gratitude

Things have been tough lately.  I feel like I can’t see my future at all.  My partner asks me to visualize our life but I don’t even have a sense of seeing my son grow older – I can just see today.  I used to be more self reflective but now I feel I am dodging bullets and reacting more than I used to.  This is partly because I have less time to reflect now that I’m a mother and partly because of the family drama.

We got through Thanksgiving and there was so much drama with his family.  The pay off was that his sister-in-law stopped her daily calls to talk trash about the parents.  But now she is calling to come and bring Christmas presents for the baby.  And my partner is starting to reel again.  His uncle is calling too, and his father’s friend and he suspects that none of them have good intentions and is needing to talk about it all the time.  Watching him swirl is reason enough to do my best not to screw up my baby.  He is still that hurt little boy and his parents won’t acknowledge his pain – they keep coming back to it being about him not having a job and lending too much money to the wrong person.  They don’t understand that all they have to do is listen to his pain – but maybe theirs is too great and they can’t see past it to help their son. 

He has acted out twice in ways that have been hurtful to me and our relationship.  After the first time we started therapy and I thought things were getting better.  He started seeing his own therapist to deal with the childhood trauma and we started working on our communication and things started getting better.  And then all the shit happened at Thanksgiving with his family and he acted out again – the same way.  Answering casual sex ads on Craig’s List.  The first time he did it, he happened to answer my friend’s ad.  Neither of them told me about it until I confronted her about something else and then she finally spilled the beans.  Now we are no longer friends – for many other reasons but the catalyst was this situation. 

Last week I caught him answering ads again on the same day that we have therapy.  We talked about it.  His therapist says it’s part of his process of healing and that she wasn’t surprised he did it again.  But what does it mean for me?  I love him, thought I had found the one.  Now I see the real person.  Is it about me learning to hang in there with his faults?  To be understanding of his process?  I certainly have been no peach throughout the pregnancy and the past year – he’s seen me at my worst too.  But I haven’t stepped out on the relationship.  He hasn’t “done” anything – no sexual act was committed but he repeatedly answered the ads.  And he did it again even after knowing how hard it was the first time.  What do I do with this?

I originally set out to post things I am grateful for because I need some way of escaping from the negative onslaught that seems to happen every day now.  So here goes:

I’m grateful for that I have a warm and cozy home to live in.

I’m grateful for my son’s laughter and the way he scoots all over the house.

I’m grateful that I’ve forced myself to run on a daily basis.

I’m grateful that I am starting to have more time to take care of myself.

I’m grateful that we are talking about our feelings and trying to deal with all of this rather than walking away – even though that may be the best thing.  Time will tell.

~ by inbetweengirl on December 20, 2008.