On Grieving the What Mights

Sometimes the most tragic piece punches me unexpectedly in the gut. You'd think after all the abuse, all the hell in trying to escape the narcissist that in escape there would be only relief. But there is a hidden sadness that can sneak up behind you. You mistakenly think, if I can just get the hell out... If I can just survive and move on.... Why then I'll be fine.

And then there you go imagining like you've always done. Thinking of what might have been, if he'd only been able to choose something different. Just when you think you're finished with all the drama, all the death, all the grief and endings of dead relationships. There is a little spot that gets in.

Call it the what-might-have-been grief.

After you've invested so many years trying to love someone who for all intensive purposes can not ever love you back, you've come to intimately know the good friend of what-might-be. For many years, what-might-be has been one of your steadiest companions. What-might-be has been your hope, your citadel. And then what-might-be flies away into the air, evaporated just like everything else.

And this can be completely ungrounding. Cause who thinks of grieving the loss of the shared dreams, the future, the hopes of the growth, the butterfly transformation. But, you've lost so much. Why not this, too? After all, the snake goes on as perpetual death and life cycle.

on Death Stamps

Sometimes I wonder at the course death may have taken if the guy dumping the coal, had looked away? What if the twenty two year old boy had just seeped away into the void of nothingness? No detectives dawning the door at half past 11. No phone calls to Africa beckoning the parents homeward in a hurry. No lonely buglers haunting the silence of a gathering with the presence of the minor keys of sadness.

Death and grief. Such strangeness and yet, such odd familiarity.

I remember playing Hide-n-Seek amidst the headstones in the South as a young child. After sitting still for far too long, we'd dart out of the country church where the old ladies still donned over-sized hats and gloves to shake the hand of Gran the Preacher. Escaping to the cemetery we'd irreverently jump and climb the dead's makeshift jungle gym until the old ladies would shame us with their scolding eyes. Retreating to the long stone tables under the shelter we'd await the lecture from the preacher himself. The lecture never happened. Instead, his wild eyes merely suggested hiding near the back of the cemetery, where our sacrilegious play wouldn't ruffle the feathers of the little ole prim-and-proper ladies.

The death rituals didn't seem any sort of different from the living rituals, then. No, rather there were giant stones with dates stamped on them marking the basic details and sometimes a quote or a little lamb which seemed fair climbing material. It didn't seem to us that the dead would actually care about the traipsing all over their space.

But, the death rituals were handled differently in Arlington. I remember the hypnotic rhythm of the marching, the clicking of the shoes, the gun cocking, the endless back and forth and the non-flinching-in-the-face-of-a-bead-of-sweat-dripping-down-your-nose in the middle of the summer humidity. These rituals communicated a different rendition of death, contrasted starkly against the graves turned jungle gym. Twenty four seven, rain or shine, timed paces back and forth for years in front of the Unknown Soldier imparted a special heaviness and honor to the idea of death and all its enshrouded acknowledgments. These rituals almost seemed more important in the face of the unknown details.

And then there was the day the detectives knocked and we planned and stewed over the most minute details in the going about of the burying of the twenty-two year old boy in the frozen January earth, the day before his 23rd birthday. It seemed pertinent to avoid having the funeral on his birthday.

A thousand people drove in. The folks hopped a plane out of Africa and a people did what they do at funerals.

The rituals seemed inept. Not enough wrappings to dress the body of loss.

And then the day came and went when a relationship a few years shy of being as old as the almost 23 yr old, was declared dead.

And nothing happened. Nothing was different. The passing in all its finality was just dumped into the vat of void. No corduroy suit or Stone to climb on or march in front of for this death. No funeral pyre, no flower arrangements, no freshly disturbed dirt, no place tethering the grieving and keeping the feet on the ground. Instead the death and change of life's trajectory warranted a stamp from a robed stranger and an email from an expensive lawyer the day after the anniversary.

And nothing was the same.

it is Finished

It is finished.
The marriage is ended. Unceremoniously declared undone by some ultimate power that rules over things like devastation and loss for a salary-of-sorts at ten minutes past 4 o'clock in the afternoon on a day not all that dissimilar from the day things began in June, far too many years ago.

It is finished.
After all the waiting. After all the speed bumps. After all the endless time spent working with the soul who abandoned itself.

It is finished. 
Those final words, oh-so-similar to the martyr I grew up hearing about. The martyr who hung in the pain of imagining God doing all the forsaking.

It is finished.
Somehow the perspective always gets skewed. The martyr chooses to sacrifice.

It is finished.
And then the martyr questions the abandonment.
My God my God, why?

It is finished.
Why hast thou forsaken me?
Perhaps God did. Perhaps God did not.

It is finished.
Sometimes we are the ones doing all the forsaking of self.
And we don't know it--the abandoning we project onto the divine figure in the sky is our own abandoning. We do the finishing. We do the abandoning of soul all too well on our own, without the Divine and then we blame the Divine for the finishing.

It is finished.
The relief at the closure of the death of relationship is ours. And we feel the stab of the snake, lifted high, in the wilderness, healing all who look. Healing with the finishing of closure. Finality. A death of sorts. Enacted by a judge, in a clinical office in the county of nowheresville. A judge knowing no-one. A judge knowing not the look of a bright eyed boy hoping to change a future and a past wrought with agonizing awfulness. A boy and a girl hoping that love might be enough. But, instead the honorable has ruled it finished. Stamped her signature on the death of a marriage. Called it at ten minutes past four on an afternoon in June when the parties knew nothing of the passing until the lawyers notified the dead of the death of a relationship past. The lawyers waited to send the email. Waited for the day after the anniversary.

It is finished.
Sometimes the finishing hurts more than you think it might. The pain seeps in even after you think you've cried your eyes out till the tears dry out and they are no more. The sadness at the finishing still hits you all the same. You tell yourself its not an ending, but rather a beginning. You tell yourself it is a return to the sacred abandoned self. The snake said so after all. There is a circle. A snake symbol looped around signifying eternity.

And it is finished all the same. 

And somehow, that hurts a bit, more than you might have imagined. Circles and death and life and symbolism aside you still feel the horror of the ending. You still feel the my God, my God, why have you abandoned me piece? 

It is finished. 

evil

And this is how I know there is evil in the world.

I think I'm going to interact with him and get a normal human being. And there he is emotionally and psychologically abusing again. And I feel ridiculous for still being affected by it--though this is someone I was married to for 19 yrs....

How is it that I know exactly what he will do... and I'm still affected?

New GF

Tis Spring Break. And my narc is vacation bound to the mountains with his GF. The new one, I might add. Not the old one, he would have to fly to visit. I guess she was too much trouble after the funds to fly to see her dried up. But the One round these parts. The One with a lab named the same as mine... Kinda creepy, I'd say.

I can't believe he told you so soon about her, I said to my kids.

Oh, he didn't tell us, mom. We just figured it out already. He's traveling on vacation with her. In case you don't know, mom, that means something in relationships.

They lecture me now on how to tell if your dad is dating someone without telling you. They school me, as if I don't know already.

And I let them.

And the truth is, I don't tell them of my own schooling of how to tell when someone you love is being unfaithful. How to figure out if the underwear was left by your sister, or another? How to tell if the razor appearing after you were gone for a weekend magically appeared in your shower by accident? How to ferret out why you feel so empty and alone in a 20 year relationship?

Truth be told, I'd rather this. I'd rather little people who love me and want to break it to me gently, tell me of his escapades. 

But, no, contrary to my assumptions, he hasn't told them. They've just grown schooled in the art of figuring out the schemes already. They've grown accustomed to watching the actions and not the words of the narcissist. They know to wait for the behaviors that tell the truth. And this, this is progress.

Because he. He can't.

Quest Ions

He questioned Me on the stand. I didn't know what to do. Yes, it was triggering of the PTSD. I froze I think. I'm not sure. Perhaps, I blanked out. I definitely couldn't concentrate. How was it that He got to wield philosophical weapons at me? Well.

He fired his lawyer.

After spending an obscene amount of money on her sophisticated arguments.

After She argued for this date in time, wherein She could be here on His behalf.

She wasn't.

It was only I on the stand being Questioned by He. My Narcissist. Echoing all that has already passed.

I survived, at least.

We shall see.

fantasy escape

I don't know what to do with wanting to escape so badly that I find myself disturbed by fantasies of my ex's death. Dreams where he dies. And stops his games. And stops hurting me. Dreams where I feel relief at the end of all this ridiculousness.

In my dream, I have peace. I fly to a tower and of course, have Orange Pekoe tea. As in OP. Which I find comical because I've been called "OP" in that addictive game of minecraft which in server speak means "over powerful" or something like that.

In my dream there are no tethers. No hooks. No chains. I'm free.

Just my wingless self that somehow magically flies above the ground with a robed dude and his six year old son.

And then I wake up. And my hex won't stop abusing me.

And I wish that I were still sleeping in a world where my ex has never existed. Or sometimes I fantasize about some sort of wrath of divine action on the part of the Almighty--striking him dead in some sort of dramatic fashion for all the world to finally see. For the jig to be up.

Except that I'm not sure that there is an Almighty. Nor am I so sure kharma exists.

And so I turn on myself. Hate myself for having such thoughts, such dreams, such fantasies. Because, honestly, I don't know what to do with such thoughts. Am I a monster? I don't really know. Am I deluding myself into somehow sainting myself and making my ex the evil demon character in a medieval fantasy novel? I don't really know.

Am I not being honest with myself? Am I not allowing space? Am I somehow crowding? I don't really know. Because, how else could my life have arrived at this locale? How else could I become so consumed with thinking of the day when I get out of this prison. Which maybe happens when he magically dies by lightening strike.

Truth of the matter is, the days without the death fantasies are far worse. On those days, I don't dream of his death. I only dream of my own. Cause at least then, all of this would end.

Hold on

The temptation is to ditch your compassion altogether. Become jaded—cynical—anything but empathic. Cause that is the tit the narcissist sucked on for so many years.

In my case, he played my compassion like a fiddle—the haunting Fiddler-On-the-Roof type character—as in always in the backdrop, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt—but always there. His own life story—so sad, so profusely unjust. And the fact that He stood so tall in the face of all the injustice for so many years, rendered my compassion a no-brainer. The long ago farce that caught his father figure in a nasty spider’s web—entangled in such ridiculousness that my heart wanted to do any and everything to bust him out of the slammer for such ridiculousness—I couldn’t believe that the system could be so unjust.

Perhaps, it wasn’t all that unjust.

Perhaps, things went down, as they damn well should have.

The night we told our kids that we were getting divorced, I saw the truth of what happened so many years ago. The eyes can communicate so much. Some things are obvious. Some things hit you hard. And it was there staring me in the face—the hatred. The I-would-kill-you look. I have never seen that look before and hope to never see it again. But in an instant I knew a lot. I knew truth that told me that self-preservation was in my own best interest. I knew danger. And it was there in one look staring through me as if I wasn't really there. 

There was no empathy or kindness looking out of those eyes. It was almost as if the absence of emotion was the only thing present. A vacant sort of look except for the presence of dark, pure, uncontained hatred and rage that had percolated up from somewhere deep. The rage was almost palpable, making the hair on my arms stand at attention.

It was an instant where I intuitively saw with my other eye as the past, present, and future met each other. 

The past where this happened before. Those empty eyes had been present before staring out of a different body. In that inherited look, things crystallized for me.  

I could see one future where harm greeted me as it had her and ushered me behind the veil. I could see another where I lost everything, surrendered it all as the bargaining chip for my own life--for the chance to keep breathing.

Yes.

I want to keep breathing. That is the one I choose.

And so my intuition began speaking. Back away from this. Get out. Survive. It doesn’t matter if you lose the house. It doesn’t really matter if you lose everything. Just survive. Start over. You've got this. Hold on.

And hold onto your compassion—it is your strength, really. Hold on. You'll be tempted not to but hold on.

And so I shall. I shall.

Loss

At least more days than not, it feels as though you have lost everything. The rhythm of the waves of loss can crash you down, dragging you out to sea in the undertow.

Intermittently interspersed on other days, you chart a little progress. A sense of doing a bit better seeps in. Mild hints of a new rhythm take shape—like the faintest shadow of a six pack emerging on the abdomen of an obsessive gym rat. The new habit of passing the kids off through school numbs the pain in your heart, a little bit. Somehow, it is easy to imagine them merely spending a few nights at a friend’s house away from you. Until the dog looks around, whining for the children that play with her and all the kid chores remain undone—little post-it note reminders call your bluff in your pretensions--your life is not the same, and never will be.

You live in a small apartment, now.

You look out the patio door at an apartment advertising sign.

You share your kids with someone who doesn't love you anymore and maybe never did.

You sleep alone without somebody next to you snoring or talking in his sleep.

And while the sleeping alone part might be an improvement over the nights of hearing him talk out loud while he dreamed of their lovemaking, as he moaned her name again and again, you still miss the comfort of lying in another's arms. You miss having your Other--your someone.

Being forsaken is hard. Difficult.   

And moving forward, of course, the predictables are hard—the anniversaries, the birthdays, the Christmases, and the Thanksgivings—all the events and celebrations, sometimes with the children, or without, sometimes alone—now you relate in your grief to the presence of an absence.

The predictables are difficult, but the unpredictables pummel, blindsiding you, catching you off guard at just the wrong time.

Taking your 13 yr old son to the Symphony—it’s not the Symphony, but rather the drop off at evening’s end, where the strangeness of it all punches you in the gut. You pull up to your house and your boy scrambles out of the van to run inside as you fight the same inclination, the automatic default habit of turning off the engine and walking inside to tuck him into bed like you’ve always done. Instead, the boy you pushed out of your own body is walking away from you and the air is catching in your throat and the drive home is fostering the need for tiny windshield wipers on your eyes.

Even the house--your own home--seems to mock you. Looking at the trim--that you begged him to help you paint--that you spent weekends painting alone for months, you are struck by the fact that it remains unfinished. Mimicry of your unfinished relationship. The house seems to stare back at you, looking into your soul. The windows clearly, wondering what-the-hell you are doing in backing up the van and driving off.  Even the burgundy Bougainvillea—that he would not let you have for so long—that he always resented because its flowers might drop into the pool—that you fought so hard to have—feels traitorous as it cloaks the house in beauty and continues to grow skyward, as if there could be something, anything, not entirely dead in the world in all of this loss.     

Feast on Your Life

Most days, I forget to eat.

Not that I have some sort of underlying, anorexic aspirations of being a waifish, Kate-Moss type. No rather, food has just fallen off the To-Do list, beat out by all the other overwhelming tasks.

Until, I look in the mirror and wonder why the woman looks gaunt and skeletal. And the clothes hang strangely and I am reminded that I have no money to buy clothes and my pants are once again falling off. I used to be pleasantly plump—a little extra padding around my organs.

Now I wonder at the stranger staring out at me from that world behind the mirror. Who is she? Will she survive this? How do I nourish her?  And the lovely words of Derek Walcott float out…

Love after Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door,

in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread.

Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

The Ultimate Oh-So-Average Divorce

The perpetual temptation is always to give up—to stop fighting—to lie down in the middle of the trail and succumb to the pestering flies and vultures; since the straps would stop cutting into your shoulders then—to allow the funnel cloud to rip you back into the emotional and psychological vortex. Because disentangling yourself from the narcissist takes absolutely everything in you and then some more. You have to seemingly dig down to the earth's core and hope that you can withstand the Dementor shop VAC sucking your soul back up through a pipeline he has fashioned out of Kryptonite.

   

The almighty, oh-so-powerful delusions you helped create—so that he could pretend to love himself--repeatedly slam against you like gale force winds that tumble you around, crumpling your iron will like the child’s toy bendie man. Escaping Medusa’s snake hair seems like it might just be easier.

Redundantly, you are hypnotized like a firefly back toward the bug zapper's flickering light of a thought—maybe I got it wrong? Maybe, I overstated things? Maybe, he’s not as bad as this? How could he actually be this awful and unreasonable?

It fucks with your head. Zapping you to the ground. Terrible Lie.

You find yourself fantasizing about the ultimate-oh-so-everyday-average-normal divorce as if it is some sort of delicious Boston Creme Donut—cause right about now—average seems like child's play.

How the hell did this become your life? Well, you hooked up with a narcissist long ago. 

Seventeen Years

Seventeen years means you listen to a lot of Bon Iver, mainly because he isn’t Ray LaMontagne.

Bon, the non-Ray. Bon, the one you did not share together. Bon, the one you did not discover on the term ending paper she submitted for credit to the professor she was fucking.

Seventeen years means he laughs in your face when you ask for a pound of the fresh coffee he roasts in the back yard—all hippie-granola-esque—on the commercial roaster he purchased with your student loan money. The same coffee he gives to garner accolades from the band teacher.

Seventeen years means he does not shed a single tear in your presence as things fall apart and the center is blown out.

Seventeen years means he keeps the Digital SLR—the one he gave you for Christmas—the same one that everyone oohs and ahhs over—the one he carries so often people think it part of his identity. The same camera that has transformed itself into yet another torture tool, when the old pain seeps in—just like the promised bed that never showed up. You thought you were over the pain of the fake gifts. But the hero worship of his photos cuts along the scar tissue.

Seventeen years means as you crumple into a heap and grovel for money when you can’t pay rent, he oh-so-graciously hands you two onions for dinner and sends you away from the home you must now knock to enter.