A Stepmother’s Angst Wednesday, Jul 2 2008

Being a stepmother is NOT easy.  Knowing your husband will talk to his ex-wife for the rest of her life or his life or yours (whichever ends first) is NOT easy.  Knowing that I have to deal with her is NOT easy.  Dealing with my stepson and the fact he is half her is NOT easy.  Dealing with him living with us for the summer after just having my own child is REALLY NOT easy.  Having to balance being a new mom and all of the emotions and sometimes postpartem depression that brings, loving a little being so much that I feel like I am going to burst, being protective of said little being, having a stepson come to live with us for the summer after only 8 weeks with my baby, returning to the workplace to a job I hate, attending to my stepson and helping him and the rest of the family (down to the dog) navigate this new situation, and trying to even out the guilt my husband feels, etc…is the most difficult task I have ever had.

Being so in tune with everyone around me and being able to not only read their emotions and thoughts, but able to see the big picture, context and how they affect everything in their surroundings drives me fucking insane.  (I swear for pure emphasis.)  My stepson is just like his mom in the sense he is chalking up to be a highly sensitive person like her.  And he is confused.  For the love of God no one has explained to him why he is in North Carolina with his mom and his dad is in FL with me.  Then throw in the fact he has a new “baby brother” on top of everything that is his brother but is not from his mommy but they share the same daddy and you have one confused little 4-year old.  I feel his confusion every single day.  And it pains me.  As a result, he has turned into a very needy and whiny child.  He was like this prior to his parents divorce, or at least trending that way, but this has brought it out more.  Despite my empathy and wishing I could help more, I also honestly find myself irritated at his presence.  Irritated at his sensitivities and his lack of being able to do for himself like other children his age.  i get angry that his neediness is pulling his daddy’s attention away from our little baby who also needs his dad.  If I hadn’t had to go back to work, I could fulfill more in my baby boy, but I simply can’t.  Dealing with my job and inevitable corporate drama drains me.  I can’t come home every night to a husband who sits with his 1st son for an hour to console him leaving me with the baby AND dinner to make AND trying to keep the house up after a full day at work. I simply can’t do it.  I’m going to lose my mind.  And get angry.

After a lot of extra time spent on his 1st son tonight, my husband (DH for short) informs me that this type of night needs to happen more often because his son really needs him and it will be good for him etc…  When I try to ask questions or present more balanced scenarios for consideration such as doing things as a family he retorts that “we” are not family to his son…at least not me (implying that our son, his baby brother is).  My suspicion that he had some drawn out discussion with his ex was confirmed by his sudden outburst.  So I quit waiting for him to tell me he had talked to her and just asked.

We resolved the discussion after I was able to articulate why I was hurt and irritated, but it left me angry.  I’m still angry and have been unable to return any affection at the moment.  Despite apologies and a thank you from him to me for explaining why his “presentation” had offended and a promise to work on it, I’m still pissed beyond belief.  i haven’t exactly been able to come up with a why other than feeling offended.

The why is this… Stepparents of ANY kind know they are not instantly family to their stepkids.  And to be honest, my stepson is not family to me yet.  (This aspect seems to always be missing from stepparenting advice givers and the natural parents of the child that has been “stepped”)  He is still a rather foreign person to me that is living in my space, my home, my time, my resources and most of all, my relationship building with my baby.  Yet despite all of this, I love him and I love his father and I am 100% committed to working toward being a family with him.  And then to have the whole he is having a hard time with this and he needs more of his dad’s time and YOU are not his family thrown in my face to tonight…well, it has sent me over some sort of invisible edge.  Part of me wants to remind my husband right now at 11:45 at night that if I’m not family, then I should not be expected to continue to share my bedroom (yes, he’s sleeping in our room), my son (genetics do not entitle you to be family), my time (which right now consists of fulfilling most demands of this child), my money, or any other part of me or my resources with his son.  After all, I’m not family.  THEN WHAT THE HELL AM I?  Some sort of hostess with the mostest? Some sort of Betty Crocker, “here let me do that” and “of course I’ll make you your peanut butter and jelly sandwich even though I’m fixing chicken for everyone else” robot?

I digress.  I’m simply angrily blithering at this point.  More and more anger keeps building up thinking about this and the other thoughts this thought is leading to at the moment.  All of a sudden I’m really tired.  I hate the ex.  I detest her very existence in my life.  No, I had no idea what I was signing myself up for even though I married someone with a child.  I’m feeling hateful towards my husband right now (yes, I still love him though).  But all I want to do right now is go get my sleeping baby out of his crib, drive over to my parents house and curl up with just him in a bed and shut out everyone else.  Boiling it down even further though, all I really want to do is let myself cry.  Despite promising myself that I would let myself go emotionally when necessary, I still find myself tightly bound, controlled and refusing to give in to the tears that need to be shed.  *sigh* I must sleep now.

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Permission to Not Care Monday, Jun 9 2008

I am currently working on giving myself permission to not care. That sounds like a simple task, especially when it is towards two people that have had a seriously negative impact on my life. For an empath though, it is a serious challenge.

The first person I am seeking to give myself permission to cease caring is towards my ex-husband.  I do not wish him ill-will.  In fact, I feel quite the opposite.  I hope he finds the kind of happiness that I’ve found.  However, I do not want to hear from him unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary.  He finally found out I was re-married on a fluke and decided to text me and send me an email.  First off, I did not get the text and, from his subsequent email, is probably a good thing since he apologized for it and then went on to how “shocked” he was but was happy for me and would continue to pray for me.  In my previous life, I would have labored for hours over a response to this and explained and apologize for him being caught off guard, etc…  But not now.  I have given myself permission to cease caring about his feelings.  I am no longer his wife; he is no longer my husband.  I do not owe him anything and he does not ow me anything.  When two people divorce, unless there is something binding like a child, you are, for all intents and purposes, through with each other.  For my current marriages sake and for my own sanity, despite the fact I spent a decade with this person, I have to allow myself to not care about his life nor his family nor any part of our past life together.  And that’s hard!  I cared about some of his family.  I hope they are alright.  I hope they are happy.  But I can’t take up space in my life caring about them.  And I can’t continue to worry or care about what my ex-husband thinks about me, my choices or my current life.  Those need to be his feelings to manage now.

And the second person I need to give myself permission to not care is towards my husband’s ex-wife.  I think because of the circumstances of how my husband and I got together, I have a lot of guilt.  I have sought approval from her that I am never going to get.  I have put myself out there only to be hurt…and somewhat rightfully so.  She doesn’t owe me anything and I have no right to expect that she is going to respect me in any way.  And that’s ok.  I shouldn’t need that or even want that.  But because I am forever tied to her via my stepson, I’ve tried, in vein, to understand this other woman that is in my life.  But I really need to release myself from caring about her above and beyond the care I would give to any passerby in my life.  It is an exercise in futility and probably perceived as an invasion, if not inappropriate and crass, from her end.

Ah the tangled web we weave…  I just need to focus my emotional energy where it needs to go and that is towards my husband, my baby and then my stepson and other family and friends.  Those are the people that need my best.

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Divorce is a curious thing Sunday, May 18 2008

My husband and I were discussing furniture accumulated during one marriage that is retained by one of the parties during the divorce and used later on possibly in a 2nd marriage. I brought a few things into my new marriage: a dining room set, porch furniture, art and knick-knacks as well as most of the kitchen gadgetry. He had his bed, bedroom furniture, family room furniture and then the point of contention…the baby furniture.

When I found out I was pregnant, after my panic attack, I quickly went into decorating mode. My husband had a nursery suite from his first son that was still in his possession. At the time of the divorce, his ex-wife opted not to take the furniture for their son due to lack of space. Before assuming its use, he checked with her again if she wanted it. She refused it. I did not want to use it, but relented for several reasons: 1) His ex-wife was not taking it for their son, 2) My husband attached great sentimental value to the furniture and wanted his other kids to use it since it was a gift from his parents, 3) He chose it, not his ex-wife, 4) We REALLY couldn’t afford to get new furniture. Even after my parents offered to get new furniture so I wouldn’t have to “deal with” the other furniture, I still agreed to use it because of reason #2 listed above. And I did like it. The wood was nice and neutral and could go with anything really. Given that though, I set about making everything else as different as possible though we were having a boy to erase some of the outpouring of emotions that I felt were permanently attached to the furniture.

Now that our son has been born, I’m realizing I’m still having difficulty with the furniture. I know enough about his ex-wife, though I’ve never met her in person, to know that she’s probably HATING the fact I’m using the furniture. Somehow, a long time ago, I swear some link was opened between our brains because I will get her thoughts and emotions at times out of nowhere. I know this is going on because I’ll start obsessing over something and then I’ll realize its because she’s angry about it and somehow transmitting it to me. It drives me nuts. (Note: She is a highly sensitive person that has some unusual abilities as well.)

Anyway, I’m going off on what this post was originally about when I started writing. We, as humans, associate memories with objects we come in contact with over a period of time. When two people divorce, all of the objects in their possession at the time of the divorce have memories embedded into each of them. These memories fade over time, but energy does linger.

Being especially sensitive to energy in the first place, I am driven crazy by the lingering energy. Case in point, I am not driven crazy by the bed I now occupy because the ex-wife had not used that as her bed for quite some time. However, the bedroom that is now the nursery drove me insane the first year after she was gone because that’s where she had slept (and fumed no doubt) during their separation and divorce (she lived there for almost a year separated). It took coats of paint, remodeling, and cleansing the room of negative energy to get out her residual energy. At one point, before I realized it was *her* lingering there, I thought there was a spirit lurking…no joke. I actually couldn’t go into that room for months after she left because of it. I’ll pick up other bits and pieces of her from other things around the house. I still avoid sitting in a section of our large sectional sofa because if I try to sit there, I get really negative. Come to find out, that bit of the sofa is where she always sat with her laptop spewing angry writing.

Of course my husband doesn’t get any of this… Well, he does in concept but not for himself. If he likes furniture, he likes the furniture. It has nothing to do with whether it came from my previous marriage or not. He doesn’t get other’s energy from objects.

In thinking about the things that went with my ex-husband, I’m bothered by a few of the things he has and if it would be used with a future girlfriend/wife. I am not bothered because I am jealous that she would be using it as his wife. Really. I hope my ex meets someone WONDERFUL that loves him in a way I never could and that he loves in a way he could never give to me. But things that my ex and I picked out together that was supposed to be part of our life together, like our bedroom dresser that he has, yes, I don’t want someone else using it. Most things though, like the sofa, etc…I could care less. If my husband’s ex-wife is indeed angry about me using the baby furniture, I sort of understand. I have no actual confirmation she is hating it, just a feeling. Logic would dictate that she is ok with it given that she did not take the furniture back when offered several times. However, my intuition is overruling logic. Anyway…

This post reads like a rambling mess. I was trying to get across two points: 1) Divorce divides supposedly inanimate objects between two people and those objects have emotional associations attached and 2) I pick up on residual memories at times and that is why I have a difficult time with some of the remaining things in my husband’s possession and things that are in my exes possession that I know will be used someday by someone else. So there. A one paragraph summary of the mess that took me a half hour to write.

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Reading Between the Lines Sunday, May 18 2008

Back on the empathy and empath topic… One area I have a special gift is in the area of extracting a person’s emotional state when they write, or reading between the lines of what isn’t necessarily written, but is thought by the person at the time of writing.  For instance, someone might write something that is obviously angry.  most people reading the message would read anger and take all of the statements made at face value.  I will read angry, but each individual statement, choice of word, arrangement of the paragraph, arrangement of a sentence, etc… will have individual feelings. I will also read lies in the middle of truth. In addition to anger, I can usually tell all of the undercurrent emotions.

I used to wonder why I would get upset at emails written at work.  A very simple email could bring about a myriad of emotions that come out of virtually nowhere.  Some emails seem like they were yelling at me.  Some emails were haughty; some emails insecure.  Blogs even can speak volumes to me about the person writing them, especially if I have a small profile already on file in my head for that person. I don’t know if I have some sort of empathy towards words or the person behind the words rather.

I was telling my husband tonight another bizarre thing that I do and that’s associate a lot of things such as people, words, writing, etc… with colors.  This isn’t the same thing as reading auras.  I’m not seeing a “glow” about people.  Rather, I give colors personalities and sometimes people strike me as a particular color.  Or a word will hit me as pink or avacado green or icy blue.  I told him I saw him as orange.  Not just any orange, but a nice spicy orange.

I don’t know.  The more I talk to people, the more bizarre I think I am.  I like to go deeper than most.  I am affected more than most.  I take things to heart more than most.

I found this awhile back when trying to make sense of my sensitivities. While I am not physically wounded by intense environmental stimuli, everything else is pretty accurate.

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.
To him…
a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create – - – so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”

-Pearl Buck-

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Empath, empathy, and going crazy… Saturday, May 10 2008

I think I will focus on empathy right now.  I had an IM conversation with my birth-mom(BM) yesterday. Without going into too many details concerning our relationship and how it got started, I’ll preface all of this with a “we haven’t met in person but occasionally talk on the phone and IM quite frequently” statement.

I am a highly sensitive person in many areas, but mostly have gifts in terms of extreme empathy and profiling people.  The conversation yesterday centered around my gifts vs. my BM’s gifts as well as if any have extended into my younger half-sisters.  Turns out, my BM and I have many of the same abilities.  She has, however, also tapped into the art of healing via Reiki.  Anyway, we both physically feel what others are feeling and can also tap into other’s minds if we are in close proximity, they are dwelling, or sometimes remotely if the other person has some of the same mental gifts.

It wasn’t until I started working through my eating disorder two years ago and going through all of the aspects of my life that led to abusing myself for so many years, that I discovered one of my blessings and curses was my pre-occupation with everyone else’s feelings and emotional states.  I had no idea I was taking on other’s feelings and often could not distinguish their feelings from mine.  For example, if a person around me was depressed, I would start feeling depressed with no catalyst in my own life.  I was wearing other’s emotions.

Now that I know more about what goes on within me, I can now better separate what’s mine and what is someone else’s.  The tricky part then comes with dealing.  I still have not been able to truly separate myself from feeling other’s pain, joy, hurt, depression, anxiety, etc…  I know it is not stemming from within me, but I can’t quite shield myself from experiencing others.

My BM directed me to an empathy quotient test.  I scored a 70 out of a possible 80.  70 is extremely high.  Average score for a woman is 47.  No wonder being around others can sometimes drive me crazy.  The next step up from experiencing feelings is sometimes receiving thoughts behind those feelings.  If someone is dwelling on a particular subject and there are strong emotions behind it, I will pick up on the thought.  It isn’t exactly mind-reading, but close.  It is like a window shade that gets drawn back briefly so an outsider gets a glimpse of a room inside a house.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure how to cope with this at times.  Life events, poor decisions, causing others pain, feeling other’s pain and depression, etc… drives me nuts.  At times I feel blessed to feel so much and have the ability to help and share in another’s life.  Other times it pulls me back into a place that I’ve worked my way out of for two-years .

Dear readers, if anyone has anything thoughts, please feel free to post.

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