it’s been a long time
So much in my life has changed since I last wrote and now I am coming to worship at the altar of my blog because I feel at a loss. I now have a 10 month old son who I love dearly – he is a bright shining life in my life. At this moment everything else feels difficult. I don’t know what I was thinking having a child with someone I had not known for very long. We were floating along on the frothing pink river of new love when I unexpectedly got pregnant. It all seemed like such a good idea then and, I have to say I don’t regret that decision. I love spending time with my little one – he’s not the problem. I guess if they wrote about all of the stressful things in the baby books no one would have kids!
I guess now there are two main problems: his family and money stresses with both of us unemployed. This coupled with the amazing transformations that occur when a baby is thrown into the mix has caused other problems. On the one hand, I feel so proud of my partner for dealing with his feelings around the abuse he suffered as a child and all of the ingrained family patterns in a direct way. I’ve been on this journey myself to a much smaller degree. I understand the pain but he believes he has lost his family now and it is a direct result of him confronting the abuse. I lost my parents to illness and death – this kind of orphaning is more organic than the kind he is having to deal with.
I have never been able to understand how a parent can say cruel things to their child and now that I have my own it is even more unfathomable to me. P’s parents say awful things to him – what parent would tell their child that they are bad luck according to the Indian astrologer they seek out on their yearly visits to the homeland? What parent would repeatedly scream that their child is a loser, telling them that they are dead to them merely because the child needs to talk about the beatings he received at a relatives hand? Talk about drama. I’m not sure why these things have come into my life and I’m not sure how to deal with all of it anymore. I keep listening and keep loving him but the problems are getting more complex and now there is acting out that is negatively impacting the trust between us.
I don’t know who to talk to – the only person who knows the whole story is our couples therapist. My partner is embarassed by some of the things that have happened over the past year and for me I see recurring patterns repeating and it scares me. I ask myself what part I am playing and I am not sure of the answer to this. I do not like the person I have become in the face of this stress. I just know that both of us are working hard to not repeat the patterns of our parents – it seems like these are things most couples face but after having had a lot more history together than we do.
I love my partner so much but I feel like we are sinking. I have had my own difficult journey with my parents illnesses and deaths, with alcohol abuse, with making wrong choices, not following my intuition and learning through the mistakes but I had the luxury of doing it alone. I didn’t have a partner witnesses my lows. Well, I guess now I do have a partner who is witnessing my lows and that is difficult for me but it is even harder to witness and support his journey of what - healing? I guess that is the correct word for it. I had time and money to support me while I meandered around taking care of myself and trying to figure it out. That money is supporting us now and has allowed him time to do the same but now with the economy tanking the money is much less and it’s time to focus and get jobs. I hope and pray that with a lot of effort we can do this. I hope that he is able to rise above all of the horrible things his family tell and have told him about himself like the phoenix and not become the self-fulfilling prophecy.
There is so much I haven’t said. I can’t say it all right now. The baby is awake and I need to focus on him.
I hope we can work through this. How do you know when – I can’t even fathom it – leaving him. I don’t know if it will all be better when we get jobs. One stress will be gone. That’s all I can say for now.
