Posted by Atticus on August 30, 2004, at 9:30:25
In reply to Re: poem...Contradiction, posted by daisym on August 29, 2004, at 16:35:45
Hi Daisy,
It's interesting that you've put your finger on precisely my central psychological dilemma related to the divorce. Part of me still thinks, "What about the 'for worse' part of our wedding vows? What about the 'in sickness and in health' part of the vows? Is it that you didn't really love me as much as you professed to all the time?" Mentally, post-divorce, there have been times when I've just gotten locked into a cycle, like someone pulling petals off a flower and saying, "She loved me. She loved me not. She loved me. She loved me not." ad infinitum. I guess I've ultimately come to the conclusion that she did love me (and may still, but just couldn't live with the person I'd become -- who was no longer the person she'd married -- any more). I really don't believe she was faking all those "I love you's" during the nine years we were together and the six years we were married. I feel like she was struggling to make things work right up to the point where she walked out, where her emotional gas tank just hit empty. I can't have her back, but I still have so many wonderful memories of the times I spent with her before the illness turned our lives upside down. For me, focusing on those and trying to reclaim them as part of myself -- rather than through the dark lens of what came later -- has proven to be very healing, if the experience of writing "Cocoa Pebbles Madness" is any indication. I never expected that plunging back into that moment would leave me feeling so sunny. In the past, thinking about it would have left me embittered that no more moments like it with her would ever follow. But I think the vehicle of poetry allows me to approach the frightening and the dreadful with much less fear. The meds and therapy have given this skill back to me, and Psycho-Babble Writing has given me a reason to pursue it. The confluence of all these factors is actually doing much more for me than my weekly sessions with my pdoc and therapist. Maybe I should just start each discussion from now on by handing my therapist a new poem and saying, "This is where I am tonight. Read it and let's go from there." :) Atticus
poster:Atticus
thread:383532
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040828/msgs/384063.html