Who Are You?
I'd say I'm great—I mean, look at my hair, my body, my clothes? But I've become a Bedford wife, and it's really just the worst thing.
– Georgina Sparks, GossipGirl
Glamour is sometimes described as a falsehood, but at its best it's the expression of the best and worst parts of yourself. What makes you great is also what makes you terrible, all day every day.We're weird creatures, humans. I tried to explain to my bestie once why I can get rejected a million times with my writing but the moment I get a contract, everything grinds to a halt. I have to force myself to do the things I need to do - sign the contract, approve the edited version of my work, follow up with my editor, it becomes the worst version of bullet time. But I can find open calls and send out a good cover letter with my work in twenty minutes flat. The work is the same but I'm always my own worst enemy. I can handle rejection, success is a different animal all together.
What could I do if I got out of my own way? What could you do if you got out of yours? And what does that have to do with glamour?
Getting Your Shadow to Stick
I always want to believe the best in you, Blair. The bottom line is, betrayal's in your nature. - Serena Vanderwoodsen, GossipGirl
The thing is, I started to do serious self examination about my shadow when my last husband divorced me in 2008. I wish I could dress it up and not bleed all over the internet about it to talk about it, but my options are to either not discuss it at all publicly, which is what I've chosen to do for the last six years or talk about it publicly. It was a brutal, ugly time in my life. I have been staring at my computer for a half hour because I feel like I can't authentically talk about my shadow and my root vices and virtues without talking about this time. I don't think about him or the divorce very often any more, but reaching back into the vault of livejournal, I feel all those old feelings again. The heightened level of anxiety, the fear of being exposed as a fraud at everything - as a wife, as a functioning adult, as a whole person. It still brings up all that old pain and fear. But I'm going to share it because I want you to know that I survived this and more than that, I thrived from this. I lost my job soon after because my company closed and my life was a complete disaster and so painful in so many ways. And it took a lot of hard work and self examination to get me to where I am, someone who loves her "day job" and makes more now than she did in corporate, a reasonably successful crafter, a reasonably successful writer, someone who has been happily married for a year and a half, someone who has owned a home for almost five years, someone who paid off most of her debt, someone who is happy with her body and her relationships. I was the girl who lived. And that's where the root of my glamour comes from, this dark ugly shadowed place. Because I lived. And I know you can find your strength to thrive too, because I did. So, here's my story. I wrote it in 2010.
My biggest fear is that I have gotten through the divorce and learned nothing. That I have not changed at all or admitted any fault and that I will forever repeat all the stupid ass patterns I've apparently been repeating since childhood.
Looking back in retrospect and having read some old journal entries, I totally got into the cycle because for the first . . .I want to say four years, everything was good. And then it started downward spiraling and my reaction was pretty typical of people who come from my childhood background. I kept trying harder and harder and was desperate for his happiness. I figured if I just held it down like a good "wife" (we were only married for 1 of the 8 years), eventually his depression would improve, he would work less, he would plug back in, and everything would be FINE. I was so invested in the concept of everything being fine all the time that I refused to see how not fine everything was. More over, I was so invested in things being fine, no one, my best friend included, had any idea how not fine things were. Post divorce, I really started opening up to her about stuff, but at the same time I felt foolish about it. Who would believe how not fine things were when I was so invested in projecting the image of fine-ness?
I made a lot of mistakes. I run through my rosary of sins at times when I have a moment to pick at myself, whenever I have time to really get into how not perfect I am. If I was better, he wouldn't have gotten so awful at the last six months of our marriage. If we had sex more, if I didn't have such a full life, if I complained less, if I did more, if I was . . .somehow more, it wouldn't have ended so badly. If I let him make me his verbal punching bag when his mom died like he wanted to, etc, etc. It just got so bad and I wouldn't let myself realize how bad it was which in turn makes me feel stupid. If you walk on eggshells all the time, constantly bend over backwards to cater to his littlest whim (except when it mattered, according to him!) By trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life (normal work, normal social calendar) several weeks after his mom died (which was right after I lost a family member), that made me a BAD WIFE. If I just kept trying, trying, trying and believing him when he said everything was fine, fine, fine it would eventually work out.
I keep coming back to all of this lately - the bitter bitter end, me on my knees sobbing begging some poor 17 year old wage slave on the phone to let me talk to my husband (who was not receiving my calls) so that he could explain why, when he told me we would talk things out and I should just keep paying the bills and he just needed some time apart, he had overdrafted the account by a large amount. When I asked him why, I got the loving response of, "What the fuck do you think is happening? We're getting divorced." And still, I begged like a goddamn dog like I had never ever begged anyone for anything for him to stay with me. What was *wrong* with me? Why would I do that when someone had done that to me? When I said we could go to counseling, he wouldn't because I had said it seemed like we could keep talking out our problems and if we couldn't, then we could seek counseling. When I asked if I could do X or Y to help our relationship he said, "You still have personality problems." I was so fucking weak. Crying into the phone about what I was supposed to do like the classic housewife.
I had allowed all of our debt to be accrued in my name. If he hadn't deigned to be "kind" (he was not legally obligated, what most people would deign morally obligated would be something else all together) and pay his half, I could have been boned with all of it. At the time he made three times more than I did. He let me hang on the tree with not knowing if I would need to declare bankruptcy for months and through the holidays before he decided to pay half. Likely so he would be thought well of and I could continue to be the shrill harpy he liked to describe.
I had to just . . .live with my mistakes. How stupid and trusting I was that he would never leave me to die like that. Like when he walked out and I just . . .broke. Broke so bad I was locked in my bathroom with bottles of pills and box cutters ( . . .which is totally not me and has never happened before or again since). I was just in such a bad way, the unthinkable was happening and I wasn't prepared for it at all. There was no real threat of divorce previously, no turns on the couch, no I'm not happy in this relationship, I was just sideswiped. When he was called to ask how many pills I had in the bathroom I had locked myself in and were they lethal (as he knew that information), he said he couldn't deal with it and hung up.
The only reason I didn't go to the hospital was (a) I figured I wouldn't have the money to deal with it and it wasn't like he was going to help (b) omg embarrassing at work the next day or week and (c) because I was told the door to the bathroom was going to be broken down if I didn't open it and I'm not great with a snap decision like swallowing a bucket full of pills, I'm totally the hesitation mark kind of girl.
It's not other people I have trusting, I'm having massive trouble trusting myself. I mean Jesus Christ, if I let that drag on for years, how do I know I won't do that again? How do I know I've really changed since he left? How do I know I've been making changes inside myself? How do I know my relationships are healthy? Everyone thought my relationship with him was healthy enough, myself included. What empirical data do I have complied to tell me that I won't let that happen to myself ever again? The little voice in the back of my head chants, is that enough? How do you know you are making good judgments? You've made a lot of really bad ones. You could be in a complete self destructive spiral right now and literally have no idea. What then? I don't know.
Always look on the bright side of life except when you are trying to achieve Mysterium Coniunctionis