Split from Throat to Belly (a.k.a. Mangled Guts Pretending, a.k.a. What Else is New?, a.k.a. Happy New Year)

It seems funny to me that yesterday started with a weird, surprising, calm and serene feeling of complete acceptance and a fundamental faith that, once again and as always, Julian was right. 

Because, by about 7 last evening, I felt like I was completely falling apart. Chain analysis: I didn't hear from my person all day, after what I thought was a good exchange in the morning. No text, no email, nothing. In a lot of ways, of course, this is perfectly ordinary. I remember saying to my counselor, "Well, she has this way of disappearing and I get thrown. I get resentful, worried, insecure." And, since it's his job to hold some kind of super ego space for my strangeness, of course he asked, "How long does she disappear for?" And I said, "Like hours at a time. Sometimes as long as, like 8 or 10 hours." And he paused a bit and said, "Huh, I thought you meant for like a week or so. Have you ever considered that you might have some attachment disorder and abandonment stuff going on with her?" Because that's the way he rolls. 

Anyway, when I finally did hear from her, she was calm, composed, serene and sounded peaceful and at ease. What the actual fucking fuck???? Does she not realize the *entire universe* is fucking falling apart? How can she be in such great shape? And a tsunami of my most primal fears suddenly completely submerged me. Abandonment, rejection, disposal, complete cut off, good old completely dispensable Percy. Also: no end in sight. She's never going to be available. She's never going to leave her husband. Why would she? And what an idiot I have been to think she would! And now, that we aren't having the affair anymore, NOTHING will keep her even remotely interested in me. And I don't have anything to offer her anyway. So my fears, really on a level of deep down pre-verbal terror, were also spiced up by self hatred. You idiot. You fucking fool. Why did you ever believe she might leave her husband, for YOU? Get real.  

So. That was me, at Sushi Time, finishing my spicy salmon roll and texting her. And I did actually go to a place I have never gone before, ever. Which was texting, "You're never going to leave your husband are you?" Except of course, because it's fucking texting and I suck at swiping, I sent "You never going to leave your husband are you." And then "You=You're. Can't let that horrifying typo stand. I was an idiot to ever think you would." 

I have assiduously avoided pressing her on this issue, all the way along. I know with my higher self how fraught the situation is for her. I know how unfair it is of me to push her on it, and how unfair it is to myself to either expect it or despair of it ever happening. It's basically just wandering into a really toxic, really awful neighborhood in my mind. 

The end result of such "ultimatum" type communication is just more despair. I mean, really, she's going to reply "Oh yes, of course I am going to leave my husband, haven't I mentioned that already?" I mean, it's the kind of thing where a person could say "I have realized that I can't remain romantically involved with you while you figure out what you want and how to go about getting it. My heart is on the line and it hurts to be involved with you when you are not available." That's about as sane as it gets. And it's a way of taking responsibility. But a weird stinkbomb like "You aren't ever going to do this thing that I hope with every fiber of my being you are going to do but that is impossible for you at this time"-- well, that's just not productive. It's really just a cri de coeur. It's more honest to say, simply, I am in excruciating pain. That's that. End of story. 

So I spent the night in turmoil, as you might expect, dear reader. Some productive and "healthy" activities along the lines of reducing surprise daggers to the heart and head and loins included moving all of her photos (and yet, glimpsing at some even so, foolishly) to the external hard drive, putting away anything and everything that reminded me of her— I had collected some precious items in an altar for her well being, and while of course I still want the well being, the items had to be put away. I placed them all in a dark blue plastic bag I had under my sink and tied it tight and tied it tight again and put the bag in a large Sterlite container that has a lot of my past in it. These are the rituals of breaking up. Rolling in broken glass. Blood everywhere. Stiff upper lip, though. Well done. Pip pip cheerio!

okay Phoebe. Will do. Thanks. 

Of course, no matter what outward actions one takes, hiding away reminders, pictures, mementos, letters, the mind and its memory is still there. The endless love letters and erotica we wrote to each other and could never get enough. The visits. The conversations. The epiphanies. The tenderness and discoveries. You can't put all of that in a big Sterlite container or on an external hard drive. 

A friend of mine, with whom I have talked about matters of the heart on and off for more than 30 years, sent this in an email yesterday:

"I don't envy you your relationship. It sounds intoxicating, heady, real. Powerful. It's the kind of thing that drops bombs of blessings & changes lives. I mean, it'll all turn out okay if you're strong enough to hold on through the process. The stakes are high and there's the strong chance of more pain than either of you can imagine. In short: It's dangerous. I don't believe real love is a song or a sexy afternoon between the sheets, it's a blessing that comes from God and (in my experience) it'll pick you up and drop you off in strange new worlds you've never asked to see. God is great. God is good. She doesn't fool around with that shit. But whatever happens, if you stay open and soft and pliable, it'll be okay."

It kind of has to be okay, or not. Either way. 

The same friend also included this excerpt:

“Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?

Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.

God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.

Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.

Harper: That's how people change.” 

― Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Sounds about right. 

Another friend emailed yesterday, and talked again about how he and his current partner took nearly 20 years to get real and be together in the open. It was a complicated situation. They tried many different ways to manage it, both by being together in secret and by cutting each other off entirely. His partner felt she had to stay with her husband, with whom she had no attraction, sex, romance or excitement, "for the children," who now judge her thoroughly anyway, regardless of her years of trying to do right by them. He felt guilty and self-sabotaging as he tried to navigate his love for her within the context of his own marriage, which was slowly and inexorably completely freezing to death. 

In particular, he felt authentically that he had absolutely no right to be happy. "Well, we want to be together and build a life with each other, but we can't have it. We're not allowed. We don't have permission. We'd never be able to live with ourselves if we go against these commitments we've made." They are living with themselves and each other perfectly well, thank you. The worst of it seems to be just looking back and ruefully wondering what took so goddamned long. Because none of the things they believed were true and none of the ways they tried to prevent this or that worked. 

Anyway, here it is, the last day of 2017. The year began with me discovering a mountain of unpleasant, alarming things about the man my partner of nearly 6 years was falling in love with. The train went off the rails. She took the first opportunity, when the holidays were over, to arrange to go see him. I tried to hold on. She returned and completely cut me off and wouldn't speak to me for a month and then sent me packing. By the next day all of my stuff was in the living room, ready to go, and the day after that, March 1st, I was homeless and my stuff was in U-Haul storage. 

After a few months of being completely submerged in constant pain, thinking about suicide many times a day, waking in the middle of the night weeping, but finally getting help for depression (after years of intermittent suffering) and starting counseling, I managed to go to Baja for 5 weeks of field work, and to visit friends in San Diego and LA, and then to take the epic trip across the country. (Cf. also this entire blog from the beginning). 

On July 13th, the love of my fucking life and I picked each other up, in the ethers, separated by more than a thousand miles, by 21 years, by currently seemingly unchangeable life circumstances. Thus began the shockingly beautiful, indelible, eye opening, endlessly surprising, achingly loving and tender trip toward each other. 

I wouldn't trade it for anything, even with the end of the affair and the current situation. 

I've since advanced to candidacy in the PhD program, done more field work, moved to a little hermit cave which sometimes feels like a sanctuary and sometimes feels like a minimum security prison cell, kept on keeping on as best as I could, in my weird journey through Hades. I have no idea how I have managed to survive the past year. I still sometimes think about how pleasant it would be to just stop being. Especially to stop being me. To stop hurting, to stop hurting myself, to stop. To just fucking stop. But I am consciously choosing recovery, growth and life along the way, and I'm here, even if just mangled guts pretending. I'll do the stitching. I always seem to. The odds are I will. 

Hello 2018. What the actual fuck?