Shower time is my thinking time. My mind races a mile a minute, and I come up with some of my best plans. My very wise mother-in-law says it is because there is no technology to distract our brains, and it is the only time we have our thoughts all to ourselves. Today in the shower while I was thinking about one of the triggers I had the night before, I half-mindedly pumped the bottle of shampoo and tried lathering it into my hair, but it just wouldn't sud up. So I added more water to it thinking that was all it needed. When that didn't work, I inserted a thought into my already very distracted brain "Man my hair is greasy today!", and I pumped another handful of soap into my hair, when that didn't work, it had my full attention. I mean I have a pixie cut, really, I don't need that much soap to suds up the little amount of hair that I have! I started thinking about just how greasy my hair was, thinking about how gross I was for having grown over-active grease pores in my scalp overnight. When the third pump didn't work, I added a fourth thinking surely this last pump would do the trick... and it didn't! I scrubbed really fast hoping the speed would activate the suds. Doing a combination of both sort of worked, but not really- it still felt like it needed more soap to get the suds going. I felt like a greasy goblin!
I was out of options- I mean there really isn't much to washing your hair- so I decided to just look at the soap- maybe my son had dumped out the bottle and filled it with water- wouldn't be the first time that's happened. But then I remembered the consistency- it wasn't super watery, it was rather thick actually. Frustrated at this point- I looked at the label. And there it was as clear as day: Conditioner.
I angrily laughed. I had just spent a good five minutes trying to suds up conditioner! My conditioner bottle and my shampoo bottle are exactly the same- the are the same color and they have the same smell.
I was immediately hit with a lesson to learn from that experience: Before looking at the logical reasons why my hair wasn't sudsing up, I had gone to the immediate conclusion that something was wrong with me rather than something being wrong with the situation itself. It's a lesson that I have to learn over and over again- and it applied to the trigger that I had been thinking about while this all was happening.
After the intensive, J and I have been working on our independent recoveries. It is HARD WORK. Surrendering EVERY trigger is exhausting- but I felt everynight that I was going to bed with a clean plate and without any resentment buildup for me to deal with the next day.
I trusted him to be doing the same exhausting work- and to be coming up with plans on how he was going to deal with the triggers if they happened in the future, and not sharing his lapses with me unless he surrendered them first and then had a plan to show me the work he was doing to avoid it happening again.
Here's the lesson: I had walked down at midnight because I had been watching Downton Abby later than I really should have, and decided at the end of it all to at least try to find some sort of healthy physical outlet that I could use to feel connected to my body physically. I found a flyer online for a co-ed softball league! I was so excited I jumped out of bed and went down to the couch where my husband is sleeping right now, to so him the flyer. When I got down there I saw that he was watching a show on his iPad. I was instantly triggered but do you know what my mind automatically told myself? "Oh, it probably isn't that show that he told you earlier that day that he wouldn't watch anymore- he told you he wouldn't- what's wrong with you? Just trust that he is doing his work." So I ignored the fact that I was triggered and showed him the flyer, and went up to bed.
Fast forward to 2:00 in the morning: I wake up to my little guy crying so I got up to go help him. J is in the hall looking like he has been up for a long time. I get triggered because linking the two of those triggers together is alarming. But my brain refuses to acknowledge the fact that I'm triggered because it instantly thinks "Man, you are so flipping tired from going to bed so late, you shouldn't trust what your eyes are telling you right now- just because you look a certain way when you wake up at two in the morning doesn't mean that J has to look that way too."
Did you see what I did in both of those triggers:
I ignored my needs because I told myself that I was the problem.
But if I would have just looked at the facts just like I looked at the label on the conditioner bottle I would have seen this:
1. No matter what show he is or isn't watching, seeing J alone in the dark on a device is triggering. Period. End of story.
2. After seeing that first trigger, it is also triggering to see him looking wide awake at 2:00 in the morning.
3. I have a right to raise a red flag when he says he is going to do something and then he doesn't. Like he said he was going to go running and then watched shows all day instead.
That is what it says on the dang label. There is nothing wrong with me for not trusting him yet. Just like I will be in the shower for the next few days: I will definitely be looking at the label before I pump any soap into my hand because I don't 100% believe that is going to be in the same spot every time like it was before.
I trusted after this weekend that he would do the work and that would be the end of it. But he didn't. And I don't trust him. And that's okay- because trusting him makes me feel crazy right now. I'm learning. I gave him a little bit of trust, and it made me feel like there was something wrong with me because I didn't allow myself to look at the facts because I wanted to trust that he was working his full recovery.
Truth is, that I was right in my triggers. He did act out. It hurts so much this time because I finally felt like we were on the same page about recovery. We had moved from almost divorce in my eyes to turning things around. This time confused me, but not really. I am going to keep doing the exhausting work- because divorce or not divorce this is my new life, and I am learning to love and embrace it. If he chooses to do his work instead of cutting corners then we are working towards the same end goal and in the end it will work out between us. If not, we are moving farther apart and that leads away from each other.
For the next little bit, it is just a wait and see situation.
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