Reviewing Rage: Recognizing Courage

I have made multiple versions of this blog entry. They have ranged from near-confessional to raging to optimistic. I’m not entirely sure how this will end up, but I feel compelled to make it happen one way or the other.

I have finally set to the task of editing my own blog posts from start to finish. Early entries were especially weak and in need of a red pen.

I knew it would be emotionally challenging. I knew I’d have moments of wanting to just delete every pre-divorce entry. I feared I might even want to delete every post-divorce entry. I knew I would have to reread all the turmoil of the new house, the new friends, the men that flitted in and out of my life, and COVID-19 restrictions.

I knew I would see all the pain of those times. I knew I would see the barely discernible thread of falling for someone new and impossible. I knew I would see my excitement at leaving followed by the surprising drudgery and horror of the emotional work I had yet to do.

What I didn’t expect, even in the gentle and “happy” posts, was to see the glimpses of the pain I was in long before the divorce. In seeing it, I have a better understanding of how I stumbled into another painful relationship and how this journey, this trip through the eastern half of the US and back to Texas, would be such a rollercoaster. This has been a journey of “one step up and two steps back,” although there has been so much beauty along the way.

Prelude to a Miss

I began my blog in 2014.

I began to see the cracks clearly in our marriage in 2006. I started therapy in about 2010 because he “liked who he was” (i.e., he refused to acknowledge any ownership of the problem), so the problem lay within me. In 2012, my therapy culminated in me deciding what exactly it was about me that needed to be fixed and he found my solution unacceptable. From that point on, words like “rage” and “anger” infiltrated everything I wrote.

What was wrong was that I was enraged and had been. What was wrong was that my personhood had been reduced to that of being a piece of property to be managed.

Some lines I discovered in pre-2020 posts:

From a post in which I imagined our Big Dog talking:

“Oh, Dad. Please come out. I’m so lonely. There’s no one here but the lunatic woman who curses loudly and often.”

              and

 “…my fears of the future, my anger with loved ones [are a result of grief].” 4 Nov 2015

From a post on being stuck in the creative process:

“Every effort to write a blog post, personal letter, notes on The Book, journal entry, etc., has been a lengthy probe into what part writerly fear, grief, clinical depression, and rage play in my lack of progress.” 16 Sept 2015

From another post on struggling to create:

“These things cloud my head (with my permission) like perpetual flu. If I were an addict, I could blame drugs or booze, but my addictions are the 3 x 5 screen in my hand and the constant reexamination of pain and rage.” 13 Aug 2018

There are additional examples; quiet and loud hints here and there of my deep and intractable unhappiness. My point in referencing these lies in my own (and his) unwillingness to address our problems fully, yet they were clearly visible.

We did see them, but we kept telling ourselves that this was marriage; you suck it up. You love and need someone so much that you just live with the misery. For my part, I kept thinking these were important things we both wanted to fix. I kept battling it out every time the same problem arose and he, for his part, kept fighting back with, “I will never change my mind.” Finally, he went so far as to say, “We are never having this discussion again.” There were no compromises to be had.

I battled because I believed we could be two whole individuals who respected each other. I battled because I needed my other loved ones in my life and the opportunity to fulfill my dreams while at the same time, I hoped, staying in a marriage to a man I still loved.

Nonetheless, I caved much of the time because he taught me to always protect him and because my mother taught me, by way of example, that the man I loved was my priority above all else. Above my career (gone), my child and my grandchildren (estranged by distance and his recalcitrance), my mental and physical health (deteriorating), and my literal bodily autonomy (vastly restricted) sat my husband on his easy-chair throne.

To look back and see that I bowed to that until the rage built in me to the point of hating myself so intensely that I would rather die than live another minute, was shocking.

I wrote all those words in those blogs from 2014 until 2020, but ingesting them over a few days instead of months has been like taking the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. It has triggered a new, if only partial, immune response within me.

I moved on to the more recent entries, those that stretch from March 2020 to December 2022, and another pattern emerged which I’ll encapsulate thusly:

“I’m free, I can do as I please, I have new-found strength, and I will make it. I’m lost, I can’t function, and I don’t know how to go on. I’m back, I’ll be okay, and I see hope again. There is no hope. I’m old, I’m tired, and I want to just quit.” Ad nauseam.

Happy New Year

I sit here, 1 January 2023, having worked on this entry for five days, with no magical insight. However, I have something perhaps more valuable.

I have survived some dark days and nights in the last two months. November and December were spectacularly difficult in a way completely new to me. In my marriage, I was miserable, but I had a home, income by way of my partner, and physical safety in the most basic sense (though I was not safe from my own self-harm and suicidal ideation). By the time I looked ahead to 2023, none of that was true. My “home” is a constant, precarious balance between timing and space availability. My income is minimal, for now. I am not truly, physically safe (though I have absolutely no fear for my safety).

I have every reason to be fearful about my future.

I am not.

I get stressed and anxious at times, but I am not fearful.

I will not call this “hope.” This is simply the recognition that I have survived a year of driving a truck, a camper, and a dog all over the Eastern half of the USA. While I’ve had a few mishaps and made minor mistakes, I have gotten through each with minimal emotional or financial damage and often with actual growth. I have done what my ex, former friends and coworkers, and most women in this country would never even attempt to do alone (acknowledging my privilege to do so). I have been called “brave” by numerous people over the course of this journey and I scoffed at it.

To look at the last three years, and frankly, the previous forty, I know that while I may not have my mother’s beauty and softness, I know damned well that I have her courage.

That is immense.

Last Updated on March 28, 2023 by Lee Ellis