cindy's world

What is the drive home like for people whose marriages have broken down? Does it start as a happy cheerful day at the office laughing and joking with coworkers, until the time comes to leave? Do they ask around to see who’s available to grab a happy hour drink, but are disappointed when all their coworkers in turn say they need to pick up their kid, pick up dinner, have a dinner date with the spouse, have a date-date, sorry-buddy-next-time? And then do they drive home slowly, dreadfully? Does a 20 minute commute feel like half a day, winding slowly toward an unhappy destination, a black hole devoid of light, full of vacuous cold and emptiness? Maybe they think about the earlier days, when they were one of the eager ones to go home and see their spouse after an unbearably long day at work. They had not lied when they recited “best friend” in their wedding vows, so what had happened? There used to be a joy, a light that shone in the home which led the way to the person who understood the best, who always had a light stroke for your hair, a nuzzle for your cheek, a pillow for your heart. And now, the night is long, the day is too short. The drive itself, albeit extensive and dreadful, is a blur as the driver sees only the layer upon layer of troubles and issues — the top of the stack, still seeped in fresh blood; the bottom of the stack, decayed and sulfurous; all of it, heavy and unresolved. Sickened and worn, maybe he’s powerless to resolve these issues and take them off the table because the spouse has stopped communicating and trying. Maybe he’s lost the hope that he can carry this relationship on his own shoulders. There are ones who go to the bar alone and stall there. There are ones who have stopped coming home. And then there are ones who come home just a shell, the spirit of their identities torn and forgotten, the joy of love and partnership just a cheesy love song on the radio, the warmth and safety of home a joke.

I read somewhere that an optimist is one who looks forward to marriage, and that a pessimist is a married optimist.

I wish it weren’t like that.

“How’d you sleep last nite?”
“Like a donut.”
“How does a donut sleep?”
“With a hole in the middle.”

For the past 2 nites, I’ve gone to bed a bit past 11p but I’d wake up at 3a-4a and be up for about 3 hours, unable to fall back asleep until it’s like 6a and I’d finally fall asleep for an hour or so before getting up for the day. During the hole, I’d be wide awake, not tired, but it’s too early to get up and get ready, so I’d just lay there, stewing in my own thoughts. This would be the ideal time to have crazed weasel sex with someone and tire myself out, except nobody has donut sleep like me. I think the return of the donut hole in the middle of my rest is a sign of internal turmoil. (Duh.) I’ve been told that I just need to quiet my internal voices and thoughts. From experience, they’re only quiet if I’ve had a mental breakthrough (i.e. figured out a solution or theory that puts me at ease) or if I dump it all out via writing or blogging.

Funny thing is, I’m not tired today at all. I was hyper driving to work this morning, bopping along to my soundtrack to The Longest Yard. Probably just adrenaline.

Today has been a remarkably better day mood-wise than yesterday.

I love discovering people to have philosophical psychological sociological introspective conversation with. I especially enjoy how they seek an explanation, a theory and a solution for me, and don’t judge me. And they tend to think I’m smart. I especially like that. =)

Mr. W and I are in personal rafts/innertubes, like we were in Jamaica a few weeks ago. We are alone, and adrift in a dark river that has a cognizable current that we are paddling against. He was at first next to me, paddling, and I was keeping up with a little difficulty. He then pulls a bit ahead of me, efficiently fighting the current, and I feel like I’m just being pulled back as I struggled with my paddle. In the background was some distant ominous-sounding roar that I had been ignoring or not acknowledging. A nervousness is pulling in the pit of my stomach. I’m now about 2 feet behind him, and I cry out to him. He turns and looks at my face and my tears, and I reach out an arm to him, begging him to help me come back to him. To my utter shock, he coldly turns around and continues to paddle on his own way. I yell his name again, and it becomes apparent that he has forsaken me. Confused and hurt, I pause in the paddling as I watch his back and innertube get smaller and smaller. Suddenly, I am surrounded in the deafening noise that had snuck up upon me. Waterfall. I scream for him again, and he doesn’t even turn around this time. As I start to fall backwards over the waterfall into darkness, I feel less terrified than I feel betrayed and abandoned.

I woke up and saw myself crawl out of bed in my mirror-lined closet. I was surprised at the flat appearance of my stomach, the slight outline of abdominal muscles in the moonlight. Or maybe it was the streetlight. I stumbled into the bathroom and weighed myself. I’m within 1.5 pounds of my goal weight range. The only thing guaranteed to make me dump weight is relationship problems.

“How are you this morning, ma’am?” my judge just asked me from the bench.
I gave him a flat-lipped smile. “All right, I guess.”
“You look…guardedly chipper,” he observed with a kind smile.

I guess “guardedly chipper” is what I look like when I realize on the drive to work this morning that I’d been lied to. There’s the “Aww, that was delicious, thank you” lie, and then there’s the type of lie that’s used to cover some negatively-motivated action that, when told, just doesn’t sit quite right with the person lied to in a “gut” sort of way. It’s like laying a plank over a marble. You can’t see the marble, but the plank just doesn’t lay flat the way it’s supposed to, congruent with its surroundings.

This is all too familiar. It’s dishearteningly parallel, despite the absolutely different variables. As my high school friend Nina used to say, “Same shit, different toilet.”

*Sigh*

I’LL BE – Edwin McCain

The strands in your eyes that color them wonderful
Stop me and steal my breath
And emeralds from mountains thrust toward the sky
Never revealing their depth
And tell me that we belong together
Dress it up with the trappings of love
I’ll be captivated
I’ll hang from your lips
Instead of the gallows of heartache that hang from above

Chorus:
And I’ll be your crying shoulder
I’ll be your love suicide
And I’ll be better when I’m older
I’ll be the greatest fan of your life

And rain falls angry on the tin roof
As we lie awake in my bed
And you’re my survival, you’re my living proof
My love is alive and not dead
And tell me that we belong together
Dress it up with the trappings of love
I’ll be captivated I’ll hang from your lips
Instead of the gallows of heartache, that hang from above

(Repeat Chorus)

I’ve been dropped out, I burned up, I fought my way back from the dead
I tuned in, I turned on, Remembered the things that you said

(Repeat Chorus)

The greatest fan of your life

I finally listened to other voices in my head today at lunch. I guess telling oneself everything’s okay, everything’s okay, only works for so long until the reality of things is waved in one’s face like a banner, thereby forcing one to confront it, at least in one’s own head. It doesn’t taste very good. And it’s all just very sad, and very tiring.

My mom’s stressing me out. Earlier in the week, she wrote me an email about ordinary stuff, but buried in the text was something to the effect that both she and Dad like Mr. W and have we talked about the future? Mr. W was good about it and laughed it off (we haven’t even been dating 6 months!), and today, she writes me again in an email that very sweetly reviews her family life starting from her marriage to now, and says that she got married, had a kid, put the kid thru college, helped her get into her first house, and now she’s going to prepare for retirement “and…something else.” And then she goes into how she wishes that, presumably before the “something else,” she will get to see me at my wedding and then hold her grandchild. And then in a later paragraph, she asks if I’m going to help her with her living trust.

I had never liked having to address my parents’ mortality. It used to scare me to death as a kid until I gulped and decided not to worry about such an improbability when I was in middle school. In middle school, my parents had brought home 2 blank certificate-looking wills and just had it on the wet bar so that when I came home from school at the ripe mature age of 12 or 13, I freaked out. Those forms stayed empty and undealt with for months or years until I felt better about it, and then they just disappeared.

It’s rough shouldering the responsibility of your parents as an only child. People assume that I’m spoiled by them, and to an extent, I guess I was. I did get everything without having to share. But I also got their bad moods, the butt of their bad days, all of their expectations and disappointments. The thing with being just one person is that you get both the long and the short ends of the stick. It was a selfish decision to move out of their house on my own, and very anti-traditional Asian. My mom cried nightly when I first moved out. I go home regularly and visit them on the weekends (look at that, I still call their house “home”, as tho I were in college), just like all the good little Asian kids who have moved out due to school or work, and that alleviates the guilt somewhat. But generally I shrug it all into the back of my head. The guilt that I should be taking care of them (altho they are autonomous and I’m very proud of my immigrant parents for that), that I should be more involved in their daily lives, that I should have a finger on the pulse of their health and know what’s going on and be doing things to help them improve their health. I feel guilty that the weekend visits are almost dealt with like a mandatory chore in my perceived-busy life instead of something I look forward to.

Speaking of health, my mom said in an off-hand way in an email string a couple of weeks ago that she had to go now because she had a doctor’s appointment. My mom’s always had doctors’ appointments as I was growing up. It was something I was used to and I normally wouldn’t ask much. But normally I’d get my information from her complaining about the healthcare network or the doctors’ vague reports. This time, when I responded to her email the next day asking what the appointment was for, she deliberately kept it from me, saying it’s too complicated to explain and then just changing the subject. I responded to the subject she changed it to succinctly, and then deliberately readdressed the doctor’s appointment, asking again what it was and how it went. She wrote, “nothing, just a blood test.” How is that complicated?! She’s keeping something from me. And now all this weird pressure to rush my life that she’d never done before. Either she and my dad REALLY like Mr. W, or something’s egging her on. *anxiety puke*

I’m still at work for an unknown reason, but I started looking back at my early entries on this thing. In June of 2005, I’d written this post when all my emotional crap came to a head and crashed. I wrote an ode to the future, meaning a letter to my future man, the “good” guy, and I’d posted a poem I wrote in October 24, 2003 when I’d first pleaded for him to come into my life. In October 2003, I was miserable and sad and during a week of nauseating depression, during which I was writing furiously in my journal several times a day (before discovering blogging, obviously) to just stay sane, I had written that poem. I’d always joked with my closest friends when they say that “the right guy’s just around the corner,” that when I finally meet him, I’m gonna kick him in the shin and yell, “WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?! Do you have any idea the kind of HELL I went thru while I was waiting for you to come into my life?!”

Looking back now, Mr. W had walked into my life days after I’d written that poem the first time in 2003. He’d expressed interest, asked me out (he doesn’t remember this, altho he remembers the event we’d seen each other at), and… I turned him down. At that point back then, I’d just finally, after 8 months of torture, officially gotten together with the Cheating Ex, and didn’t want to jeopardize that relationship (not knowing that just days after that, the Cheating Ex would begin to make his nickname-sake).

I’ve often thought back to the first time Mr. W asked me out, and how it felt so wrong back then to say yes. There were superficial issues back then — the age difference, the different points we are at in our lives — that made it hard for me to see him in that romantic way. It really took my being ground thru the wringer after that to make me able to see past what I used to think was important in a man. And when I was ready 3 months after that June entry, Mr. W reappeared, like some uncanny fated chess move, and we clicked in September of 2005. And haven’t stopped clicking.

One of my very favorite things about hanging with Mr. W is that I like who I am when I’m with him. I feel pretty and happy and giddy and silly. And I feel smart. Not because I’m smarter than the company, but because he makes me feel like my opinion and knowledge count for something. This morning upon waking I did impressions (and made him guess) of a dog laying in bed, a penguin laying in bed, a jellyfish laying in bed, a paperweight laying in bed. The only one he was able to guess correctly was my impression of him laying in bed. It’s wonderful to wake up and laugh.

Yesterday we went over to my parents’ house and my mom made dinner (which really impressed Mr. W’s palate — I’d been telling him my mom’s a brilliant cook), then we showed my parents a PG version of our cruise photos, and as my dad served tea in the traditional Chinese serving style (strong loose leaf tea served in tiny little cups on tiny little coasters from an authentic wooden tree-trunk looking serving station), Mr. W walked my mom thru how to burn a DVD on the laptop I bought her for xmas and my mom took notes. It was so cute. And Mr. W invited my parents to come with us when Huntington Library opens up its Chinese Garden in late summer this year. That guy knows how to stack up brownie points. And then afterwards, we went to my house where he fixed my garage door. More brownie points. Oh, and I finally got to yell at my stupid neighbors who ignore all the signs posted as well as the note I’d left on their car and parks smack in the middle of the community driveway and block my ingress and egress. They moved the car. 1 point for me! And then we came back to his house and sat in the jacuzzi. Or maybe that last part was the night before. But we did it again this morning.

Oh, last nite while Mr. W stepped away for a moment, my mom said to me in Chinese that I looked pretty in my cruise photos. She noted I looked better in those photos than I did in prior vacation photos. I said that Mr. W photographs me well. She asked if my mood had anything to do with it. I thought a bit and said maybe. She asked about a vacation I took over a year ago, asked whether I was happy then. I said I wasn’t. It’s nice that my parents can observe my general emotional well-being thru just an image. I remember one of x-gf‘s entries in which she wrote that she photographs well when she’s happy.