Category: Learning

Sometimes I need a good asskicking.

Bryan, My Love.

A couple months ago I was ready to leave him, but something snapped and we made it safely through the maze together. While on our blissful vacation in Portland, I asked him Did he really think we were getting better, or was there just nothing to fight about recently? I was waiting for the other shoe to drop because it was difficult to believe such a transformation could have taken place.

My theory was tested a few days after we returned when he said something that upset me, I sulked and lashed out at him, and I began having those thoughts flip through my mind: See? He’ll never change! And you? You’re a basket case who’s falling apart. No one understands your pain.

Bryan left for a meeting, then returned and we sat silently on the couch watching t.v. He wore his stressed out, defeated countenance, and I donned my stubborn, righteous resolve. We were together, but far apart.

When he stood up to go to bed I panicked. After experiencing the intimacy and comfort of the past few weeks, after remembering what it’s like to have humor and sass between us again, I loathed the idea of returning to another season of silence and bitterness.

So I spoke. “Wait! I don’t want to go to bed like this. I have something to say.”

I pulverized the voices in my mind and launched into an explanation of why I lashed out, of why his comment hurt me, that it had little to do with the actual comment but more to do with how it represented my fear of the past and the future and all that happens in between.

Relief washed over him and changed his countenance. He thanked me. We talked. We kissed. He went to bed. My head did not explode. The universe remained intact.

And I realized the answer to my question: Yes, we are getting better.

The Good Mother

The other day I was talking to a friend who also struggles with anger management. She relayed a story about allowing her children to “help” her with a task, knowing that in the end she would just become frustrated and lash out at them. But in her mind she believed that a Good Mother would be able to include her children in this task, that a Good Mother would make it work, that a Good Mother would enjoy incorporating them into her daily work.

When indeed she did become frustrated and lash out at her children, something finally broke in her and she recognized the lie swirling in her head about what a Good Mother resembles.

I listened to her with my mouth gaping open because it was like she was reading a script from inside my own head.

It was a valuable conversation to me because it turned to trigger points – those proverbial cherries on top, the straw that broke the camel’s back, and so forth. In the last few months since seeking help and accountability for my anger problem I have seen significant change – and not just behavioral management, but true inward change – yet I still found myself in moments of lashing out, and I wanted to explore the pattern (Ack! I’m starting to sound like Bryan).

When I noticed I mostly lashed out at my kids just before nap time and just before bed time, it clicked: I was becoming irritable because I was in desperate need for a break. As an introvert who needs down time alone to regroup, refresh, and regenerate, I became worn out by Ruthie’s constant need to engage me (an introvert, she is not).

Realizing this has been huge, and has allowed me to make adjustments to avoid irate breakdowns. For instance, I’ve started putting Ruthie down for her nap an hour earlier – before my fatigue sets in – so our morning ends on a more positive note. I spend the next hour doing something that refreshes me, like reading or writing an essay, then I spend the next hour doing a task that’s difficult to do when the kids are under my feet. If they wake up before the two hours is done, I leave them in their rooms because this is the two hours I have set aside for my sanity.

I’m learning that it benefits no one to embrace my limitations as failures, but if I accept who I am and learn to accommodate my limitations, I am truly a better mother and a better person. I am only a bad mother when I’m trying to be something I’m not, when I try to alter a part of myself that just Is, like trying to stuff your feet into a pair of shoes that are just too small.

I am redefining the Good Mother in my head to resemble something more familiar: me.

Practicing the Art of Being

This morning my mom left Minnesota for a month in sunny Arizona (oh, to be retired), and I called her last night to see how the packing was going.

After chatting for awhile I said, “Well, I should let you get back to your packing.”

But as usual, the conversation continued for another ten minutes. We talked about nothing, really. She mostly seemed to be talking to herself as she packed her make-up, lotions, and shampoos into a small carry-on. As I listened, I remembered a conversation we had last week about how tired she is of being alone all the time since Gordy died, that she misses having someone to talk to.

So I asked her, “You just like having me on the phone, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I kind of do.” So I decided that while she packed, I would make an egg bake dish to refrigerate for breakfast in the morning.

We stayed on the phone together for a long time, chatting about nothing as if she were sitting on the stool in my kitchen. It felt nice to be doing ordinary things while talking about nothing in particular. I’ve never lived near my mom since I’ve been an adult, and this experience made me think about what I’ve been missing being so far from her.

It also made me think about grieving and the many nuances of working through it. Sometimes I think it’s easy to miss the most important way we can support someone who is grieving: just being there. I often default to Helping others in need by bringing meals, or cleaning a house, or caring for small children, when sometimes just being on the other end of the phone is all that is needed.

A friend of mine once spoke about grieving in terms of the book of Job in the Bible:

2:11 When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. 13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

Before Job’s friends went all conspiracy theory on him, their first response was to just sit quietly and grieve with him. Those of us who are fixers and problem solvers have trouble with this. We feel it is not enough to just be present; we need to be DOING something. Sitting on the phone with my mom last night, I learned the value in just being with her. It is exactly what she needed.

Schmalentine’s Day

I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day. Really, I haven’t. I find the entire ‘holiday’ quite silly, actually. It never seemed important to me to have a specific DAY when someone was SUPPOSED to do something nice to express their love because this behavior was supposed to be NORMAL for people who love and care for each other.

Right?

One of the ways I have let disappointment swell within me and turn to bitterness is in the area of expectations: I have lots of them, and Bryan doesn’t meet them. This has played out at every anniversary, birthday, and Valentine’s Day since we’ve been married.

I’m a simple girl, I say. I don’t need airplanes dragging messages of love behind them; I don’t need ‘I heart you’ carved out of a corn field; I just want a Hallmark card with something mushy written in it because you are an amazing writer and I love to read every word.

Marriage has been a series of reality checks. Some along the lines of Holy Shit I Can’t Believe I Got Myself Into This, and some along the lines of Damn I Can’t Believe He Puts Up With Me. I have needed to deconstruct many of my expectations – or at least communicate them non-telepathically. He has needed to become more pro-active.

I can’t recall anything in my life I’ve ever persevered through so consistently. I’m the champion of quitters. I rewrote the motto to say, ‘When the going gets tough, try something easier.’ But I have been encouraged by changes I’ve seen in myself, by the efforts I see Bryan making, by the compromises we have made for each other.

When I returned from my weekend away with the ladies, I walked into the house to find a shiny red gift bag filled with raffia sitting on the dining room table. Poking out the top were two red cards – one from the kids and one from Bryan – that said ‘do not open until 2/14.’

I’m still not a big fan of Valentine’s Day, but it has provided a format for us to practice our graciousness, our listening skills, and our love languages. I love you, Bryan. Thank you for loving me.

Marvin Gaye, This One’s for YOU!

I’ve often felt make-up sex was kind of a chicken-egg thing – which comes first? Does a forgiven, healed relationship beget sexual intimacy? Or does marital intimacy help draw you into a place of healing?

I’m learning that sometimes it’s important to just take a step of faith, to extend grace, to do something completely selfless and not expect anything in return. That is, after all, a biblical principle, right?

In considering this, I assumed there would be nothing in it for me, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. An effort made in Faith and Love – even if done with heaping skepticism – brought about a change in my heart.

I Feel As If History Is Repeating Itself, and Other Thoughts on the New Year.

Last year when New Year’s Eve fell on a Friday, and most businesses were closed that day, our furnace crapped out on us Thursday night around dinner time. We were left with no heat in our home over a long holiday weekend, which also happened to be the coldest weekend of the winter that year.

This year on Thursday night Bryan overshot a parking curb in the church parking lot and punctured a hole in the oil pan, which drained all the oil from the car. And, in keeping with tradition, by the time we had the car towed to a mechanic they were too busy to get to it before Monday.

And much like the coincidence of having no heat on the coldest day of the year, I was left with no car during a weekend in which Bryan attended a conference from 9am until after 10pm each night, leaving me alone with two small children and the voices in my head.

I often go days without leaving the house, but there is something about knowing I CAN’T leave the house EVEN IF I WANTED TO that makes me crazy. By the time Sunday rolled around and my kids were still hanging on to their pink-eye contagions, I voted myself Most Likely to Go Insane and went to church alone while Bryan stayed home with the kids.

However, aside from the morning I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and dropped the F-Bomb when Ruthie woke up at the same time I did (leaving me with no alone time for the coffee and Zoloft to kick in), I think I fared on the side of having a better attitude than in the past.

I think expensive therapy and reality checks from friends go a long way to put my life into perspective, and I take them both very seriously.

When a therapist informs you that you have a tendency to fall into Victim mode when things don’t go your way, and when a friend reminds you she NEVER has a car and she lives across the hall from drug dealers who run a meth lab out of their apartment, you could either become pissy and bitter, or you could pull your head out of your ass and recognize there is more to this universe than yourself.

I am learning to embrace Option B.

Options B doesn’t come easily to me. It’s much easier for me to complain about how bad I’ve got it and how unfair my life is. Sometimes I wonder why my friends even keep me around, I get so bitchy. They say it’s because I make them laugh, but I think it’s because I have cable t.v.

I read this great post by Finslippy over the weekend. It was a very well written post about the frustration of trying to get anything done while raising a preschooler, about how everything about you seems to get sucked into the vortex of toddler land, and about how easy it is to become bitter and resentful under those circumstances.

I could have written that post, yet in reading those words as expressed by someone outside of myself, I felt icky that I could have written that post.

At any rate, as I felt the stress coming on this weekend and was on the edge of grouching out at my kids, I did that praying thing Christians are supposed to do, and I tried to take myself less seriously. In this way I feel as if I’ve turned over a new leaf. Not like a new year’s resolution, but more like a shift in perspective.

The other day I woke up feeling different, less overwhelmed, more in control of my emotions. I weaned Thomas over our vacation, which came with a dose of regret and sadness, but I wonder if it ushered in a change in hormonal balance. I feel as if new and wonderful things are in store for me this year. I feel hope that my old self is still in here somewhere. I feel strong for the battle to attack my demons.

Happy New Year, friend and stranger. I wish you hope and peace.

It’s Not My Fault I’m This Way… right?

“It is a terrible catastrophe when I am rejected, treated unfairly, and things aren’t as I would like them.”

Also known as The Victim Mindset, which I scored 9 out of a possible 10 on a ‘beliefs inventory’ questionnaire given by our marriage counselor, making me a champion of victims.

Yes, we are seeing a marriage counselor, and I am not ashamed to say so. Bryan and I have such vast ways of communicating, showing love, and receiving love, that some serious intervention was needed. I recommend it for everyone who struggles with communication in their marriage – it has been a lifesaver for us.

Back to me.

I think most people, when he or she seeks a mediator to bring clarity to a relationship, expects that mediator to straighten out the dolt he or she is married to. Why don’t we ever learn that this is rarely how the scenario plays out? For me, it was eye opening to learn how my tendency to blame all the circumstances in my arsenal for why I didn’t get X, Y, or Z done was making Bryan want to pull his hair out.

Not that his behavior is my fault, or that my behavior is his fault, but that we are both responsible for how we love each other. I’m trying to focus more on my own issues, rather than focus on how to change Bryan.

I was just talking to a friend this morning about how self-righteous we can be when our husbands get sick. When they puke, they get to skip work and lie in bed all day and have their chicken broth spoon fed to them by a loving and doting wife. When a stay at home mom gets the pukes we lay on the couch, half dead, ignoring our children as they watch movie after movie and eat potato chips for every meal, and they’re lucky if we don’t beat them out of sheer frustration in the process.

How does THAT happen? My inner victim begins to tell me that life is SO unfair, and why the hell don’t *I* get a day off when I’m puking???

I don’t have any answers, nor do I know how I’m supposed to respond (hence the counseling). I just know that I’m not supposed to act like a victim.

One of the scripture verses suggested to me in contemplating my victim mentality is Matthew 5:11 “Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me (Christ).”

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t find this verse very helpful to my situation. For one thing, I’m not an ACTUAL victim (i.e. the receiver of insults or persecution), but largely a PERCEIVED victim (one that just doesn’t like to take responsibility). Secondly, it’s just not realistic that I would feel blessed in any victimizing situation, whether real or perceived. Sometimes the Bible just doesn’t make sense to me.

Nothing cures judgementalism like having children

Oh, the silly, wicked things that have crossed my mind.

I can’t remember when or where I read this (or maybe she was on Oprah), but I remember a story about a mom who went back to work when her children were still small because she felt it would help her appreciate her children more if she wasn’t around them all day.

My eyes rolled. My lips pursed. My head rocked back and forth.

I thought, of ALL the excuses available to this woman, she chose THIS one as the reason to abandon her children into someone else’s care? PAH-lease.

Judgment was oozing from me.

So last night when Bryan and I needed to go in separate directions I asked if he could take both of the kids home or if he wanted me to take Ruthie. He thought about the question, then said, “I didn’t really see Ruthie last night because I was gone, and I kind of feel like snuggling with her.”

In that moment I was completely jealous that he had the capacity to miss his children; that he was apart from them so much he actually looked forward to seeing them while I searched daily for ways to give myself time away from them.

Then it was like Emeril was inside my head with his enthusiastic “BAM!” and suddenly I could empathize with the woman who just wanted to be able to love her children more and was trying to make that happen as best as she could.

How prideful we can be as stay-at-home-moms, believing that we have chosen the righteous path when in our hearts lies the same seed of self-deception as all women because we are together daughters of Eve.

I realize the slippery slope I am inching toward as I entertain such blaring discontent with my life. I don’t want to be discontent – especially not with such significant choices we’ve made together as a family. Discontentment breeds bitterness, and bitterness spreads like a virus. Ruthie senses everything like a tracker in the jungle, and she will learn discontentment through her keen observation of the nuances around her. She doesn’t need the obvious – she sees the subtle.

I pray I learn to model well.

Shout Out

I read this post over at Node Glue and it got me thinking about the way I follow my favorite blogs.

I’m a selfish and impatient blog reader. I’m too lazy to follow links, and I’m too uninterested to comment on other people’s posts, or even read comments others have posted on the blogs I read. What a bitch I am.

Blog world, I am sorry. I repent. I will quit lurking and begin to engage.

What about you? Are you reading this post? Have you been following my blog? Step up to the challenge and post a quick shout out in my comments to let me know you’re there!

I dare you.

Rage Interrupted

I sit here at my computer this morning, talking myself down from wanting to shake my son until he shuts up.

For those of you who know Thomas, you know he is one of those babies every mother dreams of, who sleeps hours at a time and cries only when he needs something. Beyond that he is a smiling bundle of easy-going joy.

This morning Thomas is not cooperating with my pre-set agenda, and I am feeling the rage well up within me.

I got up at the ass-crack of dawn this morning so I could get some research done on the internet – research I’m getting paid to do and have a responsibility to follow through on. I get up at the ass-crack of dawn so I can do this in the quiet of my living room without interruption.

This morning Thomas woke up at half past the ass-crack of dawn, which I thought would be okay. I thought he would nurse, then play quietly on the floor next to me while I did my research. But that didn’t happen. He has been fussy and whiney and only wants to be held or nursed – which by the way has been extremely painful this week due to [WARNING: you may consider the following to be ‘too much information’] a yeast infection on my nipples.

I am frustrated, and for the first time since he was born I am feeling rage toward my docile son.

I thought he would be exempt from my rage. I thought my rage was directed at Ruthie because she is so much like me. But I am once again reminded that my rage is an issue of my own selfishness, not of anyone else’s provocation.

I am frustrated with Thomas because he is interfering with my agenda, with my set plan for the morning, and it pisses me off. CAN I PLEASE HAVE ONE HOUR TO MYSELF TO DO WHAT I WANT??? I can feel the anger seething in my chest. I have a right to do what I want, and he is stealing my time away from me. The morning is MY time, just as the late night is MY time.

These are the thoughts running through my head as I sit here in the living room, listening to Thomas scream in the playpen in the basement recreation room. The poor little guy needs his mommy, and instead of providing comfort she has abandoned him for the sake of her own selfishness.

[I pause to breathe deeply and pray for peace of mind.]

I hit a milestone this morning. As I felt the rage welling up in me I chose to head it off. So often I satiate my need to rage because, like sex, there is much comfort in the post orgasm release of pent-up tension. False comfort. I feel relief for a fleeting moment until the guilt sets in.

Today I left room for hope and sanity. I drew my fists back to smash the stereo, but I did not deliver the blow. I allowed the spirit of God a foothold in my heart, just enough for me to walk away and accept that I cannot control my son.

I am not perfect, this was not a perfect exchange, and the likelihood that I will blow past this small victory to rage again in the future is high. But for today, for this moment, I feel empowered by the Holy Spirit that God really does have the power to change my wicked heart.

Post Secret

For a couple years back in the mid-nineties I lived in a small town an hour north of New York City. It was one of those towns on Highway 9 along the Hudson River that you pass through on your way to Poughkeepsie. There was a gas station and a post office, but no traffic lights, stop signs, or grocery stores, so you may not even realize you’ve passed through it until you hit Cold Springs further up the road. It’s just a blip on the map.

The most beautiful blip I’ve ever seen.

I have very fond memories of my time in New York even though I associate that time of my life with great sadness and confusion, with loneliness and contemplation, with longing and desperation.

New York is where I lost myself, but in the losing I found the joy of solitude.

While living there I drove a 1987 white Camero with T-tops. The car belonged to my boyfriend who was in rehab at the time.

That’s whole other story.

The car kicked ass, which was a dream for a girl who liked burning it up on the highway. I was a paradox driving it, though, as at the time I was going through a hippy Birkenstock prairie skirt kind of phase – something more in line with a Volkswagen.

One dark night I was on my way home from church with Jars of Clay rattling my windows from the inside, when my tape deck began to act up. It did that thing most car tape decks do eventually, where they flip from one side to the other at random times, sometimes going back and forth continually.

Flip… flip… flip… flip…

Jars of Clay had been my soundtrack that year. I obsessed over it. So when my tape deck interrupted the aura of my solitude I smashed the stereo with my fists until I felt pain and release.

Looking back, I see that my rage came from a place of idolatry. I was my own god and wanted everything to bend to my will. I couldn’t make the stereo work, I couldn’t stop it from flipping, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. My efforts to control my universe were the definition of Insanity – pushing the same button over and over and over and over expecting the stupid thing to work.

The insanity of my efforts blew me apart and I raged against the stereo, still trying to bend it to my will – only this time through intimidation.

I made a connection this week.

I saw Ruthie as my little car stereo, flipping at will in defiance against me. I saw myself raging against her, intimidating her to bend to my will. My rage, again, was coming from a place of idolatry, rather than from a heart that leads her to God.

I have entered into Recovery. I have stepped into a circle of women like me who are mastered by their own undoing. Together we find hope that God has the power to change us, that we can over come that which has mastered us.

This has been my secret, and now I tell the world: My name is Jen Zug, and I am controlled by my rage.

Birthday Eve

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Since I can never remember how old I am I had to actually count out the years to remind myself. I’ll be 34, by the way, which is a relief since I first thought I was going to be 35. Gotta hang on to every year I can.

I’ve been a complete dork about my birthday this year. A few months back Bryan emailed me from work in a craze of all caps saying something about a concert he wanted to go to for a band I’ve never heard of. I said, Sure, Why not, since he is usually successful in connecting me with great music and movies.

Somewhere along the line, though, I developed a really pissy attitude about the whole thing – mostly because it just happened to fall on my birthday. I started to feel bitter about the fact I was spending my birthday listening to music I’d never heard before preceded by dinner with another couple I’d only met once. Small talk was not my choice for a good time.

What I REALLY wanted to do was gather my peeps around me, put on some lipstick, and find somewhere that serves pink drinks in sexy glasses.

So I quietly seethed about it in silence for several weeks until I finally had the nerve to bring it up with Bryan.

I tried to be delicate: “Would it hurt your feelings if I wasn’t really into the show in September?”

I instantly knew he was hurt – partly due to my lack of enthusiasm, and partly due to his own baggage from a past life. We talked it through, he gave me his reasons for wanting me to go, and I knew it was important to him that I go, so I decided to go.

In an ironic turn of events, late last week Bryan’s friend emailed him saying he wouldn’t be bringing his wife, so Bryan told me I was off the hook, I didn’t have to go either.

You’d think I would have instantly taken out an ad in the Seattle Times for all the complaining I had done: PARTY GIRL BUYS OUT THE PINK DOOR FOR BIRTHDAY BASH – ALL ARE INVITED.

But there was no fanfare, no screeching, no panic shopping for the perfect going-out attire. I said nothing, I planned nothing, and I simply continued feeling sorry for myself.

Isn’t that COMPLETELY REDICULOUS???

In retrospect, I think it came down to the simple issue of my selfishness. I think I just wanted to get my way, and as I continued seething about how I wasn’t getting my way the bitterness grew stronger. Never mind that I could have listened to the music ahead of time to learn the new band, and never mind that I could have planned a ladies night out on a different night. No, I had to be a bitch about Bryan wanting to see a show on a night he had no control over scheduling.

Oh well, all is not lost. Bryan and I are still speaking to each other, and I may get a drink or two in after all.

Happy Birthday to me.

The Non Post

I have not been consistent in my posting lately, which is not to say I have not been writing. I have been in a deep and serious state of mind, yet I have fought against publicizing that to write something witty and entertaining.

This usually makes for bad writing, this constipation of my thoughts, and I am therefore in a creative funk.

Yesterday I wrote about the trainer at my club that I busted eating a candy bar as she walked from her car through the parking lot. That had potential to be funny if I was really into it, but it was crap so I filed it away in my drafts folder to look at later.

I considered writing about the junk mail delivered to me via UPS, as if the importance of ripping open a cardboard envelope would increase my potential to refinance my home. Again, it felt forced.

Even this morning I heard a funny conversation on the radio about the obsession of eating Captain Crunch even as the roof of your mouth is bleeding. THAT made me laugh, but not enough to go with it.

Life has stabilized, allowing me to look deeply into my imperfections without falling apart emotionally or ripping apart my husband and children.

I think I need to go with this, funny or not funny.

This weekend I met a group of women who amazed me – women that I have known to varying degrees before, but in this setting my eyes were opened to a new strength, a new vulnerability, and this gave me tremendous hope for change in my own life.

After many months of waking up each morning vowing to have a better day, promising to suppress my temper, hoping to bring order to my disordered life, I now see my inability to do any of this on my own.

This realization has been freeing.

I don’t know where to go with this from here. Even this morning I feel like bagging my attempts at writing because this seems random and cryptic. Or perhaps I should allow you to hitchhike on my quest to embrace the imperfection of The Draft. Annie Lammott talks in her book, Bird By Bird, about her fear of getting hit by a bus before she had the opportunity to perfect her “shitty first drafts.”

But if I have learned anything from ‘Jack,’ who is LOST on a mysterious island with other crash victims, it’s to allow our fears to well up in us for a moment so they may give us strength to push through.

So here it goes:

One… two… three… four… five….

Perspective

My friend relayed a story to me last night about one of her childhood friends whose husband just checked into a 90-day program for drug addiction. Together they have three children.

Their youngest is only three weeks old.

As the friend who is closest to all the tension that lies between Bryan and I, who has been my sounding board and, at times, our mediator, she told me this story as a loving reminder of all we have to be thankful for in the midst of our complicated lives.

I love my friend for this reason.

She is able to empathize, to listen, to offer encouragement, to validate. Then she’ll turn me around, bend me over, and give me a solid kick in the ass for good measure, just to keep me from wallowing and feeling indignant.

I love that.