What is it that bothers you??

To my husband it seems to be that one of my best friends invited me to their Christmas party leaving it up to me as to whether I’d want the husband or the boyfriend there. The fact that I have a boyfriend… na, that doesn’t do it for him. The fact that I no longer want to be married to him… nope… but the invitation – that did it.

 
 

Now – I don’t know what’s really going on with him and who knows if he even knows himself, but from the outside, the sudden realization that his comfy life is going to have to change a bit is the thing that has hit him. The hurt and heartache I went through the last couple of years – I think maybe he noticed about 10% of it and I think he probably felt badly that I felt badly. But deciding not to have our own Christmas party this year was the first time he seemed actually bothered by any of this. I think it was his first clue he had that something was actually going to change. Then… horror of all horrors – he was only invited to a party we go to each year through me. They love him, but the connection is through me and they decided to leave it up to me. Could they have made a different choice? Sure they could. Could they have invited us both and let us make the decision – sure they could. Could they have called us and asked our opinion in advance. Yup. But you know what they did do? They decided to leave it up to me. The nerve of them.

 
 

He moped around the house for two days, fully recognizing that the invitation thing was what was bothering him. It totally fucked with me and it took me a couple of days to figure out why – idiot!! He was far more visibly bothered by not being invited directly to a party given by one of my best friends than he has ever been bothered by the fact that our marriage is ending or by the fact that I’m sleeping with another man.

 
 

I fully appreciate that we are going to try to do this whole separation thing in the most unconventional of ways and try to both stay in the same house. We don’t fight, we like each other, we’re both very concerned about the kids… eh.. why not? Those who know us well, including my therapist, believe if anyone can do it – we can. So – I get how in his mind he might have been a little confused… but seriously. We are heading to divorce. There will be a point in the future where we no longer live in the same house. We are only making the decision to stay in the same house now because of the kids and because we get along so well – but this isn’t how our life will always be. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen when I told him I no longer wanted to be married to him… but certainly our friends were going to start treating us at least a little differently. Maybe not wildly differently… maybe not all of them. But I suspect as people know about the changes to our lives there will be adjustments with our friends. Maybe he’s realizing all the cool friends come through me? Who knows.

 
 

I’m sorry for him. Truly sorry for him. He’s one of the most social people I know. Everyone loves him – but he can’t or doesn’t want to truly connect to just about anyone – certainly not to me. He went to a strip club last night to see one of his favorite strippers. On the face of it – who cares, right? I don’t care a little bit that he wants to go to a strip club – and I wouldn’t have cared before… when I didn’t want our marriage to end – but… when I think about it further – I just find it profoundly sad. He went alone to a bar to watch a woman take her clothes off. I feel reasonably certain other than a possible lap dance he had no contact with anyone there. He didn’t go with friends. He wasn’t planning on dating the woman. He just likes this woman. It seems like an incredibly lonely thing. To go somewhere where there is no actual human interaction. And for such a social person… I have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.

 
 

But what it really is – is more proof that his ability to have honest connections with humans – especially on an intimate level – the level that has to exist in a healthy marriage – just doesn’t work in him the way it needs to for me. Perhaps anonymously watching a woman you know through watching porn is his idea of sexual intimacy – maybe that’s all he needs in life. I know when we talked about having an open marriage he talked about the anonymous stripper being the kind of woman he’d want to sleep with – someone he wouldn’t have to actually know. And that’s certainly fine for him – but it makes me sad for him.

 
 

I still love him. I’m sure I always will. And I wish for him intense emotional connection; passion in all its messy forms. Sex is great – but it’s just not passion. Passion is messy… it’s hard and it hurts and it’s exciting and bright and brilliant and god awful and amazing. And OMG is it risky. It’s amazingly risky. You have to put yourself out there – you have to say I want… I need… you have to trust. There’s yelling and making up and battered feeling and intense love making that breaks you apart and puts you back together. And I truly believe he’s never experienced any of that. I think he loves me and I think one day he’ll realize what he lost. And I’m sorry for that too. Life is too short to live in this safe little bubble where no one can touch you and nothing can hurt you.

 
 

Which brings me back to what bothers you? So much bothers me. But this week the thing that won the prize was yet again being reminded where I land on the scale of importance of the man I chose to marry.

Secret number one...

First of all though…. thanks to my lovely friend Farrah who took time out from her constant hair flipping to help me come up with the name of this new blog.  I have a thing for bees so I wanted that to be the theme and she reminded me of the book, which of course I haven’t yet read, called The Secret Life of Bees and well.. viola a name was born!  And it’s just so damn perfect for the current status of my life – so that’s even more fun!!  She’s a genius – though I think her hair weighs her down sometimes, but we don’t need to discuss that just yet. 

I’ve been sort of thinking of starting a new blog and finally decided it’s the right thing to do and the right time to do it… I’ve had a lot of blogs over time and I totally enjoy it, but have always seemed to get to a point where I was no longer comfortable being wide open, which is my style, because of the people who read the blogs.  Actually, I got to the place where I was comfortable with the grown ups that read it, but figured it was only a matter of time before my kids find the blogs and for me to continue writing about what’s actually going on in my life – that’s a big no way in fucking hell…. So here I am with my new and hopefully last blog. 

It’s going to be entirely anonymous so I can write with impunity about all manner of things, but mostly it’ll be okay to talk about the aspects of my life which aren’t always comfortable for everyone and are certainly not okay for my kids to read.  I love this blog title because I feel like I’ve got all kinds of secret lives… it’s exhausting.  And the first one up for discussion is my lap band.  Very few people know about it, which is a blessing because for the most part I’m a complete failure as far as that’s concerned – which is one thing in front of my loving and understanding friends, but it’s a whole other thing in front of the generic people in my life – family, co-workers, neighbors… that kind of thing. 

When I first got the thing installed it did make itself known for a while and while I never noticed any soft stop that lots of my friends talk about, I definitely had a hard stop that I could work with.  I always had this belief that if I got a lap band installed there would be something different.  I didn’t need it to be a magic bullet, I’m happy to do the work, but so far just diet and exercise had not worked for me over the long haul.  I had hoped and expected that the band would add something to the mix – would be another tool.  But what I’ve heard from both of my doctors is that I should be eating 1,000 calories a day and not eating after 7pm and exercise every day and I’m sure to lose weight.  And while – yes, they are 100% correct when they say if I do those things I will lose weight, I sure as hell didn’t need to have surgery for that to be true.  Have any overweight person alive eat 1,000 calories, stop eating by 7pm and exercise every day and they will lose weight – no surgery needed.  Sigh…

After about 6-8 months the hard stop went away too.  I seem to have two settings on my band… either I have no band.  I sense no difference, there is neither a hard nor soft stop, there are just scars on my stomach and a need to diet.  There is nothing I can’t eat, no off limit foods, I can eat fast or slowly, I can chew well or not.  It’s just like I never had surgery – nothing… nada..  OR I can not swallow my own spit.  The last 4 or 5 fills I’ve gotten have been huge ordeals.  I go in, beg them to give me a tiny fill, finally agree to half a cc which I’m sure is too much – but I haven’t had a fill in so long that seems reasonable at the time…. I dutifully swallow the water in the office with no problem and then about an hour later, I’m puking my guts up on water.  I end up not eating anything for a week or so, but am usually progressively able to work my way up to milk or maybe a creamy soup – which of course is good.  But every single moment of each day is centered on me worrying about getting enough liquid in me so I don’t get dehydrated and it’s frightening.  I have this whole hierarchical structure in my head each day – 1^st goal is to get liquid in me, 2^nd goal is to get vitamins in me, 3^rd goal is to get protein in me, 4^th goal is to get calories in me.  I end up losing 8-10 lbs in water weight in the following few days until I get tired of it and go back in and have half ish of it removed. At which point, so far, I’m back to the… I have no band at all place. 

I just need to get over myself and pretend it doesn’t exist and start religiously following weight watchers and figure out how to be healthy without that tool.  There are plenty of other tools in the world - it doesn't have to be the band for me.  Weight Watchers which is a great program to follow.  I've had success on it for good stretches of time so that's the tool I'm going to explore now.  I've had an online membership for the past 4 or 5 years that I rarely use, but it's right there just waiting for me to pick up where I'd left off.  

I am going to also go through the ordeal again - I suppose going in with that attitude could be a self-fulfilling prophecy...  I have scheduled an appointment with my doctor for December 13th.  I'll talk about my two settings and see what he has to say... but in the meantime I'm going to look into WW and pretend I don't have a band.  I spend lots of time hoping it's going to start magically giving me a signal to stop eating or slow down or something that when it consistently doesn't it makes me a little nutso and that's just no good!

Anyway... welcome to the new digs, I'm glad you're here.