This anger creeps up to bite me every now and again. So much of the time I’m not concerned with it at all. Then someone or some thing confronts me, and before I realize they are forming, there are tears over the tops of my eyes and down. Out where everyone can see them. And my equilibrium slips out from underneath my seat. All this hard earned stability disappears and I am floating once again on a sea of ambiguity.
And then I’m angry. I’m so, so, very tired of this. I’m so over it. I’m tired of working on myself, tired of trying to make it all work. Tired of making myself happy when I’m depressed, tired of being happy for other people. Tired of not knowing how to make myself happy.
This time it was Dedee. “You’re not happy.” I hated her for bringing it up. Hated that she noticed, relieved that she noticed. Relieved I could be honest. No, I’m not happy. “You’ve got none of the things that make you, you.” She pointed out the intellectual conversations, the theatre, the singing, the drive. Great that she new me back before I had to earn a living, before there was responsibility. Back when I still read books for the sheer pleasure and absorption of it. “You’re not happy. I see the Caitlin bucket in my brain and at the top of the Caitlin bucket it says ‘Concern’. ” She texted me a few nights ago to let me know she had a great time at dinner. I haven’t gotten back to her.
Where do I start to pull this apart?
- I’m in the wrong marriage, married to my best friend, who I love more than anyone in this world, but with whom I am not in love
- In love with a guy who is not interested in me
- Embedded in a job that makes me miserable and that I take far too seriously
- Thinking about what I am supposed to be doing with my life, when this is the one time in my life I was not supposed to have the time to think about that
And then I’m angry. I was supposed to have children. They were supposed to be as old as 10 right now. This isn’t supposed to be the time in a straight/het woman’s life when she has to stop and think about what she’s up to. If she has time to stop and think, she grabs a drink, a girl’s night, a soak, a nap. That was supposed to be the extent of it. Truth is I don’t want to have children with a man I’m not in love with. I don’t want to decorate a house with him either. I hate him for being there so I could decide that because of his school, his job, his travel that it wasn’t the right time to have kids. I hate myself for choosing poorly. I hate myself for not having at least the second of the pregnancies: why didn’t I have a child with Jon Brown? What the fuck was wrong with me? Life would have been completely different.
Instead I proceeded to party and rave and follow Rebecca and Kyra around. Then I met Brett and followed him around. When the fuck did I decide to stop following myself??!!
And here I am, thinking about how to fill the hours. Not wanting to spend them the way my husband spends them (listening to jam bands, wanting to travel or traveling) not knowing what is mine, what will absorb my brain and take up space without my even noticing. The truth is I WANT to be a workaholic – I just want to do work that I love. That I lose myself in. Everyone thinks it’s cute to be a workaholic when you’re a painter, a singer, an actor. But workaholism for the man is verboten. None of that. Granted, my job right now is unhealthy.
Do I kill myself? Is it simply never going to be or feel any different? Am I going to spend my life chasing after this notion of one true love? Angry at myself for not having children when I should have? Angry at myself for not just having the two pregnancies I was blessed with? Looking forward and not seeing any way out? It’s just going to be one job after another. Sure, there will be different mediums and venues. But in any role I will be a perfectionist. My own ghosts will start to haunt me, my own imaginary failings each picking at me until I’m convinced I’m a failure. When I feel this dark, it usually only lasts a little bit and then I can move on. But truly, overall, I’m not happy. And I don’t see any way out.
So I force some change into my job. I force some change into my baby life: adoption? fostering? I think we’re done with my biological options, though maybe I can try again. But I know, no matter how big the changes, I’ll just get to the same place again. Disappointed, disillusioned and lonely. Very, terribly, lonely.