  | EXCERPT: Surprise! You caught me cleaning again! Okay, I know. No surprise. It was really time to give the bathrooms a thorough cleaning. Seriously! The showers needed a good scrubbing and the walls and baseboards needed a once-over in addition to the tub and toilets. You know I have that large picture of Paris behind the toilet in the guest bath. It had a layer of dust that was truly embarrassing! That told me that it had been far too long since I gave them a thorough cleaning. Well, that and after our last conversation I really needed to feel like I had some control of my life. It is so much easier to process my thoughts and feelings when I am working on something that requires no thought. I realize this is a paradox but it is how it works for me. I must confess that I stumbled down the paradox black hole one day and could not believe how much paradox exists in our lives. Like the Love Paradox where the more you try to keep someone close the more likely you are pushing them away. Or the Effort Paradox where the more effortless something appears, the more it results from dedicated effort. Of course there’s the Failure Paradox, where the height of success is based on the depth of failure. My personal favorite is the Choice Paradox, where the more choices you have, the less satisfied you are with your final choice. But don’t take my word for it, check it out! It is wild how many paradoxes have been identified. Probably the most famous comes from Joseph Heller’s book titled, Catch-22 which is one of our most common phrases to describe an impossible illogical circumstance, like needing experience for a job you can’t get without experience. Anyway, I have given a lot of thought to what we talked about last time and I have decided that it is time to tell the truth. No, I haven’t lied. I just never imagined that I could tell anyone the sordid details of what happened. I realize that in human history and especially in our current social context, it might not even raise an eyebrow for some, but for me it was devastating. And that is what really matters, right? What it meant for me. Additionally, it was more than the act, it was the way it happened. That and the mind-numbing fear of it being revealed throughout the community. What would people think? How would they look at me after learning about it? Would they pity me or question why I would stay in such an abusive relationship? I certainly don’t want anyone’s pity. I have also learned that it is difficult to understand why people do what they do when you have no history or context to relate to. All of this makes me think of Cady. I know I have told you about Cady. She is a one-woman social network. She must get on the phone the moment she wakes up and stay on the phone until her head hits the pillow. If there is something that you want everyone to know, just tell Cady. The next day you will hear it from everyone else. I have no idea how she is so connected to everyone in our community but if you want to catch up on all the gossip, just give Cady a call. She will tell you all about it in great detail. Of course she will repeat many of her favorite story’s ad nauseum but if you hang in there you will learn all the latest. Her mind must be organized like a vast family tree with connections that you would never conceive of. Anyway, I used to think that I was not enough for Douglas. Or for our kids for that matter. I now know I never was in their minds. Then again it is something I have struggled with as long as I can remember. All through school I worked so hard to be the best in class academically but there were always one or two students who just managed to be the best so effortlessly. While I studied for hours to prepare for tests, they would glance at the material and still score a 100 while I struggled for my 90. While I worked for weeks on organizing and then writing and rewriting my assignment, they would write it the night before and again score a perfect 100 while I stared, shaking my head, at my 92. It never seemed to matter which subject it was – the results were always the same. |
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