Getting Out

 "...and I don't think it was the idea that I would miss him...Sometimes I think I was afraid that without him my life would just be the same, or even worse, and I would have to accept that it was my fault.  And it was easier and safer to stay in a bad situation than to take responsibility for getting out. "

    -"Beautiful World Where Are You"  Sally Rooney

In the past, I have felt and stated that my biggest fear is being alone.  Looking back, that actually seems quite odd to me, because there are so many lovely facets of being alone.  

Alone, you have a blank slate of interactions.  You can choose your input more precisely.  You can manage and enjoy your time without trying to cooperate with someone else's version of alone.  Can you actually also be safer being alone? Safer from the deep hurts that tear at your soul if you let someone else in to muck it up?  

Looking back, maybe I felt afraid of aloneness due to cultural expectations and teachings that existing alone translates to existing in failure.  And I do not like to fail.  That is an exploration for another day. 

I've swung far to the other side of the pendulous arc at this point in life.  

Threats of leaving me from M. used to hold tremendous fear and desperation to change anything I needed to just to convince him to stay with me.  Was that old habits?  I think I actually felt for a long time that I needed and wanted him so deeply that I agreed to start making concessions and burying my own desires out of sight so they would not continue as temptations to contradict his.  It would have been nice if they'd lined up with his, sure, but increasingly as I lost sight of mine, they didn't.  I suppose desires need to be nurtured and defended against competing demands.  I did the opposite with mine.  

Threats of leaving recently illicit a longing for him to fulfill them.  

Even these last couple days with us mostly avoiding each other and him presumably having time to consider our situation, he is not making the magnitude of concessions that my past self made to his threats of dissolution of us.  He's continued to game, sleep odd hours, order DoorDash (even from a place he knows I dislike, so didn't order me anything), and leave dishes for me to clean up.  More than that, though, the behavior of dissatisfaction and offence seems so habitual that I'm not sure he can change it. Complaints about the state of the crowded refrigerator replayed.  Anger and irritation replayed when G. got in touch with me instead of him and when I checked on him to talk, he was laying on his couch in the dark so I assumed (incorrectly it turns out) that he was asleep. 

One of his latest additions to the litany of his irritations and criticisms is accusations that I'm "poisoning our daughter against him."  I'd faded into passive listening mode at that point in the shouting, but that brought me back into sharp awareness, "No!  That's all you."  He didn't hear me of course--with his ears maybe--but definitely not with whatever part of him chooses to actually hear and believe that another person might have a valid thought.  

Surprisingly, yesterday after storming back downstairs after G. had to go before he could talk to her, he more calmly appeared to retrieve the DoorDash burger and fries and then cared to check in to see if she felt better after her tummy ache earlier in the day.  He ate at the table, asked what I'd done that day, and then questioned why parts of it took so long in a tone that told me he felt displeased by my choices.  I'd spent hours at the Farmer's Market writing and thinking and listening to the music and eating some of my favorite goodies.  I guess he thought I should have been available to him when he woke up late, waiting for him, wanting to spend time with him.  

I'm starting to see the gaps here.  I've felt that success for us looked like him not being upset or angry about something.  I'm realizing that when I told him where I'd been yesterday, it might have occurred to him to ask if I'd enjoyed it, what the music was like, if I'd seen any friends there, what I'd been thinking--so many possible questions to show interest or care, maybe even concern.

I've expected too little.  "And it was easier and safer to stay in a bad situation than to take responsibility for getting out."

Spectacles (so many formatting problems!--sorry)

My eyes have started age-related changes so now I wear

purple spectacles usually askew on my head and see

everything blurry up close without them. Perhaps it’s

made me turn more internal to see and process all the

visions inside instead of outside for these past 15 years

in medicine and moming and wifing and lifing.

  I feel somehow now like I’m about to implode inside

though nothing looks different externally

(except perhaps the spectacles). 

Working in this small town and living here,

I see story bubbles above the heads of those I

know and imagined ones above the heads

of those I don’t.  “She has a disabled daughter

and her husband was the love of her life and

her helpmate through all those challenges. 

He died last year from brain cancer and now

she’s in this life-time of caregiving alone.”

“He feels hollow inside despite going through

all the life motions masterfully.”  “She has

cancer.  We’d been looking for months.  And

despite my feeling in my clinical gut that she

had it, a scan that I thought would show it did

not, so we spent time looking for other

causes and then circled back to find the cancer

I’d originally suspected.  I’m not sure she’ll

make it.  I wonder if I should have followed my

intuition more despite the negative scan.” 

“They have just lost a pregnancy.”

Not all of it is dramatic. “He’s allergic to bees.”

“She has high cholesterol but refuses to take

medicine, so far.” “They are anti-vax.” 

The stories accumulate and begin to overlap with others."
"She’s drinking too much alcohol and I only know

because her husband is also under my care and

told me in confidence. “He’s struggling with

sex-addiction and his family is reeling from the

struggle of acceptance and anger.” There are stories

everywhere.  Those I don’t know, my busy mind

can imagine.  Though I would prefer the thoughts to be quieter. 

It gets to the point where I pull back from the stories and

wonder what actually matters among all of this. I feel

adolescent and existential and angsty.  I don’t know

where to take it or who to tell, if anyone. The restlessness

inside though makes me want to scream while I greet

everyone with the same smile everyday.  Everyday,

the same. What will quiet this?  A new challenge?  A move? 

A deeper internal examination?

I no longer have the luxury of isolation.  I can’t withdraw

without hurting people who love and need me.  I can’t

leave without the tower of our lives crumbling. 

Decisions now have a wider ripple–a closer ripple that runs into the future. 

I’m unhappy with the direction our marriage has taken. 

I don’t want to live out this path on its current trajectory.

  M now barely leaves the house and balks at any change

or suggestions to alter our course.  I ask what he wants in

10 years and he says he’d like to maybe be writing a book. 

Which he’s said for the past 14 years.  He says he doesn’t

have time, but he games for 10-12 hours per day most days. 

I don’t understand the balance nor the choices.  Addiction

throws all logic off-center so perhaps that is it. 

I’ve learned that when a patient has a story that is rumpled

and disjointed and confusing, they eventually confide that

they have an addiction problem.  Alcohol, food, cocaine. 

The addiction pulls everything into focus.  Then it makes sense.

  All the bad decisions suddenly seen through the lens of

the disease are comprehensible.  

Is that what happens so close to me that I can’t see it–or am

too resentful and frustrated to admit and address?  He reluctantly

agreed to see a couples therapist, so this should  be interesting. 

He blames me for many problems and I’m certainly not blameless.

  Nor am I alone in blame.  And actually, blame does not even

seem to be a useful emotion.  Like guilt–useless.  

I try to learn compassionate communication.  Come to the

conversation with genuine curiosity of what the other person

is thinking and feeling.  I practice all day long with patients

and friends.  At a little distance, it’s easy.  Too close, though,

and it gets blurry and indistinguishable from myself and

I don’t have spectacles to bring that anger and discontent into

a focus that is connected with a cause that I can solve.  

I’m tempted with what I know are bad decisions as a portal

to excitement.  I feel vulnerable to these choices because

the current state of being does not feel right or full or meaningful.  

Relief

I felt it when I disembarked from the plane coming home from Ohio long ago.  I feel it again now.  Not all the same, but like a sudden ability to breathe again.  Like a hot shadow falling further behind.  It’s still close now, but the fact that it feels so good to even think about leaving it seems telling.  

Adapting to situations that become more and more untenable is a gradual process.  One doesn’t realize the little daily oppressions until they stack up or are put in sharp contrast with something else.  Or unless good friends help you see.  

Just walking around today away from the house at the farmer’s market there have been dozens of little guilty confining thoughts that I can start to practice dismissing.  I was able to buy produce without worrying that he’d say there was too much or “The fridge is too packed.  Where do you think that will fit?”  I didn’t think about needing to get him something for lunch that he would then likely critique and then say something like, “But thank you anyway for trying.”  I do dread having to go home to whatever awaits there.  I know he will try again to convince me that I’m in the wrong and all his behavior is my fault for neglecting and not validating him.  

Certainly, I’m not the most attentive wife.  I do like my space.  I do like my own time.  I do enjoy going out with my friends or alone.  I do also, however, find it discouraging to go back to him over and over to try to get his attention to be turned away at least 8 times out of 10.  Some of which he would not even see me standing near him as he was so focused on his current gaming situation.  I’d just turn and go back up the stairs to wait until he was between games or ready to interact.  

There seems to have been a lot of waiting, actually.  Waiting for him to be rested, fed, the perfect temperature, nothing sticky for him to see or accidentally touch.  Nothing to make his hands rough or dirty.  

Every once in a while, more often lately, he will show me his hands, holding them out and looking down at them, turning them over, smiling, “I mean look at my hands.  Feel them.  They are pristine.”  “Yeah.”  I’d smile, thinking that is exactly the opposite of what I’d like in a partner’s hands.  I’d like them dirty with life, rough calloused, with helping outside, blistered from shoveling, splinters from the wood chips, dirt under the nails, cuts healing. Hands to be able to both hold onto life without being disgusted with its stickiness and heat and general discomfort.  

Hands to hold onto me even when I’m sweaty or wet or hot or sticky or dirty or covered in tears.  I don’t want pristine hands to hold me.  His are hands that spend thousands of hours caressing a plastic mouse, clinking passionately on a lighted keyboard, tracking behind eyes focused on a screen and ears listening to sounds of digital death and destruction.  

At the expense of mine.  His hands can be like that because mine are not.  

It’s been a thousand tiny heart-mincing slices.  Some small, some bigger.  Added up feeling pulverized into a shape no longer recognizing the frequency of the insults to the once living tissue. 

The times I’d ask him to go places and he declined with excuses of fatigue, or overwhelm, or anticipated displeasure in my company.  The times I’d come home after work to silence of him sleeping and our daughter staring alone at a screen.  The times after that when he would complain that she spent too much time on the screen and that I should monitor her more.  He’d gone to sleep because he knew I would be home and could “take over.”

The Tuesdays that he looked forward to my day off so I could be with Genevieve and he could have hours of uninterrupted gaming sessions without having to worry about obligations.  The hundreds of take out meals he ordered because I hadn’t done the dishes so he couldn’t use the kitchen, or he was too tired or out of it to think of anything to cook.  Stacking up on the DoorDash bills.  The groceries he ordered online then complained when he messed up or they got it wrong or texted him too many times with questions during their collection.  The eight bags of potatoes he ordered accidentally then expected me to clean up the consequences on the cluttered counters.  

He is so upset with the messes that we make.  More important to him to have a tidy house.  “I have asked you 1000s of times!  The house like this stresses me out!  I have tried to adjust and put up with your messes but I just want a little consideration.  Just a few things kept tidy.  Is that too much to ask?!”  Followed by a retreat downstairs for hours until he’d reset himself somehow and come up to sulk and wait for us to apologize or have cleaned something up.  “I dread the weekends you know–because you guys trash the house so bad.”

I think actually he will be far happier eventually living without us.  Or that’s the picture he’s painted for me.  I am a messy bother to him.  He suggested that if I can’t manage to keep up with my chores that we should hire someone to come in to “help me” a couple times per week while he slept or gamed.  

The more I stack things up, the more outrageous the details sound.  

To be fair, he’s done some sweet things, also.  He prides himself on giving perfect presents and he does hit the mark sometimes.  There are beautiful baskets for the garden and he did discover the amazing Japanese Garden knife and get me one.  

Though even then, I have not liked all the gifts, but I’ve chosen to pretend that I do instead of deal with his hurt feelings.  The giant rhododendron was lovely for a couple days and now I have to take care of it in a pot, or dig a gigantic hole and worry about it dying.  The glass perfume bottle he got me is beautiful, but I’m not sure what to do with it so it’s another item that fills up the house that is already so irritatingly full to him. 

He made us dinner countless times, arranging it nicely on the  plates he served piping hot, silently expecting praise and notice and floods of gratitude each time.  Irritated if we waited too long and they cooled so we could not experience the perfection of the meal. 

Maybe even the things he did for “us” were in some way for him to extract admiration from us.  That’s the old question if anyone is ever actually not making selfish acts.  I think some people do.  I think he doesn’t.  

In Scotland, I remember trying to covertly coach my family to not upset him and to pay him extra attention for any generous act.  Because the consequences  of his feelings being hurt would last for days and he would claim that he would remember those slights forever.  There would be no recovery, just a constant slow and gradual descent into disgust and anger. 

I don’t think he behaves this way with malintent necessarily.  He doesn’t see the extent to which if is damaging to those around him.  Yet, if you tell him about the damage, he also doesn’t hear you.  And what else is there to do?

I know his criticisms and particularities were not always this pronounced.  He used to enjoy that we would go for walks and I could make people smile.  Now he feels upset and jealous when they only talk to me and not him.  I don’t know why this has changed and devolved so drastically.  I tried to figure it out.  I tried to remind him who he was.  I tried to help.  I tried to sympathize.  All there seems left is to try to push him to figure it out himself.