Intermission

Last night was very hard.  Writing about my marriage and its terrible ending dredged up a lot of old feelings.  I actually sat in bed crying, trying to sort it all out, again.

Reading some of your notes, about what kind of man Dave was to me was particularly difficult for me.  I wanted to portray how sweet and loving and silly and romantic he could be.  So much so that it got annoying.  He remembered the 7th of every month because we officially got together on the 7th of February.  He’d tell me, happy 4 years and 7 months, anniversary.  His job at Target was to mark down items that were to go on clearance.  If there was something cute, like a stuffed animal that was marked down low enough, he’d buy it for me.

I now believe that Dave was mentally ill.  I know he suffered from anxiety and at least a little OCD.  Sadly, those words were not part of the regular vocabulary, back then and I had no idea that it wasn’t just a weird quirk.  I believe that most of his controlling behaviors were part of his OCD.   Because of that, it’s hard for me to think of him as a bad man.  And because I can’t think of him as a bad man, it makes me feel guilty that what I’ve written about him has painted an ugly picture.

But it’s an accurate picture of how I felt.  When I began to tell the story, I remembered how shitty and worthless I felt all the time.   By the time I left college, I told my friend that I felt like an inflatable raft that had been packed away in its box for years.  University let me out of that box, where I immediately inflated.  Now, no matter how hard you push and shove, you’re never going to get me back into that box.

To answer the main question many of you asked about, no, I do not blame myself anymore.  I absolutely did in the beginning, and even after I thought I’d stopped, I realized that I was finding ways to continue to blame myself.  Some of his family and many of his friends blamed me.  And the worst part was that I’d have horrible dreams in which he stood staring at me with mournful eyes.  In some dreams, he was blackened.  In some, he was damaged due to the train.  In all of them, though, his stare was one of immense pain.

And that’s what I realized was me continuing to blame myself.  I imagined that Dave blamed me for his death, but it really was just me taking responsibility that wasn’t mine.

I began going to therapy before I went back to work.  I have continued with therapy off and on for what will be 20 years in October.  I recommend a good therapist to anyone who can manage it.

I needed to address these things before I could continue with my memoir.  There is still much to tell, and my next entry will begin where the last one left off.  Thank you for your kind words and concern.  You are the motivation that keeps me writing when it gets hard.