The Quiet House

It was interesting, hearing my boyfriend talk about one night when  I fell asleep in his arms. He described it as holding someone in a total state of tenseness. And, little by little, limb by limb, my body slowly relaxed until he knew I'd finally drifted off into a peaceful sleep. 

I remember the feel of him, pressed up against me - warmth and safety wrapped around me with arms and legs in a calm, quiet strength. I could feel his breath on my neck, and as I listened to him breathe, I remember feeling my body slowly let go of whatever it was still clinging to.

Nearly a month later, I had lunch with a friend. We talked about what it was like to go to bed at night when we were kids. I don't even know how the subject came up but it did. We came from vastly different backgrounds yet had similar memories of feeling a heightened sense of insecurity. 

In my house, it wasn't that I feared for bodily harm or violence. It was the palpable silence, the quiet in my house that I felt deep in my core.

You see, I grew up around a lot of quiet. A lot of silence. A lot of tense moments, strung together so often that it felt normal. And I learned to live in the silence, even as much as I couldn't embrace it. 

By the time I have really any memories of my parents, they were already unhappy in their marriage. 

My dad was incredibly unhappy at his job. 

My mom was trying to earn her college degree and balance being a present parent.

My brother struggled with depression. 

I lived in a house that was simply unsettled. The kind of quiet that feels heavy. All the time. And the only time the quiet is ever broken is the random argument or disagreement between parents or kids or parents and their kids. 

Sure, we took vacations, we ate dinner together, we went fishing and sailing. But even in all of those memories, there's mostly just quiet. Not a calm quiet, a tense quiet. 

This is what I remember the most about growing up in my house. Don't rock the boat. Don't do the wrong thing. Do your best. Don't ask for more than you need. Be good. Don't share your feelings or your emotions. Just. Be. Happy.

I know it probably wasn't always that way. It is, however, what I remember the most about our day to day lives. And then it's no surprise that I learned to fall asleep with every muscle in my body as tight as it could be. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

As an adult, I found myself in a 22 year relationship (20 of those married) with a very kind man. I can't, and won't, disparage his character - there is nothing to disparage. It takes two people to make a relationship work, just as much as it takes two to make it not work. I own my part in the ending of things.

Both of us came into the union with our own baggage, our own hurts, and our own communication styles. And as I reflect back on those 22 years, now I see that I sought out a partner that gave me what felt familiar: silence. 

I was well accustomed to not asking for what I needed by the time we got married, and due to his experiences he was also used to the silence too. Years upon years piled on, the silent stretches grew longer and more frequent. 

The familiar, yet unsettling feeling of sitting in that silence and knowing in my core that something was wrong, someone wasn't happy, someone was upset or angry or didn't want to talk to me settled deep into my bones becoming its own kind of marrow, refusing to leave and becoming a part of me like my brown hair, freckles and gangly limbs.

I find myself now looking back on a lot of my formative years, trying to understand the woman I've become. Outwardly, I appear to be a strong, competent, confident woman. And I am. Yet, on the inside, I'm still a little girl. I still wish everyone could get along. That I could make everyone happy. 

And even still today, I fear, more than anything else, the soul-crushing, eerie, yet thunderous sound of silence.

It is probably one of the hardest parts for me about dating in my 50's, and probably, in dating me. I need more checking in and communication than a normal person should. 

I've been blessed with an overthinking brain and an incredibly overactive imagination. Coupled with everything else I've disclosed, it's a recipe for extreme anxiety. I tend to over-analyze every conversation, every date, every text when the silence closes in around me. 

And, when I don't hear from my boyfriend for a day or two (which is not unusual with his incredibly busy and demanding grind of a work schedule) every self doubt I have, every silence filled moment, every deeply hidden yet waiting in the wings belief that I have that I'm unlovable floods my brain. 

I worry that maybe I said the wrong thing and he's upset. I think maybe my neediness is too much. I start to believe that he's going to walk away.

Because that is what 50 years of living in the silence has taught me: silence means something is wrong. Even much as the silence feels familiar, I'm no longer willing or able to live in it. 

As I slowly reveal some of the more jagged edges of issues, my boyfriend has taken it all in stride. He continues to show up, with empathy and grace. 

From the first time we met when I played one of my "crazy" cards, as I call them, he showed up. 

As I drove away from our first date, a long walk on the greenbelt beside the river, the smell of fresh rain and cottonwoods surrounding us, I heard that little girl inside of me whisper quietly and cutting through my fearful, overthinking silence "he was the calm in your storm today." 

I don't have a crystal ball to know what my future holds, with my relationship or my job or anything else for that matter. But what I do know is that I am learning more about myself through all of this. 

And I am (slowly) learning how to sit in the stormy silence just as much as I am slowly learning to share what I need with someone I trust to meet me halfway.

I hope someday I can start to trust the silence too, to quiet my soul and just breathe in the gratitude I feel for a life well-lived and for the incredible circle of people that surround me every day. 

But for now, I'm going to embrace progress, not perfection (something else my boyfriend once remarked) and appreciate that I will, always and forever be, a work in progress.

And I will learn to sit in the silence and trust that it doesn't always mean something is wrong.

Maude vs the bullies from sixth grade

 Dear 12-year-old self,

I know that you’ve been struggling with something for a long time. And you carry this thing well into your adulthood. In fact, this is 50-year-old you writing a long overdue love letter to yourself when you really needed it the most.

I know that for most of your formative years, you felt different than everyone else. That difference mostly manifested itself in your outward appearance. It started early in grade school with comments about your height and your weight – tall and thin. And then the universe saw fit to cover you with freckles.

And as you got a little older, the bullies got a little bolder. Then, in the sixth grade your classmates felt so incredibly awful about themselves that they chose to target you. They called you Rover. Said you were uglier than a dog. They barked at you. And you lived with that for most of that year and then carried it with you for the next 38.

And when you needed it the most, there was no one to help. No one to stand up for you. That year, one of the worst, you asked for help. “They are just teasing” was the adult response. There’s a massive difference between teasing and bullying, and you were bullied and didn’t have the words to understand or ask for support. And so you let it happen and lived with it. And you still do.

Even today you describe your appearance as tall, gangly, freckled and the human equivalent of a giraffe. You are so much more than that. But, to be fair, giraffes are pretty cool.

By the time you got to junior high, Rover disappeared and nicknames like Stretch and a Pirate’s Dream (sunken chest, how clever of you stupid boys) became the norm. You never felt cute or pretty and people made fun of you and your last name and reinforced this notion that you are ugly. All these things you’ve carried with you no matter how outwardly confident you might seem, inside you’ve always felt less than.

Thirty years later, your incredible daughter was faced with the same thing at the same age. So I’m going to tell you what you needed to hear when you were 12, and the words I said to her: “You are tall, thin, smart, funny as hell, kind and beautiful. And you are everything they are never going to be. That is why they picked you to hate. You are everything. They are nothing.”

You needed someone to say that, not dismiss those hateful and mean words as mere teasing or my always favorite “kids will be kids”. Words matter. Words. Matter.

And I wish with all that I am that you could see the woman you’ve become so that you don’t carry those words and experiences with you for 38 more years. I wish I could give you a big hug, tuck you in and hold you tight so you felt safe. I’d tell you you’re beautiful inside and out. I wish you could see yourself the way others see you now.

I wish you could, even now at age 50, believe that you are beautiful. But your beauty is more than just what’s on the outside. You are funny as hell, you are adventurous, brave, kind, smart, successful, athletic (yes, this does eventually happen to you!) and you are also beautiful in your own wavy hair freckle-faced brown eyed way.

It will take some time to undo those thoughts and those memories, but this is a start. Be kind to yourself. Be proud of yourself. Remember what you’ve overcome and that you are a total badass. And, someday, I hope when someone tells you that you're beautiful that you finally believe it. You are, inside and out.

Please remember to love yourself.

Love,

Yourself

 

Maude VS Eat, Pray, Love

I am about to embark on another huge adventure. Probably the biggest adventure of my 50 trips around the sun: I am taking a solo trip to Italy for 2.5 weeks and I could not possibly be more excited.

Some people have asked me if I am nervous or scared to go. That's the funny thing about being Maude: I'm rarely scared, and only occasionally nervous. I've jumped out of an airplane, gone bungee jumping & zip lining, and risked my life to save little sailboats on Lake Coeur d'Alene in my youth. I'm the crazy person in the front of the roller coaster and I have never, ever met a ride that put fear in my soul.

I can definitively say the one thing I'm scared of is being alone for the rest of my life, while at the same time I have zero desire to be in a relationship. That's the other funny thing about being Maude: I'm an enigma. Always an enigma. 

I am, however, learning to love my own company. I've done all kinds of things on the solo track this year and I know without a shadow of a doubt that traveling to a foreign country will be no different. Friends, this will be the first time in my life I will have ever stamped my passport. 

And I'm hoping this is not a one and done. To be honest, I've always had a wandering heart. A desire to see the world. Soak up some history. See things I've only read about in books. So here I am. And thanks to a shitload of miles due to COVID and no travel, I can finally make this happen.

Two and a half weeks of travel time. Time to think. To process. Evaluate and re-evaluate what I want to do and who I want to be. Many of my friends have asked me if this is my eat, pray, love adventure. I laughed it off at first but as I thought about it, it really kind of is.

I will eat and drink (sooo much amazing wine) my way through all of central and southern Italy. I cannot wait to sit in a café somewhere with espresso and my laptop and tell some stories that have been living in my brain for way too long. 

It will be incredible to taste REAL limoncello, authentic and locally made olive oil, all the prosecco my liver can process and figure out how in the hell to avoid gluten in Italy. 

I will pray. I imagine I'll pray a lot: on the flight that I make it safely. On the country roads in the little Fiat I rented, on the cliffs, in the city of Rome, on the canals of Venice and I imagine, even though I no longer practice Catholicism, I'll visit a few old churches and reconnect with my faith in God, outside of the constructs of being Catholic. 

I do envision a lot of praying not to die as I drive a tiny car on back roads in a country I've never been to.

And love. What is that going to be? I'm not looking for love with anyone but myself. I hope, I pray (and I'll eat a few meals while I manifest this thing) that I will learn to love myself. My imperfect, loud, inappropriate, funny at times, occasionally brilliant but mostly average, tall, freckle-faced, gray haired and wrinkled self. 

I don't know if I ever have loved myself fully and completely. I've spent most of my 50 years wishing I were different somehow, better than I am, shorter, skinnier, more athletic, less of a misfit, more successful, funnier, quieter, less freckled, more confident and less of a screw up than what I see when I look in the mirror.

I hope that I will come home with more love for myself for all of my imperfections and all of my mistakes. And for all the things that truly make me who I am.

And I hope that when I come home I'll feel a little more like a whole person, maybe a little more like myself. I am still struggling to make sense of my life and how I got here and what I want for the rest of it. 

Italy may not have all the answers, but it sure has good food and wine and places to see. I really can't ask for more than that.

And, if I can love myself just enough...my future, no matter what it holds, will be wonderful.