Interregnum

Unexpectedly, I unearthed a journal I was writing from September through November of '78, with Lovejoy away at college- it traces the same experiences I had remembered, but with a few very interesting and revelatory exceptions, that I had totally forgotten about. 

It feels important that, after she broke up with me on the phone, she and I did in fact have more contact, up to her return home for Thanksgiving in November. A confusing phone call in October where she "admitted she had been wrong about us" and said she had been sad and depressed, and my writing how that made me want to rescue her and take care of her forever. A cold and distant letter afterward that knocked me off center, since I thought her perspective of being wrong about us meant there was hope we'd get back together. 

She must have told me about the guy she was dating- a guy named Dave; but she also must have thrown Dave under the bus, since I wrote that she had said he meant nothing to her- of course. I had entirely forgotten that I was attempting something I have since attempted and not succeeded at: continuing to love her and be in relationship with her even while she "dated" Dave. Early polyamorous inclinations, with sincere sounding roots, but *at the same time*, jumbled up with extreme doormat attitudes combined with burning jealousy and deep resentment. What I had remembered as immediate insecurity and pain soon after the birthday phone call was in fact sustained and cyclical, nonlinear- I was agonizing right up to November. I had already started to think about asking out The Painter, though. Also important in this time was my stated desire to go to music school and my father's flat out refusal to pay for it, and his edict that I wasn't going to college right after high school anyway: "you can't handle college," was my father's conclusion. 

What a mess I was, I mean, understandably so. My 17 year old self was deeply earnest and idealistic, which of course I still am, but there was no space or lightness in it then. I had a pattern of writing out my honest feelings of anger, betrayal, resentment, rejection of Lovejoy's way of treating me- and then responding to my own writing by saying "of course, that's bullshit, I love her." Yikes. My beaten, shredded, confused, solitary and unguided, misguided self. I have done a slight bit of inner child stuff, but it becomes more and more apparent that my 17 year old needs fathering, so to speak. Major reconciliation needed there. Some of that has unfolded through step work in the past, in AA, but after reading that journal, it's apparent that I had severe personality disruptions and no solid ground or mentoring for any sort of perspective. I do remember being in my room, incredibly upset, in October, and my father knocking on the door, and sticking his head in, and saying "I have no idea what you are going through, but I want to tell you that everything will be okay." That was it- his middle ground way of not being able to talk at all, but trying to offer something. My mother listened to my woes and said "yes, I was heartbroken when your father went away to college and broke up with me, but we got back together." She only had the option of promoting to me her own myth, which only served to confuse me even worse. At some point, during a family dinner during this time, maybe Thanksgiving, the seemingly innocent topic of what everyone was going to do for a career came up- my brother was at the Naval Academy, my sister was just beginning a career in journalism in Manhattan, my oldest brother was still in engineering school- so we were all kind of unformed. Everyone had perfectly reasonable ideas of what they were going to do. The conversation came to me, and I said I wanted to be a writer, and my father burst out laughing contemptuously, and when he caught his breath, said with an acidulous sneer in his voice that I still recall like a knife in my heart: "A writer! That's hilarious. Percy, I guarantee you, you do not have one iota of the talent you think you have." (Later, while working with my first AA sponsor, I included that moment in my resentments, and my sponsor asked the very simple question that I had not once asked, in 25 years- "Had your father actually read any of the stuff you were writing?" It floored me. Of course he hadn't. My sponsor asked an even more important question: "So why did you take to heart what he said?" Sometimes I feel like I'm still puzzling that out). 

My earnest attempts to maintain an open heart toward Lovejoy and accept and love her no matter what were met with her steely rejection at Thanksgiving, combined with my flat out telling her off. My angry litany of how I felt was authentic, and completely crumpled the facade of being the wide open, forgiving, accepting, unconditionally loving person I was trying to be. Losing that veneer was the most humiliating thing of all. My idealism is real, and remains to this day, and it's an asset I have gotten a lot out of- but it was impossible for me, at 17, to either sustain it or integrate it usefully into a practical way of being in the world that protected me. The journal also reveals high idealization of Lovejoy- poor 18 year old hormonally raging pot smoking party inclined stressed out first year biology major at a very challenging school- with me laying all sorts of Goddess/Perfection/One True Love trips on her. This would operate very powerfully for me later, as well, which I'll get to. 

Not having any tools to work through the deep rupture of myself I had experienced, and discovering that a few months of isolation, writing, insomnia and existential ugliness did not, amazingly enough, make things any better, I took The Painter up on her offer to be in another exclusive sexual/romantic dyad. While Lovejoy had been analytical, sharply verbal, more Queen of Swords, The Painter was much more emotional, kinder and a combination of the Queen of Wands and the Queen of Cups. Tellingly, I had no room for a Queen of Pentacles in my life- far too practical. 

Jung's central concept of the animus and anima would later give me at least some kind of framework for understanding why the Lovejoy had such a ruinous effect on me. 

Unconsciously, I wanted to use a new romantic relationship to heal from the one that was so killing. I felt like The Painter could reprogram me. I felt like her attachment to me would at least flatter my ego enough that I could function better. I think I knew on some level that the experience with Lovejoy had changed me forever, and I also knew that The Painter was not capable of hurting me, at all. I was deeply fond of her, but not in love. She and I were friends, more than Lovejoy and I had ever been able to be due to the emotional intensity. I enjoyed her company but could just as well do without it. I was especially relieved to have the constant and oppressive aching loneliness of my emotionally tumultuous life relieved. To be desired and admired after feeling like a worm. 

If I had had the tools to be honest, this all might have gone better than it did. Instead, I spoke the same language of romance with The Painter as I had with Lovejoy, and spent my energies pretending. I felt vaguely guilty and dishonest the entire time. Infuriatingly, I also felt like I was betraying Lovejoy. That sex with The Painter, which was great- in a lot of ways, better than that with Lovejoy- was cheating. I had no way of understanding any of this. Instead of providing healing, the relationship with the Painter just drove my still bloody heart underground, into hiding, especially from myself. 

This set the stage for a pattern I engaged in for years afterward, or at least tried to: fall in love, open wide, become intensely attached, be betrayed or do the betraying myself, get slaughtered, jump into another relationship where the woman was way more attached to me than I her, try to stay safe and use the safe relationship to heal, get bored or restless, fall in love with someone new, etc. I have been edging toward a reckoning that would untangle this pattern and make me less likely to engage in it for 40 years- the first real layers peeling away in the late '80s after rehab with the discovery of John Bradshaw (although I ran with the framework of it all being my pareents' fault, and did get to the self-accountability piece, so it had little effect), another round after early sobriety, a much deeper sex and relationship inventory in AA in 2010, and now this. One approaches in a spiral, zeroing in. My hope is that I'm ready to forgive myself and Lovejoy, finally, and yet again ameliorate the old patterns, opening more fully to the present.  

It's difficult looking back at these primal things at age 57- feeling through all of the different aspects of the ways I was sexually and romantically programmed 40 years ago. I'm astonished at how fresh many of the wounds are. (An astrologer would laud all of it as Saturn Return work, and I can see it. I certainly did not fully address these wounds during my first Saturn return at age 29). But then- I walked away from the situation with Lovejoy at that time out of a fierce rebellion against romance and the heart, secretly resolving to never be hurt again, secretly longing for a recreation of that intense enmeshment and "oceanic bliss." I feared I would never get better, so I decided- again, unconsciously- to not even try. And my active alcoholism unfolded in the midst of this resignation, in complementary cycles of desperation. 

The Painter and I spent almost all of our time together. My social circle shrank. In spite of the apparent "serious commitment" we had made, I was play acting. This was still better than living in the crux of the rupture with no anodyne. I discovered the incredible power of faking it. It did not occur to me to date casually, although I did go on one awkward movie date with a girl named Maureen who I thought was fantastically eccentric- we saw the Altman film _A Wedding_, which features the darkest of dark humor, which I found perfect and hilarious, and my reveling in that flat out scared Maureen- she later told me she thought I was a psycho. 

I'm motivated to watch this again- it's at the bottom of the list of the great Altman films, but I loved it when I was 17. 

When her first year of college was over, and as my senior year of high school drew to a close, Lovejoy reappeared. We talked on the phone- my memory is that we spoke one time, with her still in Durham, on a beautiful May day, with me on the phone in the newspaper office at school. She eventually got around to saying "I want to get back together." I instantly said yes. It was, for me, surreal- because I had secretly still been hoping this would happen, from December to June. I had become so used to the silence between Lovejoy and me that I had given up. I was feeling, finally, callused over- my heart wasn't bleeding, it was just scar tissue. I was feeling free of attachment, for the most part. So, of course, it made perfect sense to instantly break up with The Painter, who had been nothing but kind and generous and affectionate and reliable and available with me, and jump right back into the burning building with Lovejoy. 

an actual picture of the charming demon that is my heart

No one involved in any of this communicated very well, as you can imagine. The Painter took the news gracefully. I shudder to think what I said to her, and I have no memory of it. Lovejoy and I picked up right where we had left off. Except that I now had a hulking beast of resentment, jealousy, insecurity, anger and fear living in me, that Lovejoy and I didn't talk about and that I had no outside assistance with. 

Lovejoy asked about The Painter. I am quite sure I threw The Painter right under the bus and said, flat out, she meant nothing to me, I was in love with you the entire time. I asked about Lovejoy's boyfriend or boyfriends at college. I am quite sure she said they meant nothing to her, and that she was in love with me the entire time. I believe that was probably the full extent of the "processing" we did, at first. The way we could stake a claim for getting back together was by telling each other that all of our intervening experience was meaningless. The processing would have its way with us as it unfolded in time, sideways and in destructive and dark ways, where, instead of compassionately working through how we honestly felt and sharing with each other what our authentic experience had been, we set out to destroy each other. 

I now had a set of secrets that I was keeping from Lovejoy: that I had thoroughly hated her at times and I was still angry, that I did love The Painter in a real way, that she did mean a lot to me in whatever ways I was present for that, that the sex was good, that I was enduringly jealous of the other men Lovejoy had fucked, that I felt she and I were two different, new people yet trying to "get back" what we had had. Most of all, I didn't tell Lovejoy the central fact of my existence: that I had had a direct encounter with the rupture, and that I continued to be in a state of bloody shreds, covered over by bitterness, cynicism, fear, false confidence and resentment, with an additional layer of idealism, spirituality and ego. 

It's amazing to look back and realize that all of these layers of how to operate in "intimate relationships" emerged in such a short time- from December 1977 to June 1979. Eighteen months. A year and a half of tumbling through razor blades with no armor, and no outside help, and nothing to go on. And of course the "solution" first was to get into another romantic relationship but one that was safe, and then the "solution" was to "get back together," and that, in and of itself, would make everything "better." It also resonated powerfully with the Family Mythology, since, after all, I owed my very existence to my parents "getting back together" after their time of separation. I thought, in spite of a shit ton of evidence to the contrary, that, "just like my parents," Lovejoy and I would now live- wait for it- happily ever after. All is forgiven. Best not to talk about it. Let's pretend it didn't even happen.

This was a very primal, powerful experience of not only throwing another woman under the bus, but more significantly, throwing myself under the bus. My experience *did not matter* since it was complex, problematic, might hurt Lovejoy, and was difficult to describe anyway. So I sold myself out in order to try to be with Lovejoy again. It didn't even occur to me that I did not trust her at all. It seemed unimportant. It felt trivial. I judged my lack of trust in her as a shortcoming of mine. 

It was resolved, in the midst of all of this multiple bad faith, that, after a semester went by wherein Lovejoy would look for a place and I would work and save some money, I would move down to Durham North Carolina and we would live together. Dig that. Not just all of the shaky ground, but sealing the deal with the perfectly logical idea that the way forward was to be domestic partners. I was still 17, she was still 18. Living together would solve everything. I get a gathering knot in my stomach just thinking about it, right this minute. 

Lovejoy had a summer job in Gloucester Mass, working in a fish packing plant. I have no idea how she got that job. I vividly recall a trip up to see her there. This was maybe July. Everything was already rattling and rumbling. I still felt jealous about the friend she had made the previous summer, and was still convinced she had a romantic connection with him. I wanted to know everything about Lovejoy's sexual/romantic life at college. Lovejoy told me a few details and I sunk into insane jealousy. There were aspects of her sex life with others that she would not do with me, and she said she had not enjoyed those at all- in fact that one such encounter had happened "by accident," but I was not reassured. She told me that "a lot of the guys I was sort of dating wanted me to give them blow jobs, but I told them it nauseated me." I was shocked by this entire thought, and I wanted to know how many guys, and I wanted to know how she could have been so casual about sex, my fierce jealousy coming out sideways as shaming her. I was so immolated by sexual jealousy. I remember not being able to sleep for days on end, imagining scenes of her with other men. I had a convenient moral and gender framework where casual sex was evil and making love was good, and I couldn't reconcile my idealization of Lovejoy with her experimentation and party life her first year at college. It was yet another series of contrasts I simply could not integrate into any kind of meaningful whole. Meanwhile, she was resentful and defensive in the face of my shaming her, and refused to accept any of it, and told me I was sexist and entitled, and of course she was right- that was my first experience of examining my own patriarchal attitudes, but it was unsustainable, because I was so hurt. 

In contrast, she seemed completely unfazed by my relationship with The Painter and as if it meant nothing to her. I resented that. We fought almost the entire visit, interspersed with sex, interspersed with the feeling that all would be well, that we'd get through all of it, that we'd be "fine." I got a stomach virus and was sick as a dog for two days. 

I went back home telling myself we had worked through everything and all would be well. 

We stuck to our plan. Neither one of us realized how much trouble we were in, both separately and together. I had absolutely no sense of my own codependent intention to put my whole post high school life on hold in order to move to Durham and live with her, while she pursued her college education, instantly creating a serious imbalance between us. I didn't even think about it. Or, more accurately, it was a huge relief to have an excuse not to think about it. It didn't bother me in the least that our plan was secret, that we had told no one, certainly not family, but also not even our close friends. I recall venturing a conversation with my older brother who was a devout Christian and who said "If you are ready to live together, you're ready to get married. Why live in sin (sic)?" (If I had to list the ways that religion failed me and I failed religion, it would take up the next 1000 blog posts). 

It's important to include that context. Cohabitation was scandalous, still, in 1979, at least in middle class white suburbia. People just didn't do it, at least not confidently or nonchalantly in the way that people do now. This added an extra edge of intrigue and riskiness to our plan, but we didn't care. The whole situation solidified the codependent, addictive relationship sense of "you and me against the world." Looking at it now, how obvious is it that everything was stacked against us? It's crystal clear. We were bold the way late adolescents can be- we'll be different- we are meant to be together so everything will work out- everyone else wouldn't and won't understand- love conquers all. Juliet had her Romeo. 

Jazz and 20th century orchestral music snob that I was, you wouldn't have caught me dead listening to Lou- of course, I also didn't have a time machine.

Given the vivid, nearly present-feeling memories of the time from December 1977 to July 1979, it's weird that the time from August to January, when I moved down to Durham, is a complete and total blank. I honestly do not recall what I did for those five months, other than write fiction. Given also that I recall vividly everything that happened after I moved in with Lovejoy, this seems to indicate that it was a time of almost total disassociation, which makes sense, since I was in limbo, no one had the slightest clue either what I was feeling or planning to do with my life, including me, and the only thing that mattered to me was the passage of time so that Lovejoy and I could "start our life together." 

Yet another in a series of set ups, in a long cycle of setups. A major part of my mentoring/re-fathering my 17-19 year old will have to be forgiving myself for such headlong self exposure and self destruction. I know that is important work to do, as I am still prone to scoffing and belittling my younger self. And it seems like my 17 year old self then rebelliously kicks in and wreaks havoc on my life, since no one is listening anyway, especially not the one most important person my 17 year old needs to listen- me.