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Introduction, part 2
13 March 2019 15:15I'm joining a group therapy program run by the therapist I've seen off and on for the last decade or so. I've been thinking about how I'm going to introduce myself on my first session, since I have followed this process before.
Inasmuch as such things have been responsible for my lost voice, and the point of this new journal is to try to reclaim my voice, I may as well post a version of it here.
Hi, I'm Amul. I'm joining this group because I've been really depressed for the last 18 months or so. I think that I was probably depressed even before then, but at least back then I was semi-functional. Or at least, more functional than I am today.
It's an oversimplification to say that I'm depressed over a breakup, it goes beyond that. I allowed her into my life to a degree that I haven't done in literally over two decades. I created a space for her in parts of me that I've never allowed anyone into, into my career dreams, my spirituality, my volunteer teaching, into parts of my sense of Self that didn't exist a decade ago. She's only the second woman I've ever introduced my parents to as a potential life partner.
It's not just that she left me for her ex-boyfriend. It's not just that she didn't even tell me she was seeing him until I proposed to her. It's not just that they got engaged barely two months after she admitted that she'd been cheating on me. It's not just that she cared so little that she let my parents find out about all that by announcing her engagement on Facebook and never even tried to stand with me as I explained what was going on to them.
The larger problem is that I don't know how to want anything, without wanting her to be a part of it. Every single thing that I used to do, I made space for her to do with me. I can't make art without thinking about how she would have been part of the process, and that's particularly difficult since that's how I'm trying to earn a living. I can't apply to teach at alternative lifestyle events without thinking about how much better I was at teaching with her as my co-presenter. Every recipe I learned to cook, I learned to cook better for her.
I'm angry in a way that I haven't ever been. Whenever I try to focus on any task, whether it's looking for commission work or cleaning my bathroom, in the back of my head I start having an argument with the ghost of her. I cannot control my mind. I get so caught up in these exhausting, repetitive, pointless arguments that I usually fugue out. Everything just goes white and the next thing I know, hours, literal hours have passed.
I've lost months of my life trying to face this anger and let it pass through me, trying to face it so I can move on. I cannot even try to describe how painful and humiliating it is to realize that I've been standing still for half the day, holding a sponge that has dried in my goddamn hand, unable to even remember what I was about to clean. What it's like to open some software at noon and the next thing I know, it's dark out and my hand hurts from clenching around my mouse for so long. The only progress I can talk about is that it's no longer so painful that I literally fall over from the heartbreak of it all, no longer have the constant reminder of those bruised knees.
I can't bring myself to want to do anything, because even trying to speak aloud possible desires drives me down into this madness.
Do I want to keep teaching at conventions? She fucking used me, she knew she was going to break up with me but needed me to take care of her, so she strung me along for that last month, refusing to make time to apply before those deadlines and then dumped me a week after her bedrest finished. She fucking applied to teach at other cons less than a month after dumping me, after telling me....
Deep breath. Slow down. Try to answer the question.
Do I still want to be a self-employed arti...? What the hell am I going to do with this chunk of my studio that I set aside from her? What am I going to shoot? Every photograph I wanted to take, I thought of with her help. I need to find some clients. She was so much better at that part than I am. She never even wanted to move to Chicago, she never wanted to live with me. She only loved me because he wasn't an option. She only...
Deep breath. Try to clear your mind. Just get something down today. Anything. Just...just make your bed, make the fucking bed that she literally made for me to lie while pushing back every promise she made to fix things so that she could focus on him, on that piece of shit sock muppet. And I'm still banging my shin on that fucking drawer she stripped the screws on. Every fucking bedsheet in my home I picked for her to sleep on.
I can't.....I don't trust half the planet anymore because they happen to share the same plumbing she has. Which is particularly bullshit since that's the only kind of plumbing I date anymore.
I can't even say that I want to stop being angry at her. Anger is the only thing I have left. I don't like being angry, but it feels like the only thing I have the capacity to be right now. I try to be anything else, do anything else, and I just disassociate. I cease to be.
What are my ethics? What emotional self control tools do have I learned that could help? They're all fucking topics for classes that I used to teach with her, that's what they fucking are.
I asked her to marry me.
She replied, "My ex-boyfriend called."
We tried to figure out how to make that work, how to make that some kind of functional version of polyamory that we could talk about in classes, how to make what we were going through a teachable moment for nearly 2 years, except that it was always "I will do that just as soon as he proposes to me. I will fix this....after he moves in. I make this better, only I've decided to wait until he hears from his job offers."
And I held on as best I could. I was not gracious, I was not serene. I refuse to learn how to handle being cheated on gracefully. I am not going to learn to develop tools to compassionately connect to someone who spews empty promises while shoving the knife deeper into my gut. I was not graceful, but I stayed, and I begged her to fucking just stop finding new ways to discard me, discard our plans for the future.
I've spent the last 3 and a half years hurting. And the only difference between this last 18 months and the first two years is that at least I'm not trying to muster up the hope that she'll finally prioritize fixing the damage she did over the relationship she chose over me.
Inasmuch as such things have been responsible for my lost voice, and the point of this new journal is to try to reclaim my voice, I may as well post a version of it here.
Hi, I'm Amul. I'm joining this group because I've been really depressed for the last 18 months or so. I think that I was probably depressed even before then, but at least back then I was semi-functional. Or at least, more functional than I am today.
It's an oversimplification to say that I'm depressed over a breakup, it goes beyond that. I allowed her into my life to a degree that I haven't done in literally over two decades. I created a space for her in parts of me that I've never allowed anyone into, into my career dreams, my spirituality, my volunteer teaching, into parts of my sense of Self that didn't exist a decade ago. She's only the second woman I've ever introduced my parents to as a potential life partner.
It's not just that she left me for her ex-boyfriend. It's not just that she didn't even tell me she was seeing him until I proposed to her. It's not just that they got engaged barely two months after she admitted that she'd been cheating on me. It's not just that she cared so little that she let my parents find out about all that by announcing her engagement on Facebook and never even tried to stand with me as I explained what was going on to them.
The larger problem is that I don't know how to want anything, without wanting her to be a part of it. Every single thing that I used to do, I made space for her to do with me. I can't make art without thinking about how she would have been part of the process, and that's particularly difficult since that's how I'm trying to earn a living. I can't apply to teach at alternative lifestyle events without thinking about how much better I was at teaching with her as my co-presenter. Every recipe I learned to cook, I learned to cook better for her.
I'm angry in a way that I haven't ever been. Whenever I try to focus on any task, whether it's looking for commission work or cleaning my bathroom, in the back of my head I start having an argument with the ghost of her. I cannot control my mind. I get so caught up in these exhausting, repetitive, pointless arguments that I usually fugue out. Everything just goes white and the next thing I know, hours, literal hours have passed.
I've lost months of my life trying to face this anger and let it pass through me, trying to face it so I can move on. I cannot even try to describe how painful and humiliating it is to realize that I've been standing still for half the day, holding a sponge that has dried in my goddamn hand, unable to even remember what I was about to clean. What it's like to open some software at noon and the next thing I know, it's dark out and my hand hurts from clenching around my mouse for so long. The only progress I can talk about is that it's no longer so painful that I literally fall over from the heartbreak of it all, no longer have the constant reminder of those bruised knees.
I can't bring myself to want to do anything, because even trying to speak aloud possible desires drives me down into this madness.
Do I want to keep teaching at conventions? She fucking used me, she knew she was going to break up with me but needed me to take care of her, so she strung me along for that last month, refusing to make time to apply before those deadlines and then dumped me a week after her bedrest finished. She fucking applied to teach at other cons less than a month after dumping me, after telling me....
Deep breath. Slow down. Try to answer the question.
Do I still want to be a self-employed arti...? What the hell am I going to do with this chunk of my studio that I set aside from her? What am I going to shoot? Every photograph I wanted to take, I thought of with her help. I need to find some clients. She was so much better at that part than I am. She never even wanted to move to Chicago, she never wanted to live with me. She only loved me because he wasn't an option. She only...
Deep breath. Try to clear your mind. Just get something down today. Anything. Just...just make your bed, make the fucking bed that she literally made for me to lie while pushing back every promise she made to fix things so that she could focus on him, on that piece of shit sock muppet. And I'm still banging my shin on that fucking drawer she stripped the screws on. Every fucking bedsheet in my home I picked for her to sleep on.
I can't.....I don't trust half the planet anymore because they happen to share the same plumbing she has. Which is particularly bullshit since that's the only kind of plumbing I date anymore.
I can't even say that I want to stop being angry at her. Anger is the only thing I have left. I don't like being angry, but it feels like the only thing I have the capacity to be right now. I try to be anything else, do anything else, and I just disassociate. I cease to be.
What are my ethics? What emotional self control tools do have I learned that could help? They're all fucking topics for classes that I used to teach with her, that's what they fucking are.
I asked her to marry me.
She replied, "My ex-boyfriend called."
We tried to figure out how to make that work, how to make that some kind of functional version of polyamory that we could talk about in classes, how to make what we were going through a teachable moment for nearly 2 years, except that it was always "I will do that just as soon as he proposes to me. I will fix this....after he moves in. I make this better, only I've decided to wait until he hears from his job offers."
And I held on as best I could. I was not gracious, I was not serene. I refuse to learn how to handle being cheated on gracefully. I am not going to learn to develop tools to compassionately connect to someone who spews empty promises while shoving the knife deeper into my gut. I was not graceful, but I stayed, and I begged her to fucking just stop finding new ways to discard me, discard our plans for the future.
I've spent the last 3 and a half years hurting. And the only difference between this last 18 months and the first two years is that at least I'm not trying to muster up the hope that she'll finally prioritize fixing the damage she did over the relationship she chose over me.
