Looking At Old Photos Is Like Sticking A Needle In My Eye

My kid is doing a collage representing himself, and he needs some pictures.  This morning I have been scrolling through recent and not-so-recent family photos.  It feels like I'm sticking a needle in my eye.

The pictures of my married life stir up anger and anguish....angrish, as I like to call it, and I'm fighting the urge to blanket my sadness with busyness and business, and I'm wondering why haven't I replenished my chocolate stash lately?


I still have a lot of pain when I look at the pictures of my married years.  Grief and mourning still surround past events and pictures and memories.

It's like the pictures are all up on the surface of a lake, where people are smiling and posing and traveling and being born and growing up, and under the water is a dark current of deceit and sadness and uncertainty.

The worst part is that during all these seemingly happy times, I was struggling emotionally, and I didn't know why.  I didn't know why my husband was working late or why he had insomnia or back pain or depression or the checked-out disease.  I didn't know why it was a burden for him to be with his kids or talk to me.  How was I so blind to my own life, I wonder?

I believed 100% that what was happening was what.was.happening. Days like today I still grieve that loss; the loss of trust and security in my husband and in my life.

Although my husband and my life are much improved with recovery, I have a residual fear that I really don't know what is going on in my marriage and my life.  While my fear unsettles me, that fear also brings me consistently to God.

In my humility, my insecurity, my mistrust of others and situations, that is where I meet God, or that's where He meets me.  Either way.  He gives me stamina, sometimes through a feeling, or a friend or a book:  I can live today, even if I don't have all the answers.  All the answers are not mine to have.  In those old pictures, when I didn't even have the questions to the answers, He knew me and was working in my life.

Could it be a blessing that I didn't know my husband was a sex addict all those years, when he probably wouldn't have been humble enough to seek recovery?  Was I spared years of heartbreak as he tried over and over again to quit?   Did not knowing help me hold things together, albeit haphazardly, until my husband could pull his weight?  Could my blindness have been for my own good?

I Sortof Got In A Fight With A Stranger At The Park

The men in this photo are much younger than the men in this story.

Now that my blood pressure has returned to normal range, I am reporting that I SORTOF GOT IN A

FIGHT WITH A MAN AT THE TENNIS COURT TONIGHT!

I was at the end of the court with my 9-yr old innocently picking up tennis balls, when we noticed through the chain-link, about ten feet away, a group of decent-looking adults screaming at each other.

My son looked at me wide-eyed and we both smirked at each other like, "Oh, wow!  A fight?!"

From what we could gather, an older couple with two dogs had asked Peter (I learned his name later), a man with one dog, to please walk his dog in the other direction, because one of their dogs wanted to play with his dog.

It sounds benign, right?


Apparently, Peter didn't want to walk his dog in the other direction.  It was his firm position that, "YOU SHOULDN'T BE OUT WITH A DOG YOU CAN'T CONTROL!"

That comment appeared to smack the couple in a vulnerable place and they lashed back with a string of profanity.  It escalated from there into a tennis match of heavy cussing.  I put my hands over my son's ears, then he tried to plug his own ears, then we both gave up, hoping it had blown over.

But, they kept yelling and swearing, and we had front row seats.  After several minutes had passed, and wow, A LOT of bad words can be packed into several minutes, I said weakly, "Hey, there are kids in the vicinity!"


They didn't even glance in our direction.  However, the couple started to walk away,  and I breathed a sigh of relief that it was over.

Just then, the woman flipped around and advised Peter on where to go and what to do when he got there.  Peter shot back a scathing personal insult, that would burn my fingers if I tried to type it.

The insult to his wife caused the man to turn and challenge Peter to a fight.  Peter accepted with a lot of fierce, "COME ON! COME ONS", and he began to tie his dog to a tree to free up his hands.

The woman was now hollering at the top of her lungs, "He's not worth it, honey.  Look at him, he's an old, fat, bald blankety-blank."

Really?  They were going to duke it out right there?  These two old men were getting ready to beat the crap out of each other on this beautiful summer evening?

And then, without even thinking,  I jumped into the fray.  I walked right up to my side of the chain-link and screamed, "SHUT. UP!!!!!!!!!!

And they actually did shut up.  For a few seconds.  The couple turned and left, but Peter charged over to me, "Ma'am, ma'am, I want you to know that if someone is going to be aggressive against me that I will do what I need to to protect myself."

I pointed to my kid as I said, "I don't like the "freakin'" language." (I'm not proud I used the word freakin, but there it is, my friends)  My kid is hearing this whole thing!"

He proceeded to yell at me about how not one cuss word had come out of his mouth.  That he hadn't sworn once, and had I noticed that?  Huh, had I noticed that?

Actually, I had not.  Upon further reflection, I think he may have been correct, but he certainly wasn't right.  If the swearing had indeed come from the others, then he had been just as mean and insulting with non-swear words.  In fact, if I were to crown a winner of meanness in the exchange, it would be him.

He continued to hound me through the chain-link about his innocence, and how PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BE OUT WITH A DOG THEY CAN'T CONTROL!!"

How 'bout you, buddy?  YOU SHOULDN'T BE OUT WITH A MOUTH YOU CAN'T CONTROL!  (I thought of this retort later, of course.)




Anyway, was I being courageous and asking for what I need?

Was I establishing a boundary of what I would not listen to in a public place with my kid?

Or was I just another person who shouldn't be out with a mouth she can't control?







P.S.  I did apologize for my outburst five minutes later, and that's how I learned his name is Peter.  He shrugged it off, but said I owed him a beer.  What?  I'm confused.  Was it codependent to apologize?  I feel messed up tonight.

Holding My Anger Like A Baby

Thich Naht Hanh says that our anger is a part of us -- just like our kindness is a part of us.  Because our anger is a part of us, we need to be gentle with it.  This means we don't ignore it, and we certainly don't pretend it isn't there.  Underneath our anger is our suffering.  

He says we should hold our anger like a mother holds a baby.  When the baby starts to cry, and the mother picks him up and holds him tenderly, the baby feels the tenderness and begins to calm down.  When we are tender with ourselves and our anger, we allow ourselves to feel it for as long as we need to.  When we are ready, we will let it go. 

This really resonates with me.  I haven't been very gentle with my anger.  I sometimes scold myself.

I say things like, "Wildflower, how can you still be so angry, when Mr W just did the dishes and went to 12 step?"

Or I minimize my anger like this, "Wildflower, you are probably overreacting again, and you should just get over it."

But, when I push my angrish back down, it always resurfaces.  I acknowledge that despite my dreams on my wedding day, my marriage has brought me a lot of trauma and betrayal.

I am choosing to stay in my marriage, because my husband is choosing recovery.  I am also choosing recovery for myself.  Part of my recovery is working through my grief, and part of that grief is my anger.   



The way I happened upon this concept by Thich Naht Hanh was definitely an answer to my prayers.  This feels true, like this is God's method.  He cradles me in tenderness and love when I am angry, sad or both.  This tenderness enables my negative emotions to dissipate.  I feel loved just as I am.  This helps me become ready to surrender the dark feelings to Him.  The atonement of Christ enables me to let go of anger and resentment and to work toward forgiveness.


So for now, when my anger appears, I will pick it up and rock it gently.  I will sit with it.  And like all babies, it will eventually move on.

Some things I found out about Thich Naht Hanh

Thich Naht Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, writer, teacher, and peace activist, born in 1926.  In the 1960's, he organized a grassroots relief organization in Vietnam that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, resettled homeless families, and organized agricultural cooperatives.  He had over 10,000 student volunteers in this organization, and they followed the principles of non-violence and compassionate action.   Although the government denounced his activities, Hanh founded a university, a publishing house and a peace activist magazine.

After visiting Europe and the U.S. on a peace mission in 1966, he was banned from returning to Vietnam.  He met with Martin Luther King in 1966, and he was influential in King coming out publicly against the war, which strengthened the peace movement.  In 1967 MLK nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

He has spent his life teaching peace and mindfulness.  He now lives in France.

He has some great videos on youtube.  Oprah interviewed him a while ago, and that interview is really interesting.  (This link is to only part of that interview). He has written over 100 books, 40 of them are in English.

ANGRISH 101

Last weekend I was in an emotionally fragile state, when my husband abruptly changed our much-anticipated (at least for me) Saturday plans.  It was five minutes before we were supposed to leave, and he decided to do something that he felt obligated to do, for people that are minimally connected to our lives.  The timing was such that we couldn't do both.

If I were a normal person in a normal marriage, I suppose I could have "rolled with it."  But, I ain't in no normal marriage.  It brought back memories of the flakey and checked-out husband I lived with for years, who did what felt good to him, regardless of how it affected our family.  I cannot live like that now.  I need security and constancy.  This is part of building trust in our marriage.

I was indignant, far beyond what I knew was reasonable for the situation.  Since the major trauma 13 months ago, my brain has a very short fuse.  From what I've read, this is part of the trauma response.  I seem to go from 0 to 300 amu's (anger management units) in a matter of seconds.   My emotions are on a hair trigger.

Not only does my anger flare more quickly now, it also reaches far deeper.  The anger spans out to that deep place where it meets the pain.  It's like the trauma gouged out a canyon of pain inside me, and the anger crashes in like a river to fill it up.

This anger and anguish blend together into one suffering concoction that I call Angrish.   I know  anger is a secondary emotion, and I use it like a salve to medicate my anguish.  I wish it were a more effective medicine.

On Saturday, after I had soaked in my anger for several hours, I surrendered it to God, another person and a sticky note in my surrender bag.  That surrender process is a living, breathing thing, and it works.  With the anger out of the way, I broke down and cried like a baby for hours.  It felt sort of good to let go and be sad.  I know I am still grieving.

I am working my recovery every day, and I am learning to accept my feelings as they come.  My angrish cannot be glossed over or forced away or ignored.  These are my honest feelings, and they need my attention before I can be done with them, and they can ride off into the sunset.







Next post I will share an idea about handling tough emotions from a Vietnamese Buddhist monk.  He treats his anger like a baby, and it's brilliant.  Stay tuned.

Warning: There's A Rattlesnake Inside Me

I am not proud of the fact that a rattlesnake lives inside me.  A creature full of poison that strikes when threatened; that's what I am.  I am trying to learn new ways of reacting, and the snake lies dormant in there sometimes, but tonight, it came out with a vengeance.

I have mentioned before that one of the boundaries I have set for myself in recovery is, "I will not use anger or busyness to medicate my pain and sadness.  I will slow down, figure out what I feel, what I need and communicate that to the proper person."  Well, I shattered that boundary in a matter of seconds.

Tonight my husband told me something that hurt me.  I felt like I was a fool for staying in this marriage.  I felt sad.  I wish now I could have recognized how sad I was and taken time to cry or write in my journal.  Maybe call a recovery friend or my sponsor.

Instead my lower brain activated my fight/flight response, and I lashed out at him with all the venom I had in me.  I was far away from my own above boundary.  I wasn't true to myself.  I don't want to inject poisonous words into the people I love.  I wish I hadn't.

I know that for me to stay in the sadness, for me to not get angry, I must have an enormous amount of courage and faith.  I need courage, because I am vulnerable to more pain when I am sad.  I need courage, because it takes practice for me to change my anger default setting to sadness.  I need faith that God will comfort me and fill up my sad heart with love.  

When I punish my husband with anger and meanness, I think it is because, deep down, I don't trust that God will take care of me.  I don't trust that the Savior's promises are true.   Will He really give me His peace, not as the world giveth, if my heart is troubled [sad] or afraid?  John 14:22.  Will He really make all things right ?  My trust in Heavenly Father and Jesus waver, and I feel like I have to handle things on my own.

Sometimes it helps me to write out my prayers.  (Abilene did this in the book, The Help, and I've since tried it out a few times.)  I am going to bed soon, so here goes.

Please, Heavenly Father, help me feel sadness first, when I am sad.  Keep my heart soft and loving.  Please forgive me for trying to inflict pain on someone else to make myself feel better.  Help me to look to Christ (not my husband or anyone else) for the restitution of wrongs against me.  Help my belief in the atonement to get stronger.  Help me to eventually feel healed.   Help me feel Your peace and love.

Several years ago my sister was bitten by a rattlesnake on her ankle.  She was standing outside on a concrete patio, and the snake was in the nearby planter.  After an anxiety-ridden and expensive ride in an ambulance to the hospital, the doctors discovered that it was a "dry bite".  The fangs had punctured her skin, but they hadn't released any venom.

What if I could get to the point where I am doing dry bites?  I start to attack, but I catch myself and no venom leaves my mouth?  What if I eventually don't even attack?