Picking up the mess

I woke up today feeling slightly more refreshed than I had since the fight over the boxes. I had felt exhausted, nerves jangling, eyes burning, anxiety sitting on my chest and belly like a rock for days, the emotional hangover from watching my abuser abuse me in real time.

There are some potential explanations as to why I was feeling more rested, less defeated.

Time, of course, that balm for all wounds (is it?) and that I'd paid off my sleep debt from the weekend.

I had also had a conversation with a divorce attorney and decided that today I was going to pay the retainer to hire him. Or, at least, I was working up the nerve.

But as I drove to work today, I was still meditating on the fight. This time it wasn't the intimidation or the drunken hyper masculinity. It was this series from the string of texts:

He: This is why nothing gets done

He: You do whatever you want, whenever you want, and I'm just supposed to deal with it. It must be nice.

He: I've tried to absorb everything and it's been really hard. Can you give me a break?

Can you give me a break is the line I should be screaming.

That refrain: You do whatever you want and I'm left to do whatever needs to get done is number 1 on Scott's Billboards Greatest Hits. It implies that I am lazy. It implies that I am selfish. It implies that Scott has to sacrifice because of my frivolity, my lack of work ethic, my not prioritizing the right things.

Earlier in our marriage, these fights would devolve into me shaking with rage at this demonstrably false accusation, listing the things I did or paid for for our family. This was by design, because Scott could then tell me how little all of these contribution matters against his ability to "pay for everything." What were the costs of haircuts or babysitters or Happy Meals paid for by my meager part time job wages against the cost of the mortgage? Why couldn't I keep the house clean when I didn't have a job? Never mind the two small children I had including one with special needs, the hours I spent managing therapies, the part time jobs that paid me actual money, volunteering at our tiny urban public school. And later, what was working full time so our family could have health insurance when he was trying to build a legacy?

There was always a reason why what I did to contribute to the marriage was just not valuable. That despite my passion, my exhaustion, my effort, my utter devotion, I was not doing anything to really move the needle. Because it was selfish (I liked my part time job, so it's not work--actual quote), self-interested (I went back to work because I wanted to--lie), or simply inconsequential against his effort. He would tell me, as his final coup de grace, that I made him feel very alone.

These exchanges always left me bereft, not just at the unfairness or even ridiculousness, for example, that argument we got into about whether it was "work" if you enjoyed your job, but of the sheer impossibility of trying to defend my position. Asking someone, in the heat of an argument about emotional labor to list her contributions to the home is not a conversation that will go well. And it's not designed to.

My friend Quincy once overheard my son call me lazy, and she rather pointedly reminded him that she saw me as anything but. "Your mom runs marathons," she said. She has told me this story numerous times, reminding me that she was always telling me to do less. I was the president of the school counsel until my younger child graduated. I worked, at several points having several jobs. I took voice and guitar lessons, I played in a band. I hung out with friends. But it wasn't until this week when I realized that he, and I due to his conditioning, didn't count those as meaningful contributions--most of them were just fun. Singing is something I do because it brings me joy. Marathon running keeps me fit. Teaching yoga and selling women's contemporary fashions is work I find fulfilling. Being on the school counsel does benefit the children, however indirectly and it certainly doesn't bring in any money. I actually felt like this list proved that Scott was correct. I DO do whatever I want.

But another way to look at it might be that work is work, that community service is work, that filling my bucket so I could show up as my best self for my family is also work. That doing all of this while raising a special needs son and an emotionally fragile daughter, filling out school forms and refilling prescriptions and planning birthdays and vacations and identifying an emergency contacts and going to IEP and 504 meetings and finding therapists and helping with college essays means sometimes I'm to tired to pick up at the end of the day is work.

Whatever else you might want to say about it, I made it possible for Scott, back when he was working, to devote 100% of his mental capacity to the job that kept us in mortgages and travel points and Pirate Booty. He did not have to schedule babysitters or make the Costco run or take Kai to therapy. He did not have to go to teacher conferences or spend hours on the phone with United Healthcare or get the car serviced. When I pointed this out, he was apoplectic with rage. "I hate this job," he said. "I do this for YOU." He'd rage at the Amazon packages and organic food and the overabundance of toys, at this middle American life of late-stage capitalism like it was my personal moral failing.

The thing about abuse is that it tears away at what you know until you are left confused and unsure. One time I asked Scott to take Kai to Starbucks in the morning because I wanted to sleep for another 5 minutes. He grumbled and wrestled Kai out the door and it wasn't two minutes later that my eyes flew open and I realized I'd made a huge mistake. I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and went upstairs to pick up the family room, load the dishwasher, tidy the kitchen and vacuum. Scott was still mad when he got back that he had to go all the way to Starbucks for my coffee. I'd just wanted some help with baby. The one that I'd wanted and he hadn't, really. The one he'd told our therapists that I seemed to be "struggling" with. I'd cried all the way home from that session, while Scott assured me that he wasn't going to be manipulated by my tears.

I used to look enviously at couples that I presumed (rightly or wrongly) to be from cultures where gender roles were more strictly defined than here in America--marriages I assumed where roles were defined by centuries of culture, that the wife would take care of the domestic sphere and the husband would go to work, dutifully assuming the role of provider/protector. They wouldn't have to worry about roles and expectations, because it was laid out before them--this is just what we do. Obviously, I can't assume that I know what goes on in someone else's marriage, and even more obviously I can't know how a woman might feel in a marriage like that. What if she was the smarter of the two? What if his fragile or toxic masculinity combined with cultural norms to leave her unable to advocate for herself and her children? What I really wanted was not this, per se, but to be in a partnership where I wasn't held to a standard I could never quite reach. What I wanted, in retrospect, was boundaries.

When my father was sick and dying, I spent a lot of time traveling to St. Paul to visit as much as I could. Our last good visit took place in October, about two weeks before he died. We got home in the midst of a school week and as a result, the house was a mess when Scott got home from his business trip. Of course, this upset him. I asked him to give me a break because my father was dying, to which he said words that were seared into my memory. "Plenty of people have parents die and still pick up around the house."

The shock of that, the callous and casual cruelty stunned me. The next morning, my mother texted me that Dad had taken a fall, and that she thought I should go back to St. Paul. Scott had been kind, assuring me that he'd handle the kids while I was gone and not to worry. He knew I was going to watch my father die. When I got to their house, Dad was sleeping so I busied myself in the kitchen loading the dishwasher.

"I don't know if I did that in the most efficient way," I remarked.

My sister looked up from her book. "No one is going to yell at you for loading the dishwasher wrong here," she said dryly.

I remember that week as being so peaceful, so quiet. Sundrenched days looking at the fall colors along the Mississippi. Reading on the couch. Making big vats of food. With no one criticizing me or reminding me of my every perceived failure, it was a great week.

Except that my father died.

I remember at his funeral, I asked Scott to bring the kids to the reception. They were not there when I arrived with my mom and sister, and I had a moment of panic. I had not given Scott any directions. I'd asked him to take them to McDonald's and didn't give him their order. I hadn't told him where to park. I knew he was going to be livid with me. But my next thought broke through all those years he'd conditioned me to center him. This was my dad's funeral, I thought. If there's a day I get a pass for the infractions of not prioritizing him, it must certainly be today. But still, I was relieved when he walked in and didn't seem to be upset with me.

Driving home the other day, I was talking with Quincy about the fight and she circled back to Kai calling me lazy, as she often does.

"But you always did so much," she said. "I was forever trying to get you to quit committees."

And then it struck me. "I was busy. I am busy. I was always working. The problem is that it wasn't directly benefitting him."

"So it didn't count," Quincy concluded.

It didn't count.

:::

A few years ago, I was talking with my friend Anne about something I felt guilty about. I had hosted a fundraiser for our school at the store I managed, but I had never submitted the receipts to get the donation. I had a lot of shame around this and felt like I couldn't reach out to try to do another one.

"I feel so ashamed," I said. I felt like a failure, and this one was a moral failing.

Anne wasn't having it. "Because you made a mistake? You're actually just a human?" She asked.

That question was the start of a tiny thread that I began to worry. Could I forgive myself for making a mistake? Could I give myself that tiny grace? Is this standard that I hold myself to even possible?

A few years later, when I no longer managed the store but merely styled part time, I left a can of sparkling water on the shoe display.

"By the way," my friend Gray said, "you left your can of LaCroix right here yesterday."

"Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry!"

"Honestly, it's just nice to see you doing something human," she replied.

There was that word again. Human.

I thought about both of those interactions a lot over the coming months. Like, in what ways do hold myself to a standard that's superhuman? And in what ways? And why?

When Anne and Gray talked about being human, I began to wonder why I resisted the urge to be, well, perfect. And where did that shame when I did something that wasn't perfect come from? And then I found out.

Last December, I played in a show with my friend Andrea and a group of other musicians, including my daughter. At the rehearsal, I volunteered myself to play the jingle bells on Hazy Shade of Winter. Our drummer, Aerin, is a tough cookie, which I know because she's in several bands with Andrea. Aerin is exacting, like the time Andrea was singing a Swedish song and Aerin insisted she wasn't singing in a proper Swedish accent. In any event, I was jingling the bells when Aerin stopped playing and signaled for the rest of us to do the same.

Aerin turned to me. "Your jingle bells are off," she said brusquely.

I was embarrassed at being called out. "Sorry," I mumbled.

Aerin demonstrated the way she wanted me to play the jingle bells, and I'll admit to merely pretending for that practice, so as not to play such a loud instrument in an offensive way.

The night of the performance, I summoned all of my concentration and hit my jingle bells in the way Aerin had wanted. I saw her give me a little fist pump, which is the only thing I really remember about an evening that included a solo performance and a rousing harmony of Jolene.

I remembered that I pleased a very hard to please person and I felt special. I wondered what that said about me and my experience in the world, how much of my own identity was wrapped up in prioritizing someone else's comfort and attention, conditioned that the best thing I could do for myself was not an emotional performance of Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters but to please another person by ringing a bell at the exact right time.

:::

Twenty-three years of trying to convince Scott of my value, of my commitment and who, in the heat of battle, will always try to negate these things has been to prove that I am forever more committed to someone else's needs than my own, to internalize that what I do for myself actually doesn't have as much value, to begin to believe that human tendencies to make a mistake or spend time with a loved one instead of tidying up a few toys makes you a shitty person.

I will never convince Scott in circumstances like Saturday's altercation (or maybe any) that I don't "do whatever I want," that I don't contribute, that what I produce has no value. I won't ever convince him that that this is untrue or hurtful or abusive. It worked so well for so long, tearing me down, wearing me down, making me doubt my experience.

The best I'll ever do is gray rock him over it, telling him that I don't see it that way and refusing to engage.

No. Actually the best I'll ever do is to be kinder to myself as I learn to trust my own perceptions and give myself grace as I remind myself that I have value.

Over and over until I truly believe it.