Love, or Something Like It*

Determined to be Queen shares...

Karen Carpenter’s lyrics poked at yet another of my sore spots on Monday.

During the bridge, Carpenter says that when she gets these blues—the ones when she wants to quit because “nothing ever seems to fit”—she runs to “find the one who loves” her. But more than that, she suggests that she needs someone else to make her feel better. She can’t seem to console herself. This is a classic sign of the relationship addict. I, too, have found that the chemicals of love can be just as effective as anything in food, alcohol, or drugs. The highs and lows, the mood swings, the delusions of either grandeur or insignificance are one and the same.

Hello, my name is Nicole Williams, and I am a love-aholic.

It hasn’t been very long at all since I tried to control my love interest or felt personally out of control where my emotions are concerned. But the first step is in realizing that I have a problem, and that I am NOT in control. In addition, what I’m learning this year is that I’m just not the victim I think I am.

I’ve been in relationships that might be termed “toxic,” on some level at least, for the past 20 years. I learned early on that “like attracts like,” but it took one failed marriage to really see what that means. It’s like the three finger rule—on crack! (see my blog on Feb. 8th for an explanation of the three finger rule!)

It took a couple years, after the divorce, to realize that I shared in 50% of the responsibility of that relationship. It was easier to point fingers at the behaviors of my partner because they were obviously “bad” ones. Only later did I realize that my bad behavior was just in stealth mode. Not because I intended to hide anything, but because that was the nature of my part of the problem. I had been involved with persons who had extroverted their anger, making it look like I introverted mine.

But I didn’t know this until the Universe served me up another mirroring soul, one more like me. I looked like the feeling extrovert in comparison this time. That’s when the light dawned and I saw myself in a whole new way. I had to take responsibility for my role in the relationship, and I worked on that for a good long time.

Deep below the surface of all of these relationship lessons I was learning, though, there was another current to be reckoned with. What about ME? All the years that most of us spend “finding” ourselves were spent finding group answers. With very few answers about who I was as an individual. Wife and mother were always at the top of the daily to-do list, but that put me below dirty dishes and folding laundry. Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time I got that far, so I kept postponing those me-centered pursuits.

Motherhood tends to have this effect, or so I’ve heard! And it’s true that wives often feel that they compromise more often than the husbands. So what’s “wrong” with that? Nothing at all. And that’s exactly what I held onto for all these years that I’ve been a wife and a mother. But something clicked along the way and I saw that I have, oftener than not, used my dedication to avoid probing my own depths.

In other words, whenever it starts to look like I might have to make my own way and express myself as an individual, I slink back into the comfort zone of my relationships…especially partner love. For me, loving a man is the perfect thrill ride for my insecurity, self-doubt, and fear of failure to set in motion, hoping to keep the focus on things outside the self. Do you love me? Do you need me? Do you want me? Does your world revolve around me?

Ok, right now, this seems pretty serious. But hey, don’t we all do this at one time or another? I bet we all do! But there’s a subtle difference between any substance use and abuse. Use and ab-use. Engagement v. Compulsion. Even good things like exercise and a career and, yes, love relationships can be ab-used. It’s the spirit behind the emphasis.

For me, I just happened to notice that I’ve spent a lot of time using the slings and arrows of insecurity and blame and focusing on the motes in my partners’ eyes to avoid myself. Keeping the instability going and feeling like a victim has created a world of fear that I’ve lived in because it gave me something to fight with or flee from. It’s like a constant state of war. Of death and destruction. Living like that isn’t really living at all.

So now it’s time to create and connect. To take responsibility for myself. To live from the inside out. To be free and fully alive.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.


© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

*I just found out today that this is the title of a Kenny Rogers song. I think the spirit of the refrain fits my idea about addiction to love: “Something's got a hold on me/It's cheap but it ain' free/Love or somethin’ like it's got a hold on me.”

Something About Rainy Mondays

Determined to be Queen shares...

Any time since the late Seventies that there has been rain on a Monday, Karen Carpenter’s refrain plays in my mind. So today, listening to the thunderous downpour outside, I heard that chorus again and decided to look up the full lyrics to “Rainy Days and Mondays.” Lo and behold, I found out that Karen must have felt like I do right now when she wrote it.

The first verse struck me because just this morning I had been “talkin’ to myself and feeling old.” I celebrated my 37th birthday a little over a week ago and for years now I have been using those numbers to beat myself up. Something like, “You are 30-something years old and you should have this all figured out by now; you should be sitting back and riding the waves of success by now, not floundering around in the surf, trying to get up on the boat!!!”

So what really upsets me about Carpenter’s lyric is knowing that she was younger when she died than I am right now.* She was a famous singer with at least sixteen number one hit songs before she was thirty! And she still felt like she’d “like to quit” and that “nothing ever seems to fit.” That same self-doubt even resulted in her own untimely death.

We see it all the time, right? People who, in our eyes anyway, seem fantastically successful, with every reason to be happy, and who self-destruct. Look at Anna Nicole Smith. Ok, so we may not all want to look up to her as a role model for success, but she’s a good example of how fame and fortune just aren’t enough.

But we know that, you must be thinking!

What is enough?

That was the topic of my rainy Monday argument with myself. I became flustered with the nagging coming from the school marm specter in my mind’s eye. She tapped her wristwatch and said, “It’s after ten a.m. and you are still fooling around on the internet. What are you going to do today? Tomorrow? With the rest of your life?” I physically waved her out of my sight and spoke aloud to the cat, the dog, the walls, the mess in the living room, and said, “I don’t have to do anything if I don’t want to! Nothing. Nothing more than what I am already doing. I don’t HAVE to be productive to be worthwhile! It’s my time to explore!”

And that’s the part that is so difficult for me. The process. The journey. The taste testing of all that life has to offer until the thing I want most becomes clear to me. I have to keep telling that other part of me to RELAX! Just because I quit my job doesn’t mean I will miraculously and instantaneously know what to do next. Some people might, but how could I? I’ve been avoiding myself for years. That part of myself that wanted things and was always told “NO!” is not going to come running right out, especially if the school marm is still hanging around telling her to “hurry along now; it’s about time you got going.”

Who wants that?

Sometimes, quitting can be a beginning. It took me a year to decide that quitting my job was better than keeping it for the sake of appearing productive. I was finally able to see what I didn’t want and convince myself that the better way to find what I did want was to give myself the time to find it. The time to play and to explore. It’s been a tough transition so far because I’ve been judging myself harshly about it. Almost every day I’ve said, “Maybe I should just go find another job.”

It’s difficult to believe that my job is to take care of myself first. It’s so much easier to take care of other people and blame them for my lack of time to discover what I want for myself. And it’s so difficult to believe that doing the thing that doesn’t reward with a paycheck is the best thing. But I guess I need to believe in the spiritual paycheck more than the monetary one. The bottom line is that it’s difficult for the woman who likes (ok, loves) control, to feel so out of control. I’m uncomfortable, but that’s a sure sign that growth is possible, right?

Hopefully, these rainy Mondays that “get me down” now, will soon turn into the sunny, blossoming days of the spring of my soul.


© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

*Karen Carpenter died the day after my 13th birthday; she was almost 33 years old.