This week I have been concentrating on why when I get home I walk through the kitchen and I immediately put something in my mouth. Sometimes I'm hungry but usually I'm not really hungry but I do it anyway. So, why? Why do I do this? I'm not bored. I'm not lonely. I realized that I have this tension that I am trying to resolve.
I look forward to coming home because it means I get to spend time with my little Moo, E'llee. I love this time we have together. It's fabulous. But the other part of it is that I am also coming home to Barb. Please don't get me wrong Barb is a wonderful lady but here's the deal....
I want home to be a safe haven. I want to be comfortable and be able to create the atmosphere of my household. However, when I get home there are a few things:
- Barb is already there so in essence has already influenced the mood of the house.
- Barb is sick and I am hypersensitive to her moods,
- I learned this hypersensitivity as a survival technique when I was an adolescent with my dad.
Now Barb has never really been all that grumpy much less explosive with me. However, she does "kick the dog". Tawnie is the next one down on the totem pole from her and she gets really cranky with Tawnie. I can tell her mood by how she treats Tawnie or how Tawnie is acting.
I am hypersensitive to that. I feel the mood. I am flooded by that emotion. I expect an outburst anytime but quite honestly the outburst is more likely from me than from Barb. It is odd because I find myself getting annoyed with the same stuff that I used to get in trouble for with my dad that I learned to by super attentive to over time.
For example, putting away and cleaning up after ourselves was something my dad would explode about if it wasn't done. He did this because he didn't feel good enough to do these things and my mom was already taking on lots of extra responsibility. I'm sure he felt super helpless about being the cause of my mom's extra stress and not being able to do some simple things to help her out like making sure the dishes were put away and kitchen was clean when she came home. Cognitively I get that. Emotionally I still resent the fact that it felt like it always fell on me. Why was I always the one that had to clean it up?
I get home now, what 25 years later in life and I have the same feelings from a slightly different angle. I come home and I always make sure that when I leave the sink is clean of dishes because there are always a few trickle in dishes after dinner it seems. And I try to make sure that the dishes are put away so that if someone dirties a dish it can be put in the dishwasher. HOwever when I get home there are dishes in the sink. And if I ran dishes in the morning instead or didn't put them away I get home and the dishes are still sitting in the dishwasher.
This really triggers something in me. I get the same feeling I got when I was an adolescent. Why does it fall on me? She is home for many hours in a day. Many times the dishes are just left on the counter wherever she happened to make her lunch much less in the sink or god forbid in the dishwasher. Can it really be that much more effort to rinse the bowl out and put it in the dishwasher? And, why can't she put away dishes? Almost everything is within 2 steps of the dishwasher. 90% of the stuff that comes out of the dishwasher is within arms reach if stand on one side and then the other side. It's pretty damn easy. So why does it feel like it is always me?
And I see the pressure on Cate. I again feel like that adolescent who needs/wants their parents (in this case partner's) attention and I resent the fact that so much time and energy go to this other person who really shouldn't be taking up the lion's share of her time and energy. (Well except for the fact that she is ill). I think there is even double resentment because not only do I feel that for myself I feel that for E'llee too. I feel like Cate is missing out on being a mom sometimes to E'llee because she is so wrapped up in Barb's stuff. And I feel like E'llee misses out on things from her mom because of Cate trying to balance her mom, work and family. It feels like we are third priority. We are always the thing that can be flexed. Which we really are? We do not usually have appointment times or deadlines.
So, back onto the food thing. Here is what I find myself doing. I look forward to going home and spending time with E'llee and cooking a nice meal for Cate and I. I get home and I am suddenly anxious. By the time I hit the kitchen after picking up E'llee and stripping off my bike clothes in the laundry room I am compulsively reaching for something to put in my mouth. I'm not sure if I feel really soothed by the food because I find that I keep reaching for it on instinct unless I go distract myself with something else. That is why going for a run immediately after I get home or taking E'llee to the park or swimming is a good thing for me. It helps break that cycle a little. Granted I encounter it again when I return home but I've gotten through the critical point.
Like I said at the beginning I don't know how to resolve it. However acknowledging that is what is going on for me is huge. Admitting that that is why I have this love/hate relationship with being home is a big deal.
I've been trying to create a little more grey in the world for myself this week. This is also something really difficult for me, I'm very good at black and white. I have been trying to embrace something Renee said about letting both things be true. An example is, I can be slender and safe. THis is something that has always been an or for me. I can either be slender or I can be safe. It doesn't have to be this way.
So I know I have this tension between wanting to home and not wanting to be home. What is the AND there. I can be support Barb in her illness (perhaps I should change this to treatment) and create the atmosphere I want in my home. I'm just not convinced of that yet....
Renee has a new subject she has been exploring (compulsions). She just posted a new podcast which I am grateful for because I did the homework of figuringout what the trigger is for me when I get home. In this episode she has you blow through that compulsive feeling by visualizing a more perfect you, embrace I think is her terminology. And you release this tension by pulling it back and then letting it go like a slingshot so that you are exploding with this more perfect self. And you just kind of keep doing this over and over again until you feel the release. I'm having a hard time seeing that more perfect me in that situation. I get so bogged down in the resentment it's hard to visualize something positive coming from that. But I'll work on it. That is my goal for this week. I know that if I can master this compulsion I will be able to easily lose weight and get to my naturally slender self. I just have this thing in front of me right now that i'm not sure how to hurdle.
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