Journal Entry 9.10.23
I’m writing about grief, but I’m writing as if I’m alone. Grief does not exist in a vacuum. I am surrounded by people. People who I love and who I rely on, but who I am actively pushing away as if I am not allowed to love and be loved. I know I am loved, but I was trained to believe I was unlovable. My sister even went so far as to tell me I was not “allowed” to find love again after being twice divorced. Her cruelty negating her own words. I clearly still orient towards the grief, towards the people who take away, who punish, who see me as unworthy of love. I need to begin the process of unweaving right now, not waiting for the trek in the Himalayas. I remove the thread of my sister’s cruel words. I let it go, it falls to the ground, and begins the process of decomposition.
In order to grieve, I must reawaken what I have packed away. The trauma of what happened at the end of my first marriage has been packed away. What happened happened, but I had a small child to care for so the shrapnel remained embedded in my flesh, healed over, a cyst formed around it, a callous worn into my skin. I incorporated the shrapnel in my being, but I never processed the trauma. Now I need to reopen that wound, cut through the scar to release the shrapnel, and excise the pain, put away, encapsulated, but not forgotten. I want to forget, but you cannot forget what you carry.
My young husband, a romantic ideal, helped me escape the feelings of loneliness and not being understood in my family. My first husband was intellectual, creative, difficult, and yet part of the New England establishment. He created a bridge between my past and my individuality. He was romantic and aggressive, fitting into a stylized vision of the tortured artist lost somewhere in the 1920’s. I had long ago learned to compartmentalize, dissociate, and refine the things in my life so I could tolerate them. When he had an affair, I was less upset about the sex and more upset that I had lost that sanctuary of feeling “understood”. He had become abusive, trying to kick out the windshield of our car when he did not like what I had to say. In order to punish me for speaking my mind, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey, our family dog, and pulled the car out of the driveway, knocking me aside with the turning vehicle. I kept our son physically safe, believing that my compartmentalizing and dissociation could protect him from remember my abuse. He still remembers 24 years later. When later, after the affair, after the divorce, after when my ex-husband had expected me to raise his son for him while he played the fabulous artist in NYC, he declared himself a feminist and I laughed.
I still keep his letters. His passionate love letter,s extolling my virtues, my importance to him, the love and solace I delivered him, his saving grace, my talent as an artist, his equal companion. His vile, punishing letters, sent only weeks later reminding me what a disappointment I was, sexually, artistically, physically, intellectually, morally. I keep the letters tucked together to remind me the craziness I felt was not of my making.
Motherhood created a light for me that shone through all the gaslighting of my childhood and my first marriage. But I still question, how could I not see the wolf in sheep’s clothing? I still long for the sheep, false though it might have been.