You know how when you've been sick for 2 straight weeks and you start dragging your ass around to do the minimum, then there's the blah, no energy, grey zone? Well, that's the exciting place I am now.
Plus feeling lots of empty places, because for a variety of reasons it is now more emotionally obvious to me that my marriage is over and I need to now go officially claim all the spaces that B used to inhabit in my soul and heart. It's like going into abandoned rooms where someone (he) lived and it kind of sucks.
This pain also resurrects the ghosts of much more ancient pain, the rooms of which seem not only abandoned but haunted.
Luckily, I have a couple good friends who can help carry me through this, because it just kinda sucks.
To give an example: my father was out of my life from about 2 1/2 onward and for years I convinced myself this didn't matter and I don't have conscious memories, still, of missing him - though I know from my mother I did, cried even when he wouldn't see me when I asked. But I kept my last name (his family name - which is of course a lie as you can see from earlier posts, but no matter...). I never let it go, not for any step-fathers and not for any husbands, which means I've stayed crazy loyal to this man I barely knew and simply had no ability to be there for me in any way, never mind as a father. As my friend Julie says: that's your childhood passion. And she's right.
This is why ending of relationships, even more so marriages, is so hard - it kicks up all the ancient pain.
The possible truly plus side of this is: if I can feel the pain and know in my deepest self that I did not cause that pain and did not deserve it, I can heal. Sounds easy. Isn't. I drag this over-arching sense of responsibility into my relationships and that doesn't work.
I was teaching in my class today about healthy versus damaged self-concept, distorted feedback, obsolete information and how that leads to low and high self-esteem. It's good stuff to teach but also difficult, because none of this stuff for me is a theory - it's deeply lived experience. I think given the unusual level of attention in the class that it is for many of the students, too.
While I know I have a lot to look at in my own behavior, I also know that I tend to look too closely at that, and take on responsibility for things that are not mine. Why? It's easier than surrendering that control.
I'm fairly certain I've written about some of this stuff before in the blog, but it's what's happening again on yet another level.
No way out but through. I just wish there was some magic door, short cut type thing.
I hope my next post will be more positive, and as there is a celebration upcoming, that is possible.
I'm ashamed of all this pain, but hoping 'outing it' will lessen that shame at least a little bit.
Welcome to my blog..
"We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." Maurice Merleau-Ponty
I am now transitioning into being married again with a new surname (Barclay-Morton). John is transitioning from Canada to NYC and as of June 2014 has a green card. So transition continues, but now from sad to happy, from loss to love...from a sense of alienation to a sense of being at home in the world.
As of September 2013 I started teaching writing as an adjunct professor at Fordham University, which I have discovered I love with an almost irrational passion. While was blessed for the opportunity, after four years of being an adjunct, the lack of pay combined with heavy work load stopped working, so have transferred this teaching passion to private workshops in NYC and working with writers one on one, which I adore. I will die a happy person if I never have to grade an assignment ever again. As of 2018, I also started leading writing retreats to my beloved Orkney Islands. If you ever want two weeks that will restore your soul and give you time and space to write, get in touch. I am leading two retreats this year in July and September.
I worked full time on the book thanks to a successful crowd-funding campaign in May 2014 and completed it at two residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Wisdom House in summer 2015. I have done some revisions and am shopping it around to agents and publishers now, along with a new book recently completed.
I now work full-time as a freelance writer, writing workshop leader, coach, editor and writing retreat leader. Contact me if you are interested in any of these services.
Not sure when transition ends, if it ever does. As the saying goes, the only difference between a sad ending and a happy ending is where you stop rolling the film.
For professional information, publications, etc., go to my linked in profile and website for Barclay Morton Editorial & Design. My Twitter account is @wilhelminapitfa. You can find me on Facebook under my full name Julia Lee Barclay-Morton. More about my grandmothers' book: The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani
In 2017, I launched a website Our Grandmothers, Our Selves, which has stories about many people's grandmothers. Please check it out. You can also contact me through that site.
In May, I directed my newest play, On the edge of/a cure, and have finally updated my publications list, which now includes an award-winning chapbook of my short-story White shoe lady, which you can find on the sidebar. I also have become a certified yoga instructor in the Kripalu lineage. What a year!
And FINALLY, I have created a website, which I hope you will visit, The Unadapted Ones. I will keep this blog site up, since it is a record of over 8 years of my life, but will eventually be blogging more at the website, so if you want to know what I am up to with my writing, teaching, retreats and so on, the site is the place to check (and to subscribe for updates). After eight years I realized, no, I'm never turning into One Thing. So The Unadapted Ones embraces the multiplicity that comprises whomever I am, which seems to always be shifting. That may in fact be reality for everyone, but will speak for myself here. So, do visit there and thanks for coming here, too. Glad to meet you on the journey...
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