More Anger: Bread Tags

Bread tags. You know those little plastic squares with a space and a circle in the middle? They're wrapped around the end of a loaf of bread, and are so unimportant that they don't even deserve a name. So, I'll just call them bread tags. My latest burst of anger was prompted by those bread tags.
You see, my hasband has always saved them. Why? Because he's neurotic...not about everything...just about bread tags. And he doesn't just toss them in a drawer. No, he actually takes the time to clip them to our wire, hanging basket. The basket is for fruit, for veggies...for fresh and pretty things. It's not for freakin' bread clips! He's sure that he'll use them whenever a plastic bag needs to be sealed. This is the man who will reuse anything, no matter how germ infested.

I'm Mad as Hell and... So, here I am a month out from our separation. I've had a shitty day (see previous post) and my eye catches on those f$#%ing bread tags. I started to rip them down. At first it was just a domestic chore: cleaning up. But then I whispered, "F#ck you!" With each tag, my "F-you" got more emphatic, and louder. With the last "F-you" I was screaming so loud, I looked at my open kitchen window with dread. A handful of bread tags, I considered for a milli-second, throwing them to the floor in victory. Then I realized I would have to clean them up. So instead I opened the door under the sink and tossed them into the garbage. In one swoop I grabbed the garbage bag, tied it in a knot at the top, ran through the house, down the steps, and with force, threw it in the garbage can. I felt like Rocky at the top of the steps...with a garbage bag held over my head. I looked around. A man was walking his dog past me. He didn't see me...or at least he pretended not to. Smart man!

Divorce: The Anger Stage

When I told my daughter the true story of her father's affair, she asked me if I was angry. I said, "Not really. It's been coming for a long time." I don't remember this conversation, which I'm chalking up to "Divorce Complicated Amnesia." But my daughter does. In fact, she told me this last night when I told her I seem to be getting angry about all this.
You see, I'd spent the day stomping around the house at everything that went wrong, from the rake breaking off in my hand, to the table I was trying to move downstairs, that got wedged between the railing and the wall. My thinking went something like this;

The Rake Incident: I was hot and sweaty from working in the yard, HIS yard. But I had one last thing to do - rake the dry spots in the grass so I could plant seed later. I got the rake out and with one brush across the barren island, the rake broke off the handle. "Shit!" I said, "Shit, Shit, Shit!" Anger welled up in me like a volcano that's been dormant for way too many years. And here's what I thought; If he'd redone the automatic sprinklers, like I said a million times, I wouldn't be out here sweating my ass off! I'd even gone to the extent of putting little clear plastic cups on the dry spots overnight and then showed him the next morning, after the sprinklers had run their cycles. Not a drop of water made it to those cups. Still, he argued with me - maybe the wind had blown, maybe the water from the rest of the grass runs to the dry spots. Maybe, maybe, maybe. So, I set a sprinkler on the grass and turned it on. When I came back to turn the water off, it was already off. So, I turned it back on. When I returned 20 minutes later, it was turned off again. You can see where this is going. Now he's not here, and I'm sweaty and miserable, and it's his fault - Clearly!

And then there's the table stuck two feet off the ground story...but you probably get the idea from the rake story.

Clearly, I'm not in the denial stage anymore. I don't like anger. But it's here. Hopefully it won't decorate, paint, and put shelves up for chachkies that only mean something for a short time. Eh...

Weighty Issue

OK, so maybe that should say, "Weight Issue." That's the theme of my life. It went something like this. I was married at 19-years old. I was 121 pounds and quite sure I was obese. (What a fool!) I'd already spent years (sad, huh?), dieting. My top weight in high school was 155lbs...a quite reasonable weight at 5 ft 7. Of course hindsight has perfect vision!

Our 20th anniversary (ten years ago) should have been a wake up call. I thought it would be romantic to read the love letters I wrote to the hasband just prior to our marriage in 1983. He was in the service and I was still living with my parents in a tiny town in the Pacific Northwest. So, I sat on the bedroom floor with a box of "love" letters. My intention was to read a few and choose a couple to read to him on our trip to Mexico. But there was one problem. Every single letter had a diatribe about how much weight I promised to lose. "I've lost three pounds since I started fasting." "You'd be so proud of me...I only ate an orange today." Looking back at those letters made me realize one thing; I was obsessed with my weight. But the other thing I remember quite clearly, is that he never once said I was silly for wanting to lose weight. He never once discouraged me from the crazy yo-yo dieting that ruled my life.

Is it any surprise that my therapist helped me realize that I've been unconsciously putting weight on and keeping it on, to keep my hasband away from me? Yeah, not all that hard to figure out! Funny, huh? I hardly know what or how to think of that. I mean, when threatened by another woman, wouldn't you think "one" would do the opposite? Maybe get all dolled up, lose weight, have a boob job? Something like that! But no, I couldn't possibly do anything that other women do. Instead, I put layer upon layer between me and my hasband. Why did I do that? Was it really to distance myself, or was it a challenge, as in "if you love me, prove it by loving the fat version of me"?

Oh jeez...this is all so complicated. Somebody help me!