Staying through the raw

There is construction directly across the street from the apartment my husband and I share. We’re never in it at the same time. It’s a bizarre way to live with someone. We are separating our lives after 25 years together, and we were in need of a new living situation. I heard an interview on NPR with a woman who did the same with her ex. She wanted to reduce confusion for their kids, so they took turns staying in the house with the children while the other stayed in an apartment. Elegant. Cost Efficient. Effective at achieving her goal (which I also prioritized). I was so grateful to be listening that day. It was a light in the darkness of my own situation. We rented an apartment that overlooks our children’s elementary school, so I could be reminded why.

I realized during a meditation one afternoon that I no longer loved my husband. The feeling dropped into my belly like a steel marble and rolled slowly to a still. Metal on metal. Of course, I still love him in the way that you love the people who have a hand in creating your identity. The way you love the father of your children. The way you love your first love. But too much happened between us in our years together, and I wasn’t able to forgive enough of it to stay married. We tried counseling. We scheduled dates. We talked. It was connection I couldn’t find. I stayed for two more years to be absolutely certain.

It was the little stuff got to me, it all felt important to the narrative arc of our relationship. We have a simple water fountain for our dog. She prefers the flowing water, and I like that it holds a ton, so I don’t have to fill it up three times a day like the small dish by her food. When the water approaches the minimum fill line, the motor starts to whir loudly and obnoxiously. The grinding is a good reminder to fill it, actually. My ex unplugs it. He leaves the bowl empty and leaves the cord on the floor next to it. That’s how he deals with the noise problem. I know if I asked him about it, he would say that she has her other water dish, but that one is frequently empty when I come over. How long is it like that? Then he’d tell me he just filled it and she drank it all. But it’s empty now? Then he’d jokingly say she’s tough and doesn’t need water, like thirst is another one of the hoaxes, which is funny until you think that maybe he might seriously think that the dog doesn’t need water. At the end of the trail of excuses, the dog has no water, and no thumbs to get her own. Doesn’t he think of her? I don’t know, but I started thinking I can’t stay married to someone who’d let a dog go thirsty.

Once on our road trip, I missed an exit late at night and added about 45 minutes to our drive time. I was very upset about it and the entire trip’s baseline upset level was already higher than average. When I finally made it to the parking lot that would serve as our front lawn for the evening, exhausted and erratic (crashing out as the kids would say), I grabbed my pot and headed for a darkened parking lot corner, letting everyone fend for themselves at bedtime. Immediately, I realized I should not be out alone in this particular parking lot at 1am, but pride took hold. He’d come for me, I thought. I smoked and sat alone and alert for ten minutes before heading back to the camper. I walked in to find my husband passed out on the children’s bunk and my teenage son waiting up. This is my greatest shame. I assured my son I was fine and told him to get some rest, then I wedged myself between the two little ones that had taken residence in my bed. I had trouble falling asleep because of the cramped quarters and the movement I kept hearing outside. There was a man organizing crates and shopping carts around an open trunk. I could tell that he had been there for more than a few nights. I thought of our unlocked storage compartments outside. After a few failed attempts to rouse my husband, I put my pants on and drove the RV from one end of the parking lot to the other. Then I cried myself to sleep. I don’t remember what state we were in; we were far from home. That was the night I knew it was over.

A partner would have come after me. A partner would have locked the kids inside the RV and trekked across the parking lot to say “Hey! I’m sorry I didn’t give you more notice before the exit. You did a great job driving. Thank you. Are you doing okay out here? You seem to be having a hard time, how can I help?” and then a partner would listen to the answer. That’s what I wanted him to do. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask. He was sound asleep, too. He wasn’t worried about me in the slightest. I could have been snatched off the pavement, and he wouldn’t have known until morning. When I asked him about it, he said he thought I wanted space. I would rather live alone, then be let down like that again.

I miss the good days when I felt okay on my own. When I got really sick, I needed someone to watch out for me. He didn’t. Even my psychiatrist expressed concern that he hadn’t reached out to her, and she saw me for a half hour virtually once every few weeks. Thankfully, my meds helped and I was able to pull up with the help of my doctors. He and I don’t talk about that time at all. We never mention the weight loss, my manic behavior, or my paranoid delusions. During this time, I went on a three hour walk alone in the middle of winter, leaving my husband and kids at home, and he didn’t even text me. I asked him about that and he said, “I can’t be with you all the time.” I don’t even understand what that means. Realizing that you could die and the person who claims to care about you the most might not notice for hours or even days is humbling. At the time, I could be brought to tears at the thought of my husband in a car accident somewhere without my knowing. I’d text him between his departure and destination. “Let me know when you get there.” He often wouldn’t.

We both made mistakes, though. I pushed him too hard for the children we have. I wanted children. I always did. When we were dating, we talked about raising a football team of children. After we got married, I had to convince him to have the first one. Here’s where experience taught me that you should not procreate with someone who you have to talk into it. That’s a warning sign. But I wanted a loving family, and I was going to get it. So, I pushed and manipulated him into a yes. Three times. I love our children more than breath, but experience taught me why it was wrong to force that kind of responsibility on someone who isn’t asking for it, for both my partner and my kids. I would like to say explicitly here, that my partner is an amazing father, who more than rose to the challenge of parenthood, but I experienced first hand how the stress affected him. I would have acted differently if I knew what I know now. I would have explored why I felt I needed so many babies to fill the hole in my heart.

There was a lot I took for granted when we were married. He did our taxes every year, he mows the lawn and manages the landscaping, he takes care of the vehicles. He is warm and silly. He loves to teach what he knows. He likes to have fun. I miss those parts of him. But I don’t miss feeling invisible. I don’t miss being asked how my day was, understanding that none of my answer is being absorbed as I’m saying it. I don’t miss being talked down to. I don’t miss hearing something I said five minutes ago come out of his mouth as if it was his idea. I don’t miss listening to him blame everything under the sun rather than being accountable.

Once when we were with friends, everyone was sharing their impressive sporting achievements; championships won, buzzer beaters, etc. It’s safe to say that I do not have an impressive sporting achievement to share, so I was listening politely to everyone else when my partner decided to share a story on my behalf; the time I got smashed in the face with a volleyball. He told it as lovingly as you can tell a story like that, but it was awkward for all of us, especially me. Everyone else is celebrated and I get smacked in the face all over again. I didn’t want to be with someone who would share my embarrassing moment, as if it belonged to him, for the laugh. When we got home I told him how I felt, he told me it wasn’t a big deal.

Before our wedding, I made the case for writing our own vows. At the time, neither of us practiced any rituals or beliefs that would help guide us, so I thought writing them ourselves would be the most meaningful. I remember sitting on the couch, laptop ready on the coffee table, and asking him to come write some words with me to commemorate our union together. He refused. I don’t remember his reason, but he said we should do “the standard ones,” so I dutifully googled them. Experience here taught me that I should not have made vows with someone who didn’t care what they said. Ironically, we have a copy of that exact coffee table at the apartment. It’s the cheapest one they sell at Ikea. 

You could say a wedding ring ended our marriage and that’s partly true. A lot of it was what I have written here. The story that ends every argument is the story of the ring I asked him to get me to commemorate our 25^th anniversary together. I followed all the relationship advice out there; I told him explicitly what I wanted and why it was important to me, I held a reasonable expectation (just a simple gold band), I reminded him a few times leading up to the day. He didn’t get it. He didn’t even apologize for not having it. I showed up to the reservation I made at a restaurant he wanted to try, wearing a dress that he’d like even though it was freezing, and he was empty handed. He ate his shrimp and scallops while I chastised myself as selfish for expecting anything. He didn’t even have to do it for me. He gave me the ring a few weeks later for my birthday, but the damage was done. Every time I looked down at my finger, I could see the version of myself who sat across from him at that table in the restaurant feeling like less than nothing, and felt angry on her behalf.

Experience comes at the end, doesn’t it? When pain first happens, you seep blood everywhere, and it’s a mess. Experience is the scar. You can read the edges of the cut clearly. My therapist referred to the traumas that happen to us as injuries, because given enough time and care, it’s possible to heal from them. When he offered this wisdom, I could suddenly see how my spiritual body was falling apart. I had been walking around on broken legs. I needed rest, I needed care, I needed time to heal all the injuries I had never even acknowledged.

Injuries to bone have always made me cringe, especially having to reset a bone after it’s healed incorrectly. It sounds like a nightmare, bones are so jagged. The thought makes me want to curl up inside myself, saving my entire skeleton in the center of the goop in my meat sack. I’d like to move around the world like that so I don’t accidentally break a bone only to have to re-break it when it fuses together in the wrong place. Breaking a behavior pattern you’ve been consistently repeating feels a lot like I imagine it feels to reset a bone. The buildup is agonizing, and it’s painful and violent splintering the fresh marrow from itself. It’s necessary for the injury to heal they way it is meant to. For years, I felt like I watched my bones fuse in the wrong places, as though my behavior was pre-recorded and I was viewing a tape of myself making the same mistake over and over, knowing I was delaying the inevitable reset that needed to come if I wanted to walk without pain. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I felt angry at the idiot for not learning faster.

Blaming myself is the pattern that kept me broken, but I was injured by the time I could see it. I could not know then what I know now without the experience. With hindsight, I could see how I abandoned myself in the interest of his feelings. I assumed he would collapse under weight of my criticism, and so to save him the pain I carried it instead, letting it cripple me while I told myself it was ungrateful to expect more. My life with him was already so much better than the life I had come from. How much did I think I deserved? Breaking this pattern is resetting the bone. It felt excruciating to say this is the last time I will let you hurt me, but with every step forward my pain has eased. For the first time in my life, I can envision what it might feel like to walk without suppressing discomfort for the sake of others. I feel myself healing the right way.