C

I feel like I have a scarlet letter emblazoned on my chest. "C" for complicated, too too complicated.

Coming Apart

Many people, when I tell them about the separation, say something to the effect of, "Well, that is a big decision. Being in a relationship takes work and effort, involves making concessions. You must have talked so much about what you could do to fix things, to get to this point. You must have exhausted all the alternatives."

When they say this to me, I murmur something that sounds vaguely affirmative. But it feels weird, the whole interaction.

Why does it feel weird?

We didn't exhaust anything.

Jaimes is checked out. He has no desire to fix things. He has no desire to talk things through.

Then today, my dad asked me if we've considered counseling. I responded honestly, "Jaimes isn't willing." My dad was silent. I was silent.

I can't presume to know what Jaimes is thinking. Sometimes it seems he really cares for and loves me. But right now, where it concerns me, he is unwilling to give, unwilling to make concessions, unwilling to put himself out. And he is indifferent to my giving.

I will be the first to say that we've been struggling for a while; being new parents involves a lot of stress, dropping our budget from 2 full salaries to 1 salary creates stress, creating from scratch and running a business is stressful, trying to pay off debt can be stressful, moving in with roommates can cause stress. Stress, stress, everywhere. We haven't handled it well, and rather than coming together to battle it, we've come apart. I am not happy where we are now. I have felt for some time that change is needed.

But if I had my choice, in all honesty, I think I would choose for us to change together.

Something Beautiful

On Not Posting for Some Time, and Now Posting Again

For a long time after Ravenna's birth I wasn't able to find the time to post or update. Or really, to log onto my computer at all. I still have backlogs of email dating from them until now that I haven't really touched.

More recently I've started having time here and there where I could post, but I've had a sort of ethical issue with it. Right now, a huge percentage of my world is family life. Most of the things that I find myself wanting to express have to do with Ravenna or with Jaimes. But I make no secret of who I am on this journal. Perhaps nobody reads it any longer, since I have gone so long without updating, but in the past people who knew me read it. People who knew me peripherally read it. I've had the experience, several times, of meeting someone for the first time, only for them to tell me that they read my journal.

Thus it becomes a privacy issue.

Not for myself, so much; I started blogging during a time in my life when I felt all muddled about who I was, when I felt that I was too often tailoring what I showed of myself to each individual I interacted with, showing them only what I thought they wanted to see. Also, I felt that I was starting to live my life in a way that I was ashamed of. I was making choices without integrity, and wanted to hide them from others. I wasn't okay with myself, and that is a nasty, poisonous feeling. If you don't care for yourself, if you disapprove of your own choices, if you are drowning in guilt, how is anyone else supposed to know you or care for you? You're not a whole person, you're just a shard.

In a low moment, at a turning point, I thought that, if I started to write about my life with complete frankness and honesty, if I forced myself to be open about everything I was thinking and doing, either I would start thinking and doing only that which I was able to write about, or in the course of exposing and examining myself and my actions, even if nothing about me changed, I would start to accept myself for who I was. Either way, giving up some level of privacy was essential to the spirit of this exercize, and I did so intentionally from the very beginning.

But...

Yes, a "but".

But these days, it's not just about my privacy. If so much of what I would have written the last year or so would have been about Jaimes, then it is an issue of his privacy, too. If people who know me can find and read this blog, people who know him read it too, and what right have I to air our laundry out in the open when it affects him, and peoples' perceptions of him, as well? I don't want people to judge him based on my highly biased viewpoint.

I suppose it is about Ravenna's privacy, as well, although that doesn't give me the same sort of pause. Maybe because she's a baby, still, and I feel that whatever I post about her, people won't judge her for it. We aren't as quick to judge babies, somehow. Maybe we see them as still unformed. Pure. Full of potential. Whatever bias I have, I don't think anything I say, at least at this point in her life, will affect peoples' perceptions of her, or the relationships that she forms with others. She is still too new, and too insulated.

So, privacy is of import.

Jaimes's privacy, in particular.

Here I am posting, anyway. Why is that?

Here's why. I am sitting at a changing point in my life. We are sitting at changing points in our lives, our little family. Jaimes's privacy is going to be less and less an issue, because we are not so intimately entwined these days. Jaimes and I are separating.

So here I am, sitting on top of a ledge...behind me I see a life all entangled with his, and ahead of me I see a life all my own again. As such, I feel more comfortable owning it, writing about it, and airing it in this forum. Maybe journaling again will help me sort myself out.