Asking for Help and Installing Emotional Support Beams

Every time I start to write this, I let out a huge, deep, involuntary sigh.

Then I sit here for a while, unsure where to start.

I suppose I should just jump in.

Zach and I are separating. It is not a decision that has been come to lightly, or quickly. It has involved tons of therapy and more than a few tears. I’m not going to talk about the details here, but I will say that we don’t hate each other or anything like that. Currently, we are still living together, though I have found a house to rent on the same street, starting June 1.

The option was first discussed the morning of my dad’s death. Yeah, not even kidding. Obviously, everything went to hell by the end of that day and we tabled it for a little while. But life always comes back around.

We’ve told the kids. Rowan just wanted a slice of cheese and a juice box. Lorelei is maybe 1/4 sad, 1/4 confused, and 1/2 really excited about buying new things and getting her own room in both houses. That first night, she cried off and on, but called to me from the bathtub, “Mommy! COME HERE!” I ran in there, expecting a meltdown, but she said, “I have a question. Does the new house have a mailbox at the street?”

She has asked us why, she has been sad, but she is doing ok. Though she did say, “Maybe I shouldn’t have decided to take a therapy break while my therapist was on maternity leave…” Her insight as an eight year old astounds me sometimes.

I’m neck deep in logistics. I haven’t rented since early 2010. I haven’t rented a house since 2003, and never as the sole responsible adult. Add to that the details of separating two lives and households, and sometimes I feel over my head. We are also still in the Rowanaversaries, and nearing one-year since Squirt died.

The kids and I spent Mother’s Day weekend with my mom. I went through a lot of pictures and found some awesome ones of my dad and me. And some cringe-worthy ones of just me.

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My birthday was this past Saturday. I took Friday off work and went to a fancy spa nearby. I had a long massage and spent time in the hot tub, and steam room, and just lounging around reading a book. I had two nights booked at the Embassy Suites across the street, complete with free drinks and free breakfast and all the sleep I could want.

If you ask me in person how it was, I’m going to tell you it was wonderful.

But again, life comes back around.

Friday afternoon, there was a post-beer sob fest. Good to get that sort of thing off your chest every once in a while, even if it feels miserable at the time. I spent the evening talking with a friend and drinking free drinks. The next morning I got breakfast and went back to bed. I stayed in bed until I realized that this was not luxuriating, this was wallowing. I drank a beer, emailed my therapist, and went to sleep again.

That afternoon I drank another beer and played on the internet for a while. Then I went down and ate my weight in chips, salsa, and pimento cheese. And drank my weight in a mix of beer and liquor. THERE IS A WHOLE RHYME FOR THAT RHIANNON.

From there the night derailed. I was completely drowning in self-pity and was too drunk to think of appropriate ways to ask for help or support. I made my friends worry. I made my therapist worry. I frustrated people. I said things I really regret saying, and I’ve worried off and on that I may have done permanent damage to some relationships. To say it was not my best moment would be the understatement of the year. My birthday is well known for being a magnet for terrible shit. But this was of my own doing.

I’ve promised to just quit drinking for a while, because it lets in all the feelings that threaten to drown me, but in an unhealthy way. The pressure valve that sometimes feels stuck gets blown wide open and everyone gets burned trying to get it closed again.

My therapist and friends are pushing me to add some more support beams (I’m really mixing my metaphors here) to my life, to try to learn some better coping skills right now, while everything is hard. I’ve spent the past few days pushing back… hard. I’m fine, yo. Totally fine. Nothing to see here. They’ve all come to the agreement that a DBT skills class would be helpful, for which they got a bunch of anger (my therapist) and frustration (my friends) deflected back at them. That they must think I’m too much. That they must be done with me.

And I’m having to pick through some bias that I didn’t realize I carried. The feeling that DBT is for people who are more “sick.” For personality disorders. For people who are not me. Discovering that I was “othering” people and perpetuating a stigma I would rail against any other time was really fucking difficult.

Beyond that, I know full-well that DBT is useful for lots of issues. I’ve got DBT handouts and worksheets both at home and at work. There’s a packet sitting right next to me at this moment, and I’ve even highlighted things in it. But a group? Ugh. I hate groups. And I hate classes.

And, I think mostly, I really, really hate being told what to do.

But then… if I trust them enough to fall apart and expect their help picking up the pieces, maybe I need to trust them to sometimes know me better than I know myself. Or to at least see me more clearly.

I don’t know yet. I’m not sure I’m quite done acting like a petulant child about it all. It’s a lot of time off work. Luckily, I have intermittent FMLA for mental health… but that’s not paid.

In the meantime, I’m throwing myself into planning. Planning is my Ativan. No, actually, Ativan is my Ativan. But planning gives me some sort of outlet. I’ve ordered new beds and some of the other large necessities for the new house. Lorelei would want you to know that her new bed has curtains!

I’ve made a huge Amazon wish list of things to buy later. Does anybody want to help me think of things to add? I keep finding things I’ve forgotten.

And, umm, if I’m going to be taking a lot of unpaid time off in the near future, does anybody want to like, buy me some dish soap or surge protectors or something?

Surge protectors. There’s some poetry there. I need a surge protector for my life.

While I was in the attic at my mom’s house, I came across a tub of paper. Some was clearly typewriter paper and some was dot matrix. Stacks upon stacks of it. It was everything my dad wrote in the early 80s. So many stories. Some day, I’m going to get that box and look through it and piece it together more carefully. But what I did find was a thick folder full of nothing but rejection letters. Dozens and dozens of rejection letters.

I think it’s fascinating that my dad kept them all. I wish he was here so I could ask him about them. Did he keep them just so he’d have a record of what he had sent where? I sort of doubt it, because he is the type of person who would have had a list of all of that.

I want to believe that he kept them to look back on later, when things were different. That someday, when he got a book published, he could look back and see how far he had come.

I want that folder of painful moments to be a folder of hope.

I’m not still talking about the letters, am I?