On Pintrest the other day, I came across this quotation:
"The greatest battle is not physical but psychological.
The demons telling us to give up when we push ourselves
to the limit can never be silenced for good.
They must always be answered by the quiet,
the steady dignity that simply refuses to give in.
Courage.
We all suffer.
Keep going."
-- Graeme Fife
This has been tumbling around in my head ever since.
One of the things I struggle with is feeling alone on this planet. I have my folks, my friends, and my kid. At one point I had my partner, but I have never really been heard. To be fair, it is mostly because I didn't know how to speak, and thought I didn't have the right to speak. Kinda limits the ability of others to hear when all you say is silence.
I felt like I deserved to be left alone in my marriage, that I didn't deserve my partner in the first place, and that as soon as he found someone else, he would get rid of me. I thought a "good" mother sacrificed all for her children. I thought a "good" wife sacrificed all for her partner. I know I am fat, and worried that if I spoke my pain, my partner would leave for someone more interesting/slim/better in bed than I - and I constantly edited what I said and did to avoid conflict.
I didn't do this well. I have a naturally loud mouth, and the brake between my brain and mouth is faulty, especially when I'm stressed or upset. So my silence would erupt like an emotional pustule; infection, pus, detritus, spewing across my marital landscape.
To be absolutely clear, the battle I experience with the decision to leave my marriage is psychological. My partner has never hit me physically, and I think that he never started out to hurt me emotionally. I am absolutely convinced he loved me to the best of his ability. He has his own story, and its telling is not my place.
To leave my marriage, I am fighting the demons that scream at me that I will never be good enough for anyone to share their life with. I feel the demons breathing in my hair that tell me I am a bad mother for even considering moving away from this situation, because children need their fathers. The demons of despair with their clawed fingers dig their weight into my shoulders, and poison me with tension and anxiety when I think about giving up and walking away. These demons are fed with fear - fear of abandonment, fear of being alone, fear of rage when I don't comply with someone else's desires. My demons aren't telling me to give up, in fact, they are demanding that I stay - but they are screaming so loudly that I can barely hear the voice of reason saying, "Courage. We all suffer. Keep going."
I might spend the rest of my life alone. The voice of quiet, steady dignity tells me that is a better alternative than being in a relationship where there was never time for me and never time for us in our relationship. When your partner makes standing social engagements for friends, and leaves work early to get coffee with other women, but doesn't make time for "Date Night" for just you and your partner, there isn't room in their life anyway. I did try to say, "Hey, this isn't fair!" But I didn't know how to say it in a way that could be heard. Even now, it sounds like whining to my own ears.
I do deserve better than second-hand time, and second-hand attention. The voice of quiet, steady dignity tells me that all human beings deserve relationships where they feel valued and wanted, that what I want in life isn't unreasonable, and that many people on this planet DO have relationships that are built on mutual respect and dignity.
I just wish I knew how to make that voice of quiet, steady dignity resonate deeper than the screaming panic demons.
No comments:
Post a Comment