Monday, October 12, 2009

Short hiatus

Just marking the moment.  Tomorrow, I go to the hospital to have this baby!  It has been a long journey, but a longer one is about to commence.  Excited and nervous tonight...  Shall certainly be writing about the experience when I'm able to return to my computer.

But for now... signing off.  :-)))

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Lost and Trapped, part 4: lesson 3

Lesson 3: A relationship is not a cure for what we lack within ourselves

I can remember the thought in my mind after the proposal, "And now, I will never again be alone."


Being alone.  At one time in my life it was my greatest fear.  I thought that if I could just find someone who loved me so much he never wanted to leave me, then I would be content.  The feeling I'd had for so many years that I didn't belong, that I was an outsider, would go away.  I thought all it took was finding that person who wanted to be committed to me forever.  


It took me nearly a decade to learn that what I struggled with - my insecurities, my loneliness, my fear of growing up and standing on my own - were all issues that I had to confront myself, sort through myself.  It took experience and soul searching to fill in the voids.  It took time confronting head on the things I had most sought to avoid.  I did not know when I was 22 that to feel better, to learn to appreciate life and feel true happiness, I had to sort through and banish my demons myself.  No one could do it for me.  And asking anyone else to take care of me - depending on anyone else for my sanity, the security of my soul - was dooming myself and that person to failure and misery.


So, why have I called all these posts "lost and trapped"?  Because I went into my first marriage too quickly and for all the wrong reasons.  And once I had committed myself, I thought there was no way out.  But I didn't understand why.


The first few years, as I tried anti-depressant after anti-depressant, as my anxiety and sense that all was lost grew, I thought I was falling apart despite having found what I most wanted (a husband).  I thought I was simply losing my mind.  The years took their toll on X as well and at a certain point (perhaps two years in) he too started changing.  There was very little semblance left of the man I had imagined marrying.  We stopped laughing.  He had always made me laugh, but as he drank more and became zealously religious and his behavior became increasingly erratic, I was finally able to see what had been evident all along.  My depression was not a chemical fault in brain... it was my environment, including (and mostly) X.


But getting divorced only started my recovery.







Thursday, October 8, 2009

Lost and Trapped, part 4: lesson 2

Lesson 2: Wedding vs. Marriage


The second mistake I made was willfully confusing a wedding with a marriage.  As I mentioned, I met X in June, was in DC in July and he proposed when I returned in early August.  Now this felt, at the time, like Twilight Zone time - it seemed forever.  But obviously, it was very rushed.  He had begun talking about marriage in June, just weeks after we'd met.  And we were apart in July, so I could fantasize all I wanted about him and our life together without fact and reality interfering.


And here's what I fantasized about: what kind of ring would he buy?  What would my girlfriends say when I asked them to be bridesmaids?  Where could I start looking for a dress?  


Here's what I gave no thought to whatsoever: how well do I know this man?  Am I giving up too much to be with him?  What will I do with my life when I am back in Connecticut?  Would he sacrifice as much for me?  What will life be like with him in ten years?  How will I cope with how messy he is?  


So many of us girls dream of "getting married."  What we refer to in that dream (or, at least, what I meant by that) is the wedding day and the fact that we have a man who wants us.  Too few of us think long and hard over whether we want the man.  And what life will be like day after day, year after long year.


Some women fantasize about a doctor, lawyer or politician - someone with a job they admire or desire because of the associated wealth and power.  They want someone who will take care of them financially, buy them a house or take them on glamorous vacations.  Someone who will impress their friends or family.  Someone who will open up a social world they may desire.  They want a hero who will sweep them away to his castle on a hill where they'll live "happily ever after"  (whatever that means).


Too few women, I think, focus on the qualities they desire in a man: trustworthiness, loyalty, support, kindness, sense of humor.  Too few think about whether the man will expend his energy trying to make their lives better, happier, more fun, more fulfilled.  Whether he will fit in with the life they already have.  Whether he will support their dreams, or whether his focus will be solely on his own career and dreams.


Too few think about what kind of father the man would make - will he be an equal partner, or will he kiss the kids on the head after he arrives home late from the office or before he rushes off for another international trip.


We get caught up in the moment - the romance, the excitement of being loved and wanted, the status we might think it confers upon us.  We don't think about the substance of what we truly need to be happy.  We don't think of what we want in a partner.  What kind of a man do we want by our side in 5 years, 10 years, 40 years? 


The wedding lasts a day.  It is (or ought to be) an acknowledgement and celebration of a relationship - a lasting state - that exists between two people.  Not a goal in itself... not an end.  Because the wedding day does fly by... but I can't begin to describe how long life can seem when you are unhappy in a relationship and can't see any way out.  When every day is a small scrape of a disappointment, embarrassment or frustration.  When some days are a huge and painful battle. When you realize you've sacrificed your youth, your career, your children, yourself and must start try to start over at a time when you thought everything would be settled.


After, I learned that if ever someone were to propose to me again, I needed to pay attention to the following:  my gut reaction - was I filled with joy and happiness or was I a bit queasy?  could I see myself in love with this man when he is old, wrinkled and drooling?  could I imagine wanting to be with him in our home every day?  did he understand what I want from life and would he help me to achieve it?  did I understand what he wanted and could I support his dreams?  could I imagine always being attracted to him?


I thought of none of those things when X started talking about proposing.  I thought of wedding... not marriage.  And it was not long before I learned the difference and how serious my mistake had been.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Lost and Trapped, part 4: lesson 1

So I've told  the story of meeting and marrying my X, describing it as a significant (though necessary) mistake in my life.  The four years that followed were, in many ways, dark, lonely times.  Before I describe anything that happened during the marriage, I think it's important to identify clearly the mistakes I'd made to this point and what I've learned from them since.


1) The mistaken notion of love at first sight.
Don't get me wrong, I believe it's possible to see someone and know that they are going to be important in your life (that goes for friendship as well as love).  Intuition exists and can be very powerful.  In fact, when I first saw the amazingly wonderful man to whom I am now married, I was captivated.  Was it love?  Maybe not... but I lost my heart right away.


I think one can be "in love" at first sight; but that love - real, lasting, true love - takes time to grow.  I was certainly "in love" with X at the very beginning, to the extent that I knew what that was.  But we did not know how to love each other.  I did not love him for all his foibles and flaws; he did not love me for all my dreams and ambitions.  His world was centered around himself and he wanted to fit pieces into it that he felt he needed: wife, child, home, etc.  He did not expect to have to give anything to those responsibilities.  This isn't to say that he didn't care for and about me - just that he never really understood me, knew what I needed or how to give it to me.


For example, in the days before our final separation I tried to explain to him that it wasn't enough for him to tell me he loved me - to say the words.  I needed him to show me with his actions.  He didn't understand how to do this.  He sent a rosemary plant to my office ("rosemary for remembrance").  This was a nice gesture, but it didn't take much effort.  I suggested he could start by cleaning up our condo - allow me to live in an environment that I found pleasing, rather than one full of clutter, dirty clothes and a kitchen counter compost pile.  He said he couldn't do it - that he could never make the place as clean as I'd want it... he wasn't even willing to try.  He wouldn't pick up his dirty underwear to save his marriage.  This is what I mean... 


As for me, I didn't bother to get to know who I was marrying.  I was so ready to dive headlong into the idea of love without understanding what it meant.  I had no idea what real commitment was all about.  I truly believe that X went into the marriage with the intent to remain married for the rest of his life.  I think he was oblivious to much that was going on around him (on one of our last days together, he said with sincerity, "I thought we were happy."  I was flabbergasted as through the years he had suffered from alcoholism (probably caused by the strain of our relationship), had once physically attacked me, I had attempted suicide and been on anti-depressants, we had stopped speaking and spending time together and we hadn't had sex since the year we were married).  Blind to our "shortcomings" though he may have been, I believe he never wanted the marriage to end.  And I, who had been so careless about entering the relationship and the commitment, hurt him terribly by ending it.  For this, I have to take full responsibility.


If we had taken the time to get to know one another... if we not rushed into the engagement and the wedding (which was just as much my doing as his)... if we had spent a few years as a couple, learning about each other... I am certain we would have saved each other a great deal of heartache.  I am certain that we would have learned that we did not truly "love" each other - that we would have fallen out of love and would not have gotten married.  We might have been "in love" at first sight... but not the kind of love that grows and lasts.  


Love at first sight can't be trusted.  It can be acted upon... it can drive us to the right relationship.  But that relationship should be given time to grow in the light of day beyond the wooing period, without rose colored glasses.  Two years became my guiding time frame.  If you are still "in love" and do love each other whole-heartedly and without reservation after two years, you have a good chance, I figured. 


I believe a lot of women get caught up in first (often false) impressions created by the wooing period (trick themselves into believing it's "love").  Just before I met H (husband), I met a Frenchman (the Frog) in Washington Square Park.  It was Saturday morning, around 8:00 am and he was sitting across from me at the dog run.  His dog - a rather ugly Boston terrier with only one eye - kept running over to play with me.  The Frog moved to sit next to me and we ended up talking for hours.  When it was time to leave, he walked me most of the way back to my apartment, asked me to come to his place Sunday night so he could make me dinner, then kissed me.  It was only 11:00 am on a random Saturday and I was being kissed on a street corner by a handsome, rich, almost famous, very intellectual Frenchman.

I was certain that was the fairytale beginning of what would be a beautiful romance.  Only it very much wasn't.  I soon discovered he had a girlfriend in CA, he would only ever see me in his apartment and wasn't much interested in anything having to do with my life.

For several months I struggled between the fantasy my little brain had created upon our first meeting and the reality of my visits to the Frog's pad.  I had such trouble letting go of my initial romantic impression, no matter how often and in how many different ways he proved that impression to be wrong.  On paper, he was who I could see myself with and our first meeting was the story I wanted to tell.  But nothing that followed resembled a relationship about which I could be happy.



Why do we do that to ourselves?  Rather than thinking the initial meeting was an anomaly, I spent months wondering what I'd done wrong to change our dynamic.  Tried to figure out what I could do to get it back to how it was the first time we met when he was pursuing me.  Thought I had somehow screwed up and could change things if only I could figure him out.  Thought I could make him want what I wanted.


What I should have said after the second "date," was "that meeting in the dog run was a lovely New York moment, but it was just a moment.  This man is not who I thought he was that day.  Time to move on."  Because you can't live on one moment.  Too many bad relationships develop and continue because we make excuses for the other person; we remain hopeful too long; we refuse to see the truth about the person we are with.  We see them how we want to see them, not how they are.  Or worse, we keep hoping they will become who we want them to be and allow ourselves to be continuously disappointed by who they actually are.


Had I not rushed into an engagement with X, I would have seen fairly quickly that our interests and expectations were not the same.  Without the pressure of an "engagement" to call off, I might have had the courage to call a spade a spade and move on.  If I had known how much a relationship can change when the initial "wooing period" ends... when you stop trying to impress one another by being someone your not... I might have known X was not "the one."  


Relationships take effort, but that effort should make you happy much more often than not.  If you are not happy, secure and uninterested in being with anyone else, you are not in the right relationship.


It may have been love at first sight... but that's not love for a lifetime.


To be continued with Lesson 2

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Lost and Trapped, part 3: The wedding and "honeymoon"

This is to be the last of the especially long postings (I think), especially as this baby could (should) be coming any minute and I might have to send my computer in soon for repairs, which could take two to three weeks.


I was wondering why I'd launched into these old stories and don't seem to be coming to any point about actually being "lost and trapped."  


The thing is, I like to offer advice.  But as I was reading Paulo Coelho's The Warrior of the Light today, he warned against those who would offer advice.  He says, "the fool who gives advice about someone else's garden is not tending his own plants."  I'm not sure I fully agree with that because I think we can learn from other's experiences.  Maybe not as fully as we learn from our own, but not all advice is an evil.  I hope.  So, rather than thinking of what I'm writing as "advice" of any kind, I guess the last few entries have been a bit of a cautionary tale.  And for future entries, in which I'll talk about what I believe and why, I think it's helpful to have written the experiences that brought me to my conclusions.  And since I'm writing what I believe based on what I've done without implying it is right for anyone else, without trying to impose my beliefs upon anyone else, I'm hoping I am not one of Coelho's fools.


So, below is the story of my first wedding.  Or, as my parents refer to it, "the first event," as neither one of them believe it was a real "wedding."  Following this, I'll just pick and choose particular moments of the next four years to illustrate points and begin to talk about what I learned from that particular episode in life, which - as it turns out - is much less than what I learned in the three years that followed...



Wedding day.  How many times had I played bride as a little girl?  I used to practice saying my vows, “Do you promise to love, honor and cherish, him?  And do you promise to tell his friends when he’s sick?”  I’m not sure why I thought that was a vow – and an important one at that – but apparently, according to my parents, it was always part vows I made when I was young.  But nothing that happened that rainy June day was like what I’d imagined over the years…

When I awoke in the hotel about twenty minutes from X’s father’s house, the setting for the event, there was no mistaking the pitter-pat of heavy rain against the window.  The morning rushed by with my parents and brothers in a flurry of activity as they went back and forth between the house and the hotel trying to prepare against the weather.

For my part, I just sat tight and tried to keep faith.  X had promised it wouldn’t rain and I was determined to believe all would be well…  My only break of spirit came when I heard my oldest brother trudging down the hallway outside my room, declaring loudly that “This was going to be the worst wedding ever!”

My mother (a woman who had owned an interior decorating shop, a devout follower of Martha Stewart Weddings, a woman with impeccable taste and a romantic nature, who had imagined this day since her daughter was born) was coping remarkably well, considering the challenges.  My future father-in-law had taken care of procuring tents.  In fact, he had taken care of just about everything, seeing as I had lost interest in planning the wedding sometime shortly after the invitations had gone out.  He borrowed a school bus to take guests from the hotel to his home (what says wedding more than a big, yellow school bus?).  The head chef at the school where he was superintendent was our caterer, the photographer/videographer was a science teacher and the justice of the peace was a drinking buddy – we were all set.  To be fair, it was very kind of him to have helped as much as he did; it’s just his taste wasn’t exactly the same as my mother’s.  And getting back to those tents…

When told we would have tents, my mother imagined they would be of the lovely, white, fully-walled variety often seen at wedding venues.  But when she turned up at the house to try to convert the garage into a dry seating area, she found the tents were red and white striped, without walls – neither elegant, nor practical in a downpour.  In fact, definitely better suited to an event that features elephants and popcorn. 

And in other decorating hiccups – the night before, mom had dropped off beautiful (and not inexpensive) white, gardenia topiaries to line either side of the front porch, where the ceremony would take place.  But Saturday morning, in place of the gardenias were two large pots filled with blue-dyed carnations.  We would come to find out they were left-over from the recent eighth-grade graduation.  The topiaries were nowhere to be found and my mother was too embarrassed and too polite to move the carnations, thinking at the time that they had been specially chosen. 

My parents have often said that upon reflection, someone should have questioned more deeply the root of the bride’s lack of interest in the details of the wedding, but as with the bride herself, there were other reasonable explanations – “she doesn’t like to be the center of attention,” for example.  Again, the extraordinary value of 20-20 hindsight.  But it’s true, a bride probably should have looked around at what was being planned and wanted to have a bit more input.  As it was, at the time, only my mother felt distress as her best-laid plans fell apart into a mire of questionable aesthetics. 

Back at the hotel, I was having my own share of difficulties.  When we first planned the wedding, we’d decided to get married in December.  Accordingly, I’d found a vintage 1940’s winter-white satin dress that, though off the rack, looked as though it had been made for me.  Perfect for a December wedding.  Only, this was June.  Shortly after the engagement, my grandmother (my only living grandparent) and his grandparents all began suffering health problems.  We pushed up the date of the wedding to help ensure they would all be in attendance.  The satin was a bit heavy for the weather.  But that was the least of my problems.

I had gone on anti-depressants a few months earlier.  While I had not noted any significant improvement in my emotional or mental state, I had noticed a significant increase in weight.  Ten pounds to be exact.  I had been quite petite to begin so it wasn’t that I looked especially bad, but the satin did not have a lot of give in it and after it had been let out as far as it could possibly go, it was still rather… snug.  Unforgivingly so, particularly on a humid June day.

Finally dressed, though lumpy in places I wished I wasn’t, I headed down to the lobby where we took family photos and said hello to friends.  As I mentioned, I hadn’t put a great deal of thought into arrangements so there was only one limo, which needed to take several trips back and forth to bring elderly guests and family before me.  Just before my great aunt got into the car, she pulled me aside and whispered into my ear, “God will forgive you, someday.”  Um, thanks?

Due to the multiple trips the limo was making, we were a little behind schedule by the time my bridesmaids and I got into the car.  Now, I should pause to mention here the great injustice I did these beautiful women.  I’d always sworn I would not force upon anyone an ugly bridesmaid dress.  I’d picked what I thought was a beautiful gown from a Lord and Taylor’s catalogue.  It flowed in chiffon from aqua blue to sea green with a simple tank neckline, straight to the ankles.  The dress I was certain would look gorgeous on everyone actually looked god-awful.  Well, with a few exceptions.  But there was just something peculiarly unflattering about the way it fit – over-emphasizing hips, under-emphasizing chests, or for the less curvy – just looking like a colorful bag.  I have since apologized to several of my dear friends for the hours they suffered, but I guess that’s in the contract of being a bridesmaid.

So anyway, I’m sitting in the limo with my attendants.  Little did I know that at that moment the groom was fuming over the fact that I was (as usual) late, regardless of the fact it (for once) wasn’t actually my fault, and he was considering calling the whole thing off.  Can’t say I haven’t fantasized once or twice about how life would have turned out if he had…  As it was, I watched the scenery pass by the window, barely aware of the twitterings of my girlfriends, and had the sudden urge to cry.  In retrospect, of course, I know it was the pangs and longings of my buried self-conscious begging me to listen to it and mourning my impending fate.  But at the time, I must admit complete self-unawareness…  I had no idea why I was sad.

Arriving at the house, I noted with hope that while the air was damp, it had stopped raining, as X had promised.  I entered the house on the side so neither the guests nor the groom would see me.  There, my family waited to say good luck, in their own ways.  Again, my eldest brother was ready with just the right words of wisdom.  He pulled me aside, laughed and said, “Remember, it’ll be much easier to end this now than it will be ten minutes from now.”

It’s only been with the passing of time that I’ve come to find out how many of my guests were laying bets on how long the marriage would last…

So there we were, all my bridesmaids fanned out on one side of the front porch, the groomsmen on the other side, X and myself in the middle.  The justice of the peace began the ceremony… only, it was clear within his first few sentences that he was one too many sheets to the wind – at 1:00 in the afternoon.  When he stumbled on the best man’s name – “Jim Davis” – I was not surprised that it took him three attempts to say the name of the reading Jim was doing from Kahil Gibran. 

Next, it was time for us to say the vows we’d each written for one another.  I was first.  Only, I couldn’t speak.  I looked around at the gathered guests as panic struck.  My eyes fell, for a moment, on the guy I’d dated one summer in college and I had the most bizarre thought: “Object!  Please object!  Tell them you love me and want to marry me!”  But he just smiled his warm, friendly smile and I turned back to face X.  Still the words wouldn’t come.  My mind was a blank.  The only thing I could think of to say spilled out of my mouth before I could stop it.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

Simultaneously, 120 people drew in breath, gasping like the sound of a hot air balloon descending.  Speaking of hot air balloons, for reasons unknown, my somewhat eccentric aunt had brought a giant, yellow smiley face balloon and tied it to the tent post.  I looked at it then, bobbing and dancing in the breeze, its empty black eyes staring manically as it smiled its wide, thin grin, mesmerizing me.  I tore my eyes away and saw the shocked faces of those closest to me – my parents in the front row, and then, X.

His stunned expression was a reality slap, returning me to where I was and what I’d just said.  I started giggling, and as though I were a bad actor in some amateur play who had forgotten my lines, I turned back to the crowd and shrugged, saying, “Sorry – stage fright.”  With a deep breath, I started again and this time managed to get through my vows as planned.

I have often said, and do believe, that it was the effort of my subconscious to reach the surface that made me say what I said.  In truth, at the time, I don’t believe it was really my intention to stop the proceedings.  Or maybe it was, but the instinct only lasted an instant. 

The ceremony ended, followed immediately by the reception.  We danced, sang, laughed and drank.  Nearly all my female friends and more than one of their mothers sidled up to let me know that the justice of the peace was a lech who wouldn’t stop hitting on them. 

The photographer/videographer/science teacher didn’t think to film during the reception at all, so for better or worse, those moments were lost to time.  He also, rather strangely, forgot to take a picture of just the bride and groom.  My mother had to take a picture that had originally included my grandmother and cut her out so that she could have a wedding picture with just X and me.

At one point, late in the evening, some guests were thrown into the pool.  I was grabbed by a few inebriated groomsmen and dragged to the water’s edge, but was rescued in the nick of time by X’s friend, a very homosexual costumer, who threw his arm before me and shouted, “Stop!  It’s vintage!”

But, like Cinderella, the party ended about midnight.  The bride and groom left – and as they did, the rain returned.  X had kept his promise, though; it had stayed relatively dry throughout our wedding.  The limo drove us back to our apartment about an hour away and we promptly fell asleep.  Nothing was consummated that night…

The next day, i.e., the first day of wedded life set the stage, in a way, for much of what would follow.  In other words, it wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t what I wanted. 

X was in the middle of directing a show (as usual) and so there would be no honeymoon that year.  Instead, we used one of our wedding presents – a gift voucher to stay at The Plaza – and headed to New York City for an overnight.  It was shortly before noon when we were shown into our room and shortly after noon when X stretched out on the bed preparing to take a nap.  Somewhat irrational fury coursed through me like fire in a paper warehouse.  Didn’t he feel any kind of obligation to make the most of our twenty-four-hour honeymoon?  Didn’t he want to do anything special with me?   

My eyes narrowed into small slits signaling danger to all who know me well and I seethed as I said, “If you don’t get off that bed immediately, this is going to be the shortest marriage in history.” 

Sighing, X heaved himself off the bed and looked around, “Well, what do you want to do?” he asked.  The truth was I didn’t know what I wanted to do… just something – something to distract me… something to make me feel like a honeymooner.  It was almost exactly one year since the day I’d first met him, and looking at him there, all tussled and fatigued, I was filled with the feeling of… nothing. 


Monday, October 5, 2009

Lost and Trapped, part 2: The Wooing Period and The Engagement

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black,
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
***
I love this poem.  I'm not sure if I have taken a less traveled road, but in looking back at my life - at the roads I have chosen - I know I would not be where I am today if I had not been where I was - if I had not followed wrong road after wrong road.  If life's journey is through a labyrinth, it's as though I had a map at the beginning, knew just where I wanted to head and thought I knew exactly to where it would lead.  But at the moment when I turned down the job at US News and World Report, I dropped the map and became utterly disoriented, having no idea where I was or where I was headed.  In order to write about that time, I have to remind myself that all that blind and tortured wandering led me to a far different place than I'd imagined, but probably also a far better one.  


But then, at that cross-roads where I chose my path, I could not have known the way ahead for many years would be governed by the tyranny of a mind that spoke a primary language of  disappointment, hopelessness, fear, ugliness and regret.  Breaking away from that government was a journey in itself.  And a story for another day.


To be clear, this was not X's fault.  He was and remains a good. if a bit odd, man.  I do not blame him for anything that I suffered at that time.  He did not cause it.  Another woman in my situation might have been perfectly happy.  He could not have known that I was not meant to be with him and that despite what we both initially felt, the relationship was a mistake.


Of course, even the word "mistake" is subjective.  Some lessons are incredibly difficult to learn... incredibly painful.  No, I wasn't supposed to be with him, but if I hadn't been, I would be a different person today.  When I think about this it always seems to me that there was only ever one path I could have taken - the other roads are illusions.  They were never really choices at all. 


I am grateful for the hard lessons.  If I not had those experiences, I might still be wandering about fantasizing that depression is somehow "noble" or a window to enlightenment.  I might still be romanticizing the idea of suicide, which is the only way to fail at life; after all, if you wake up in the morning, there is still something for you to do... a reason for your life.  


But I digress.


In part one of this post, I had skipped ahead almost to the wedding.  But I think I should backtrack to how I got engaged and the warning signs I should have recognized.



When young people are in the first throws of infatuation, it’s hard to make them see the pitfalls and cliff edges ahead.  And often those hazards are masked by the “wooing period” of a relationship.  The wooing period is when a guy who is normally an ambitious workaholic takes the weekend off to stroll around a lake holding hands, and a woman who has no interest at all in sports happily spends a sunny Sunday afternoon parked on the couch watching the game.  It’s when we are on our best behavior and no little personality foible can annoy us.  When we refrain from nagging or farting or showing unease about anything.  When we are who we think others want us to be… for the most part.

Unfortunately, the wooing period is unsustainable, lasting (in my experience) anywhere from a few minutes of the first date to a few months.  One must recognize this truth if one is to keep from making terribly false assumptions about the object of our affection.  Who we meet in the beginning is not necessarily who we will end up with over time.  I have come to the conclusion for myself that it is necessary to know someone two years before one can be sure one is clear of the wooing period and is seeing the true person without rose colored glasses.  This, of course, varies from couple to couple.  But what I can say with absolute confidence is that one should know someone for longer than a month before one makes any life-changing decisions.

My first date with X was not particularly noteworthy – nothing especially romantic or exciting.  Just your typical happy hour get-together at a local town bar.  The only thing I particularly remember was that towards the end of the evening, an acquaintance from high school – a guy who was a few years ahead of me – sat down at the bar next to us and joined our conversation as though we were not obviously on a date.  Eventually and obliviously, the guy went so far as to ask me out.  I replied without hesitation or thought, “I’m a lesbian.”  To which he replied, “Can I watch?”  That seemed like a good time to pay the bill and leave.  It was on the walk back to our cars that I suddenly realized the man beside me did not know that I am not a lesbian and I awkwardly had to try to explain my “speak first, think later” self. 

Despite that slight hiccup, our dates became more frequent.  Soon, I was invited to his apartment for the first time.  I cannot state emphatically enough: infatuation is blinding.  I hardly noticed that he had shoved clothing and newspapers under the couch cushions in an attempt to provide me a place to sit.  The situation was similar in his room – his mattress was directly on the floor and covered in clothing, papers, CDs and other miscellaneous items.  The kitchen counter was also difficult to find underneath the mail and scraps of previous meals.

I’m not a particularly clean and tidy person, though I generally keep things in a state where I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have people drop by unexpectedly.  I was rather unimpressed with the state of his home, but as I said, this was the wooing period during which one tends to overlook such small details as the way a person keeps house.  What was it to me if he didn’t care about his living space? 

If you think a person’s housekeeping habits (whether they are neater or messier than yours) will not impact the long-term happiness of your relationship, think again.  I strongly recommend anyone considering a commitment ensure housekeeping is an area of compatibility.  Either you both care and make an effort or neither person cares and you live happy as pigs in… a sty.  In any case, while there is always some room for compromise, this is an area of a relationship that really can and must be addressed in the earliest days.  If you walk into someone’s place and the sight of it makes you quiver with fear (either because they show symptoms of OCD or they strike you as the kind who, fifty years hence, might be found dead in their home buried under a six foot wall of old newspapers and garbage), you may want to reconsider the next date.  It will be important in the course of a relationship.

But I was twenty-two and that was a lesson I had not yet learned.

Another signal that might have raised an eyebrow or two among the objective observers was when, one night, after about two weeks of dating, X found a gray hair on my head.  I was, of course, mortified.  But as he plucked it out he said something rather unexpected. 

“I think we should dye our hair gray now so we can start getting used to how we will look when we are old.”

They say, “You’re as old as you think you are.”  With hindsight, I can perfectly well recognize that this was an indication of how old X thought he was – and that’s about 84 years.  I didn’t put together all the pieces at the time – the gray hair comment, the fact that almost all of his friends were at least twenty-five years older than he was and that his closest familial relationship was with his grandparents. 

As, at the time, my emotional age was about thirteen, all I heard was, “when we are old.”  And my happy heart spun images of a wedding, followed by a long life being loved by this man.  Never again having to worry whether I’d end up alone; having the security I’d always tried to squeeze (to the point of suffocation) out of every boyfriend I’d ever dated.  It never occurred to me that one’s twenties could be a time of fun and freedom and that would still leave many, many years for a committed relationship.  I was ready for the fairytale “happily ever after,” and this guy was offering it.

Days later, with a sort of “understanding” that this was “forever” between us, I left for the dream job in Washington.  No longer enthusiastic about my great chance to make my way in the world, all I was thinking about was the love I was leaving behind.  We had talked about whether he would ever move to D.C., as I had not really enjoyed my childhood in my hometown and was not enthusiastic about living there permanently.  But he said he had a good job (more than I had) and wanted to be in close proximity to his grandparents for as long as they were around.  After which, though, he would consider moving anywhere.  Made sense to me.

When I turned down the full-time gig with the magazine, I headed back home.  I had met X in early June, moved to DC in late June and was back in early August, certain I was sure what I wanted for the rest of my life. 

X picked me up from the train station upon my return and presented me with a beautiful bracelet.  I was enchanted!  A gift!  And it wasn’t even my birthday!  This was something that had never happened to me before… this was romance… this was love!

I pause here to comment that another example of “wooing period” behavior is unexpected gifts.  If you are given a gift for no reason in the first four months of a relationship, it is a lovely gesture, but it does not necessarily signify that you are seeing a true romantic who will make every day a special occasion by turning up with a token of affection.  Date for awhile.  See if those gifts keep coming a year or two later. 

But again, I didn’t know this at the time.  As it turned out, I think that was the first and last unexpected gift I was given.  However, just a week or so later, I was to receive another piece of jewelry.  The one that almost every girl dreams about from the time she can make a veil out of toilet paper.

X had to pick up a package at the post office.  He was nervous and excited, which made me nervous and excited.  We were there when the doors opened at 9:00 a.m.  The day was all blue sky and puffy, white clouds.  I stayed in the car while he collected what he claimed were school supplies.  He emerged with a mischievous grin and refused to let me see what he had picked up, but I had a pretty good idea.

We went to a local diner for breakfast and I ordered pancakes, as usual.  We giggled a lot, both us aware of the smoke coming from his pocket where the package was burning a hole with its desire to be revealed.  Midway through our meal, we overheard a conversation two older gentlemen at the neighboring table were having, describing how they had met their wives.  They reminisced with loving anecdotes about the days they had proposed and the lives they had led together.  X and I looked at each other and smiled that “young love” gooey smile. 

At last he cleared his throat and said to me, “Will you do me a favor?”  Feeling the moment was upon me, I was breathless and nodded.  “Will you be my wife?” he finished, as he pulled the ring box out from his pocket. 

This wasn’t exactly how I had imagined a proposal – over pancakes and bacon, trying to avoid the sticky syrup on the table.  But, nonetheless, I said “yes.”  The ring was lovely, vintage 1940s, white gold filigree with a small, but pretty diamond.  I slipped it on my finger and it twirled around like I’d just won the ring toss at a carnival.  “It’s a little big,” I commented, giggling. 

“I asked what size I should get,” he said, embarrassed.  “I was told it should match your shoe size.  You’re a 7 ½.”
I giggled some more, “Yes, well, I guess I was meant to have smaller feet or larger fingers.”

What frustrated him the most was that the ring had initially been a size 5, which is what I wear, but he’d had it made larger because of my shoes.  Now he would have to resize it down to its original size.  Ah well.  We didn’t dwell on it long.

I assumed he had planned the day around this event.  We were having perfect summer weather and as a teacher, he didn’t have to work, so the world was our oyster – the beach?  New York for a show?  A hot air balloon ride?  What would it be?  I couldn’t wait to leave the diner and find out how we would celebrate.

After breakfast we went for a walk along the town’s linear trail.  This is a small and silly pet peeve of mine – linear trails.  I like circles.  I like following a trail that leads me back to the beginning so I don’t have to pick a spot and double back on myself.  The park always annoyed me.  But, well, that’s my own little neurosis so not fair to blame anyone for that.  There we were walking along the trail and the first person we come across is one of my former high school teachers.  My very least favorite teacher.  The teacher who made me hate science with a passion and abandon all fantasies of becoming a marine biologist or a primatologist.  Masking my feelings, we smiled happily as we approached her and I showed off my ring, thinking how very odd it was that she should be the first person to know. 

Shortly afterwards, we returned to his apartment and I waited for what I was sure would be the next part of my surprise.  The surprise, it would seem, was on me…  X took a nap.

Napping would become a very sore spot with me.  I had stopped napping somewhere around six months old and had never looked back.  There was too much to do with every day to waste it sleeping.  But for X, naps were a daily ritual.  A necessity.  They took precedence over what others might consider important activities (like picking your wife up from the police station after a car accident).  Ever after, I have considered napping to be a relationship deal-breaker.

So there I was, 11:00 a.m., on a bright, sunny August morning, standing by myself on the back deck of X’s apartment overlooking a cemetery, staring at the ring dangling from my finger and wondering, “What did I just do?”

The thought was there…  I know it was.  There was an opportunity to change my mind.  The problem was a twenty-two year old (or, to be fair, this twenty-two year old) looked at the situation as an isolated incident.  It was the disappointment of this particular moment.  It was enough to make me question what I was doing, but it didn’t seem like a big enough problem to make me second-guess my decision to spend the rest of my life with this person.  The “rest of my life” was an abstract and unimaginable concept.  I had a ring and a wedding right before me.  These I understood.  These excited me.  In my naivety, I didn’t understand that wedding and marriage are two very different things.  And that of the two, “marriage” was significantly more important than wedding.  A wedding lasts a day.  A marriage, well…

I did not look ahead and consider that if this is how I felt on the day of the proposal, how would I feel on other special occasions?  I did not stop to think whether I would be similarly disappointed on every anniversary, Valentine’s Day, birthday, Christmas, etc.  I did not think of the future at all.  I just thought that on this particular occasion, I was sad and I didn’t think I ought to be.

I stormed into X’s bedroom and kicked his feet.  Grumpy at the abrupt awakening, he grumbled at me, wondering what was wrong.  I whined something about having thought he might have made some small effort to make the day special.  Sleepily he rubbed his eyes and asked what I wanted to do.  But the wind was out of my sails.  I didn’t want to have to tell him what I wanted to do.  I wanted him to have made the effort to think of something. 

Amazing how clear the warning signs are in retrospect.  It seems so self-evident that the indications of all that would make me unhappy were right there in the first six weeks of our relationship.  I just didn’t see any of it.  I was living in the present.  I was carried away by the fairytale of “love at first sight” and the romance of giving up what I thought I wanted for myself to be with the man I loved.  I didn’t know that often the little things that bother you at first are actually likely to get worse as a relationship develops.  But someone who graduated with a double major in government and history should have known: the past is prologue.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Lost and Trapped, part 1

Before I write about finding the path, it seems somehow appropriate to write about the times when I was most lost.  


At the suggestion of a friend, I'm currently reading a young adult novel called Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld.  I don't know what to make of this book: not much happens in the plot and I can't stand the main character, yet still I can't put the book down.  It's incredibly real.  I wonder what I'd make of this book if I'd read it at 16 rather than at 34.  


In the scene I'm currently reading, Lee, the protagonist, has just learned that her roommate from freshman year in high school (to whom she was not particularly close) has just attempted suicide.  Lee had never thought this particular girl had emotions strong enough to make her want to take such a drastic action.  A teacher takes Lee to the hospital and seeing her friend there, she thinks, "The way she looked at me was so hopeless, so exhausted, that it seemed scornful.  I had an inkling then that maybe I had underestimated her.  Perhaps in the past I hadn't given her credit for having opinions or experiencing discontent - for being like me."   Then she thinks how you just try to be normal, to do and say the right things to fit in... but "at certain moments time slowed... and you saw that it was all really nothing.  It was just endlessness..."


It's funny that I truly can't stand the protagonist when, in truth, I was very much like her: self-conscious about everything I did, desperate to fit in, a self-imposed outsider, a snob, painfully embarrassed by everything my parents said and did.  I'd like to think I was a bit nicer than she was, but probably only marginally.  I was friendlier and more successful as a student and athlete, but in terms of what was going on inside, I was as big a mess.


It was observed by a couple insightful friends between my teens and early twenties that I was either the happiest or saddest person they knew, but they couldn't tell which.  This was fair.  I was alternatively both the happiest and saddest person.  In college I put up barriers between myself and most of my friends.  I was never sure anyone actually wanted me around.  I felt more comfortable with adults, with whom I didn't feel like I had to put on an act - to know what was cool and what was popular. 


I felt so alone so much of the time.  I would walk around campus listening to the Counting Crows.  "Rain King" would play and I would take particular comfort in the line, "Mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone?  I can't go outside cuz I'm scared that I might not make it home."  I always wanted to have a boyfriend because I didn't want to be in my own company... I was afraid of the direction of my thoughts would take.  But, it wasn't because I didn't think much of myself.  In fact, just the opposite, I thought quite highly of myself - felt I was special... destined for greatness.  


Funny now to know how many others feel exactly the same way.  Some of them are, some of them... not so much.  And funny how the definition of "greatness" changes as one matures.  But back then, I thought it was my own little secret.  I had a destiny to fulfill, but the fact that I was -  shall we say "special" - was unrecognized by my peers.  I was equal parts snob and insecure.


I thought about suicide, but not in any real way... just a bit of melodrama - the misunderstood and unappreciated genius.  So isolated by her own gifts for understanding the state of the universe.  I fantasized about being in a psychiatric hospital - I thought of it like a retreat from life.  I pictured myself in the company of Keats and Coleridge, FitzGerald, Woolf and Plath.  My depressive tendencies put me, in my mind, in a unique group of those who have affected with the world - the darkness opening up to them insights invisible to eyes of mere mortals... my peers who walked through life with such ease and comfort, going to class, drinking at bars, hanging out with friends.  I... I was different.


That was my college mindset.  Then, against the desperate objections of my subconscious, I got married the year after I graduated college.  In fact, I graduated in May, met X in June, got engaged in August and got married the following June.  


It was during the engagement, probably in October-ish, that things started to unravel completely. I had given up a dream job (a dream job in retrospect... didn't recognize it at the time).  U.S. News and World Report had offered me a position as a fact-checker, with opportunities to try writing.  A thousand times I've imagined myself going back to that moment and saying to X, "You can be a teacher anywhere.  This is the only place I can work this job.  If you love me, you come here."  Then I would have learned before it was too late - before I'd lost 4 years, before all the hurt we'd caused each other - what love meant to him.  He would have said no.  I've gone back to that moment a thousand times and thought, "if only... where would I be?"  It's only now... now that I see the long and twisted path behind me that has led to this amazing place that is my life now - the amazing man who is my husband now - only now that I know I would not be here if I had not been there - that I can let go of the regret.


But then, I didn't think twice.  I turned down the job and at X's suggestion, started a Masters in Education program.  It wasn't that I'd ever really wanted to be a teacher, but I had respect for the profession and thought maybe I could do it.  Turned out, I was a much better student than teacher.  The program required an internship in a middle school, where I worked M-F.  I was in the principal's office more often in the first couple months of the course than I had been in my previous 16 years of education.   Apparently, one wasn't supposed to do gymnastics in the cafeteria or allow students who didn't have warm coats to stay in from recess.  And other Teaching Assistants tattled when I was a minute late for morning duty.  And there was the fact that I was living in Lisbon - not Portugal, which would have been cool - but Connecticut, which I didn't even know existed, despite having lived in the state for 8 years.


For a multitude of reasons (again, I go back to my subconscious emotional reactions warning me that I was making a huge mistake), I started experiencing Sunday night blues - deep depression every Sunday night when I had to leave X to travel back to his father's house, where I was staying for the program.  Then Sunday night blues started Sunday morning; then Saturday... Then Friday night.  Then, they never went away.  I was constantly ducking into bathrooms to cry, staring in the mirror at myself wondering what in the world I was doing?


It was all over by Christmas.  I couldn't go another day.  I moved out of X's father's and in with X (who lived in the same town as my parents).  I thought this would make me better, but actually, I got worse.  I didn't get out of bed.  I cried all day and all night.  I tried to make X stay home from school to be with me.  I thought about death all the time.  


At some point, maybe February or March, I called my father and told him I couldn't stop thinking about dying.  He picked me up and brought me to his cousin's office.  That was the start of my pharmacological journey to hell.  Dr. M is a brilliant psychiatrist, neurologist who listened to my descriptions of dark thoughts and manic highs.  He diagnosed me as I expected him to (since I knew well the symptoms I was describing).  He prescribed medication.  Of course, it only took him about a month of treating me before he diagnosed me appropriately.  He said, "It's X.  You need to break this off.  I'm going to call your mother to come get you and bring you to her place.  You must get out of that relationship."


And part of me knew he was right... 


And yet, that voice was too quiet.  Too overpowered by what was still love at that time.  Too overpowered by my sense of the inevitable.  The ring was binding - I couldn't see a way out... I couldn't see another way.  


to be continued.  

Thursday, October 1, 2009

What Should I Do With My Life?

This is the topic for a book... for many books, in fact - not just one blog post.  I'm only going to touch on the subject below.  It's been the question that has plagued me most of my existence.  Even at 34, this is a question that is at the forefront of my mind.  I know I am meant to do something... I just don't know precisely what it is.  This is a subject I suspect I will write about a lot over time.  But for today, I want to focus on two particular aspects of the question. The first was raised yesterday by Salon.com's advice columnist, Cary Tennis and the second was a page in Paulo Coelho's book Warrior of the Light.


The letter to Mr. Tennis asks the question, "How do I become an adult?" and is written by a 20-something dreamer who wonders if she "missed the memo on how to grow up."  She describes how her friends are all in graduate school, making lots of money or doing something good for the world.  She describes how she has a passion in life but has no clear path to follow it; how her job as an office assistant is tangentially related to that passion, but she has no real interest in the job.  She comments how she's a terrible assistant who daydreams all day and surfs the web doing very little work. 


Next, she talks about how she's suffered boughts of depression, been on and off medication for it, seen a therapist, tried yoga.  Then she wonders if she should "indulge the darkness"; try to understand it.  Finally, she says she feels ashamed because she could and should be contributing good things to the world but she's not.  She asks for advice.


The only way I knew for certain that I hadn't authored this letter is that she is currently working, while I am 10 days from giving birth, and she signed it The Maenad, and I had to look up what that is (a female follower of Dionysus, prone to mad debauchery).  


As I wrote yesterday, it seems I am physically - or, rather, emotionally - incapable of working at a job in which I do not believe.  Doesn't matter if the money's good or my boss is wonderful. When I am off my path - not, as Paulo Coelho describes in The Alchemistfollowing my personal legend, I become depressed.  


I, too, have envied friends who seemed to have their act together: friends who are making a lot of money or are doing something noble.  Unlike the Maenad, though, I have tried enough jobs to know, at least, that no matter how glamorous a job seems, unless it is what you are meant to do, no job is all that exciting day after day.  


I think the question the writer asks is the wrong question.  She wants to know how to become an adult.  I suspect she believes that "true adults" find their niche, accept their lot, take responsibility for themselves and go to work day after day to do their job to the best of their ability.  I don't think this woman actually needs to know how to be "an adult," whatever one's definition might be.  As I said, I'm 34 and about to become a mother.  I'm about as adult as you get.  That doesn't mean that I wouldn't feel exactly like she does if I were to go back to work in corporate communications.  I know that I would.


I think what the writer really wants to know is how can she discover and pursue her personal legend - her true path?  Doing so, i.e. finding a way to follow her passion in life, I think, might be the cure for her emotional state.  Whether or not it will make her feel like "an adult" I can't say, but I can say it is the way that she will feel truly alive.


Interestingly, in a way, this is the same advice Mr. Tennis (the advice columnist) gives to her as well.  He recommends she read a book he is currently reading, called Nature and the Human Soul, by Bill Plotkin.  Apparently Plotkin believes that the process of becoming a true adult is the process of knowing your place as an individual.  And by that, Tennis implies, he means understanding your soul.  


I will be writing a lot about different ways to find one's legend... mostly about my own journey, which has had many peaks and plateaus, along with some traipsing through the valley of despair.  


But to begin, I will just point to the passage I mentioned from Warrior of the Light.  Coelho writes that there are two ways to pray.  The first is for something specific that you want.  The second is for guidance in following the path the Creator has set for you.  The first way will leave you feeling like God does not answer your prayers.  The second will lead you along the path you must follow to reach your destiny. 


I've tried both ways.  I would add to Coelho's warning against praying for exactly what you want that sometimes you do, in fact, get it - only to discover it wasn't what you wanted in the first place.  I remember one particular point in life where I seemed to have a magic journal.  I would write in it what I wanted and my wish would be granted - but in a way reminiscent of the Brendon Fraser movie, "Bedazzled".  The devil offers to grant Faser's character Elliot seven wishes, but each has a catch.  For instance, Elliot wishes to be rich and married to the girl he loves, so the devil makes him a drug dealer in South America whose philandering wife hates him.  


I wrote in my journal that I wanted to meet a sensitive, thoughtful guy.  And I did... he ballroom danced and wrote me poems and was just toooooo much.  Next, I ordered a rich intellectual.  He came in the form of a gorgeous Russian entrepreneur who turned out to be a snob who was the last man ever to say to be that I was "too needy."  It was a criticism that had, at one time, been fair to make of me.  But at that stage in my life, I certainly didn't feel desperate about this guy.  I thought I'd acted (and been) entirely independent.  I was caught completely off-guard by what he thought was constructive criticism.  I never spoke to him again, but I also never again gave any man a reason to say that to me.  Maybe he did me a favor...  Maybe God was doing me a favor - but that wasn't the answer to the prayer I had been looking for.


In the end, I began to think about and focus on how I wanted someone to make me feel.  Nothing specific about the man (his career, his interests, his qualities); instead, I focused on how I wanted to feel when I was with the person: secure, amused, comfortable being myself.  I wanted someone who enjoyed doing the same things I do; someone with whom I didn't have to put on an act; someone I could trust to do what he said he was going to do when he said he'd do it.  The superficial qualities  - where he went to school, what he did for a living, how much money he had - none of that mattered.


And going back to the question of what one should do with one's life and how to find one's personal legend, I can easily apply Coelho's teaching.  For example, rather than praying to God to help me get my book published, I will just pray that I can be an instrument of his work and ask him to lead me to the right path to fulfill my destiny.


I'll save for a future post my whole concept of god, to whom I'm actually praying and for what...

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

New Age or New Fad, continued...

My sister brought to my attention the end of the New York Times article ("Seeing Yourself in Their Light," by Allen Salkin on September 20, 2009) describing how Ms. Bernstein suggests a client who is worried about moving in with her boyfriend write a story of the perfect "move-in" scenario and read it to herself every day, visualizing the move as ideal.

It's this kind of advice that I find a bit unnerving (dare I say, dangerous).

Visualization is an important tool.  The power of positive thinking has been well-documented.  "Seeing" success is critical in many endeavors - athletic competition, professional achievement, maybe even dating (seeing yourself in a healthy, happy relationship may put you in a better frame of mind for finding one).  But it isn't a solution to all scenarios.

A perfect case-in-point would be Ms. Bernstein's "client."  If she is having doubts about moving in with her boyfriend, she would be far better off exploring the root cause of those doubts than she would putting them aside and creating a fairytale for herself.

It has taken me more than a decade, but I have finally learned an important fact about myself - my subconscious reacts to problems emotionally before my conscious can react rationally.  When I was engaged to my first husband and living in his father's house while studying to become a teacher, I developed severe depression.  I did not attribute my melancholia to either my professional pursuit or my impending nuptials.  I was, instead, treated for clinical depression and for the next four years was on a variety of cocktails made up of mood stabilizers and anti-depressants.  Unsurprisingly, none of the drugs helped.  How could they?  The underlying problem wasn't a misfiring of chemicals in my brain, it was my subconscious's inability to directly state I was making terrible mistakes with my life.

When I began to make changes years later - first, getting off the drugs; then quitting graduate school to try writing; then joining a political campaign; and eventually (and most significantly), deciding to divorce my husband, I was amazed at how much better I felt... Depression cured?  Just about.  I had spent years combating suicidal thoughts and tendencies.  After I made these changes, I never again suffered such utter hopelessness and anguish.  But that doesn't mean I never again felt desperately depressed.

The next time I started suffering the "I hate life" blues was about 9 months into the job I took following the divorce.  I was terrible at the job and not particularly well-liked by any of my bosses (a first for me - I'd always been a "teacher's pet"-type).  Every day, I felt utterly unhappy as I made my way to the office (though the fact I was able to get out of bed and go was a serious improvement over my behavior only a year before).     In this particular scenario, the cause of my unhappiness- the job - was pretty clear.

In fact, I suffered the same thing over and over with each of the following three jobs I took.  The difference was that the jobs weren't nearly as bad and I didn't directly associate my unhappiness with my work initially.  I would just start feeling trapped, claustrophobic and unable to breathe.  I would start crying at work for no apparent reason.  I would start feeling like if this was how I was going to be spending my life, than life wasn't really worth living (though, with no actual desire to end things...).

It wasn't until the second of the three jobs that I finally started to recognize the pattern:  tears, feeling trapped, then feeling hopeless and associated it with what I was doing with my life, i.e. my job.  I wasn't being true to who I am and what I'm meant to do.  Granted, what I wanted to do wasn't possible at the time - quit my day job and write... but I at least recognized that my fits of depression had a practical, real-life cause: my subconscious was unhappy with the decisions my conscious mind was making.  I have learned to recognize the importance of my strong emotional reactions and understand that there is a rational reason for them, even if it isn't immediately apparent.

Reacting emotionally before reacting cerebrally is the way my mind works.  I have come to understand that anxiety and stress can be important warning systems - tools to let me know when I'm about to make a mistake.

Writing a story about my ideal marriage would not have had any impact on the outcome of that relationship.  The reason?  I only have control over my own actions - not over the behavior of anyone else, spouse or otherwise.  So I could have spent a lifetime trying to psychically force him to clean up after himself or try to make my birthday special.  It never would have happened.

Again, there is nothing wrong with positive thinking.  I have an image of the charming, little house I'd like to live in someday soon in the front of my mind.  There is nothing wrong with thinking hard on that picture and trying to bring it to me (a la The Secret) - as long as my husband and I are doing all we can to save for the house in the meantime.  But Ms. Bernstein's client may have had excellent reasons to be worried about her boyfriend moving in with her.  And no amount of visualization of the ideal scenario could change that.  In fact, it could lead to greater frustration and disappointment when, inevitably, the boyfriend fails to live up to the storyline.

For me, my emotional state is the first sign that I am or am not making good choices.  For someone else, it might be another sign - physical health, for example.  Someone who is unhappy with the way their life is going, but who is unable to face those issues and deal with them might suddenly start getting sore throats or terrible cramping.  Their unhappiness might manifest itself in physical discomfort.  The pain is real, but no MD will be able to fix it.  They'll have to realize that they are, in fact, unhappy and take steps to try to address the problems.

We have voices within us to guide us along our path - and learning to listen to them, to understand them and apply them to our lives - that's how we begin our journey to enlightenment.  Ignoring anxiety; failing  to take the time to understand it's cause can be dangerous; can lead us to ignore warning signs that we are about to make a mistake.  Again, it makes me wonder if Ms. Bernstein's $180 fee is money well spent.

On the other hand, there was an interesting article on Huffington Post the day before yesterday.  The article, by Marcus Buckingham, called "What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently" had some points that I thought made excellent sense.

Point 1: Focus on moments, more than goals, plans or dreams.  In other words, rather than trying to "boil the ocean" as my husband has warned me not to do, women who are happy focus on the moments that make them happy.  For my sister, this might mean thinking about how she feels when she creates the perfect floral arrangement and trying to find opportunities to experience that same moment.  For my friend, it might mean finding the perfect way to express in her writing an experience she's had.  

Focusing on the dreams of being a full-time floral artist or a published author can detract from these women's happiness because the realization of them might seem too distant or unattainable.  But focusing on achievable moments - the reasons that we have these dreams to begin with - lets us experience joy in our life almost as often as we'd like.  Little steps to ultimate happiness.

Point 2: Accept what they find.  "Acceptance doesn't mean resignation, giving up on your dreams. In fact, more often than not, accepting which moments strengthen you and which don't reveals to you exactly how you can live out your dreams, whether at home or at work. It means not only being comfortable in your own skin, but also being creative in your own skin."

I interpret this to mean that it's good to want things, but it's important to learn to be happy with where ever you happen to be in life.  For example, when I moved to New York City in 2005, I was still looking for love... I was open to finding someone... I was hopeful.  I put myself out there and dated as much as I could.  BUT, I accepted the fact that I might not meet someone and I made myself grow comfortable with the idea that it might just be me for the rest of my life. I learned how to be happy being on my own.  In doing so... in accepting where I was in life (without letting go of the dream), I felt much more at peace.  

Or, for example, my husband purchased his bachelor pad in England before he moved over to New York to be with me.  Our relationship had not been at the point where I could tell him not to make that kind of a purchase.  This was not a "flat" I ever wanted to live in.  But, here we are.  The real estate market has crashed and who knows if we'll ever sell this place.  I have had moments when I've been really angry at my husband as I walk around the flat, resenting the fact that we live here.  But at some point during the past 18 months, I finally said, "Self, this is where you live.  It has good points and it has bad points.  But being angry won't change the fact that this is where you live.  You won't always live here, but you live here for now.  So better accept that and move on."  Letting go of the anger is a physical release - a weight off.  

I remember getting to this point of acceptance years ago.  I was walking my dog alone one night and asked myself, "What is wrong with this moment?  I have a place to live; I can choose to eat anything I want for dinner tonight (salsa and chips with ice cream dessert?  No problem.); I can watch whatever I want on TV; I have clothes to wear; a place to sleep; and a way to pay my bills.  There is nothing wrong with this moment." That acknowledgement helped me feel happy in the moment.  I lived in the present: moment to moment.

Point 3: Strive for Imbalance.  Rather than trying to find equal time for all things in life, the women in the article try to figure out what moments in life make them the happiest and then make small changes to what they are doing to "tilt their life in that direction."  

It makes sense.  It means making deliberate choices about how one spends ones time and energy so that there are as many good moments as possible.  For me, as a rather introverted individual, this means, for example, saying "no" to invitations from friends when I am really not up for spending time with other people.  It means protecting the time I have for myself.  It means compromising with my exceptionally extroverted husband so that he has the opportunities he needs to socialize and I have the opportunities I need for solitude.

Point 4: Learn to Say Yes.  As the article says, we are often told that we need to learn to say "no" so that we are not overwhelmed with obligations.  But the flip side is that we need to learn to say "yes" to doing things that interest us or make us happy.  Go to the movie you're dying to see even though tickets these days are ridiculously expensive.  Say yes to people who offer you help by reducing your load a bit, even if you feel like you're imposing on them.  Say yes to a small purchase or adventure, even if it feels frivolous.  

***
It probably would have been sufficient for me simply to link to the article from the Huffington Post, rather than summarizing so much of it here.  But, my point is that there was more good advice to be had for free from this article than I imagine is to be had by the so-called "Spiritual Cowgirls" of the NYT article.  

We all have to find our own way through experience, and from understanding ourselves.  I am certain one can obtain enlightenment and still have a glass of wine with a nice filet mignon.  I don't think anyone needs to pay $180 a week for a teacher.  Teachers are all around us.  Books are full of them.  Passing strangers can show us something we need to know. An old friend... 

To me the "Charlie's Angels of Wellness" aka "Spiritual Superheroines" (as they've named themselves) are this year's Manolos...  

All I would say to those who are thinking of following them is keep searching...