I used to think that to be at odds with someone I loved meant to sever the relationship. There was no messy grey area. We had a good relationship or a bad one, and to be a bad one signified an impossible undertaking beyond my efforts or control. When I fought with my mom, I believed there were only two outcomes to it, suicide or surrender. We couldn't disagree though, I couldn't have my own identity and opinions if they weren't synonymous with hers; I couldn't because to me that was pure devastation, we were one or we were nothing. I continued on with all my relationships in this same destructive line of thinking. We were with each other or we were against each other. Which is why the circumstances of my current situation are so monumentally bizarre and beautiful at the same time.
I am now living in that messy grey area with my husband, recognizing that I can love him and enjoy him, without currently being with him. For over a month now he's been on the couch while me, our two dogs, and the evergrowing bun in my little oven takes over the bed. Our relationship is so far from perfection it's terrifying. But I need him in every way you need another person. I'm sick, I'm tired, and I'm not financially stable. That and the fact that he continues to be my best friend, in spite of his outrageously large and at times nearly unforgivable shortcomings, has put us right in the center of a steaming hot pile of limbo. And no, for those who are wondering, he didn't beat me or verbally abuse me or cheat on me, it's not that extreme or indisputable. It's just human ugliness, the tools we acquire through shitty experiences in our childhood that unknowingly and unintentionally hurt the ones we love most. I'm just as guilty of it as the next person. So yeah, back to that steaming hot pile of limbo, here I am. I've had to ask for peace in a time where I would normally rage and he would normally sulk; I've had to ask for laughter when I would have imagined tears, and I've had to request dinner and dog walks in replace of the removal of him and all his possessions.
In an unexpectedly metamorphic session with my therapist, I realized the misconception of my own apathy towards those who have hurt me. A coping mechanism that began with one of the worst years of my life, and continued on into adulthood, left me blind to my pain and safeguarded my vulnerability behind a wall of anger and near anesthesia. I could go into it, the Year of the Punishings, the year that began with one of many suicide attempts and a month-long hospitalization where we, as children, were told we were nothing more than manipulators and narcissists, that our depression and loneliness wasn't real, that we were all full of shit and that the only way to cure us was through a strict, year-long process of consequences and the immediate removal of privileges. We were to be broken down and retrained to be better people or we would all be sent away to a residential home for the remainder of our adolescence. The anxiety attacks began shortly after. I no longer believed that anyone could help me. My parents were my enemies, my friends could not even begin to comprehend the situation, and the overpaid doctors who were supposed to be guiding me had criminalized me. And if that wasn't enough to digest at the young and impressionable age of thirteen, six months later my dad packed up and left. Suddenly it was my 8-month-old brother, my 2-year-old sister, and my handicapped brother and I, fending for ourselves while our mom crumbled before our eyes. Here I was picking up the pieces of it all and trying to understand her suffering while I lived with the newfound belief that my feelings were nothing and my experiences weren't real. I carried around the shame of my depression and the weight of her constant threats to run away or to kill herself. I no longer trusted that anyone really cared about me.
In the beginning, I deemed to be perfect; honor roll, theater, gymnastics, speaking at 8th grade graduation, an eating disorder, a bedroom that looked like a museum and a smile plastered on my face at all times, that was who I had to be; only then would I matter, would I be visible to the world as someone authentic and worthy of being taken seriously. But come on, how long can anyone go on like that? It was only a few years later that I began to push my friends away and took on the bad girl persona I believed I had earned. I would be a drug addict and an alcoholic, maybe one day I'd recover and finally be real and my feelings would be authentic and I would have nothing to be ashamed of, but that was down the line, I'd be an adult, everything would be different and make sense, right? I would eventually be better. But for the time being, it was, fuck the world, fuck everyone, that was where I was at. That was my safe place.
So anyway, yes, black and white, that was where I lived, that was who I was. There was no in between. I did not hold on to anything. That dark wall of detachment was all I had. If I so much as had a negative opinion about a friend's behavior, we were over. If I did not succeed at something I had attempted, all future attempts ceased. We were good or bad, successes or failures, rich or poor, funny or dull. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was tired and fucking lonely. The hardest reality I began to face as the years went on was that reaching adulthood wasn't the magical antidote I imagined it would be. Nothing just began to make sense and those coping mechanisms did not just go away.
So here I am, separated from and living with my partner of eight years and I'm pregnant and we've got some work to do and everything is insanely confusing in our house. But in my cathartic session with my therapist, I was able to identify the truth behind my feelings and realized that, no, I don't want him to fall off the face of the earth, to disappear; and yes, I would be devasted if I lost him; if this marriage ended. The wall had to come down for the sake of this child I'm carrying, for the sake of my health. Anger bubbled and boiled inside of me so easily I threw up everytime I sat with it. It was not sustainable and, like I said, I needed him. I need him. So with the help of therapy, I was able to say for the first time in my life, the hard cold truth of what his actions did to me.
"Your actions hurt me, you're someone who is supposed to care about my feelings, and what you did made me feel like you don't care and that you don't love me. It made me feel unsafe. It brought me back to being thirteen again and feeling like I'm all alone and unworthy of love, understanding or compassion. And I'm afraid of being alone, I wanted you to be the one that I could trust, that would respect my feelings, and I'm afraid you don't and I'm afraid I'll never be able to trust you and I'm really sad because I don't want to lose you and because this experience has also made me question myself and my abilities to make good decisions and choose the right people to let in and it's always so hard for me to let my guard down and you betrayed me and I feel completely alone like I did back then."
I said all this to him because at the heart of all the anger was this brutal, raw, messy truth. We've hurt each other, we love each other, we are best friends who sometimes want to strangle each other. And now, through all of that, we are here, in this unfamiliar domestic climate where mental and physical health take precedence over our instinctual urges to behave like two overgrown children. He makes me dinner, we talk and laugh on the couch at the end of our long work days, we watch The Walking Dead on Sunday nights, he hugs me when I talk about my insecurities regarding my changing body, and he tells me how beautiful I am to him, how much he loves me, how adorable my current gluttonous eating habits are. He still feels ashamed and I still feel hurt and untrusting. I hold my ground with my needs, advocating for them like I never have before; letting him know what I'm feeling in a more honest way than I'm comfortable with; sharing how his actions, negative or positive, affect me; listening to him when he has had a lousy day at work, encouraging him when he talks about his ideas and thoughts. We are still scared and we have no idea what the future holds. We hug each other before bed and talk as he sets up the sheets over our sofa and goes into the bedroom to pick out his clothes for the following day so as not to wake me in the morning. He touches my cheek before he leaves in the morning and tells me to have a good day and we text funny messages throughout. Sometimes I laugh and other times I feel the sadness and fear of a potential loss.
But he is not my enemy and if this ends in divorce, I know we will always have a solid friendship and will work well together as parents. I do hope it doesn't, I am actually able to recognize that I care about him, I don't have to hide behind name calling and the old I don't give a fuck that I once believed served me. I didn't realize how badly I needed to let myself admit that I'm hurt by him and that I love him. It makes me wonder how many opportunities I missed out on, to get close to people that I let go of all because of a hurt feeling or a missed understanding. Don't get me wrong, my husband fucked up, but it does not make him all bad, he is neither good or bad, that's been my biggest lesson through all of this. He is human just like all of us, prone to ugliness, prone to beauty. But I don't have to make any decisions right now beyond what I'm going to eat in the next thirty minutes. That's just where I'm at, the grey, messy area in between black and white, and I'm learning how to be okay with it.
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