A Room of Mama’s Own

Stating the Obvious

Aug 1st, 2010

I just don't feel much like writing this summer. (That's The Obvious. Well, unless you thought I was dead or trapped under something heavy. I'm not.) Last month, in a fit of inspiration, I thought I'd recycle some old content, but I don't even want to look at the computer long enough to do that. In fact, I don't even want to look at it long enough to find the link to where I said I'd do it. It was, like, the last post. You can scroll down. I'm just too summer lazy to do it myself.

So, I'll let you poke back through the archives yourself if you're interested. There's lots there. After all, I've spent the past few years writing here nearly every day. And it's probably because of that I'm finding that I need to take a break away from the screen. I'll be back, renewed and refreshed, in September when the kids are back in school.

Hope you all are having a great summer. I know I am.

7 comments

Posted in: blogging, school break mayhem, writer's block, writing.

Stillness

Jul 18th, 2010

by Mary P Jones.

Image credit: Photo by
Baloulumix on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

I was cleaning up outside earlier today, an activity I'm finding much more soothing than cleaning up inside the house, because it turns out that Nature is less destructive than my family, so I get to enjoy the fruits of my labor a little longer before entropy takes over and sends everything back into visually displeasing chaos. At some point, my pesky back pain kicking in, I sat down, and thought, "Wow, this is wonderful! I'm sitting here and it's so peaceful," which was followed immediately by, "But if I'm going to sit here, I should be writing something or reading something or doing something."

But it struck me that the guilt was misplaced. The stillness was a necessary part of writing and a form of reading and an aid in doing. So, I stayed there for a while and did a little of the work of letting go, just by the slightest amount, of the to do list, which seems to be harder for me than doing the things on it. And then I wrote it down, here, to help myself remember it.

9 comments

Posted in: meditation, school break mayhem, stillness.

Happy Independence Day

Jul 4th, 2010

by Mary P Jones.

I have been meaning to write a post about why I haven't been writing many posts lately, but go figure, for all the reasons I haven't written about yet, I haven't finished it. So, I'm going to take the excellent suggestion offered by Wendy of Renewing Ruined Cities, who said I should consider re-posting some older (perhaps seasonal) material to fill some of the gaps. And as it happens, I have an Independence Day post that I wrote on a July 4th three years ago, in my very early days of blogging. This post was on my mind today, as my husband Mark told me this morning that he'd shared this very story -- about the way our family had transformed this day from an anniversary that was painful and triggering into a new beautiful tradition for the family -- in a meeting recently. So, I thought I'd reshare it with you all too...

Independence Day Fireworks
Originally Posted July 4, 2007

July 4th is Independence Day here in the United States. It is also Israeli Girl's birthday. My husband's relationship with Israeli Girl was his bottom: it was what finally caused him to admit his sexual behavior was out of control, that he was an addict. I began calling her Israeli Girl contemptuously: while not technically a girl, she was only 19 when my 30+ year old husband met her on a business trip abroad and began a several year long relationship with her. I don't feel the same contempt anymore, yet I still cannot quite bring myself to grace her with a name. Somehow, giving her a name gives her some humanness, some power, that I don't yet want her to have.

For years, Israeli Girl was one of the most worrisome splinters in my brain. I remember one year, on July 4th, Mark spent $70 of our money (I was furious when I saw the price) on a single international phone call to her, to say happy birthday. I listened to the entire call, jealously, edgily, because something seemed wrong, suspicious, off. I listened for any hint in his voice of anything beyond friendliness -- some trace of desire, seduction, attraction, deep caring, love -- but I didn't hear them, although I knew the sound of them well. And I settled back into a dissatisfied uneasiness, which persisted, until years later, everything fell apart, and made sense.

After my husband admitted his addiction, admitted that one April day he had finally hit bottom with Israeli Girl, July 4th was tainted. I imagined all of those beautiful fireworks going off to celebrate her birthday. I remembered the phone call, imagined what he must have written to her in those years e-mail messages they exchanged, and I couldn't stand to leave the house. This night four years ago, new in a black place of crushing, disbelieving pain, I cringed at each pop of a distant firework, each whistling rocket, and felt they were searing and exploding inside of me.

The next year, Mark and I were wondering aloud whether or not to go out and try to see fireworks. He was tired, and I was still angry and depressed. We both understood that subtext, although with the kids listening, we simply said to each other, "Should we go?" My son heard us talking and said, with verbal skills newly developed after a year of speech therapy, "I want to watch fireworks!" So, it was decided, and I declared it my Independence Day. I was not going to let a tyrannical past rule my present; I would not let the past cast a shadow that blotted the fireworks from the skies my children saw.

We didn't have a destination that year, we simply drove around until we saw some fireworks and parked the car by the side of the road to watch them. There is a Schoolhouse Rock song my son liked to listen to that contained a line, "Red, white and blue fireworks like diamonds in the sky..." As he gazed up into the sky, my son echoed it back, gasping, "They look like diamonds in the sky!" He was thrilled to see a smiley face in the sky, and to watch the blaze of fireworks that marked the end of the show.

As I was putting him to bed afterwards, I told him that he could go to sleep and dream about trains (which were his obsession at the time). When he said he didn't know what dreams were, I told him they were pictures in your head while you sleep. He looked thoughtful, and said, "We can go to sleep and see fireworks in the sky, and we can see that face and then lots and lots like diamonds in the sky."

See, I worried about Israeli Girl's birthday ruining the fireworks, when in fact, my son's joy, and the magic he saw in the sky, threw a light on that night that no dark memory could blot out. I wouldn't think of missing fireworks after that year.

Last year my daughter was awake and old enough to appreciate the fireworks for the first time. As she walked outside, she saw the moon, which was quite a new and exciting sight to her, since her bedtime was 7 p.m. She asked if the moon could come with us to see the fireworks, and I promised her it would. During our car ride, she looked out the car window, checking to make sure that the moon was following us to the fireworks display. When we arrived, she was thrilled to see the moon, still there, watching. She sat with her mouth open wide through the whole show and was too excited to fall asleep, even so long after her bedtime, on the way home.

She and her brother have been chattering all day about the fireworks, about sitting outside and eating cookies and having the moon there and seeing lots of them explode at the end of the show and waving our flags and singing love songs to our nation, like "America the Beautiful," which gives me goosebumps (truly) every time I hear it. My life may not always be perfect, and my country may not always be perfect, but both of us are free.

Happy Independence Day. Enjoy the fireworks.

3 comments

Posted in: Mama's tired and needs something quick and easy, addiction, autism, blogging, codependence, dreams, family, holidays, infidelity, marriage, motherhood, parenting, recovery, sex addiction, smiles, speech delay, sweet kid stuff.

Trauma

Jul 2nd, 2010

by Mary P Jones.

Image credit: Photo by
Express Monorail on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

In the dream, I was driving on a highway laid out like silver thread between my home and the nearest big city. My husband was seated next to me, smiling, and I could feel the kids safely at home, laughing with their babysitter. It was just before sunset; the day's dying rays were golden on the water and the softly swaying dry grass as we approached the bridge.

My husband looked at me, and for a split second, I lost focus. I stopped looking at the road, and the car simply drifted serenely off the bridge and started plunging down, down before I knew we were in danger. We fell like Alice down the rabbit hole, falling for so long we seemed to hang suspended in the golden air. I felt like one often does feel in an accident: as if I were seeing everything in slow motion and if only my body would move as fast as my mind, I could do something to prevent the inevitable moment looming ahead. But the water waited unyielding below us. And I knew we were going to die at the end of that long fall. I had killed both of us in that momentary flicker of attention. My children were going to grow up without parents. I just hoped they would be asleep when the babysitter called and called the cell phones that would ring on without answer, wondering why we were so late.

I turned to Mark to say I was sorry for killing him; sorry that he was paying the price for my inattention. And he lookedsaidthought, "We all make mistakes, sometimes very bad ones." But he didn't blame me. He held out his hand and we sat, holding hands and falling, waiting for the impact that never came, as I woke with a start. I sat up, shivering, as the images flashed on my waking mind in the cold gray dawn, and I assigned the dream the moral: "I am feeling guilty for not paying enough attention, not being present enough, for my kids."

Irrational as I know it is, I have been terrified of driving that highway ever since. The dream was so vivid, that when I enter the stretch of road leading to the bridge I can see my dream self plunging off the side. If I hit an uneven stretch of pavement and the car jolts or swerves slightly, I feel my heart racing, my body taut with anxiety. I fear that at any minute, I might lose focus, lose control and lose everything. It only takes an instant to make a mistake from which there is no recovery.

I was driving that highway today, with my kids unusually occupied with drawing in the back seat, when I started to feel numb with panic thinking about the bridge. My kids' lives depended on me. Other drivers lives depended on me. And am I really to be trusted? My hand could slip on the steering wheel. Or jerk. Or freeze. What if I have a seizure? What if I fall asleep? What if I get a brain aneurysm? What if I suddenly become diabetic right here in the car and my blood sugar becomes unstable and I pass out? What if I panic so much I black out?

Of course, the only real problem was the panic, which was stubbornly refused to respond to either rational thought, meditation techniques or faith. I eyed the traffic, wondering where it might be safe to pull off and breathe, grumbling to myself, "I so need to talk to my doctor about anxiety meds. This is ridiculous. I can't function. What is really going on here? This isn't just about a stupid dream."

And my mind, as if relieved to have finally been pressed with a direct question, brought up an image of my destination: a park that formed a green oasis in the barren concrete, steel and glass of the city. We were meeting friends there, visiting from out of town. But eight years ago, on the day he hit bottom, my husband went on a different kind of visit there: a picnic to that park with one of his... What's the word for it? Lovers seems too intimate, mistresses too urbane, and acting out partners, too sterile. In any case, they met. The picnic was the appetizer, the foreplay, the prelude, the rising anticipation. Rolling the food on their tongues, then wiping their lips, packing the remains and walking, toward her house, her bed. I can see the way his hand slipped down the small of her back as she pulled him close under a tree for a kiss. Right there in the park. For anyone to see.

We were going to drive past the street to her old house on the way to the park. We were driving on the highway Mark had traveled, secretly, back and forth, from her house to our own. Was this panic -- over this highway, over loss, over lack of control, over mistakes from which there is no recovery -- not about the dream but a twisted response to past trauma? Was the dream, perhaps, not really about quite what I thought it was either? Those thoughts washed through me like water, like crystal clear liquid truth, taking the panic and the looming shadow of future annihilation away with them, leaving me staring at an old scar, still sometimes tender to the touch.

5 comments

Posted in: anxiety, control, death, dreams, grief, healing, if you listen to your mind man it just chatters, infidelity, memories, motherhood, sex addiction.

Summer Cleaning

Jun 24th, 2010

by Mary P Jones.

Image credit: Photo by
canonsnapper on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

It's summer: the season of kids around 24/7 and of subsequent blog neglect. It's also the season of summer visitors, passing through in cars bulging with luggage, fast food wrappers and warm, disheveled smiles. While some people like to do spring cleaning to prepare for those visitors, I (a hopeless procrastinator) prefer to do summer cleaning. And with the kids out of school, not only do I tend to need to do it anyway, but really, what better way to keep two bored kids occupied than by sorting old toys and rearranging furniture? So, we have been slowly working our way through the house and ridding ourselves of clothes, furniture and toys that are outgrown or just unused.

Most things go to charity and a few hopeless odds and ends find their way to the trash, but those things that are too nice to throw away but a little too worn or, um, scribbled upon in permanent marker end up being freecycled. Now, as a good sex addict codie, I know I really ought to do my freecycling through some other source than the website so bound up in addiction that it cannot be named, but I've found that nowhere else can I post any kind of crazy old junk -- from broken electronics to a nest for spiders that was once a stroller to a table with a dinosaur drawn on it in Sharpie -- and have ten people lined up to cart it all away in as many minutes. I've tried alternatives, believe me, but they just don't work. Left to choose between feeling unscrupulous for actually using The Site That Shall Not Be Named and distressed for having to take perfectly usable items to the dump (and guilty for not having maintained every part of every item in my home in pristine condition, with its original packaging and instruction manual), I've chosen unscrupulous.

And it honestly does make me feel unscrupulous. Seven years of hanging out with people who have used The Site That Shall Not Be Named for the worst of purposes and those who have been harmed by it have given me a nagging underlying feeling that everyone on the site is at best a liar and at worst a serial killer. And when I use the site, I feel like I'm trying to get away with something too, although it doesn't start out that way.

I start by posting a perfectly accurate description and picture like: "Small bookshelf. Unfinished wood. 36"x 36" x18". Decorated in blue Sharpie with a 3-year-old's depiction of PacMan eating dots, several smiley faces and the words 'i lik dinasors.'" Five minutes later, I have ten messages in my inbox each begging me to please, please bestow upon her (or him) the honor of carting away my bookcase. Some of the messages just say something like, "I want this if still available." And I find those only mildly suspicious. After all, maybe some of those are from some crazy person who just likes to screw with people who post things for free on The Site That Shall Not Be Named. They say they are going to come pick it up but -- psych! -- they never do. Instead, they sit giggling at home at the thought of that item sitting on the curb one extra day before someone else gets it.

But other messages try to convince me that they are more worthy of my esteemed stuff than the other people who might want it. These messages usually read something like, "My granddaughter would love this for her birthday next week!" or "I've always wanted one of these, but can't afford it!" These messages leave me wondering things like "Do you really have a granddaughter at all?" or "Maybe you are actually the CEO of AT&T but have some weird mental disease that makes you pretend you are poor while you go around collecting other people's old stuff."

So, with nothing else to go on, I always offer the item to the first person in my inbox and tell them so, but I always feel vaguely as if I'm lying, because I suspect that the liars I'm writing to will think I am.

Last week, I offered an old tricycle to a man who called himself Joe and said he wanted it for his kids. (Read: he doesn't have kids and was going to trade it to his dealer for crack.) When the trike hadn't been picked up a day after he said he was on his way right over, I called the number he sent.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Joe?"

"Um..." His bewilderment pulsed through the telephone line.

Just great, I think. Joe is one of his aliases. Ignoring his confusion, I plunge on, "My name is Mary. You responded to an ad about a trike on The Site That Shall Not Be Named."

I can hear "Joe" struggling to recall this. "Oh, yeah!" he said at last, "Is that still available?"

"Yes, I was calling to see what happened and if you were still interested."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. My girlfriend just had a kidney transplant last week and she's not doing so well."

A kidney transplant? Seriously? "So, you've obviously had other things on your mind. Totally understandable," I lied.

"Yeah. But I still do want it. I'm heading over right now!" said Joe.

"Ok."

That was one week ago. I never saw Joe, who (I assume) after finishing the bottle of whiskey he was drinking, got distracted by a prostitute, lost his car in a poker game and (once again) forgot all about the fact that he promised his drug dealer a trike. Or who went to visit his girlfriend in the hospital instead and happened to find another trike that would be just perfect for his kids. Either way, the trike went to "Anna," who wanted it for her "grandson." Or at least that's the story I'm telling. Since I post things on The Site That Shall Not Be Named, you really shouldn't believe a word I say. After all, how likely is it that I actually have kids or am doing any summer cleaning if I've actually managed to write this blog post?

8 comments

Posted in: addiction, am I really going to miss this age when they grow up?, craigslist, lies, school break mayhem, serial killers, sex addiction, trust, you're supposed to laugh now.

Haiku Reviews

Jun 4th, 2010

by Mary P Jones.

Hand Wash Cold let me
sit with uncomfortable
and beautiful truths.

Slip transported me
to a time when my son was
newly diagnosed.

Karen and Tanya,
thank you for sharing yourselves,
for sharing your truths.

2 comments

Posted in: Buddhism, Haiku Friday, autism, book reviews, good books.

Carry that Weight

Jun 3rd, 2010

by Mary P Jones.

Image credit: Photo by
Nena B. on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

A few months ago, Mark and I took the kids to a "sensory friendly" movie showing. Autistic individuals, and others with sensory processing difficulties, can find a typical movie going experience overwhelming. Movies are loud. Theaters are dark and often crowded. The screen is huge and the images on it are flickering and fast paced. There are previews and commercials before the show that switch rapidly from one theme to another, while we wait impatiently for what we actually came to see. Then when the movie does start, its story and situations are designed to evoke strong emotional responses: to scare or thrill or amaze us. And did I mention they're LOUD?

Most of us go to the movies to be a little overwhelmed. But for some people, all of that can be too much. So, at sensory friendly showings, there are no previews. The lights are dim, but the theater is not dark. And the sound is turned down. And not only that, it's ok to sing or talk or to get up and walk around, dance or jump if it all gets to be too much anyway.

At the showing we went to, some kids got up and paced the aisles. Some rocked in their seats. Some grunted or chirped. My son commented on the movie at full voice. (Whispering is only for secrets.) And we all had a fun day out doing something different while nobody stared. Nobody glared. Nobody shifted uncomfortably in their seats and made little "hem" noises in their throats. The air didn't buzz with electric hostility. And nobody had to worry that, at any moment, it might.

I don't know about the other parents in that theater, but I felt like I'd been able to put down a hundred pound weight. The kids and young adults in that theater could all be themselves, and we all understood. No one said anything or did anything, but there was a palpable sense of acceptance in the air. It hung there, invisible but enveloping, like the drowsy smell of honeysuckle on a warm afternoon. What a relief. Which made me realize just how guarded I am and how much weight, how much fear and tension and worry, I carry every day.

This past weekend, I went to a convention for my 12 Step group. Hundreds of sex addicts and their partners or family members gathered in hotel conference rooms and ballrooms. There were meetings and workshops and outings. There were speakers who shared their experience, strength and hope. At each banquet iced tea was served instead of alcohol. No one gossiped about the latest infidelity scandal in the media. People openly shared their pain and their weaknesses and their gratitude. And all weekend long, I had nothing to do but connect with my Higher Power in a group of people who was supporting me in doing just that. All weekend long, I felt I had nothing to worry about and nothing to fear.

Again that love and acceptance enveloped me. Again that hundred pound weight dropped off my shoulders. Again the relief washed over me. And again I realized just how guarded I am and how much weight, how much fear and tension and worry, I carry every day.

On the last day of the convention, I wept with gratitude for the gift of having been there. (If you were one of the lovely ladies sitting around a hotel banquet table with me on Monday morning at breakfast, yes, that was me crying and smiling at you all crazy.) We were asked on that last day if we had picked up any burdens that we wanted to leave behind, and I couldn't think of any. All I could think was that I needed to try not to reshoulder the burdens I'd set down when I entered.

5 comments

Posted in: God, God moments, acceptance, addiction, anxiety, autism, codependence, disability, gratitude, judgmental people, recovery, sensory issues, sex addiction, special needs children, spirituality, support groups, understanding.

In Memory of Henry Louis Granju

Jun 1st, 2010

by Mary P Jones.

Image credit: Photo by
kevincole on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

Sometimes I picture those who are in the grips of addiction as falling down into a chasm so hopelessly dark that eventually no memory of light remains and so endlessly deep that it can take years of hurtling down, scrapping the rough walls and smashing into rocky outcrops, before the falling ends.

In the happy ending, the recovery ending, the addict lands somewhere -- broken and battered, but safe -- and calls out for help. Hands are extended, light grows, and the addict starts climbing. That's the ending I pray for, every day and in every moment of silence in every 12 Step meeting I attend. And that's the one I see manifested in so many beautiful lives around me.

But in the other ending -- the one we all fear -- Death sweeps in, swift as darkness, to stopper that cry for help and cut off the ascent before it can begin. Death may come wrapped in a cloak of despair or disease or irreparable physical damage, but it always comes tragically and too early.

And when it comes at just 18 -- as it did for blogger Katie Granju's son Henry this weekend -- it is so unnaturally early, the sharp horror steals my breath like a plunge in icy water.

I don't have the power to erase, or even fully understand, that loss, that grief. In fact, I didn't know Henry, nor do I know Katie, except virtually and in passing, through another blog I follow. Yet my heart is with them. Recovery has taught me that we are all connected, that grace shines through the loving-kindness of those around us (often total strangers) and that the knowledge that we are not alone in the darkness can lift us up. So, knowing that many of my readers know the pain or the fear of losing a loved one to addiction, I ask you to please consider dropping by Katie's blog with your condolences or donating to Henry's memorial fund, which will provide financial assistance for families who cannot pay for drug and alcohol treatment for their children and may be just the light in the darkness someone needs.

2 comments

Posted in: addiction, death, recovery.

Stuff You Shouldn’t Post on the Internet

May 26th, 2010

by Mary P Jones.

Spock - Evil Spock
Image credit: Photo by
Dave Friedel on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

I was going to write this post about Facebook. And Privacy. And Privacy's evil twin, Secrecy. And how when we say Privacy, we often really mean Secrecy. Because not only do well-intentioned but befuddled people confuse the two, but addicts and other evil-doers also (gasp!) use the sacred name of Privacy as a mask for the nasty, putrid character of Secrecy.

I was going to tell you to learn to recognize Secrecy. (It's the one with the goatee. Oh, and also the one you've lied to someone about, explicitly or implicitly.) And I was going to ask you to think carefully about whether you are really, really talking about nice, clean-shaven Privacy or if you are actually sporting evil facial hair and hiding from people for fear of being judged. And that being worried about how it will look if people know that you are who you are is not Privacy, it's illness. And I was going to tell you to live well and without secrets. And not be both so scared and so freaking judgmental. And if you live with secrets anyway (you devious person!), then Deal With It if you are outed. Because it's your fault for having them.

And as for Privacy online (or Secrecy online for that matter), I was going to inform you that it's an illusion. Nothing on the Internet is really private; it's on millions of computers around the world, forever. If it's truly private, don't put it out there or at least recognize the risks, because demanding Privacy online is the equivalent of yelling at people for walking into a public restroom while you're using it with all the doors wide open. Good, honest, non-goatee wearing Privacy is what the confines of our own Real Life are about. (It's all the stuff I don't post on the Internet. Whatever that is.) *

And I was going to tell you all this as someone whose life and marriage has been marred by secrets, so that I can see the difference between Privacy and Secrecy in the big, ugly gash burned through the middle of my existence. And as someone who has this secret blog with a secret identity. And who litters the Internet with posts about whole bunches of stuff that, really, I'd rather people in my Real Life didn't know. All of which makes me one of the World's Experts on Privacy, Secrecy and Stuff Not to Post on the Internet.

But as I was writing that post, being all opinionated and you'ing you about how to do stuff right, you whiny and incompetent Facebook users, I saw that all that stuff about you was (surprise!) really stuff about me. And not just stuff about me, but putting all my worst fears and worst character defects right out there in your face. I mean, really, that kind of bossy, judgmental, know-it-all-ism -- telling you about how you shouldn't be bossy or judgmental because it makes me have to deal with my uncomfortable feelings about Secrecy and Privacy and how they've gotten all mixed up in my life to the point where it makes me want to punch them both square in the nose -- that's me at my total worst. And that is the very kind of secret I shouldn't post on the Internet.

10 comments

Posted in: I am a dork, about me, blogging, codependence, culture, current events, judgmental people, lies, resentments, secrets.