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?

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.

Acceptanceland

When my husband disclosed that he was addicted to porn and masturbation, that he hadn't stopped in 1998 like he had insisted for 14 years; I knew in that moment two things.

1.  That my life would never be the same.

2.  That at some point,  for me to feel consistently peaceful and happy,  I would need to forgive him.

Those two things would stand whether or not I left the marriage.

It would be months before I knew the extent of his betrayal to me.  It was porn and masturbation and beyond.  His addiction had raged for almost 3 decades, and his brain was as sick as a dog.  His behavior had escalated to inappropriate relationships with women, some fantasy and some not.  He had lied his way to some pretty impressive church callings.  He had played dumb when our son's addiction became apparent.  He had manipulated me with lies since I had known him.

Before his disclosure, my old life was no picnic.  But it was my life, and I was used to it.  My husband has had chronic depression since childhood.  After his first disclosure of sex addiction and quick "recovery" in 1998, which I wholeheartedly believed, I chalked up all the addict behaviors to mental illness.  So he was withdrawn, disconnected, resentful and unpredictable, but hey, wasn't everyone like that?  I was no picnic of a wife, either.

Despite all of that, I still carry grief about my life never being the same.  I am working my way to acceptance, but sometimes I show up in a black dress at the grave of my old life.  I mourn my carefreeness and my easy laughter.  I mourn the loss of love and respect for my husband.  I mourn my old brain.  My thoughts were free to wander as they pleased, unsupervised.   Now my whole recovery and life revolve around God and me keeping a clamp on my wild and horrible thoughts.

Every day I teeter between rage, depression and acceptance.  I have been playing the game of Candyland for years with my kids.  I picture that in my recovery, I am playing a similar game called Acceptanceland.  The destination is a peaceful place with fluffy clouds, a green meadow and a few wildflowers :).

I wake up some mornings and I am there.  I think accepting thoughts like, "You are going to be OK.  This is the life you have, and it's OK.  This is not want you wanted, but God has not left you alone in this.  Trust that He will be with you all the way.  You can have a better life than before.  You can be happy again.  You can do this today."

When I am in Acceptanceland I taste peace and I want more.  I feel a new and full love from my husband, regardless of what emotion or affection I choose to share.  There is a calm and spirit in our home that has never been there before.  I feel gratitude for the life I have.

Acceptanceland is my own creation, so I sort through the cards.  I take out the rage and depression cards and put them at the bottom of the stack.