Entries from June 2008 ↓

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I have learned a lot in the last few weeks about ‘normal’ and the lack of it. I wrote a few weeks ago about how I had ’suddenly’ developed asthma. This has been a life changing experience — when you can’t breathe, everything that is important to you, everything you thought you knew about your body, suddenly changes. Breathing is so integral to life itself, that when you’re struggling to do it, you can’t think of much else.

Having said that, after several changes in medicine, my regime is finally working. My asthma is improving, and I actually am starting to feel that it’s coming under control.

I still struggle with stairs, mind you, but I’m back to walking again for exercise. (I can’t do Level 20, Random Hills on a treadmill anymore, but I can walk on fairly level ground — with, hey hey!, one set of stairs in the middle — at a brisk pace.) I’m increasing my time gradually, and today after walking I didn’t even feel the need for a recovery inhaler afterwards. So things are better.

But…

I feel the loss of ‘normal’. I’m of an age now where I kinda know what my body can do and what it can’t. I know how much I can push myself and what kind of recovery it will take afterwards.

Or at least I did.

I miss that. I know I don’t actually have a lot to complain about: I’m getting better, I’m under good care and things are most definitely improving.

But I can’t help feeling a tiny bit sorry for myself that, at least a part of the ‘me’ I knew is gone.

I have quite a few female friends, most of whom are married and have been for some time. In the past few years, I’ve heard from more than one of my married friends only to find out that they and their husbands have split. And more than half of the time, the split has been precipitated (notice I did not say ’caused’) by the husband first saying he’s ‘unhappy’ or ‘disatisfied’ or ‘going through something’, and then in the end it turns out he’s found someone else. Sometimes the wife has known said woman because she was ‘just a friend’ or ’someone I work with’ and other times it’s been a shock completely out of the blue. And once ‘the other woman’ enters the picture, things deteriorate rapidly.

I do realise, of course, that some relationships need to end. I think most times that’s down to the individuals, but you can reach a point where there is nowhere left to go, or else there are so many things wrong in the relationship (especially where something like abuse is concerned) that the relationship needs to end.

I have no problem with that. What bothers me is when a person, still in a relationship, decides to ’stray’ with another person. They create a new relationship before their current one is finished, and generally one person doesn’t know what’s going on and ends up feeling really stupid, betrayed and angry as a result.

Now I’m not naieve enough to believe that these people were in perfect relationships (Oh dear, I had trouble even typing that phrase, as I don’t believe ‘perfect relationships’ even exist!) that rapidly fell apart once ‘the other woman’ entered the scene. In fact, situations like this always make me think of a very apt line from the film When Harry Met Sally: “Marriages don’t break up on account of infidelity. It’s just a symptom that something else is wrong.”

While I do believe that infidelity is an outcome, rather than a cause, I find myself asking why so many people, and especially so many men (at least that seems to be the case), attempt to solve their relationship problems by finding a new relationship.

One big reason I think this avenue is so tempting is because it gives a feeling of control. If your most central relationship is threatened, you really feel it. When you find yourself constantly arguing with your partner, or else growing very distant and maybe having nothing to say to each other, it can feel very scary. For a lot of reasons. Somewhere down inside you feel a failure when you can’t make your relationship work. You can also feel afraid of the future, afraid of the unknown, out of control. You may even start to feel worthless.

On the flip side, we all know how it feels to be in a new relationship. You feel good about yourself, desired, attractive, and if you do lose control, it’s in a fun, total emotional ‘rush‘ kind of way. If you’re feeling your relationship with your partner is breaking down, if you feel undesirable to your partner, or if you feel as if everything you do is ‘wrong’, that ‘rush’ can be a powerful temptation. Why work on old issues or bother with confrontation when you can just have a ‘clean slate’ with a new person who thinks you’re wonderful?

Why indeed. And many people seem to think this way.

That brings me back to a book I read a very long time ago, The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. Of all the valuable things in it (It’s a fascinating take on life and what makes it worth living, what things we need to do in order to become a person who lives a truly fulfilling life.) the one that stuck with me the most was about love. In a nutshell, Peck believed that real love is a choice. Attraction is biological, as is infatuation. Feelings are important — you don’t want to be with someone you don’t even find attractive! No one should be that self-sacrificing — but they are not the be-all, end-all. They are just the starting point. To truly love someone, you have to commit, you have to choose to be there. You choose to do what it takes to make that relationship work.

The benefits of that choice, that commitment, can be amazing. When you’ve been through real life with someone else, worked on your issues, found your strengths, been a support to that person and been supported by them, that’s a real relationship. You have a friend, a partner, someone to laugh and cry with, someone who really knows you — both the good and the bad — and chooses to still be with you. That is something worthwhile.

Of course, anything worthwhile comes with a price. And, in this case, that price can be hard work, at least some of the time.

There are always rough patches in a relationship, times when you make each other more angry than you thought possible, times when you cannot seem to get through a day without a shouting match. To get past those points can require real work: copious discussion, true listening, compromise, sacrifice, being honest with yourself, sometimes painful things. It definitely isn’t easy sometimes.

So is it worth it? I think so. A lot of my friends and family agree.

But there will always be some who take a different path, the ‘easy’ path if you will. Much easier to just call it quits and start again. More exciting? Yes. More fun? Probably. Better than commiting to your relationship and working through the obstacles? Not to me, that’s for sure.

I guess, like Peck and the poet Robert Frost I believe:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

(from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost)

When I was pregnant with my first child, I had not been in England long and I didn’t have many friends. None of the friends I did have were pregnant and I felt as if I had no one to talk to that was going through the same thing I was. So my husband, being the Internet-focused man he was and is, found me a mailing list.

As I was due in May, I joined a list called MayMoms. It was a complete turning point in my life.

At full strength there were over a hundred of us, women all due to give birth in May of 1996. We shared fears and concerns, we asked for ‘reality checks’ over whether we were imagining things that were happening to us, we talked about babies kicking and growing bigger and midwives and obstetricians and birth plans and everything to do with having a baby. And when our babies were born we talked about weights and feeding and poops (It’s amazing how much new mothers can have to say about baby poop!) and milestones. And later we discussed baby blues and postpartum depression and finding yourself apart from being ‘Mom’. And then came siblings and school and so on.

We discussed our lives. Some of us even met in person. We made our own yearbooks, complete with photos of our family members. We knew each other.

I was connected to a whole group of women (admittedly mostly white collar, upper-middle-class, highly intelligent, educated women — not anywhere near the norm of all women and we knew that) that were my friends. I knew these women, cared about them, gave my input when they asked for it, and asked for theirs in return. We talked members through illness, divorces, infidelity, unemployment, buying and selling houses, moving to new countries, you name it.

And just yesterday, one of us died.

I haven’t read the list actively in the past year. I’ve checked in now and then, and one woman in particular has been good to flag up important news to those of us who had become ‘on the fringe’ of the group. It was her email that let me know I’d lost a friend.

A friend I’ve never met in person, never spoken to on the phone, I probably couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. But she was my friend. We met in the virtual world, far from my everyday life, but our connection was real. I knew about her illness, that she had cancer. I knew she went into remission, and then I knew she was ill again. And now she’s gone.

I will miss her.

I hate to cry.

My mother, bless her, is a cry-er. She cries when she’s angry, she cries when she’s sad, she cries when she’s moved, she cries when she’s happy. Do not misunderstand me — I love my mother, very, very much. I also know this thing about her, and I’m honest about it.

I have never been and never wanted to be a cry-er. I look awful when I cry (red face, runny nose, swollen eyes — NOT pretty) and I feel pretty awful while doing it. I feel better afterwards, but I’m still not good at it.

Now it is a woman thing. We honestly can’t help crying sometimes. ESPECIALLY if a woman has ever had a child. That hormone thing is real and it’s weird. And we can’t help it!

So why is it, when nearly every 2nd person on the planet has to do the crying thing sometimes, that men are so flummoxed by it?!

My husband hates it when I cry. Now he’s known me, been with me, lived with me, for more than a decade now. And yet every time I cry, it’s like this totally baffling (and irritating) experience for him. Do they not cover this at men school?

If you’re a guy, let me give you a small piece of advice. (And trust me, this will take you far, with the ladies I mean.) When a woman cries, this is what she wants: 1) Have a sympathetic look on your face, 2) put your arms around her and hold tight and 3) this one is your choice — either rock slightly with her in your arms, or make soothing noises (words like “It’s okay”, or “I know” or other similar phrases are great), or heck, BOTH at the same time. You can even rub or pat if you feel so moved (BONUS POINTS), but these aren’t totally requisite. The first three, non-negotiable. Must be done.

The sympathetic look doesn’t have to be real. You can fake it. Trust me, we don’t care. We just want to see it. We want to believe you get it. That you understand. You don’t. You probably can’t. You are a different species, after all. On some level, we know that, but when we’re crying we want to believe you get it. Don’t make any other kind of face, even if you’re feeling it inside. Feed the fantasy.

The hugging thing scores major points. Don’t walk away, (or worse, run) although we know, again at some deep level, that you want to. Don’t pretend you don’t hear us sniffling or sobbing. Don’t suddenly get absorbed in a fascinating article on the Internet. Approach and hug. Believe me, it will have payoffs for you. This is worth doing.

As for the sounds/rocking, we don’t know why we need it, we just do. It just helps. Don’t tsk. Do not, under any circumstances, roll your eyes. Do not sigh. Rock or make soothing noises, or do both. (Depends on a) how believable you can be with the noises and b) how much credit you want for this!) That’s it. Don’t improvise and don’t let us know you don’t really want to do this. It will go much better for you if follow these rules, believe me.

Now there may be a woman out there somewhere who doesn’t like this. But chances are, even if it’s not how she wants her crying to be handled, she’ll still appreciate the attempt.

So do us, and yourself, a favour. Ignore your natural instincts. Follow the three rules as laid out.

And then our crying will be over sooner, and you will benefit from being seen as such a “wonderful, understanding man”. See? Everybody wins!!!

Books are one of my greatest pleasures.

My husband and I seem to disagree TOTALLY about books. I love Sci-fi and Fantasy books; he hates them. He likes trendy new novels; I can get through a few, but I don’t usually like them. He reads factual books; I’d rather gnaw my arm off at the elbow. We can both enjoy biographies, but our ideas of a ‘good biography’ seem to be poles apart.

Me? I love a good story. Throw it into an as-yet non-existent world or universe, add some ability or power nobody really has, chuck in some impending doom that isn’t a possibility in this life, and I’m in heaven. Why? Because it sets my imagination free.

I love when a book goes places we can’t go in this world. That’s the excitement of it for me: not knowing where things will go or what might happen. I like that kind of surprise.

I love worlds where people move things with their minds, spaceships go further than we could get in several lifetimes, vampire masters can be defeated by a girl who raises the dead for a living (Ssshhhh! If you know, don’t tell. ), women who always thought they were perfectly normal can suddenly work magic and do extraordinary things. I love this stuff because a part of me would love to live this stuff. No, I don’t really want to live in a world inhabited by vampire masters (If they’re really out there, then don’t tell me!), but I’d love to be a girl who could kick vampire butt and save the day. I’d love to be more than I think I am, do more than I know I can do.

Is that so strange?

Isn’t that why we go to movies? To forget who we are for a little while, to try to walk in another person’s shoes, a person who can and does do things we cannot?

Books are my own personal movie, running in my head. I can see it all on the big screen and in living colour.

That being the case, why wouldn’t I want to read the stories that are larger than life, completely impossible and full of creativity and imagination? I don’t want to read about what’s been done — I want to read about doing what I wish could possibly be. I want to read about all the things that the server technician, wife and mother-of-three will never do, but would love to think that maybe, in another universe, she could.

I really don’t sleep well. I wonder if I ever have. I sleep poorly, suffer from nightmares and, worst of all, from night terrors. The kind that have you out of bed screaming without really knowing what’s happening or being able to get yourself out of it. And the only blessing is that usually I don’t remember it in the morning.

Why? Why don’t I sleep well? Why do I have these issues?

I think it’s because the god of my childhood was a bastard.

You may not think it’s fair to ‘blame god’ for my past fears or my present sleep problems. And I’m not really. I’m blaming the image I have had of god all my life. An image that I am admittedly responsible for creating and perpetuating, but one I haven’t yet been able to escape. An all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful bully, who takes great joy in watching you get screwed over.

Man, that’s sad, powerful stuff, isn’t it? And it all started before I was even five or six years old. As soon as I was old enough to understand it all. And believe me, that was early.

I’ve heard it said that the picture you have of god when you’re a child mirrors the picture you have of your grandfather.

Yeah, that definitely makes sense. My grandfather was a bastard. In fact, both my grandfathers pretty much were, but one more than the other. One definitely hurt me more than the other. And I think he was my cardboard cutout when I was forming my god picture.

Mind you, I had a lot of extra help there. My childhood religion did a LOT to influence that picture. It’s little wonder I’m not religious now. (I’m not sure I could be and remain sane.) But I still can’t really feel safe. Not anywhere. Sometimes I find that terrifying, and other times I just find it unbearably sad.

I grew up in a fundamental Christian family. They were, and are, lovely people, my family. Lovely and loving. However, our religion, THEIR religion, was not.

Take fire and brimstone, add a heap of terror and a child’s understanding of you’re-going-to-hell-if-you-don’t-get-this-exactly-right, tack on the worry that you can’t possibly get it right, mix well with trying extremely hard to get it right and saying the same ’sinner’s prayer’ at least four dozen times (I’m being conservative), being baptized twice (in case it didn’t ‘take’), and finish off with being quite sure it’s still not ‘right‘. My childhood in a bottle, ready to serve.

And the worst part is, being the intelligent, conscientious, precocious child I was, I had to worry about the state of everybody’s else’s soul as well. After all, I was responsible for them knowing ‘the good news‘, too.

And all the while, that super-duper bully was there waiting…just waiting for me to mess up. Put just one foot wrong.

My god, how did I not only survive that, but end up a functional, productive, mostly happy adult?

I have no answer except that I’m a survivor. How else do you make it through? And I always do.

Through a list of average, bad, and VERY BAD men and relationships. Past a number of bosses who seemed bent on emotionally abusing and/or destroying me and my self-esteem. Through a lot of very hard times. But I did. I do. I continue to not only survive, but go beyond that.

I’m married to a good man, a good father, a man I love, a man I have amazing chemistry with and a good friendship with as well. I have three amazing, intelligent and beautiful children. I have a difficult, responsible job that challenges and excites me.

And yet, when I close my eyes, it’s not safe. All the scary things are still there.

I’ve dealt with so much in so many ways. Yes, I’ll raise my hand and say I’ve been through therapy, with a number of different therapists. And it’s better. I don’t sleep with my fists clenched anymore. I don’t wake up with my shoulders aching anymore. But I still don’t sleep well.

I’ve met and comforted my inner child. I’ve faced the things that happened in my childhood. I’ve confronted those that hurt me. I’ve distanced myself from, and reconciled myself to, my family. I’ve left the church. I’ve journalled, talked, done the twelve steps, tried self-hypnosis, used every sleep aid on the market, read every related book I could find, google’d every website. I still don’t sleep well.

I’ve been on this earth quite a number of years, and really past the age of four, I’ve never slept well. I’m coming to the place where I believe I just maybe never will.

And that, is a very lonely, depressing and frightening place. But there is worse. A lot worse. And I know that. So I am grateful for what I have, and I carry on.

I’ve decided relationships are not about what people say. They’re not even about what people do. They’re about what people want.

My husband and I have been together a long time now — 13 years in August! And yet, I just realised, TODAY even, that I don’t really understand what he wants.

I thought I did. I thought I knew what it meant to please him, make him happy, be supportive. I don’t. And in return, he doesn’t seem to know what I want either.

The reality is, we each do what we think the other person wants, and that translates into doing what we each want individually from the other person. In other words, I’m doing what I want him to do for me and vice versa. Not exactly a recipe for success that, is it.

Bummer.

What do I want? I want him to talk and I want him to talk in a way that shows he cares about me. I want him to ask about my day and really want to hear the answer. I want him to chat with me on car journeys. (I am a driver married to a non-driver. That means I drive everywhere, and somewhere along the way the thrill of driving ceased to be a thrill. TALK TO ME! Driving is boring now — talking is not.) I want him to tell me I’m important to him.

I also want him to do things I want done. I want him to put pots away when he’s cleaning up in the kitchen. (Everybody has their ‘thing’. Pots left out on the stove is mine. I hate that.) When he’s washing up, I want him to wash the backs of the dishes, not just the fronts/insides. (Why do men not do this? I don’t think I’ll ever understand that.) I want him to change the sheets on the bed instead of waiting for me to do it — I want to come home one day and there are clean sheets on the bed. Surprise! (Yay!!)

So what do I do?

I ask him, every day, how his day went. (Or in this case, night – he’s been working nights for nearly a year now. We both hate it.) I try to chat with him on car journeys. I try to tell him in words, phone texts, emails, that he is important to me. I am trying to make him happy by saying what I want him to say to me.

I get it a bit more right with the doing — I know a lot of his ‘dos and don’ts’. I try to be tidy because I know he hates it when I’m not and when the house is not. I try to wear clothes I know he likes on me when we go out, because I know he thinks his taste is good and mine sucks. I try (VERY HARD) not to ask questions with obvious, or given, answers because I know he hates that.

And I also put the pots away on the stove, wash dishes inside and out, and change the bed sheets unexpectedly. Trying to please him by doing things that would please me.

And you know what? I could be wrong, but I honestly think he does the same thing in reverse. I know I hear him say, “I thought that’s what you wanted” often enough, and yet the ‘wanted’ thing is usually, very surprisingly to me, far outside my scope of even thinking about.

How can we get it so wrong? And how, after all this time, can we still think the other person wants what we ourselves want? And can we ever get it right?

I suspect getting it right would involve those taboos of “asking for what you need“, where ‘mind-reading’ is SO much more romantic, and “communicating honestly and openly” about what works and doesn’t work for you in a relationship, where guessing and basing your reactions on your own wishes is SO much more natural.

No wonder people say relationships are hard work. It seems to me it’s not the other person who’s hard work — it’s dealing with ourselves: our own preconceptions, misconceptions, interpretations, explanations. I have always believed, and still do, that the benefits are so worth it, but I gotta tell you, the work (which mostly seems to involve working on myself) is sometimes very hard.

My name is Leanne, and I’m an asthmatic.

Until 3 weeks ago, I didn’t know I had asthma. At least, not really.

I mean, I knew I had ‘exercise induced asthma’, but we’re talking a slight cough if I had to run for a bus. Nothing serious, nothing that needed an inhaler. Just something that bothered me now and then when I was at the gym, but basically disappeared on its own.

Cut to 4 weeks ago. People kept saying to me, “Do you have asthma?” “NO!”, I would answer. I had a ‘phlegm problem’ (which I still have — anybody know how to REALLY get rid of catarrh???), I was a bit breathless after those stairs/that hill/that walk, whatever. But no, I DON’T have asthma.

And then, I had lunch with a friend. A very caring, concerned friend, whom I hadn’t seen for about 6 months, by the way. All through lunch and afterwards, she mostly seemed to be saying, “I think there’s something wrong with you…” And finally, after several hours, she pointed out that I couldn’t get through a sentence without having to gasp for breath. (Okay, yeah, I’m a bit thick about medical stuff when it’s happening to me. I’m GREAT with anybody else’s crisis — just give me a call!) “Please go get yourself checked out,” she said. “Call your doctor, or better yet, go to the hospital.”

I waved off her objections, of course (this is ME we’re talking about) and then….

I ended up in A&E (the Emergency Room) the next day. For five hours. While the doctors tried to prove I had a chest infection, and yet couldn’t. And then diagnosed me….with asthma. *sigh*

And then, as a follow-up, my own doctor signed me off work for 2 weeks. “You are a very sick girl,” she told me. “You need to take this very seriously.”

It has been a debilitating experience. I never knew such little things could wear me out as they have. And, believe me, when you can’t breathe, you can’t do anything else either. But, after steroids and antibiotics (in case there was an infection they couldn’t find) and inhalers, I am better. Finally. And unbelievably, I’m an asthmatic.

Who knew? And who would have believed it?

Certainly not me.

Yet here I am. I am an asthmatic. And I must go forth with that always in mind. Talk about a trip.