Birthdays

I turned 35 this week, on Wednesday, and I had a lovely birthday party for myself this weekend.  I feel like I should say something important and profound about turning 35, about how this year has changed me, and I will try, but not tonight.

This weekend brought another anniversary of sorts, and if this post is not very eloquent, it's probably because I'm crying a little while I type.

Yesterday, August 20, was my father-in-law's birthday.  Last year the Professor's family came to Chicago to spend the event with us here, the first after his death.  It was a strange and confusing time for me, and for the Professor and his family as well, I am sure.  Although, to be honest, I don't really know how it felt for them, because it's not the kind of thing they ever discussed.

This year I was preparing for my party.  The morning was gray and stormy, and I was in the kitchen up to my elbows in black beans and corn.  I turned on the television for background noise.  A few hours into my work in the kitchen, I realized the background noise I'd been listening to was a Dr. Who marathon on the BBC.  

It was fitting.  It was Dr. B's birthday, and he was an avid Dr. Who fan.  I admit that I never really got the show, and I never cared much for British television, but I decided to let it play while I worked.  And so I chopped onions, minced garlic, washed cilantro, and listened to Dr. Who and thought about Dr. B.  

It felt right to be thinking of him on his birthday, to listen to his favorite show.  It was sad, but good, to think of him and my own sadness at his death, a sadness I could never experience with anyone else, because he was not my husband, not my father, and so my own loss and sorrow were effectively meaningless - trite, next to the pain of those around me.  At the time, it seemed like it was not 'my' loss, but a much bigger loss belonging to others.  My own sadness seemed selfish.

Dr. B was jovial.  He could be hard to get at on an emotional level.  But I believed that, not having had any daughters, he had a special place in his heart for me.  And I did in mine, for him.  He teased me mercilessly, with what I thought or hoped was affection, and I teased back.  

The night before Dr. B died, I flew to Augusta and went straight to the hospital.  He was waiting to go home.  He could not speak, could barely write, but he was his jovial self.  He insisted that he be allowed to go home; he did not want to die in the hospital.  He wanted Yoohoo and cream soda.  When the Professor insisted I make my monkey face, Dr. B gave me a thumbs up.  He was brave.  Scared and sad, I am sure, but strong for those who loved him, for those whose devastation played out before him.  If you can face sudden and certain death with character, he did.

Dr. B was cremated, but there was a viewing, and the family had some quiet time alone with him.  I wanted to wrap my husband inside myself.  I wanted to kiss Dr. B and hold his face.  To grab his hands in mine, to see him laugh one more time.  I wanted to make it better.  Instead, I sat alone on a chair in the corner, watching my husband struggle not to cry.  I was helpless to make anything happen.

I never did figure out what to do.

Dr. B was a lovely man.  Someone impossible not to admire, not to fall a little bit in love with.  I had my own quiet time to remember him this weekend, to honor him in my own little way with my Dr. Who marathon.  So, while I prepared to celebrate my birthday yesterday, I celebrated his, as well. 

Crazy Dog

The time has officially come that Crazy Dog is leaving.  He's going to the kennel tomorrow, and the Professor is picking him up next weekend and taking him back to his new apartment.

I have been looking forward to the absence of the stress of Crazy Dog.  But we had our goodbyes tonight, and it was very sad.  He really is crazy, but I love him anyway.  Isn't that always the story?  He is messy and destructive, but he is loving and snuggly.  He cannot control himself, but he means well.  And, even I cannot believe I'm saying this, but I will miss him terribly.

It's one thing to send him to the kennel for the weekend because people are coming and he's too much to handle.   It's another thing entirely to say goodbye.

He is crazy, but he is my puppy.  Something about loving things when they are just tiny babies makes them forever have a special, totally heartbreaking, place in your life.

Our goodbyes were tearful -- at least on my end.  I'm pretty sure he was just thinking of all the ways he might pee and poop in the Professor's new apartment.

The Flight

The Professor moved his things out of the house today.  It was strange to come home to a half-empty house.  Oddly, with most of his things (and half the furniture) gone, it doesn't feel like my house anymore.

Nearly eleven months to the day, he told me he wanted a divorce.  At the time, I started keeping a journal.  After a while, and shortly before I started this blog, I stopped journaling.  It became too painful, became too much a reliving of the daily horror.  My last entry was December 21.

Walking in the door tonight, the house looked like I felt those eleven months ago.  Deconstructed, foreign, broken. Like someone fled imminent disaster, frantically snatching what they could carry, leaving tumble weeds of dog hair on the floor and nails in the walls.

And so it seems appropriate to post my first few journal entries.  They are me, panicked and throwing sand bags at the tsunami, unedited.

9.2.10

Last night my husband told me he wants a divorce.  Well, not that he “wants” one, because he says it’s not what he “wants” but that he cannot do this anymore and has chosen divorce.  I am simply devastated. 

He’s been saying for nearly a year that he isn’t sure he wants to stay in the marriage, but this is the first time he has said he affirmatively wants out in a calm and rational manner.  We have been married for three years, together for seven.  We’ve had a tough year in our marriage and personal lives, and we’ve been in counseling for a few months.    We haven’t had a major argument in a while (until last night), and I thought things were improving.  Not great, but getting better.  I do not want a divorce.

Last night he told me how unhappy he has been, even in the few months that I thought things were getting better.  Two weeks ago, he gave me a sweet card for my birthday in which he wrote that things were getting better.  Today, he wants a divorce.  I can’t seem to comprehend it.  We must be living in different realities.

My husband keeps his feelings pretty close to the vest.  I try to get him to talk to me about what he’s thinking and feeling, but it’s only when we argue that he does.  When we’re not arguing, he likes to maintain a certain pleasantness.  That’s not really my style, but I try to go along with it.  It take a lot of energy for me.  But I love him.  And I get taken in by that pleasantness, oblivious to the subtle undercurrent of his dissatisfaction.  It’s so frustrating, thinking he is happy and things are going well, then being hit with the unexpected blow of his hidden hostility and misery.  It feels like I never had a chance.

The first I heard of how unhappy he is in the marriage was a year ago.  Yet he says he has been unhappy for six years.  For six years, the relationship has been a struggle for him.  For six years, he’s felt like he’s put in more than he’s gotten out.  Six years of patterns make him believe there is no hope for our marriage.  Then why did he marry me three years ago?  I don’t think I would have married me, if I felt that way.  I would have run like hell.

But I didn’t feel that way.  I still don’t.  I would do anything to save our marriage.  Is that wrong? Too extreme, too desperate?  I say it not because I would stay in a loveless, miserable relationship, but because I still believe in us, in our future happiness, in our life together.  Or maybe I am desperate.  Maybe I should maturely accept the wisdom of his decision. After all, if he believes that this cannot repaired, isn’t it therefore necessarily true?

He has had one foot out the door for months.  I did not want that to be true, but now I see that it is and that, on some level, I’ve known that all along.  Isn’t that why I’ve been trying so hard, seeing not just our marriage counselor, but another therapist on my own to help me deal with my issues?  To help me become a better wife?  A better person.  Someone he would not divorce.  The fear and uncertainty of knowing he might leave was certainly a great motivator.  He did not have that fear and motivation.  He would probably have been relieved if I left.  It would save him the difficulty and blame of doing the leaving.  No one wants to be that person.  Not even him.  Maybe that’s the only thing that has kept him here this long.

I would like to think that being left means I’m somehow blameless.  But even I don’t buy that.  I have made my fair share of mistakes.  I have been bitchy and demanding.  I have been righteous and unyielding.  I have cared more for myself than for him.  I have tried to repair those things.  But it seems he is not willing to accept my reparations, or make his own.  I know he is unhappy and in pain, and that’s not what I want for him.  The generous part of me wants to make this easy for him, to let him ease out of his misery.  The other part of me wants to protest.  To say if only he could commit to our marriage and accept me for who I am, accept my mistakes and flaws, forgive me for my selfishness, then we could move forward together, embrace one another without judgment, map our problems, and his unhappiness and pain would fall away.  But maybe I am projecting.  Maybe that’s what I need and precisely what he wants to avoid.

I do not handle heartbreak well.  It consumes me.  I’ve been up all night.  My eyes are swollen and dry.  I’m exhausted, yet I feel like I’ll never be able to sleep again.  I feel like a failure.  I feel like the joke’s on me.  I feel like I can’t move, and I can’t sit still.  I may never get off the couch, walk upstairs to the bathroom, turn on the shower and wash my hair.  It’s too much effort. I need to Do Something.  I am.  I am writing.  Each word on the page is a salve, an anchor to sanity.  If I can formulate words, I am still here, I am still me. 

 I am on a train hurtling in a direction I don’t want to go.  I want off.  I want to turn around and return to where there is hope.  I want to weep and wail.  I want to rend something, or someone.  I want to beg.  I have begged.

I am decimated. 

It’s starting to rain.

9.5.10

Thursday morning, after telling me he wants a divorce, my husband told me he was sorry and doesn’t want a divorce.  He put his arms around me and held me.  It was the most authentic, vulnerable emotion I’ve seen from him in months.  It gave me hope.  It also left me confused, more uncertain of my marriage than I was just 36 hours earlier, more afraid and sad than I’ve been for the last few months.  It’s been very hard for me to deal with the pain and sorrow of knowing he isn’t sure he wants to stay in the marriage.  Just knowing that has caused me enormous stress and unhappiness.  But I’ve done my best to keep that to myself and deal with it on my own, because he doesn’t want to be a part of my emotional turmoil.  I feel like I’d gotten a pretty good handle on it over the three months we’ve been in counseling.  Now I feel like I’m starting 100 yards behind the starting line.  I get no credit for it.  I am not allowed to be angry about it.  How am I supposed to do this?    

Saturday morning we agreed to talk about our relationship.  My husband said he wants to continue in couple’s counseling, notwithstanding that he’s not sure he wants to stay married to me.  I told him that even if he can’t commit to the rest of our lives, I need him to commit to right now – to doing what needs to be done, whatever that is, to make things better.  If not long-term, at least for now.  He was unwilling or unable to agree to that.  I had to leave the house for the day, just to get away from the sadness.  If I didn’t leave, I would lay on the bed and sob, and he wouldn’t be able to give me the tenderness and support I want.  He wouldn’t be able to say he won’t leave me. 

This morning we biked to a bistro for brunch.  We had a disagreement about finances.  Something that should have been minor but turned into a major catastrophe.  The catastrophe was not about the financial disagreement, but about my getting upset and his anger at me for being upset. 

That seems to be a theme in our relationship, and was in large part the impetus for seeking couple’s counseling.  My husband doesn’t feel like he can deal with my emotional stress.  I am an admittedly emotionally sensitive, highly reactive person.  I’m in individual therapy to get a handle on that, and I feel like I’ve made tremendous progress.  But the level of his anger and hostility towards me when I do get upset is extreme.  It is as if the very fact of my upset triggers in him hatred and resentment.  Then everything spirals completely out of control.  When he becomes quietly furious, he becomes emotionally unavailable.  He seems to want nothing more than to escape me, and he has no regard for how rejected, hurt and worthless that makes me feel.  At that moment, he truly despises me, and it crushes me.  I become panicked and sad.  Which only makes him angrier and more determined to have nothing to do with me.  Which makes me desperate. 

I am trying to learn to stop this cycle.  I am trying not to become hysterical when he manifests his revulsion of me, when he closes himself away where I can’t reach him.  But I am also learning that I am helpless to start a new, healthier cycle if he is uninterested in joining me in that.  His anger at me at times is so acute that I feel paralyzed by it.  I don’t know how to get him to let go of that anger, so that we can move forward together.  I don’t think there is any other way.

As long as my husband is not committed to this marriage, he is not truly invested in making it better.  I feel like he’s just sticking around to see what happens.  That leaves the entire burden for our marriage on me, and it’s a burden that I am helpless to carry.  How “good” can I be?  I am surely going to fuck up at some point.  Like today.

This situation leaves me constantly terrified.  The next disagreement, the next marital stress, the next time I am anything less than perfect and he is anything less than perfectly happy with me might be the time he decides to physically leave.  My husband either doesn’t appreciate or doesn’t care that this is the situation I’m in.  It is a tremendous stress to walk around with that on your heart.  I feel like I am breaking in two.  I feel like the end is inevitable, yet entirely in my hands.   It makes me edgy and emotional, which are exactly the opposite of what he wants me to be and exactly the circumstances that make it likely I will screw this up.

I know a girl from college whose husband is almost certainly dying of cancer.  I know a girl from high school who has lupus.  Right now she’s in the hospital with numerous blood clots and a bleed the doctors cannot identify.   These things both give me perspective and make me feel guilty for wallowing in the sorrow of my own dying marriage. 

My husband just came home.  I sit here, terrified of what he will say, and of what he won’t.

9.6.10

He didn’t speak to me for several hours yesterday.  I told him that I have tried to talk to him, and that I wouldn’t try again then, or today or the next day.  I said I would just wait for him to try to talk to me.  A couple of hours later, he told me if I’m still going to be upset today, he doesn’t want me in the house.   So, I guess that’s all he has to say. 

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

~~~

My husband hasn’t spoken to me at all today, other than to email me and ask me to bring the car home so he could meet a friend for drinks. 

I left the house this morning, at his request.  He made no effort to contact me, did not inquire where I was, did not respond to my email early in the day letting him know my schedule.  I checked my email every ten minutes praying he would show me he cares.  He did not. 

He was watching baseball when I came home, whooping at some great play.   I cannot begin to describe the pain his apparent indifference to me causes.  I am so worth so little?  This man is supposed to be the person who loves me most of all, yet my sorrow, so deep and palpable I feel I’m wading through it to cross the room, doesn’t touch him.  It was all I could do to breathe and not hurl my hurt and angry words at him.  I stood on the stairs and wanted to scream at the back of his head, you are hurting me more than I can bear! I will never recover from this! We will never recover, if you don’t stop before it’s too late!   I wanted to fall to my knees and beg him to love me again, the way I thought he once loved me.  But I didn’t.  Even though it took great effort, I know there is no point. 

 My words have no meaning for him.  If they did, no one could silence me.

He left a few moments ago.  I heard the front door slam downstairs.  

My face is red and sore from sun and crying, and the tears burn my skin.

9.7.10

What is that quote, it’s always darkest before the dawn. There is something to that.  Midnight really is the loneliest time.  I’m glad there is a television in the guest room – i.e., my new room.  I tried to turn it off around midnight, but in the dark silence I started crying the kind of jerky, gasping sobs that make it hard to breath.  I was nauseous and sweaty and my heart was racing, so I thought of something my therapist told me about temperature regulation and mood, and I took a very cool shower.  To my surprise and mild delight (let’s not get crazy here), not only did it cool me off, but I felt calmer and more settled afterwards.   I turned the television back on and watched a show on MSNBC called Lockdown.  It’s a pretty brutal documentary about prison life and each episode is filmed in one or two (usually violent and notorious) prisons.  I think they run the show fairly regularly in the middle of the night, because I’ve watched it during several previous bouts of insomnia.  What does the programming say about the kind of folks who watch MSNBC at 1 a.m.?  Maybe the message is no matter why you can’t sleep, these guys have it worse than you.  At least I’m not in prison.

I think I slept five or six hours, which is good.  I lay in bed this morning crying and listening to my husband feed the dogs, shower and get dressed for work.  Just before he left, he opened my bedroom door.  He stood at the foot of the bed and said, without any conviction or visible emotion, that he was sorry he hasn’t been there for me and he wants to talk tonight.  I had no response.  Haven’t I said everything already?  Besides, it may be better to lie immobile.  If I moved, I might unleash a torrent of emotion that would push him further away.  I am on that precipice.  

I have a counseling appointment this afternoon.  At my last appointment, Dr. G told me she wants to see more emotion from me during our sessions–after all, I’m seeing her to deal with my supposedly out-of-control emotions.  Ironically, I don’t know if I can cry anymore. 

9.8.10

My husband told me tonight, again, that he wants a divorce.  Actually, what he said was I’m done with this relationship.  We weren’t even fighting.  We had a nice dinner – homemade lasagna – then he made the first fire of the season in our fire pit.  Later, he said something about whether I was going to “visit” my parents.  [I should insert here, after the fact and for clarity, that the visit to my parents, which we had previously discussed, was something I suggested as a temporary separation period, not a casual trip.]  He said it so casually, like it would be just a vacation.  That was very upsetting to me.   I tried to talk to him about it.  I was upset, but very calm.  And he said he was done with the relationship. 

I feel like I want to die.

The Biggest Fight

I realize my last post was "Week One" and today is week two.  At least I'm pretty sure it is, but the fact that I don't have the date etched in my mind is a good thing.

For a long while after the Professor said he wanted a divorce, everything was measured by that moment.  How many days ago did he say it, how many weeks and, later, months.  That dark anniversary never passed by unnoticed, unmourned.  But I am no longer counting days and weeks.  I'm not measuring the moments of my life by him or what happened.  Was it really just last week that I posted?  It feels like last year.

Here's what I can say about divorce:  if you are prepared, it isn't so bad.  Which isn't to say it's great.  I'm not exactly celebrating.  But I'm not killing myself, either.  The first week was pretty miserable, to say the least.  But I was prepared.  I spent the last ten months actively preparing myself for this, working hard to adjust and adapt, facing myself honestly and critically, reflecting on our relationship, evaluating who I was, who I am, and who I want to be.  I didn't bury my head in the sand or distract myself from dealing with things.  I have dealt with it all, in the most thoughtful, real and honest way I know how.  And I have tried to do it all in a way I could be proud of, in a way that I thought would have some dignity and honor, if dignity and honor can be found in the destruction of a marriage.

It has been painful in a way I cannot describe, and more difficult than anything I've ever done.  I have learned to be with myself, to bite my tongue, to let things go.  I have learned to measure the depth of my immediate pain against the gain, if any, of acting on it.  I have learned that -- much to my dismay -- I am not always right, and, even worse, that right or wrong, sometimes I just have to accept that I cannot have, will never have, what I want.  And I have learned that, while sitting with pain or anger hurts, and feels impossible, sometimes it is better than the alternative of being ignored, rejected or denied.  I have learned not to touch the hot stove that burns me, as tempted as I am.

These are good lessons for me, as I'm a fighter.  I'm a kicker and a screamer.  I will have what I demand, and I will be heard.  And, while it has been painful, it has also been necessary for me to learn that kicking and screaming don't always work, aren't always the most effective way to make your point.  To the contrary, they rarely are and often obscure the point altogether.  Not to mention that kicking and screaming is just plain exhausting.

Because of this -- because of the work that I've done, the pain I didn't fight, the temporary distractions I didn't embrace, the impulses I resisted -- I was prepared.  As prepared as anyone can be.  I didn't throw myself down and wail, I didn't rend my clothes.  I did not fight what I could not control.  Which is not to say that I didn't want to.  I wanted in a primal way.  But I didn't.  Because I know how not to.

And the moment passed.  The worst of it came and then, eventually, left.  There will be other moments, things that trigger memories and sorrow, things that remind me of this great loss, things that bring me to my knees.  I won't fight the pain.  I will sit with it, because I have learned how to.  And learning that is the biggest fight I've ever won.