Out With the Old; In With the New

Posted on by stilllearning2b

When my parents divorced, my mom elected to stay in the house so that I could continue to live in the same neighborhood and attend the same school. It may have been the same house, but it sure experienced a transformation after my dad moved out. The dark wood was painted white. Old wallpaper was removed and replaced with pastel print. Out went the heavy and masculine and in came the flowers and fancy scrollwork. When pink floral pillows were placed on the pale blue sofa, I think I even made the comment, “It looks like Laura Ashley threw up in here.”

At the time, the redecoration seemed a bit extreme to me. I didn’t comprehend the obsession with change or the drive to find the perfect painting. I didn’t understand it then. But I do now.

My situation was different than my mom’s. I left the marital house behind along with everything it contained. For a year, redecorating was the furthest thing from my mind as I lived in a rented room with borrowed supplies. That green flannel comforter may not have to my taste, but it soaked up my tears without complaint.

That spring, I was looking forward to moving into my new space, an apartment down the road from my new boyfriend.

And that’s when the decorating bug hit. I fell in lust with a colorful woven throw from Cost Plus and, after much debate, purchased it even though I did not yet have a place to put it (or even the funds to buy it). I soon started making lists (and spreadsheets) of what I wanted to fill my new space. My list had to be practical; when you don’t even own a towel, you can’t spend too much money on decorations. But it was still my list. My space.

And, like my mom many years before, I grew obsessed. My status had changed. My heart had changed. My life had changed.

And my home needed to reflect that change.

Even though I had loved the oversized, dark furniture in my old home, I gravitated towards smaller-scale white pieces this time around. I introduced some floral prints, although not quite to the Laura Ashley puke standard.

It was sparse. It was clean. It was new.

It was uncluttered of stuff and of memories.

And it was mine.

 

Change begets change.

And divorce begets redecorating.

Whether it be our homes, our hair, our wardrobes or our lives.

Out with the old and in with the new.

Time Travel and the Road to Acceptance

Posted on by stilllearning2b

We enjoyed a little “date afternoon” Saturday as a way to extend the holiday and break up the monotony of post-camping laundry. We were both in complete agreement about the move for the day – Mockingjay Part I, which Brock calls the “Star Wars for the next generation.” It’s such a universal story – the struggle for independence and the fight against oppression – and The Hunger Games tells it beautifully.

One of the previews was for a movie where a group of young people (oh my goodness, I sound old!) used a small time machine to go back and tweak their pasts, which of course led to all kinds of drama and unintended consequences. It felt like a mash-up of Back to the Future and The Butterfly Effect as it featured the entertaining allure of time travel as well as warning about the potential repercussions.

As the preview was playing, I found myself contemplating what I would do with unfettered access to a time machine. Not surprisingly, my thoughts centered around my ex:

Would I go back and ignore him when we first became friends at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 1992? Flashes of all the wonderful times we shared followed and missing out on that was not a choice I wanted to make.

How about leaving that relationship in my childhood and remaining in Texas when he moved to Atlanta in 1998? I thought about how much I now love Atlanta and consider it home and how much I would have missed out on.

I next focused on the money. After all, I gained nothing by being ignorant of his marital embezzlement and going back and stopping the hemorrhaging of my money could only have a positive impact, right? But even that left a sour taste in my mouth. Losing everything made be stronger and more grateful; I wouldn’t have had that lesson if I still had a cushion.

Ultimately, I decided that I would not change a thing. I am happy where I am and I could not be here without going through the rest. I’m sure some of my conclusion is from my brain’s self-protective mechanisms – justifying past decisions and weighing known losses as costlier than imagined ones. But some is also from the acknowledgement that struggle is what makes us strong and experiences really do build character.

On the way home from the theater, I posited the time machine question to Brock:

“I’m happy where I am, so I wouldn’t change anything. Oh, except I would go back two days and win the lottery.”

I smiled.

A Geographic

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Brock has been busy lately. Very busy. So when he had to drive to the other side of town this morning to drop something off for work, he invited me along for the ride. That’s life – sometimes quality time comes from a romantic evening out and sometimes it comes in the form of an hour plus on the highways of Atlanta (which even have traffic before dawn on a Saturday morning).

It was a quiet ride for the most part. The comfortable companionate silence between two people with nothing to prove who simply enjoy each other’s company. But it was also a journey to the past for me, as we drove from where we live to the area where I spent ten years of my former life.

I make that drive once a month or so to visit with friends or to attend some event. But usually I am either the driver or the sights are hidden beneath a shawl of darkness. This morning was different. The soft morning light had just brightened the sky when we made the turn into my old stomping grounds and, as the passenger, I had endless opportunity to peer between the trees to see what had remained and what had changed.

We drove by the street that was home to my first Georgia apartment where we served breakfast to the family who came into town to celebrate our wedding. We passed by my old library, where I checked out endless decorating books with the intention of turning our house into a home. I saw the biscuit place that my husband loved and the Costco where we went together every Saturday. We pulled through the drive through at the Starbucks where I met dates and sought public solitude after my divorce. And I caught a glimpse of the Gold’s Gym that was my sanctuary where I rebuilt mind and body.

I first heard the term “a geographic” relating to a need to pull up roots and start over somewhere new when I read Stephen King’s Duma Key. At the time I read the book, tucked securely in my other life, I didn’t understand that drive.

A few years later I understood it too well.

Once the reality of the end of my current life had set in, I felt an overwhelming need to escape. To run. To get away from every reminder and every location.

I wanted a geographic.

If I was going to be forced to start over, I wanted it to be fresh. Not built upon the dunghill of my former life.

Necessity kept me local for that first year; my job and my support system were nearby and needed. But that whole year, I felt restless. I no longer belonged. I needed to move. I was planning on a move to the West Coast, as far away as I could get in the continental U.S. But then love happened, and I cut my planned move short by about 2100 miles.

But it was far enough. As our morning drive took us through the streets of my old life, it felt like another world, another lifetime. It was distant yet interesting. I was curious rather than anxious. It held no pain, only far off memories. And it certainly didn’t feel like home.

I am feeling the pull for another kind of geographic right now. This semester has been way too frantic. I’ve felt pulled and prodded, trying to balance too much for too long. I feel the need to get away. To run. Not to another life, but to the woods for some quiet and simplicity. Life pared down to its most basic. Where the morning fire is often the most pressing item on the to-do list.

Peace. Hopefully without frostbite.

Sometimes we need to get away. Maybe for a few days. Or maybe for a lifetime.

Sometimes a geographic can help cure what ails us.

Portage

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I’ve spent a good amount of time on rivers. As a kid growing up in South Texas, tubing down the Frio or Guadalupe rivers was an essential part of every summer. I went whitewater rafting with friends and continued the tradition with my dad out West. When I moved to Georgia, I again spent time on the river, especially now with the Chattahoochee just down the road.

Rivers teach us about change. Unlike trails on land that stay static for months or even years on end, rivers swell and retreat seemingly with a mind of their own. Smooth waters are replaced with raging froth as boulders or logs divert the flow. Formerly deep wells become shallow graves lined with smooth stone when rainfall fails to meet the river’s demands. No matter how many times you have traveled those waters, they can still catch you by surprise.

A lesson I learned one summer rafting with a friend and her family on a river north of San Antonio. It was a stretch I had done before. In fact, I had even rafted it with her family on the previous summer. But this year was different. The usual drought had been relieved by drenching rains the week before and the river was full. Very full.

For the first part of the trip, we welcomed the swollen waters. You see, rafting (or even tubing) in Texas is usually broken up with intervals of walking the flotation device for a spell when the river becomes too shallow to support its draft. We used to joke about it being a sort of Texas portage. A normal portage is performed when the waters are too treacherous to approach and the craft is carried over land. In a Texas portage, the flotation device is simply carried over the small trickle of water while carefully stepping around the smooth stones that line the river bed until the water is again deep enough to support a craft.

So on this particular day on the river, we were simply happy that no Texas portages (portagii?) were necessary; the river was more than capable of carrying the raft with my friend and I, her parents and her brother. We were laughing and joking, eating soggy Pringles and drinking warm Cokes when we started to hear the noise. It started out as a dull roar, almost like bad reception on the car radio. But soon the noise was unmistakable. Water. Whitewater.

The recent rains had turned an upcoming portion of the river into a raging torment, made even more unpredictable by the damns created by debris moving down the river. Throwing the Pringles down, we scooped up the inadequate paddles and frantically rowed the boat ashore, narrowly escaping the tumultuous waters and our increasing panic. Where we carried the raft through the brush and bramble of the shore until we could safely place it back onto the water where we continued the remainder of the trip without incident.

That was my first real portage.

It wouldn’t be my last.

 

Our success on a challenge is greatly influenced by our view of the trial. If we see every section of impassable whitewater as an insurmountable obstacle, we will either remain stuck above the falls or find ourselves dashed on the rocks below.

But if we realize that the perceived obstacle is simply a detour in our plans, we will gather up the necessities and portage until it is safe.

Like the river, our lives often change without warning, causing us to leave the flow and construct a new path. Portage is not a sign of failure; it is a sign of acceptance and faith in the journey.

Sometimes you have to leave where you are to get where you are supposed to be.

Guest Post: Homeostasis, Interrupted

Posted on by stilllearning2b

While I am out of town for a few days, I will be sharing posts from a series of awesome guest bloggers. This post is from Tara, who describes herself as

… a recently divorced, single mom.  I work as a Clinical Social Worker with kids.  I obsess over coffee, being by the water and politics, not necessarily in that order.

She can be found on Twitter at @goog927 and on her blog, I’m Right. So What.

I love her insight into habits and preservation of the status quo. It’s something we all do, even when we’re not aware.

Homeostasis, Interrupted.

The toughest part of that Friday evening was knowing I just chose to leave both the consistency and familiarity behind, two things my marriage undoubtedly provided me.

The problem was that it was consistent emptiness, especially the last 3 years. It was consistently being on my own, in my interests and values; consistently longing for an escape.  It was a familiar sense of growing regret and questioning; questioning him, me our family and friends.  I was all too familiar with not looking forward to him walking in the door after work.  Familiar with the sense of dread I felt at the prospect of knowing I would have to pull the trigger.

But it was consistency and familiarity nonetheless.  I knew what to expect every day.  We had our routines, although mostly separate.  We knew each others buttons, vulnerabilities and needs.

This leads me to the concept of homeostasis. Being a therapist, this is a term we throw around often, especially in family therapy, giving possible explanation for why we stay stuck in cycles or behaviors.  Homeostasis is the internal stability we crave as humans and often why we resist change.

So that Friday night, I take the plunge.  A simple question, “Do you want flank steak for dinner?” led to a complicated answer and ultimately the biggest, single decision I’ve ever made, “I don’t even want to be married anymore, let alone a flank steak for dinner.”

No shit.  That’s how it went.  My ability to resist change was no longer. Nothing would be the same from that conversation forward.  Homeostasis, interrupted.

So here I am in the land of Singledom, as a single mom no less, dating with minimal emotional consistency.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the stability a marriage can provide. I’m not overly motivated in my beliefs on remarrying one way or the other.  I haven’t sworn off men. In fact, I’ve been dating someone who is pretty great.

There are plenty of couples among us who I observe and think (and sometimes I flat out say) “what the fuck?”  But it works for them even though sometimes that “it” is seemingly dysfunctional.  There’s a certain dance we engage in in our relationships that gives us this sense of familiarity, consistency and, a lot of times, safety.

Point is I think it’s easy to get tripped up and get caught out there.  In fact, I’ve been tested and tempted to lower my standards in lieu of that lost sense of consistency and familiarity.

As a single mom, it was of the utmost importance for me to re-establish stability. I’ve done a pretty good job thus far in creating my new life with my son, navigating and adjusting to various changes, despite the numerous days I’ve struggled not to say ‘fuck it’ and throw in the towel.

The most important thing to remember, something helpful I’ve practiced since shortly after my divorce, is to remind yourself daily to be aware of the authenticity of all of your relationships, not just with potential romantic suitors. When something as life-altering as divorce rocks your world it can be easy to jump back into something less than ideal to regain that sense of homeostasis.