I was doing so good. I was enjoying myself, making the best of a heartbreaking situation. I was nourishing myself with good foods, I was walking miles and miles a day. I was taking my meds, talking to friends, writing letters to strengthen relationships, cleaning the house, brushing my teeth, doing my best.
It wasn’t enough.
I was seeking approval, ticking off boxes, oversharing to get others to understand why I was still a viable person to love even while
it was all still so bad.
Though I was doing all of the skills, doing all of the breathing, it was never going to be enough. I hadn’t started practicing self-acceptance. I was still defining my worth through the eyes of this man, the man who kept showing me that I asked too much and who kept asking more of me.
I had subconsciously traded my “self” for my partnership to this man.
This man was not a monster. He was not a bad guy. He was not a boogeyman. That was perhaps the hardest hurdle to overcome. I was not a victim. He was not a perpetrator.
We were two wounded children, neglected, abused, in the bodies of two middle-aged people doing our best with big emotions. As a couple, we never developed the tools to both heal those suffering children and honor the adults we had become, with agency to heal or continue being wounded-whichever was the choice.
I had decided a few years ago that I wanted to be as healthy as I could be. It was most likely at that time that our marriage suffered it’s first cracks. I started exercising in earnest, I started seeking to understand WHY I would act out. WHY rejection made me lash out in anger. WHY after living such a successful life, rich in adventure, I still felt the need to gain approval from my elders, from my friends. I started doing this incredibly difficult work of transformation one small step at a time. Over the course of a handful of years, we progressively had less and less in common. I found myself clinging to his side, doing all of the things he liked to do, hoping to maintain that intimacy we had shared.
I didn’t understand that the foundation of our intimacy was built on childhood trauma. I didn’t realize how dangerous that can be for a couple without the skills necessary to deal with these kind of emotional webs.
I was so hopeful. I was so optimistic.
I stopped doing things I liked doing, because I didn’t want to be away from my partner for too long. Though I constantly invited him to do things that fed my soul, he would only go on outings that he liked. For outings I liked, he would say, “if you want. I just want to be near you.” These sweet words, telling me that he just wanted to be near me. I would reward him with not doing what I wanted to do, and instead doing something we could both enjoy. Over and over, for years and years. I slowly allowed myself to disappear.
I allowed myself to become a ghost.
And then I became sick. Then I actually needed him. I needed him to be emotionally mature enough to take on the role of the caregiver he was promising me he could be.
He was incapable of being a caregiver for another person with mental illness. He was raised under a mother with multiple diagnoses, and abandoned by his father, both self-obsessed adults, both with a penchant for drugs and alcohol. Without healing from those wounds of his past, he could NOT be what I needed him to be. And yet we both tried so hard to believe he could.
And then I became more sick.
My efforts in diet, exercise, medication, therapy, mindfulness, they were no longer enough. I was dropping into despair, loss, bitterness, loneliness, and thoughts of escape. These thoughts of escape stayed with me, gnawing at my subconscious for three years as I progressively devolved into a sick person. Not a person with a sickness. I became sickness.
And then, as the rest of the world celebrated 2023 with champagne and friends, I celebrated by promising myself liberation from this, somehow.
I promised to start accepting myself, as I finally realized that I was the only one who would be by my side until my last breath.
I had no other options, except certain death. I knew it in my bones, I was not going to be able to survive in my own skin unless I did something drastic.
So I did. I decided to get to know what I liked again. I decided to take trains to new places, and explore new hotels without the input of my husband.
By this point we could no longer speak to each other except about household duties. By this point he had become comfortable speaking to me with resignation and contempt, and I had decided to become comfortable with ignoring it and moving about my day.
For two weeks, I traveled to three new cities. I navigated one completely without my phone (fun time for a lockout) and I survived. I started feeling the unease of learning and growing. I started to discover and rediscover things I like. I started buying myself food that I never kept in the house before, because he didn’t like it. I started buying flavored coffee, a thing he detests (and I love).
I started becoming defiant in my acceptance, grace and curiosity about myself.
And his contempt grew.
And his lack of engagement in productive conversations became more and more rigid.
And then, one day, things went too far. Details aren’t needed, we have all been there. Sometimes great intentions, huge feelings and old unhealed wounds can create a very dangerous situation for couples.
And I left.
And I flew out of the country.
And I flew to the arms of my lifelong friend, my girl, my sister from another mister.
She was my angel, telling me to come here so I could learn to fly again.
Sisterhood can be one of the most powerful forces in the planet.
Today, I look out on a day bathing in sunshine. I am deciding to go out there again, now without the safety net of a marriage. To truly blaze my own trail again, heading down paths I have created, without permission from others.
The best trailblazing is done without permission from others, after all.