Sometimes now I feel positively invisible. It is funny to watch how people define themselves and those around them. Single girls tend to hand out on weekends with other single girls. People with kids in sports migrate toward other families who have kids in sports. Divorced women bunch together like magnets and like hobbies attract like hobbies. The laws of the universe. Like attracts like. I notice now more and more that people do not know how to define me once they learn I have had a child who has died. If I am not careful it can feel as if I have a vague communicable disease. Logically, intellectually I realize for 99% of the population this is probably not true, but more along the lines of just not knowing how to categorize, what to say, how to relax. I have had the same interesting reaction from my closest group of friends, many of whom are currently unattached. While Joe lived miles and miles away I was automatically called and included, part of the "gang", one of the girls. Nothing feels that different to me now that he is here but my social life has dwindled to a trickle, and I find myself feeling hurt...resentful....lost...the invitations having dried up and yet the stories about activities told freely around me, as if it is understood that I should not feel bad..perhaps some unconscious logic that, after all, I have a man....? I do not understand it. I feel alienated by it. They tell of things they did, phone calls made, stories shared, events planned...and I know nothing...and stand there like an idiot...wondering whether to address it directly...or simply let it go...wondering if I am too sensitive, or just plain unlikeable..and furious at myself for questioning myself this way.
I start my job at Cooper Clinic on Wednesday. I am looking forward to it, though wondering if I am putting too much on this job, too many goals and dreams. It feels like a watershed, a gateway back to myself, a pathway to follow that will let me find resolution to some of my health/diet/exercise issues that predated this job but were exacerbated by the constant exposure to those who just do not care. I am looking forward to being surrounded by health conscious people and to having work out facilities right at my fingertips. It is amazing the number of people who ask me to help them find work there. It is definitely a coveted employer and I feel both gratified by the level to which they courted me and fortunate to have lived my life in such a way that I have earned this place.
I am at belly dance. My instructor is going to video us tonight and show us to ourselves. The depth to which I do not want to see this is stunning. I see in the mirror every day how my actuality does not fit with my mental impressions of myself.
Is anyone ever complete? Ever happy? Ever in a place where they are satisfied with themselves or the world? And would I want to be? I hate feeling unhappy. I fight against it so hard that when I no longer can it comes out in a rush of dissatisfaction that sounds borderline bipolar. And then I build again upon the relief of that emotional vomit.
Time to dance. More later perhaps.
I start my job at Cooper Clinic on Wednesday. I am looking forward to it, though wondering if I am putting too much on this job, too many goals and dreams. It feels like a watershed, a gateway back to myself, a pathway to follow that will let me find resolution to some of my health/diet/exercise issues that predated this job but were exacerbated by the constant exposure to those who just do not care. I am looking forward to being surrounded by health conscious people and to having work out facilities right at my fingertips. It is amazing the number of people who ask me to help them find work there. It is definitely a coveted employer and I feel both gratified by the level to which they courted me and fortunate to have lived my life in such a way that I have earned this place.
I am at belly dance. My instructor is going to video us tonight and show us to ourselves. The depth to which I do not want to see this is stunning. I see in the mirror every day how my actuality does not fit with my mental impressions of myself.
Is anyone ever complete? Ever happy? Ever in a place where they are satisfied with themselves or the world? And would I want to be? I hate feeling unhappy. I fight against it so hard that when I no longer can it comes out in a rush of dissatisfaction that sounds borderline bipolar. And then I build again upon the relief of that emotional vomit.
Time to dance. More later perhaps.