10:30 AM Sat 4 Dec 82
My 33rd birthday! Last night T “healed” me. He was his old self –flexible, warm, imaginative, generous so that every problem there had ever been between us just melted away. The BEST birthday gift. “You shall be one flesh” and presto! I told him I don’t understand MYSELF what I’m going through! He likes my poem. I’ going to pull through. Reread as far as I’ve gotten on Falsetto. It’s intriguing. I see lots of possibilities. 1 PM Dec 5 -82 The “healing” holds. Feel like I will never have to suffer that peculiar loneliness again. The next child’s babyhood will be dramatically different if only because Shane will be there. He was so much fun this morning, wanting to play with me rather than his toys, slobbering over my glasses and standing on my book. M & D sent Isak Dinesen biog for my birthday it is WONDERFUL! Reading it in a state of exaltation. She lost “everything” but gained “the world!” Of course she wasn’t “happy” THAT would DEFINITELY have been too much to ask. I am way ahead on all counts. Want to read everything else I can find about her. As soon as baby awakes we ride into town for tampons & baby oil – I hear him. 12:30 PM TUES 6 DEC 82 Feeling blue at my desk as I shift from “inner” to “outer” tasks – preparing an agency mailing. Ugh. St Theresa has to drag the sword out of her breast and go answer the door. Rough life for us introverts. Poor T says, “I’m sure when you get hooked up with an organization you’ll feel better!” We each KNOW it “should” be that way but we can’t get ourselves there. Taking S into Phila today – gives Me & T time to talk & something new for me & S to do – play by the river. Reading Wickes The Inner World of Childhood– it is a help. I got this book from Granma (who hadn’t read it. She’s too “busy”. No one reads but me.) I think my problem’s “cowardice”. T yelling trying to give me a sense of responsibility without any actual power. I have to confront that. His mother always tries to play “offense” – works for her. 1:10 PM – NOT going to Phila! Called L to say I was coming and she responded in such a flustered, hostile way I had to let her off the “hook” she seemed to put herself on! Similar to my response to her visits here! We all suffer from the same sickness I’m afraid. T. says he’ll come home early – I said that was fine! Thurs 9 Dec 82 Last night T wasn’t early but he was on time for dinner and that was good enough. We talked while dinner cooked, which meant his long litany of complaints about Why Developing Property isn’t easier (hint: Everyone’s Against You.). Under the hypnosis of L’s reasoning he doesn’t understand that resentment is the poison that kills. I got T to see we can’t talk this way around S – he has to see us SOLVING problems not COMPLAINING about them! Luckily this made sense to him – focus on how things aren’t what they “should” be is DISEMPOWERING. T said he hadn’t felt his parents’ hypocrisy till he was 17. Having been a witness I was able to disprove that and then he remembered. He saw his father skewered between his mother’s incinerating rage and her sulky silky manner. We sat down after dinner to work on our “life plan.” Mine is 2nd baby in ’84 (last if it’s a girl) part time job 85, Masters 86, full time in the “psychotherapy of poetry” in 1990. Meanwhile having fun with my press! T promised to finish his “life plan” tonight – wanted to take pix of me for Xmas card instead, I was drunk enough to comply. T’s “complaints” about me – Bad Mother, Beggar, Slob – seem to melt away when You Know Who isn’t around. Thinking of putting a rape in Falsetto. Dare I? Short & sharp. Have to accept that misery & terror can be conduit to God. I refuse to feel the worthlessness life seems to demand of me – God won’t allow me to feel it. Sun 2 Jan 83 A new diary! A new year! I interrupt the backbreaking labor of vacuuming pine needles out of the rug to make my first entry. I got a triple Perry Mason that has been getting me through, plus Christmas cash paying the most desperate bills. Grocery bill is the consistent biggie but T admits I’m very thrifty. Having to fight the urge to run upstairs & reread Dorothy Thompson’s life – anyone’s life but mine! Every dirty broken corner of this house makes me want to flee…Can’t spare any $ from the exchequer for remodeling a house we don’t own! Lois latest plan “in lieu of salary” is that we should take her old car so she can buy a new one; offended when T declined. Hey, she would recover the seats! No hot water last night - was afraid they’d tuned off the gas but it wasn’t that, fortunately. If I want a happy married life with my husband I’m going to have to take this craziness down a few pegs. T has taken to saying jokingly to me around other people: “Lighten up!” Yeah, I’M the problem! Ha ha ha! Not laughing hilariously enough! In private of course he’s completely different. “Raggedy man” beset by feminazis. “I could earn my own living without my mother when I was 23,” he says sadly. Not much to laugh about there! I stress our freedom: we can go anywhere! No. He says he is stuck. Cleaning up trash in my study found the Ballantine report – feeling a certain nostalgia for the hope that sustained me through the romance novels. In the mean time struggling with a rape scene that’s awful any way you parse it. 2:45PM 4 Jan Tues 83 This is the time of day I want to collapse and I’ve still got everything ahead of me. Unfortunately. Now is when I really feel the lack of a supportive person to confide in. Trying to get anything out of T produces bare cupboards & hostility. His ego is under too much assault to help me any. I’ve tried and tried to persuade him to see a marriage counselor – I’m convinced ANYONE would say you can’t keep doing what you HATE – which is what I say – but he says no. Marycliff College to look forward to. Took a long trip yesterday to Hopewell junk shop to buy china – soothing & relaxing but didn’t solve anything. Inspired by Published in Paris.
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Alysse Aallyn
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