Eight Days

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and ended up recounting this story... I don't know why I've not before because, in truth, it was a pretty significant moment in my marital history and colored the way I reacted to most things from then on out - in a lot of ways it set the tone for what happened during the second half of my marriage. It's actually one story with two themes... one story with two distinct moments... and as much as I've thought about it, I've not been able to divide the one into two separate postings so I will just muddle through here:

My (then) husband spent eight days in the hospital in early October of '98. It all started one morning when his therapist called me and said, "It's time." He'd come home weeks earlier saying he was unhappy and we started marriage counseling and the therapist told him she thought he was clinically depressed and she set up a counseling schedule with him and referred him to the doctor who put him on Prozac. That morning in October he had walked into his therapy session with a suicide letter and shared it with her. So she made the arrangements and I drove him to the hospital and he admitted himself. During the intake process they gave me his personal possessions and contained in all that was the sum of $200 in cash. He always had to have cash in his pockets, always, and not small amounts either, and to be honest I'm really not sure where he got it all from at any given time... but that's not the point, they gave me his cash and I put it in my wallet and left it there.

The drive home was long - mind racing, heart pounding, tears flowing. I was terrified - terrified for him, terrified for myself, terrified for the kids. I didn't know what I was supposed to say, what I was supposed to do... so I made my way back to town and collected the kids and I took them home. That night I crawled into bed, alone, for the first time in a very long time, and I cried myself to sleep. I was lost. I can't adequately express just what I was feeling... I can't seem to find the words to explain how stunned and scared I was. Everything I grasp at falls short. That, I suppose itself, says a lot. I was not emotionally capable of handling one more thing, one more crisis.

I wish I could recount each of those eight days but the truth is they were all a blur... I desperately tried to maintain our routine, son, after all was 11 and had just started middle school, daughter was three. Luckily I wasn't working at the time - I really have no idea how I would have managed that too. I don't remember any family coming around, holding my hand or volunteering to help out... and then at some point I realized there was something going on with the septic tank - at some place outside, near the house, it was backing up, or leaking... and I called my dad and I asked him for help and he and my mom reluctantly came out and looked it over and he said rather nonchalantly, "Guess you'll have to call a plumber" and then they left. I didn't really have the opportunity to ask him any questions... and I suppose I didn't adequately express how overwhelmed I was - so strike one... on my own. So I called the in laws and I asked them and they advised I look in the phonebook. So once again I was on my own, once again I suppose I didn't adequately express how overwhelmed I was - strike two. All I remember after that was sobbing and getting the phonebook and through tears, searching for the name of a plumber - I called one, he came out and to this day I'm not really sure what was wrong, all I know is it required getting another guy to come out and dig something and the bill was $618.

That whole experience - reaching out and being rejected - was like some kind of verification for me... I'd long suspected that reaching out, asking for help, was a pointless thing to do, and here I was, at my absolute lowest point ever - asking for someone to help me, asking someone to show me, take the reigns, let me rest - and nothing -nothing but rejection.... and it's not like it was asking just anyone - I was asking family. I guess I just put down the bat after that - no point in going for a strike three.

That's moment one... and so, as I said, I had to keep the routine going for the kids - and at the time son was playing soccer... and he had a game and daughter and I went and after the game we were all hungry... and it was late... so we decided to eat out, the three of us, and it was the most normal we'd felt during that whole time. We had an appetizer and our dinner and even ordered dessert - and we laughed and we talked and it felt ok, for a moment we all felt ok... and so I paid for the dinner and I used some of that $200.

Well, ex is released on the eighth day and I go to the hospital to pick him up and we go through this long, drawn out process, and the hospital has us in a room and is, in essence, shaking us down for money - they didn't want to wait on the insurance to reimburse them... they wanted money then and there... and I had to negotiate all this while he sat in the chair with a smirk on his face, like the whole thing was some kind of joke. But I finally got him home... finally got us all settled in... and one of the first things he asked for was the money - his $200, and I gave him what I had, minus the money I spent on dinner, and he just stared at it and said, in a controlled yet perturbed tone, "Where is the rest of it" and I explained to him what I had done, how we'd eaten out that one night and he said, rather coldly, "I want it back." And I remember being just stunned, almost like I had been slapped in the face - and the tears choked in my throat but I couldn't cry because this wasn't about me, none of this was about me, I couldn't have any emotions because if I did it might upset him and I couldn't do that on the day he got out of the hospital. I couldn't do that on any day from there after - the danger was always he'd end up back in the hospital, or worse, actually kill himself.

And it didn't matter to anyone, not one damn person, what I was going through, what I had been through - my world was collapsing around me, and I had two kids looking to me to make it ok, and I wasn't even ok myself - and here he was, no concept of what I'd been through - demanding money, like I had robbed him. And that became the dynamic - the unspoken dynamic - he would bully me and I would eat it, whatever emotions I had. There was always that look, that body language that said to me I had to be careful. I was constantly assessing the situation, always on hyper vigilant guard for any change, any indication that he wasn't happy or satisfied or safe. Now of course his bullying wasn't verbal - he was always so damn nice remember - but the message was loud and clear - my feelings, my wants, my desires, are always more important than yours, or the kids, or the family unit as a whole - and the only way I can describe it is to call it bullying... and the resentment in me that began building on that day wasn't because he was sick... it was never because he was sick, but because he never acknowledged my pain, never acknowledged my sacrifice - and he kept on sucking me dry, and I kept letting him... and y'all know the rest....