The Most Destructive Thing I Could Ever Do

PRESENT

From the files of journals emailed to my therapist:

3/7/17

If I’m typing up a homework, I try to keep them all in one long file. So I opened it today, and this is what I saw:

5/27/16

A year tomorrow. Happy Anniversary to me. It sure hasn’t been the year I was expecting a year ago today, that’s for damn sure. 

Of course, I should have known that would never, ever happen, for the simple reason that life is never, EVER that good to people. Never, ever, ever,

Ever, ever, ever, EVER.

Well…life isn’t that good to ME. It was that good to Simon. It was that good to Chi! He just wasn’t able to say yes to it a year ago, for various reasons—some good, some poor.

Oh, but not for me. I don’t ever get happiness, fun, pleasure, breaks, or things made easier. If I do something comes along to ruin them. I get difficult, difficult lessons, most of them very painful.

Oh, but I was expecting exactly the opposite. I’d taken care and taken care and taken care of other people, given up all my dreams, lost so much, and been through SO MUCH HARROWING SHIT, that what was I expecting? I was expecting to be rewarded.

And:

7/23/16

I’m going to try to type in the most important journal homework. More if time permits.

The last week I have felt horribly, horribly depressed. There are aspects in my horoscope which talk about me being wayyy too dependent on emotional intimacy with other people for happiness. And this is true. All I needed was Simon or one good friend, and I was fine. Without such a relationship…I’m plodding through life going, Why am I even doing this? Why am I even here? If this is all there’s ever going to be from now on, and I get diagnosed with something terminal, forget it. This is nothing to undergo miserable cancer treatment in order to prolong.

Apparently there are ways to be alone in life and not feel like this. If you’ve got any ideas, I’m all ears.

                                      ***

The weeks since this Valentine’s Day have been interesting. When I left your office on Valentine’s Day, I had a nice day planned for myself. I was going to go out to a jewelry store for a little research on my novel (the main villain has An Important Diamond), and then I was going to go to a nice movie dinner theater, get there a little early, treat myself to a mixed drink and write some, then enjoy a fabulous dinner and a movie. By myself. And I did these things. I had a lovely, lovely day. I had a GREAT time.

So, I get to the diamond store, and not only are they nice enough to show me their largest diamond (10 carats, fancy yellow, $650,000 +), but they have a 0% financing sale for five years. 

When I married Simon, we had $1000 to spend on our entire wedding---dress, cake, rings, minister. A diamond was out of the question. I figured I’d never own one other than the tiny ones on rings I got from my mother or Terry the Terrible (who was a jewelry salesman), but I am now the proud owner of a pretty ring with two, well, decent-sized diamonds of decent quality. It’s nicer than anything my mother ever had, and I EARNED mine. (Especially after the last eight years.)

I had such a lovely day, and for about a week I was on Cloud Nine. I spent all my life worrying about being such a failure at work that I would one day end up homeless. And now I’d bought MYSELF a nice diamond ring. (Since there’s never going to be a guy to buy me one.)

And then I sort of crashed. I began to realize exactly how much I’ve been attracted to men based on worldly success. Having spent most of my life feeling like a failure in a profession I shouldn’t have chosen, I always envied Rory how she didn’t have to worry about that. Chi makes more than enough for both of them with his one job, and she has this cushy life. She can stay home, do crafts, raise the kids, do things for other people, clubs, hobbies…Jesus, for the longest time, she didn’t even do the HOUSEWORK. The Sunday he started trying to broach the idea that they had a problem, HE was the one making breakfast. And HE usually did the dishes. Christ!!

I used to think, I’d be wayyy more help than that, if I could only just get one quarter of the help in life that she gets. And look how she treated him! 

Simon, I admired because he was so hugely talented. I was soon to find that that does NOT translate into worldly success, at least not in terms of dollar signs, but I always believed neither man would ever want anything to do with ME. I was too young or too fat, too uneducated in anything but medicine and not well read enough, too much a failure and would one day be unhireable and unable to pull her own weight. (Rory chose not to work to stay home with the children, she didn’t get FIRED nine times.) I was sure I couldn’t take care of myself and I would end up down Route 1 in a tent someday, and to have anyone who didn’t experience that worry actually want ME really turned my head.

Now I’m looking down at this diamond ring. Something I thought I’d never own, and it’s pretty, and it proves something. I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF! (The I Can Take Care Of Myself Twin diamonds.)

I can take care of myself. Geez.

I mean, who knew, man?

And now I was feeling really strange and depressed. All that falling all over guys (in my imagination, anyway) because they were a success. I saw I was trying to marry taking care of myself instead of actually DOING it. (The same way Chi thought he was marrying emotional health rather than actually DOING it.)

And both of us got a surprise.

WTF will I ever be attracted to in a new guy now? I didn’t even know!

I know that if I ever see this guy again, he knows how to appeal. He knows how to smoke out whatever you want to hear and present it on a golden platter. With diamond-embedded cutlery. If I ever see him again, he’s going to look and sound very, deceptively well. For a time, most likely a short one. (Especially if he's pissed off at Rory.)

It occurred to me that he’s let Rory make many, many of the important decisions in his life that affect him. And then, thirty-five years later, he’s miserable and asking, “Things look good and everybody seems happy except me. What’s wrong?”

In a word…DUH.

It occurred to me that, should things once again go south, he’s going to do the same thing we saw before and look to everyone else in his life for signals about what he should do. (How much do you want to bet that Rory was the one who picked out the house, its design, and where it would be located? I’ve got $20 that says…)

And other people are NOT the ones who should be making decisions like that all the time. Especially in the hypothetical case of: “Who should I spend my life with?” HE needs to be making that decision. Not me, not Rory, not his daughter, not his son, not his cousin (who simply doesn’t approve!), not his friends, no, nor any of the rest of his family. 

“Who should I spend the rest of my life with?” is FOR FUCK’S SAKE a question that should be answered by only ONE person: CHI. And he’s going to try to push it off on someone else. Good grief, last time around he blamed fate at one point, and THE MAN IS AN ATHEIST. Sheesh.

It also occurred to me that this IS my new life. I AM ALL ALONE. I may be forever, now. 

What I needed to do was change from a person who only knows how to be happy in at least one harmonious relationship with a close loved one, into a person who knows how to be happy without anyone close at all.

And I didn’t know how to do that. 

So what I was trying to do was control another person into changing, so that I WOULD NOT HAVE TO.

And that is a reprehensible thing to do. Especially with a person who needs to step up and make ONE important decision FOR HIMSELF, more than anything else he EVER needed in the entire world.

And I thought I was so smart. Of course I knew better for him than anyone else! Why, I was just going to grab one arm and pull, while Rory still had the other arm, and do the most destructive thing to him that I could ever do. 

And I saw how horrible that was. The fact is, I must never, never, never, EVER do that to him,

NO MATTER HOW SAD I AM.

NO MATTER HOW SCARED I AM.

NO MATTER HOW LONELY I AM.

NO MATTER HOW SORRY I AM THAT THE LOVELY TIMES I THOUGHT WE COULD HAVE CAN NEVER BE.

NO MATTER WHETHER I WILL BE ALONE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE OR NOT.

NO MATTER HOW TERRIFIED I AM OF FACING SOMETHING LIKE A TERMINAL ILLNESS ALL BY MYSELF.

NO MATTER WHETHER I’VE FIGURED OUT WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF ALL ALONE OR NOT.

NO MATTER, NO MATTER, NO MATTER WHAT.

YOU CAN’T TRY TO MAKE ANOTHER PERSON CHANGE, SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE YOURSELF.

A person who truly loves Chi could never do these things. A person who truly loves Chi, sees how much he needs to make those Crucial Life Decisions by himself, for himself, and leaves. Him. To. It.

NO MATTER WHAT.

And that’s what love is.

                                            *** 

Surgical Tools

Surgery is not like sewing. When sewing, you can pick your work up, and you hold the needle in your fingers. When you’re doing surgery, your work is tied to the table, and you have to reach down into it. You have these six-inch-long things like needle nose pliers that hold the tissue, your suture, everything. Your work is six inches away from you at all times.

And that’s how people like Rory and my mother operate. Other people are their surgical tools, so they are six inches away from the world at all times. You feel low in yourself, with low self worth and no self esteem? I’ll give you something that looks like love if you’ll insert yourself between me and the world and let me manipulate my world THROUGH you. I’ll be your Valentine, if you’ll be my surgical tools. Then I never have to touch anything difficult myself, you will take care of me, and if anything goes wrong, I can blame the tool holding the needle instead of myself, since it’s you and not me. And you are under my complete control. Because you have zero self worth, your opinion of yourself, and therefore, your general feeling of well-being, rises and falls with how I act and what I tell you I think of you, bringing you under my complete control.

Which Chi was okay with, since he thought himself clumsy and inept in anything but work anyway.

But I can’t do that, because it robs another person of their own humanity. And I am NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT TO ANYONE, NO MATTER HOW I FEEL, OR HOW MUCH HELP I’M TELLING MYSELF I NEED, OR WHAT I HAVEN’T FIGURED OUT HOW TO DO FOR MYSELF.

I myself got used like that, and look how my life turned out. I know better.

So that pretty much solved that problem for me. 

I am alone. Time to just get used to it, and start figuring it out for myself. 

Odd, but just realizing how pernicious and how harmful to someone else TRYING TO CHANGE THEM really is made figuring it out for myself look more feasible, for the first time in maybe my whole life.

This past two days I spent in bed with the flu. All by myself. This was one thing I never looked forward to. What if I’m really sick, and I can’t do anything for myself, and I’m in here all alone? What if I don't have any food in the house, and I'm too sick to go to the store?

Well, this time I wasn’t that sick. I ordered takeout, and I’m still alive. And I wrote a few blogs.

I’m starting to realize that is what this time is going to be about. Just me, work, exercise, writing, and my ideas. I might as well settle in with them and learn to be comfortable and cozy. In November I will be four years a widow, and although I’ve looked for close relationships, that hasn’t panned out. 

I’m pretty hard to please. Nobody’s here, and it’s highly likely no one ever will be again.

Time to just suck it up and learn how to get along.

There’s a reason, it turns out, why life is never, ever, ever, ever, EVER, ever that good to people. 

It’s so we can motherfucking LEARN SOMETHING.