New Year

The new year began, and it seems to be barreling ahead without me. Am I lost in the dust? I don't know. I seem to have everything under control. My lesson plans are written, the classroom is fairly clean, my little sunglasses breakers are staying after school to help me every day, I have my paperwork done. Or do I? I get this weird feeling that there's something important I've forgotten. Today we took down the Christmas decorations, and now the house looks oddly bare as if it were crying out for some ornamentation. I'll miss the color the various holiday accessories brought.

#1:

I was ruminating over 2010. I was barely scratching the surface. I ran out of energy right before I got to the part where I was going to write what I did wrong. This is very hard for me. I don't like to admit my shortcomings. Will it overwhelm me to do that? Will I shrivel in shame if I dare to write it in this blog?

It was, okay here I go being brutally honest, a relief when Bill was diagnosed with cancer. It had been such a tough marriage and I was so tired of his poor money management, the way he was beginning to treat my father, his sloppiness, his bad behavior, his betrayals. The cancer was a signal to me that this would end in the foreseeable future. I didn't want to admit that to myself. How could a woman be almost glad that her husband was given this death sentence?

But I felt that I wanted to be with him through it all. I had made a commitment to him, I still loved him in many ways, we had always been good company, and I knew I was the only person in his life at that time. He was relying heavily on me to be his rock. I thought that with the limited time we had, I would stay by his side while his time on this earth ended. I wasn't looking forward to watching him die; I didn't even want to see him in pain. But we had been together 26 years, and I am a loyal person.

#2:

I resented him. I resented the gambling, the bipolar mood swings, the way he copped out of the Bar Exam God-knows-how-many times, didn't help support our family,gambled away his inheritance, had stolen money from me, embarrassed me socially and with my family, the holidays he had ruined, the way his word was no good, the two-faced way he disciplined our daughter. I would have been able to 'forgive and forget' if he had just stopped. If I had been more true to myself, what would have done about these betrayals? My resentments?

#3:

I was seeking support from outside our home. I was readying myself for his death. I was gathering people to support me. Is that bad? I don't know. But somehow I was drifting away from him. Part of it was a coping mechanism for me to 'ready' myself for his death. Part of it was wanting to push myself away from him because he was being unkind to my father after he was the one who had invited my dad to live with us. But I was feeling separate from him. And he felt it. And I felt bad that he felt it. It seemed like a phenomenon over which I couldn't get any control.