The Bear - Episode 21

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, I'm back again next day after the last podcast from last night or this morning at four thirty in the morning or something. And I'm feeling emotional. I've had three hours and seven minutes of sleep last night. I've been packing and cleaning and I'm exhausted. And this is my third day of fasting. And somebody asked how long I was a friend of mine. I said, How long are you gonna fast for? And I said, Until God shows me the light and some direction, and I have some kind of clarity. So I I don't have a deadline. I don't, I'm not like, oh, on day three I'm done, you know. But anyways, okay, so I'm watching this series on Hulu, and it's called The Bear. And other than way too much cussing, because it's Chicago people who I guess cuss all the time, F-bomb, like every five seconds. It's about a chef, and he is like the best chef in the world, and his brother kills himself, so he goes back home to Chicago from like France or somewhere, I don't know where, maybe I don't know. And he takes over the family business that is just a mess. And then they work and they work hard. He works hard. Everybody works hard to be the very, very best they can be. And they challenge one another and they tell each other, you know, how it is, and and they forgive one another and they tell each other they love each other on a regular basis, and they fight and then they make up and they, you know, forgive. And it's just like this amazing show. And I've basically been watching it since I got back from doing ketamine. And I I highly suggest you watch it, other than the F-Bombs everywhere. It's like such a good series. In fact, my friend and I said we're gonna start series five together because she's in the same place I am. And so maybe we're gonna get together and binge watch it some Saturday or something. I don't know what that looks like. But my my my reason for coming on here and just saying my thoughts and everything is number one, you should watch the series on Hulu. It's called The Bear. That her last name is Berlowski or something like that, some Polish name or something. But in the last episode that I just watched, which was season four, episode seven, they're all getting together at a wedding at somebody's house. And the ex-husband comes, and the new current husband and the ex-husband are getting along and working things out and talking, and everybody's communicating really well because even though they're not always nice and sometimes they argue and it gets really heated and whatever, they forgive each other, and it's just like this beautiful thing. And maybe because I'm on three hours of sleep, uh, you know, maybe because of just the emotion of all of this, but I'm grieving. I'm I'm grieving that I have spent the majority of my life with the same man, the same family, uh, his family. You know, I haven't seen my biological dad since I was like 13 or 14 years old. I've only talked to him one time since then, and that was like a three-minute conversation over the phone. And so when I got married to Mark, I thought, oh, great, now I kind of have another dad figure. And I told him, I said, I want to call you dad. And he said, that's fine. And so I've literally called this man dad for 30 years, you know, plus years. And I'm not only gonna be losing my husband and my future plans and any dreams or hopes or anything, I'm also gonna be losing all the family, you know, and while I know that once again, this is probably cognitive dissonance because I want them to care and love me like I care and love them. It's like, you know, it's just it's over, like it's all gonna be over, and I will never see her talk to them ever again, and it's just um it's hard. That's hard.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Mark has a sister, and I love her, and I love her kids, and it's just I really don't want to have to think about it, but it just makes me so sad that our family, and you know, I keep going back to that word level up, but my gun, our family level up, our immediate family, the extended family, like it's just so effed up.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

And it just makes me so sad that we live in this world where things are it's okay to estrange your mom, and it's okay to divorce people, and it's okay not to go to counseling, and it's okay not to try. It's like I want to surround myself with people who are hard workers who are willing to challenge one another and and bring it and level it up and work hard and make things better instead of just, you know, like, oh well, you know, and I just I feel like for so many years I've just kind of gone with the status quo because what else was I gonna do? I didn't have any choices, you know. Uh, you know, and and now I have all the possibilities in the world, you know. Once this divorce goes through, I'm the big first day of the rest day of, I mean, like the first day of the rest of my life every day. That's the way I'm looking at it, right? Like I I I'm wanting to get in a plane and go visit my daughter so I can see my grandkids and I can hold them and I want to see my daughter and I want to I want to hug her and I want to do that with all my kids. And I just had all these dreams and it's such a fantasy, you know. Somebody called it um uh fantasy heal something, you know, healing fantasy, whatever. I think it's called a healing heal fantasy. And you you want you have this fantasy in your life that if just this could happen and this could happen, then maybe you could work with these people and things could get better. I was thinking if Mark says he wants to work with me, then we can take the next you know step. Let's let's go to counseling, this let's deal with this. And then after that, you know, maybe we have the kids and we invite them for Christmas and we say, we know it's gonna be hard, we know it's gonna be difficult, but let's say the things that are hard, let's do the things that are difficult. We have this book, and I, you know, I thought some of my kids read it, although my husband said that my daughter was mad at me because I didn't give her a full education, which I kind of laugh at because nobody has a hundred percent education. We all have holes in our education, pretty much anywhere you go, unless maybe you went to some fancy prep school in London or something, you know, really, really hardcore. There's always gonna be holes, even if you're really, really great education, because people don't remember everything. And my daughter said to my husband that I didn't teach her about tectonic plates. And I was like, actually, I know the curriculum we did. We probably did it when she was too young and she doesn't remember, but whatever. She she always forgot things a lot of the time, but fine, she wants to blame me because she didn't learn about according to her tectonic plates. I know we did teach her about that, and I even remember the curriculum, it's for younger kids, so maybe she really doesn't remember that. But we talked about Pangea and all of that, like so, and my husband, you know, just bringing up stuff like that, and you know how people are mad and people want to blame, and people, yeah, okay, fine. You want to come and bring blame me? You want to blame me for everything? Bring it. Do you want me to have pain? Do you want me to cut myself? How much do you want me to bleed? Because for three and a half years I've been in grief and sadness. And and my husband said to me, I I it's hard for me to even keep saying my husband. Mark said to me, you know, when was the last time you were happy? And I mean, I truly happy was over three and a half years ago when the estrangement happened. And he goes, It's not all just about that day. Well, that was the day that my life stopped being what it was, and I lost four children. So that was the most crucial time period in my life, uh short of this, obviously. But I thought, you know, I went talk to my kids for two days, two months, not two or two, you know, two years. I remember thinking this is insane. Now it's been three and a half years, and I am like, oh my gosh, this is the most insane, crazy thing that we live on a planet where they believe this is okay. My husband believes this is okay, you know, they're adults. Let's make excuses, you know, justifications. Oh, you know, it's scary, or mom might say something, or we don't like that, or we're doing it for our safety, or we're doing it for our protection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I I'm not, I'm not buying into it. You know, what it is is you're not doing the hard work, you're not having the hard conversations. Oh, that's where I was going. We have a book, and it's called Do Hard Things. And we had some of our kids read it, and I don't know if they would remember it. I read part of it to them. I don't know if I ended up finishing the whole book, but it's it's these two homeschool Christian boys, uh brothers that wrote it, and it's about, you know, being pure and not having sex before marriage and you know, honoring and respecting your parents and all this and that. And because I always believed in Bible and character training, and the Bible says if you train up a child in the way they should go, they will not depart from it. So I thought, okay, this is good. They're gonna be Christians, they're gonna be in heaven with me. Two of them said they believed Christ and they got baptized and they made a profession. Two of them didn't, and then the last two did, as far as I know. So I don't know. I just I'm I'm sad that I'm watching a TV show, and people can work even in really difficult situations, you know. They're sitting here. I mean, it's an ex-husband at his. I mean, it's a guy at his ex-wife's house with her really good-looking, really wealthy, very, very nice husband that he's getting married to. He wanted to puke outside. He was like, I feel so nauseous, I feel so much anxiety. This is so stressful, this is so stressful. I'll text you. Hold on, I'm doing a podcast. And you know, he was so stressful, so stressful. But his friend Sydney was there, and she said, Come on, we you got this, let's go, let's do it. And I just think, you know, instead of our family, you know, raising the bar and encouraging and saying, Hey, let's let's try this, let's make the best of it. Sure, it might be a shit show here and there. Sure, people might have feelings and emotions, sure people make mistakes, sure, people are human. I got that, you know. Like maybe she didn't say the right thing, or maybe he didn't, you know, do the right thing, or maybe he embarrassed, or maybe this happened, but you know what? We're family, and family matters, and we need to care for human beings and love one another. And it's just watching this show just makes me it makes me sad because that's not what we have. And I I remember when Mark and I first got married, like I wanted to be able to have everybody over, and I wanted to do this, and I wanted to do that, and I quickly, you know, in a new situation when you're just at the very, very bottom of a total pole of a very large family, I I learned quickly that I was never going to be in control of anything, and and that they had a way of doing things. And I my voice, in my opinion, wasn't wanted or needed there. And so I I even remember once having an argument with my stepmother-in-law at Christmas. She got mad at me. I asked for tea, and I made like an off-the-cuff. What I just thought was like, what do you mean you don't have tea? I thought everybody in Texas had tea, but I guess she was bottling her emotions because that's what she does. And she blew up at me, and it ended up us cussing and everything. And I was with a friend of mine from Australia, and we ended up walking back home. I ended up leaving and walking to my home. Nobody, not even my own husband, came to check on me. And I thought, what in the world? I mean, this is many, many years ago. And I thought, my husband isn't coming to my rescue. He's not coming to save me, he's not coming to help me, he's not checking on me. He just went on partying with his friends and his family. And I thought, wow, this is this is as good as my marriage is getting. He's he's not there for me. And I I could tell you so many stories like that where I've been disappointed and hurt and left out. And I'm sure he could do the same thing where he felt hurt and disappointed and left out or angry, maybe not as big, huge, glaring things that you know seem completely obvious to me that that's what a husband should do. I don't know if he knows what a husband's supposed to do. I don't know, he doesn't read books on how to be a better husband, he doesn't go to seminars on how to be a better husband. He doesn't, that's not his his jive. Have I read those books on how to be a better wife and a better mother? Yes, I have. And I've I've tried. I have tried and I have prayed, and yeah, it's just it's not gonna work out. And I, you know, I'm sitting here going, it's gonna be an uphill battle, and I know that now. But I've got to get the right frame of mind on, and I have to try my best because nobody's coming to save me. Nobody's coming to save me, less it's God. Nobody's giving a rip about how I feel or how I'm grieving or how I'm sad. Just like Mark didn't give a shit about leaving me at the bar when all this happened on March 13th, or he didn't give a shit about, you know, his his stepmom, you know, stepmom and me arguing at Christmas and me walking back home to our house. I mean, this was like 25 years ago or something. I mean, my kids were little, he didn't give a shit then, you know, and it's like I keep thinking about that analogy that the counselor said, you know, you're trying to get water from an empty well. He's not ever going to be the man that you need slash want him to be. And I thought I could accept it and be okay with it because of love and family and history. I I really was willing to try with him last night when I came. You know, I was saying the prayer and I was hoping, but it takes two to tango. He can't he can't, I can't, and I get that I've been abused and abandoned for a huge majority of my life, but I want more. I want better. And if this family can't level up, if this husband can't level up, then I know that I know that I know that I know I will never put myself in this position again. I will never be with somebody who's not willing to fight for me, stand up for me, listen to me, care about me, love me deeply. I I will never ever put myself in that position again. And I'm grateful for the hard, hard, hard lesson that has had to be won by this. You know, I can't keep pulling him and trying to get him to be convinced. I shouldn't have to convince my husband to be a better man, to level up, to care about things, to come to me with honor and not be covert in his actions and whatever. And if that is who he is and that's the best he can do, then I hope once we get divorced that he finds somebody that maybe he will do that for, or that's very happy with the way he is, just the way he is. I don't want to ever go to a restaurant and be embarrassed because of a drunk husband who's spouting off and embarrassing me in front of the guests and the waitresses. I will never put myself in that position again. And I should have had enough, what's the word, self-confidence and determination and ootspa, but I was so worried and concerned about him. I put my own needs on the back burner, and I know that, and I'm just trying so hard to stop doing that. Everybody kept saying, You're a people pleaser, and I just kept saying, Well, what's wrong with wanting to please people, you know? But I guess I know right now when you want to please other people so much that your nervous system breaks down at Christmas, and those people don't love you enough or care about you enough to check on you, or when you love people so much that you're willing to go and suffer through really difficult times with a human being who just doesn't give a shit about you. That's when you know it's not right. That's that's when you know that people pleasing is wrong when it hurts you so bad that all you just want to do is just cry and be just like a puddle on the floor because you feel like you just don't have any energy to fight that kind of dismissal and that unkindness.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

And I I need to love myself, and I think part of my biggest issue is that I haven't loved myself enough, I cared too much about what other people wanted and what other people needed and what other how it was gonna affect other people.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

You know, I didn't want to disappoint anybody, so you know, I just disappoint myself.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

And it makes me so sad that that's what I did, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

I just I didn't let other people down. I just let myself down repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. And my kids are now blaming me for stuff, and that's fine. They can blame me. I'm that's fine. But I know I was there, I know I was sorting the socks and doing the laundry and going through the multiplication tables and going to the playgroups, and I showed up to every dentist appointment, to every Sunday church, to every birthday party, even if it wasn't the best birthday party in the world. I was there, I showed up, and I'm so freaking proud of myself. Like I'm now I look at this and I look back on everything that I've done and what I've put up with and how I did it, and I am so proud of myself. I'm so proud of myself, and I don't have to have everybody else believe in me or agree with me or see everything that I went through anymore because I know that God knows. God was there, God knows what I went through. And that's gotta be enough for me because I will never be able to convince them they were never there, they never saw it, they don't know. And I wish, you know, sometimes I wish this, but I can't, you know, change it. But I wish I had pictures more pictures. We didn't have cell phones back in the day, you know. I wish I had taken more pictures, I wish I had taken more videos, I wish I had more proof, I wish I had journals to say this is what we did on this day. Pick any day of the year. This is what we were doing. We were having dance parties and making macaroni and cheese, and and we were making forts and we were making Lego tables, and you know, we I did all this. I I'm the one who had birthday parties for you. And I, you know, not just my kids, but my husband, you know. It was me who folded your boxers for 30 plus two years, you know? It was me who showed up and did this. And did I do it perfect? No, absolutely not. Am I human? Absolutely. Do I need to give myself grace? Yes. Do I need to give other people grace? Yes. And should they give it back as well? Like these people in the movie The Bear, the series? Yes, they should. Are they gonna? That's not up to me. And so I'm grieving the fact that right now they don't have the communication skills, they don't have the grace, they don't have the mercy, they don't have the empathy and sympathy and compassion and talking skills and and the willingness to do hard things. And I think I'm just gonna be grieving that for a while, and I've been grieving it for three and a half years. I don't know if I'll ever not grieve it. That's I think my biggest fear in life is that because I don't want to miss my kids for the rest of my life. But I hear stories about it. I hear stories about people dying and their kids not going to their funerals or there being, you know, issues at the end of the life, you know. And all I can hope is that, you know, in heaven, you know, God, God sees me, he loves me, he understands what I went through. He knows, he knows all the tears I cried, he knows all the prayers I prayed. And I just have to be focused on that, you know, and have the conviction and the fortitude and the determination to go, okay, you know, I did my best, and and truly I I know that I have. I know that I have. And I have to be okay with that and give myself grace and go through grief. And I guess that's it. All right, there's my thoughts for the next day after the last one. All right.