Movin' On Up

Moving from one place to another often puts you in mind of other moves. Moving experiences cluster like bananas in my mind and I smell them to see which is the ripest..

It is a move I made, many years ago, while I was married. We had just returned to Los Angeles after living through the seasons in Paris and needed a place to live quickly, as school was about to start and our children needed an address. Since sailing was the prime leisure activity of our family, we took an apartment at Marina Del Rey, as a temporary measure. The boat was birthed there and the location allowed us to leave home and be in the Channel within minutes.

The marriage was clearly a raggedy, ripped, sail, that was on the verge of collapsing down the institutional pole to the single deck below. I couldn't, however, find enough wind to leave. When I moved to Paris for the first four months I couldn't stop oohing and ahhing at living in that velvety city of beauty. Then it became just another place you live and I didn't notice the details any longer. How soon my eyes lost their freshness as I watched my marriage fray and loose its nap.

My palate however, was wide-awake and I looked forward to each and every meal. From the milky, strong, coffee with crusty bread in the morning, to the four course lunches and dinners I enjoyed daily, to the tune of 20 extra pounds. It was as if I discovered food in Paris. Before that I ate when I was hungry, but it was like putting gas in the car, something you needed to do. In Paris I looked forward with anticipation and discussed at length the fare of the day. Eating foods that tasted incredibly delicious - what a concept - Viva la France.

In Paris, my marriage moved to a stage of very noisy tearing, as it's seams strained and pulled to expose the oozy hurts, beneath. Friends feared one of us would do the other bodily harm. This never crossed my mind, although I can't speak for my former spouse, but I can understand that the vibes we emitted gave the impression of impending violence. My thoughts about my husband at that time were what Anne Lamott would describe as so awful it "would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish." It would be two years, after our return from Paris, before our marriage would totally end. And, I never did conjure the courage to leave - he did.

It's odd how you can be streaming along next to a person in comparative harmony and then your flows innocently begin to meander off to other areas and before you know it, you are no longer flowing, side by side, in fact you're flowing from opposite directions. When you meet head-on it's with such a terrific force, that angry white plumes spray high into the sky. The apartment in Marina Del Rey was small. The things from our former house, the one we'd owned before moving to Paris, did not fit. Feeling needy I determined to have all my things around me. I crammed and stacked our belongings into the space. This was not a good idea, it only added to my feelings of being trapped. I couldn't adjust to being moved into this doll apartment. After all, I didn't have anything to do with this move - it was all his doing - or so I thought at the time.

My Paris poundage fell away and I lost interest in food. I was learning major lessons about giving away my power. Shortly after we moved I went to the hair salon for a haircut to cheer myself up. As instructed the hair-dresser removed about two inches of my hair. It looked fine, but when I gazed in the mirror I saw a shorn Samson, done in by a duplicitous Delilah. The image in the mirror collapsed me into a sadness deep enough to keen. Instead, I endlessly wept. The crying continued for 24 hours, until my husband called in the doctors and drugs were prescribed. Six weeks after the break-up of my marriage I no longer needed the drug.

I don't mean to intimate that my former husband drove me to "mellow yellows." It was my own need of myself, which put me there. I kept forfeiting myself, for the image of a "good wife." It didn't work for me. In my feeling place I was not interested in being good nor wifely - I was faking it and it was depressing my spirit so flat that if I weren't adjusted by medication, teary grief, continually poured out of me. Not being able to look at my own pain I projected it on to my husband, casting him as Simon Legree" and me as "Poor Pauline." This scenario is not uncommon in relationships, which makes it no less of a sorry-ass drama. Not that my ex didn't have faults, primarily of the "other woman" variety - but he wasn't a tyrant. He just wasn't the sensitive, full-time, therapist, I needed at the time.

Eventually I would forgive my former husband, because as Lamott says, "not forgiving, is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die." Forgiving myself took a little longer. These events were precipitated by change. The coming to terms with the fact that I was not living who I was and that it was no one's fault - but my own. The resistance to the other person and where I was living and the role I was playing just bound it to me longer than was necessary.

Contrast and change serve us very well, but they can defeat, discourage and bury us if we cross the line into resistance. What we resist - persists. If you do not have the courage to change, after awhile, events will rearrange themselves to force change upon you. You will be vibrating the change to yourself, very slowly, through yearning. It's all a marvelous flight of energies that we probably take much too seriously. Sometimes, I think it's better to just accept that we are loved and all is well - then put your hand on the tiller, hang out your smile, and sail on.

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