Life unfiltered
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Magnet
I am reviewing our 42 page divorce agreement.
It begins innocently enough with a few gut-punching lines about where we got married, the ages of our children and their birthdays.The first line mentions our anniversary date: Oct. 21, 2012.
Surely the agreement had to begin somehow, but why did it have to start with a happy memory? I received an anniversary card from today from a relative in California who hasn’t heard the news. Gut punch number two.Gut punch number three: We’ll never make it two days from now to what would have been our 11 year wedding anniversary. Instead I am being mentally punted back to a time way before our marriage, way before I met him.
There’s something about visiting your parents’ house, tail between your legs as a single mom that feels fully like gut punch number four.
I’m being forced against my will to start over.
I can’t put my finger on what age I’ve been returned to, but the only age it could be before the trauma began in my life would be 17. I don’t feel 17.
I feel me at my age now with a striking sense of confidence and clarity, but I think I found my track back to my silly laughter from 17. Things I found funny as a teenager have returned. And I laugh more than I have during our entire marriage. I laugh at super inappropriate things at inappropriate times, just like teenage Joanna.
So, I am carrying this Frankensteined version of me, a weird mix of 17 and 38. She’s brave, confident, confused, sad and fun.
And this version of me is a magnet. Part of my magnet magic is that people are beautifully coming to my rescue in too many ways to count. They all, in their own ways, are able to lift me out of my darkness when I am in their presence. And because I’ve got so many people, I’m also hearing their beautiful hopes and dreams and stories.
I’m honored lately to be witness to people sharing their dark stories of past trauma with me and I am grateful to be a listening ear for the creative and out-of-the-box thinkers in my life sharing what makes them tick and how they are actively pursuing their goals.
You people are more beautiful than you realize. I see you. I think you are open to telling me because maybe you trust me a little extra now that I am baring my soul more now and it gives you permission to share yours.
I, of course, am grateful for everyone who has talked to me and continues to help me with my dark stuff.
But, I’m really loving this mix of 17 and 38 year old me that’s showing up right now and able to be witness to how incredible the people are that surround me.
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Irreconcilable differences
Unforeseen circumstances. Irreconcilable differences.
The polite ways to say shit has hit the fan.
Every time I have to use and see these words to describe my current situation, it feels true and false at the same time.
Were my circumstances really unforeseen? Or did I choose to ignore all of the red flags?
Are our differences truly irreconcilable? Or did we at some point replace the true and deep musings and conversations of our early relationship with discussions about daily schedules, meal planning, gymnastics and basketball sign ups and what we’d watch on Netflix?
I did not notice we had stopped talking until it was over.
I was indifferent to our circumstances. It was not intentional.
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Lean in
Who am I when I’m not a mom?
Who am I when I’m not planning the next phase of my life?Who am I?
I know what everyone I’ve met has wanted me to be. I sensed it from their subtle and not-so-subtle clues and behaviors, and I morphed into the perfect version of me for every single one of them.
It’s my super power and the super destroyer of my authentic self.Who am I?
I can tell you when I feel most at peace.
I am peaceful when I’m walking in the woods alone, writing full novels in my head.
Actually, a more honest answer is this: I’m always peaceful when I am alone.
I notice sensations and breezes and bees that simply land on the words I’m writing in my journal.I’ve never let myself be with just me.
To know who I am.It will be the greatest gift I can give to myself to just stop.
No next plan, no dreaming of the perfect future.Just be here. Now.
Let what my future is be what it is without my obnoxious intervention. -
Miss Manners
When I received the Miss Manners award in fourth grade, it felt like the highest honor. The proud look on my parents’ faces for having raised me to win such an award made me feel as if I’d brought home a gold medal. There’s no doubt they had raised me to be a good person.
In my home growing up, I don’t remember us ever having a saying we lived by, like, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all”, but the expectations were crystal clear. I noticed what parts of myself received praise, and what didn’t, and began to shape my personality accordingly.
I needed to be kind, polite and quiet. No disruptions. Be as small as you can. Above all, make others comfortable.
I’ve only just realized how much I’ve carried this with me into adulthood. On the surface there’s nothing wrong with being kind or polite or quiet. It has really become part of my identity because I’ve always wanted everyone to like me. And, truthfully, that’s been so easy when you are those three things. I can make friends with anyone.
But now I feel myself shifting. Kind above all else is not kind to me. When everyone else comes first, where does that leave me?
When I’m polite above all else, where is there room to speak the truth?
When I’m quiet above all else, I live inside myself and can’t share my life with anyone.
These questions keep bubbling up to the surface. I feel lately that I’m stepping away from how I once was and stepping into my power. It feels so freeing.
For example, this may sound nuts, but I’m finally letting my face rest. My entire life, my mouth has been permanently turned up into a smile because I needed everyone to feel comfortable around me. I needed to look the part of that kind person. It is only over the past year that I have allowed myself to look neutral. My face doesn’t have to be pleasant all the damn time.
I’m also finding my voice. I’m learning that I can be straightforward and that’s doing a service to people around me when I tell the truth.
I don’t really know what it is about being in your 30s, but I’m enjoying the great unlearning and undoing of parts of me that no longer serve me.
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Into the lion’s den
If no one is talking about pandemic fatigue anymore, I will.
Because if left unspoken it will take me down.
It is the first Monday of 2022 and there’s not enough coffee brewing in the entire world to keep me awake.
It feels like 2020 all over again, except instead of being able to look at the situation with a set of fresh eyes like I could the first time, I’m wandering through it, very confused, with two years of trauma on my back.
My house is quiet for the first time since before Christmas, but my mind is loud.
It screams at me to read more news, to be afraid, and to hone in on that the small, barely detectable, possible figment of my imagination scratch in my throat.
But the loudest, shreikiest scream is the one that yells at me, saying “how the hell could you send your kids to school this week?”
After everyone has been at holiday gatherings during the surge of the most transmissible variant to date, it feels like sending them into the lion’s den while I get to work safely from home.
It feels really bad.
There’s no other way to describe it.
But the system seems set up against me, in many ways, to make an impossible choice.
Yes, I know, they will “probably be OK”, but when we say that, we’re really saying is that our kids will “probably not die”. And I don’t think my mind will ever be OK with that reality.
