Who Are You When One Becomes Two?

It’s easy to get lost in a whirlwind of love, passion and excitement. I like to call this phase the: ‘I’m really going to get my happily ever after'. The problem is, like Dorothy was swept up in the cyclone and dropped in the Land of Oz, we too, will come crashing down and land somewhere when the whirlwind stops. So the question remains, where will we land and what do we do when the inevitable strikes? The inevitable being everyday life…

As many of you know, I am madly in love with a wonderful man. I have referred to him in the past as Mr Well Aligned, but for this stage in our relationship it doesn’t seem sufficiently flowery. So henceforth, he will be known as Mr Dream. Mr Dream proposed to me several weeks ago in idyllic surroundings with a ring so shiny you can see it from space. As you can imagine the weeks following this moment were aflutter with excitement as we shared our news with anyone who would listen and moved in together.

Happy faces of the newly engaged!

Like a house picked up in a cyclone, dreams inevitably come crashing down at some point. Or so my own history tells me. Recently, I had a rude awakening which was roused after a night of woe-ing (it definitely wasn’t wooing). As I washed dishes, having completed cooking dinner, making Mr Dream’s lunch and proceeding to slice my finger open on a rusty can, I thought: is this a role I can really take on: happily? Mind you, several other things preceding this had occurred during the evening which made me stumble on my recent choice a little. Ordinarily, in single land, I’d be painting my nails, gasbagging on the phone to my pals, and letting the dishes pile up, if I had even bothered to make dinner at all, which I probably wouldn’t have done!

Don’t get me wrong! Living with Mr Dream is a wonderful thing and I, for the most part, really enjoy thinking of and doing things to make his day a little brighter, hence a gluten intolerant making delicious sandwiches on a daily basis (although apparently the sandwiches I had made that day were not up to par- forming part of my woeful eve).

These past few weeks, shrouded in the fallacy of domestic bliss, I have been preparing meals, making lunches, tidying, co-habitating two houses, wearing nice clothes and smiling when Mr Dream walks through the front door. But, weary from the evening of woe, I crawled into my bed, in physical pain and somewhat emotionally defeated and stared at my big vision board. Suddenly the weight of the ring on my finger became overwhelming and I had to take it off. Crowded with personal images depicting a happy and fulfilling single life, my vision board has evolved after the past few years and has been instrumental in assisting my emergence from my cocoon of self loathing and personal baggage into a fledgling butterfly.

I searched the board for images of the co-joined life I had joyfully agreed to embark upon with the man I love, and found none. For years I had been working towards a vastly different kind of life. So you see, the noise of my dream cyclone suddenly became very loud.

I had been mapping out my life for years and had just begun to live it in utter and complete happiness (notwithstanding interruption and daily hiccups of an un-planned injury). This life was the life of a single woman. My vision board was filled with single woman dreams of health, hobbies, career and personal goals. It’s adorned with images of girls hanging out having fun together, in foreign countries, eating at restaurants, playing on the beach and others of women on their own, paddle surfing or kayaking. My favourite designers, writers, power-words, business goals and a very personal brooch my mother gave me all hung from this board. There were no men, no babies, absolutely nothing to do with a married life. And yet, here I was, ecstatic over my choice to engage in nuptials with a wonderful man who I love with every fiber of my body.

I raced downstairs with my beloved laptop, past midnight, in a mini-panic. Could both roles co-exist in a happy and complementary way? My initial fear- to be brutally honest with you- was no…



This was a hair-raising moment for me!!!!!

Where do our single selves go when we make the decision to cohabitate with the special someone we love dearly. Can there really be enough time in the day and enough cash to prioritise your personal dreams and the dreams you share as a couple? I realise some overlap, but in effect you go from having one set of goals to three! What you want for you, what your partner wants for them and what you want to build together. How is this managed so that no part of anybody’s dream has to be left out? If this isn’t possible, and I suspected it wasn’t, how is the division of the ‘dream energy’ divided equally so that one partner isn’t left unfulfilled or growing resentful?

Having recently sat down to do some business planning for our year (what can I say? A program manager and a business analyst: what do you expect?) we have an extremely busy one ahead. And always one for a challenge, I scribbled furiously as we mapped our goals. And, on paper, they look beautiful! All colour coded with dates and budgets! However, throw an unpredictable injury like mine into the mix, which sucks energy out at a great rate of knots, and how much is then feasible? Also, tip in a good ounce of cleaning and cooking and general domestics and how much energy is left then? Where does one take out an insurance policy against losing sight of one’s personal goals to ensure that the role of ‘best partner in the world’ is utterly fulfilled? Isn’t that the contract I signed when I said: “Yes! I’ll marry you!”

I have a very high regard for the institution and sacredness of marriage. Having come from a ‘broken home,’ I spent my mid-to-late twenties devouring books on the importance and sacredness of marriage and the family unit. Many of these were from the Christian perspective. These years of research have given me a depth of understanding of the traditional vows and what they mean in practice, not just as something pretty to recite on your wedding day. So it was with great honor, respect and a just a hint of trepidation of the enormity of what I was agreeing to, that I accepted Mr Dream’s proposal.

Yes friends, I have over two rows in my bookcase dedicated to books on relationships. And yet, oddly, the subject of these books never made its way onto my vision board…

I went back to bed that night and hardly slept, pondering whether the personal freedom of single life and the ability to set goals and achieve them could exist within the role of a married person and the responsibilities that marriage entails. Was it possible that the life I wanted for myself and the life we were going to create together could co-exist, uncompromised in their richness?

Like many women across our great world, I ache to give my partner a wonderful home. To build a loving and welcoming home that family and friends enter and feel taken care of and renewed. To provide delicious and wholesome meals that satisfy the tastebuds and the soul. To listen, to support, to please, to remember birthdays of extended family members, to clean and to be the heart of the house. These ideals come from years of conditioning and lapping up books about the role of women in the household. But, after just one week of trying to fulfill that role, trying to be one step ahead of Mr Dream’s needs and wants and build that home I so desperately wanted to give him, I felt a dull nagging inside. I wasn’t going to be able to do both! There is no other word for how I felt than BEFUDDLED!

Finally waking up the next day after a triple shot coffee, I spent my morning with a trusted woman who has had many years of life experience under her belt. I divulged my predicament, as I have written it for you, and the advice she gave me astounded me! I was literally silenced, and those of you who know me can imagine how rare it is that I am silent, if you can imagine it at all!  Here is what she said:

“I understand what you are trying to do. But let me tell you this, men leave women like the one you are trying to become. They leave them for exotic women and you are already exotic. Why would you want to become mundane?”

The conversation continued and expanded, but the crux was captured in

her sentence above and was my lightbulb moment. Heck, thunderous, roaring, sky-lightening moment would be more correct!

I had put the pressure on myself to fit a stereotype, an ideal that I had formulated from the books and culture I had been exposed to! There was no pressure from Mr Dream to fit to change or become or do anything. I had put this pressure on myself. I had bought into the delusion that as a wife-to-be I had to fulfill a certain role, undertake certain activities, become a certain type of woman. I was wrong.

Simply put, there is no single model of a relationship or the roles of the people in it which will ensure its longevity. Together, within the confines of the vows you agree to, you make your own rules. The house keeping and provision of a good home is not the relationship, it’s a by-product of living together. Forgoing who you are to create a spotless and flawlessly run home or become a ‘Stepford Wife’ stereotype, leaves out the essence of the person inhabiting it. In effect, you’re altering one half of the reason two people fell in love in the first place.

Renewed with vigour that achieving my personal goals, helping Mr Dream achieve his and together work towards our ‘us’ goals is an entirely plausible proposition, I have thrown away the two shelves of books on relationships and all the confusion they contained within them, because now I know better!  To build on Frank Sinatra’s much loved quote, “I did it my way,” I am renouncing my former ideals and adopting the philosophy of “we’ll do it, our way!”

Taking on our new motto!

To Mr Dream, I won’t always do things the ‘right way’ even though I will try. I may occasionally make sandwiches that you don’t enjoy and leave my make-up all over the bathroom counter. I will sometimes suggest we buy an art piece instead of groceries and I will probably avoid changing the sheets on the bed for as long as I possibly can. I will let the dogs jump on the couch, zone out if you start to talk to me about computers and sometimes drink your scotch. I will sometimes spend just a little too much money on shoes and I will never iron a shirt, yours or mine, for as long as we both shall live. But you will always know that you are the head of our household and the king of my heart because I will love you, actively and abundantly, every day in every way that I can.

Soul Vacation: the naval gazing journey to depression and back!

I begin to write this almost at the break of dawn, new years day. I find myself inside my body once more. For those of you who don’t know me personally, you won’t know that the past few months for me have been particularly tumultuous and my soul went on vacation… somewhere. I am pleased to report it has returned safely and, while still timid, is renewed and ready to start again. Just in time for 2012.

2011, for me, saw heartbreak, physical incapacity, betrayal and mistreatment from care providers, physical relapse, loss of career, loss of my social world and the many ‘friends’ that I believed made it turn, the emergence of some good old fashioned ‘Queanbeyan Crazy’, the appearance of my Knight In Shining Armor, the choice between wonderful and evolved, changing mental and spiritual patterns and basically the ‘total recall’ of everything I thought I knew. You see, it stands to reason that my soul packed up for a while sometime in October and didn’t say goodbye. I just woke up one morning, empty. It felt as though I was hemorrhaging and I didn’t know where from or how to stop the bleeding. No matter what I did or how I did it, I felt like I was walking around stained from this broken place I didn’t know how to heal.



While I might have been able to join in festivities on one level, I certainly didn't feel like a 'firework.'

The things I loved, the very things I believed defined who and what I was, seemed to desert me as well. I looked around and realised my phone no longer rang, my door bell no longer sang, my diary was full of doctor and physio and work return appointments, not parties, coffee dates and pub gatherings. Usually the life of the party after a drink or two, my beloved wine seemed suddenly to turn on a tap in my eyes somewhere that I couldn’t turn off until the next morning. Friday nights, once filled with bands and dancing, were now spent sobbing in some rancid corner of my house. My one true love, writing, was nowhere to be found as I sat at my computer only to muster the will to play solitaire and tap the keyboard in frustration while I stared at a blank screen. My big smile was replaced with a vacant, desolate look and my much loved wardrobe full of shiny, bright and gorgeous things was replaced with a uniform of oversized track pants and a black top covered in dog hair. Makeup filled my drawers rather than my face and sometimes I swear my own dogs didn’t recognise me. On days when I didn’t have appointments, I would stay in my pj’s all day and not shower or do my hair. Not even if my man was coming over. And for someone with my usual second helping of vanity, this was a very big departure.

I felt this constant, aching guilt that I was letting the people who were still around me down and pushed to be the one to say goodbye first to the man in my life, because- I rationalized- it was only a matter of time til he realised that the happy-go-lucky girl he fell in love with had been invaded by some bitey, sad and soulless troll doll who cried more than she smiled and spent nights tossing and turning, begging sleep and stillness to take her away. I watched my mother tirelessly clean my house because I could no longer do it and tears rolled down my face as I said goodbye to my independence and hello to a thwarted version of childhood and penetrating vulnerability.

Whatever you might name this period of time, I know most people have experienced at least something like it at least once in their lives. You might call it depression, the blues, an emotional crisis, a dark period. The less compassionate among us may name it self-indulgent or weak. But no matter what resilience I tried to employ to bring myself out of it, the mantras, self help books, self awareness, motherly kindnesses, professions of gratitude, visualisation processes and mindfulness, there was no soul to be found. No heart in anything I did. No meaning in any moment. It was all just-dead. 

For the purposes of my own experience, I am going to call this period my ‘soul vacation’ for two reasons, one: my soul certainly vacated, and two: I am still naive enough to hope that it went somewhere nice!

Of course, the experience of a soul vacation is different for each person, but I am certain that there are strong commonalities. Hopelessness, things seeming out of reach, simple tasks becoming difficult and an endless emotional void where the joyful gamut of emotions used to frolic, to name just a few.

Functioning in the world while your soul is on vacation is no small undertaking and it takes all the courage an empty vessel can possibly muster. It begins with accepting that you are, at least for a short period of time, not who you were. And you may never be the same again as a soul can transform while it is on vacation. These changes are usually tangible and for the better. This is some consolation for those awaiting the return of their soul.

You have heard the rhetoric before and most people- especially those of you who read this blog- have an abundance of self-awareness, resilience and survival tools. The last thing you need is a dot pointed list of ‘must do’s’ to survive a soul vacation. Rather, this is merely a message of hope if you are finding that the colours of life aren’t as bright as they used to be. You will come back. This too, will pass. Laughter, joy, textures, tastes and the desire to partake in life will return.

If your soul is on vacation, like mine was, it is on vacation for the very reason we need holidays from work. It’s exhausted! Drained! Depleted! Consider this a time of hibernation for your soul. It is going away to regenerate and your job is to keep stoking the fires in your daily life, waiting for it to return. Because it will. But right now, it just needs a rest.

My soul returned on the very last day of 2011. I woke up, and felt like me. It was a strange sensation. I had energy to do things! I wanted to get out of bed! I wanted to wash my hair and put on a pretty dress! I was home again…

As I finish this article, the clock is almost ticking over to January 4, 2012 and over the last few days I have experienced an eclectic mix of emotions as I still come to terms with the changes made during my soul vacation. I lost many people in my life during this time, but now count myself lucky for the wonderful and true friends I have now. I lost my career for most of the year, but gained reassurance that my career is my true calling. I lost a man I loved deeply, but gained one who actually loved me in return. I lost staunch independence but gained the ability-to some degree- to ask for help. I lost my ability to trust in myself due to the misjudgment and mistreatment of others, but I gained it back and will never let anyone take it from me again. I lost my physical ability but will now always treasure each step I can take on my own. But most importantly, with my soul now rested and ready to engage in life again, my hope for the future is back with a juxtaposed timid vengeance and I enter 2012 with one single goal: to take things one step at a time. Always one to rush into things like a bull at a gate (my mother’s saying), I am trying to release the need to rush to make up for lost time and to also accept that my physical healing is happening, one step at a time. The later is the hardest one but I keep repeating: one step at a time!

My soul vacation has given me patience and I now know and absolutely accept that I don’t have to be perfect 100% of the time. I am going to make mistakes, have setbacks, trust the wrong people, take the wrong turns, and engage in any number of mild misdemeanors. But I also know this, as long as I know what I want, there will be enough moments of perfection to keep propelling me in that direction. One step at a time. And I will make it. And most importantly, if this story resonates with you, know that you are going to make it too. Be patient with yourself. Take lots of baths, drink lots of tea, or whatever it is you can do that is kind to you. Just remember, right now, your soul has vacated for a reason and was probably in desperate need of some R & R. Let it take the time. It will return to you. One step at a time.  

I end with a simple plea, while it is easy to be absorbed by our own woes or daily life, if you look around you and you have a friend who you believe is going through a soul vacation, please don’t look the other way and just keep going. The sorrow of not having friends there for you in your darkest hour multiplies the intensity of a soul vacation tenfold. Take the time to call, drop by with a simple meal, or at the very least, send a text every few days.

Soul vacations are the most hauntingly lonely and deeply isolating experiences, especially if they are combined with illness or physical incapacity of any kind. Friends are the lifeline that can help to bring a soul back faster and in better repair. Do not underestimate the effect even a small kindness will have. Think of it like throwing a ‘happy stone’ into a river of sadness, the ripples are far-reaching. It’s like Mother Theresa said so beautifully, “be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier.”

Until next time, butterfly kisses.

Wyld.