength to challenge those in power with revolutionary teaching. \u00a0He knew that they would execute him, but that didn’t stop him.<\/p>\n Because I love, I am willing to accept the pain of my loved one, even pain I have caused.\u00a0 This is what my ex-husband couldn\u2019t do.\u00a0 Hurting me made him feel despicable, and the only way he knew to stop it was to cut me off.<\/p>\n “Some hard thing that you do,” and “Hating those we have injured because it makes us feel despicable,” are both quotes from the writings of Elizabeth Goudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wildfire at Midnight is a romance by Mary Stewart Last Saturday I didn\u2019t have any human contact all day.\u00a0 I typed a lot of journal, played a lot of solitaire.\u00a0 Washed a bunch of dishes.\u00a0 Dumped a puzzle on the table & started turning pieces right side up.\u00a0 I … Continue reading
\nThe Journey of Crazy Horse is a biography by Joseph M. Marshall III
\nThe Middle Window is a novel by Elizabeth Goudge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"