11/3/2010

I am writing in this file in lieu of writing you letter. The St. John's Wort was making me more clingy and neurotic and I feel stupid for not seeing it until now. I am off it until I speak to my therapist. Clio wrote me a letter this morning (last night, likely, but I got it this morning), telling me to back off from you. I don't feel well or good right now, I certainly feel depressed, but I don't feel the despair her letter would otherwise have provoked had I continued with the regiment. It isn't behind my eyes, it is in my chest, which is a better place for it.

I hate that a part of my head is planning for a life without you. I hate that, at this point in your life, you cannot be consistent in your feelings for me. (And by "consistent", I of course mean "consistently fond, having hope despite the issues in your life".) I don't want a life without you and I will fight with everything I have. According to Clio and the feeling I get from you, that means fighting it by leaving you alone, a war of attrition with your neuroses.

I hate that the relationship has to be on your terms so much because you are the one growing up. I hate that I am simply this thing you see as static, because I tried to make love easy for you as you struggled through life.

Like you once said to me, I don't have forever. I have things I want to accomplish in my life. I have gone through the slings and arrows of college and I am willing to help in whatever way I can, but I am not going back or pretending I can return to that misery. I am ready to live with someone again and I want that someone to be you. I want to build my life with my romantic partner, as I thought we were until recently. Yes, I want to think of things like marriage and a home together, and I am frustrated beyond saying that I cannot with you. I am tired of cringing back because Clio or you say you are too young to think of these things. If you can expect your every twitch to be individually catered to, you can listen to the fact that I have needs of which you are not currently ready. From the beginning, your age was an issue that I tried to overlook. I never held it against you. I never treated you as less because you were in college, because you were younger than me. I respected you and took you seriously. I worked around your chronological and maturity issues more times than I can count. And it was worth it totally, because you loved me and I never felt so whole, so myself, as when I was sharing love with you. Now you want to hold that back because you are having a hard few months.

I hate that I now have to pretend with you at the same time you insist upon greater honesty. I don't want to be away from you. I don't want to ignore you. I want yours to be the last voice I hear before going to bed. And I have to pretend that it doesn't sicken me to be asked to behave otherwise. I hate that I cannot send you this letter.

And, if I have a spare moment, I want to spend it with you. I am happy to dedicate my weekends with you. But I have a lot else in my life to attend to than the current hormones in your head. I can accommodate you, but you have to actually be willing to work with me. Your sanity isn't something that can take a backseat to your schoolwork, because I promise you that you will lose your academic standing if you have a complete emotional breakdown. You need to take care of you before you can take care of academia.

I hate that you take me as a given, that I am some placid cow who you can just leave behind, that your issues don't affect me on a daily basis because you are casually cruel. Being born of a French mother doesn't excuse that.

I hate that I want to call and tell you all this right now and I can't because you are in some headspace where you have decided I am the enemy.

I hate that you imply you want me to move closer, then tell Clio and me that you want space. I know that you are just venting what is currently coursing through your head, but you cannot have it both ways. You cannot ask me to change my life and then spurn me because I considered it. You can't play games with me because you know that I won't leave you unless I see no other option, that I will work to fit you into my life as much as I deem feasible.

I hate that I have spent years waiting for you to be ready to do something other than wait and am now being told that maybe you don't want me after all, even as you love me. You repeatedly acknowledge that I am who you are going to spend the rest of your life with, why is that so easy for you to forget in the next breath? I hate how much I love you. I hate being the party that is seen as weaker because I continue to love you and feel devotion even as you pull away from me. I hate that I have to fight not to follow you when you run.

I hate that I now feel like I have to play games with you to keep you from running away.

I hate that you never listen to me when I tell you that I know what you are going through. My life, my history, is laid out before you and you act like I am this ignorant party. And, having just been chemically altered for a week, I think I understand better than most how much an errant molecule can make the world feel impossible. I hope what I feel now is withdrawal and not the actual state of my psyche. More than that, I very nearly have a Master's degree in adolescent development, which is still applicable nearly into one's late twenties.

I hate that you are so bullheaded that you won't go into therapy when you are crying out for help. Do you think playing at a psychoemotional moratorium with Jenna and Chip is going to make your head less cluttered?

I don't know what to do with you right now. Sunday was wonderful. The weekend before was superb. Yet you act in the weeks between like the sky is falling, like you can't possibly want a future with me. Or, more likely, a future at all.

I can't and won't wait forever for you. I would spend my life with you without a second thought, but only if you were the person who made those promises with me. I can stay by your side as long as you aren't pushing me away. I can give you space as long as you don't let me think you are using it to take aim. But I cannot be neglected and I certainly cannot be spurned. Our weekday relationship is not what I want because it violates the contract of our relationship without fair renegotiation, which we had begun doing when you said you wanted a more adult relationship. Being with you, though, when you are truly present is wonderful and it is for that I fight now.

I hate having to go back and forth with you. I hate that I cannot have any problems right now that you don't subsume or ignore (my job situation is a frequent worry, but you breeze over it when I try to talk about it). I am going through a difficult time irrespective of you and I don't think you give a damn because you can't let yourself acknowledge that right now. You are all that is important in all the world, like an only child. I think you are so solipsistic in your Bard Bubble that you can't even accept that I could have feelings outside of you.

I hate this Bard Bubble. You are not in the real world. You are coddled while you play at being independent. In the real world, college doesn't count. Try actually having to work through the weekend to pay to put gas in your car to get to that job. Try having to figure out a budget so you can pay your rent and student loan bills. Try not being able to do it. Try working two part-time jobs just to get by. Try holding someone after their father dies, knowing it is all you can do. Try being broke because your dog is dying and the vet doesn't accept anguish in trade. Try having a life where you can't run away, can't bemoan that you would be so much happier hiding alone in your parents' apartment in France. You suffer from a critical lack of self-awareness of your place in the world, because you aren't in it. You stress yourself beyond the breaking point, not realizing that you are not working in the real world right now, that much of this will not count any more than high school did. You are learning how to move within the world, gaining a skill that you will hone in grad school and beyond, but you aren't in the real world yet and you forget that.

Losing me, I promise you, will be one of the biggest mistakes you ever make, if you are so narrow-minded as to let it happen. I have been nothing but good to you. I have conducted this relationship the best I could because you - because we - are beyond worth it. And if you throw it away because you cannot see what is before you, you will be no better than the trollops you deride. You will have chosen vapidity over meaning. I am certain you know this and that is one of the things staying your hand. It is simple on every level not to think or care. Having a soul worth preserving is the hard bit.

I hate that, if you leave me, you will have left me broken for a long time. I won't be able to even talk to a woman without thinking of you, without making comparison. I won't be able to get you out of my system, because I am a product of who we are together. As are you. We have both grown and evolved in the conditions of our love.

You want to make me the issue, but I'm not the problem. You are. And you need to seek help, help no one can provide you but a therapist in all likelihood, if you are going to get through this. You don't think it is telling that you are trying to cut off one of your main emotional outlets?

I don't know how to behave around you anymore. I just sent you a text telling you that I am giving you space, which felt counterproductive, but you needed to know that I wasn't abandoning you because you are having issues. (And, despite intentions, I do sincerely wish you would text me back something simple like, "I love you" or "thank you for finally understanding".) I wish I knew that this was going to work out well. Every time you have an issue, it feels like my world is contracting in on itself. Of course, my life doesn't stop because you are filled with the wrong chemicals. I still have to put on a normal face and engage with students. Right about now, I dearly wish I still worked for [the publishing company], that I could just hide proofreading dull manuals and didn't have to talk to people. Instead, I am corralling teenagers and pretending that I am not full of tears and stress because you are having a hard time. I wish I could care for you and help you through this without thinking my kindness and compassion, my love for you, will cut my throat and take away the person I have loved for nearly three years.

I am so used to taking you seriously when, objectively and logically, I should know better. I get so wrapped up in your drama because you make it feel so permanent. I can't remember all the good things, the hope you have, the love you express, because today was a bad day to you. I know what it is like to lose myself in problems, forgetting that it really isn't as dire as it feels in the moment.

I think I need space as well. Space from what you are slogging through, much as I promise I will be there waiting and will throw you what ropes I can. You can't believe that I know what you are going through, that I can help, because you need to experience this if you are going to grow up. Otherwise, you will be stuck in a world where college is all the matters, you will expend ridiculous amounts of energy approximating what you are going through now until you get over this crisis. What you are going through sucks you down and makes you miserable, but you let it because you need it and want it right now. I think you are wise not to go straight for your Master's. You need to spend a little time in the world, getting context. Maybe it will only take a semester, a job that reminds you of the redundancy of your internship. Maybe longer, but you do need it. Your world is not academia, as much as your parents' lives are or were. Your world is in the field, and you aren't there yet. You are in the petri dish, as much as you think otherwise. What grows in your petri dish won't in the field and vice versa. You've got a world to see, and I will be your wings, your home. But I won't be your anchor and I won't allow you to cast me in that role, as much as you seem to want to make me the problem you are experiencing. I am barely even a symptom. And, if this relationship is to survive (and I usually believe it will despite your current issues), you can't continue to do this to me. I appreciate that you didn't want to get into this last night, because I think it shows an awareness that what you are doing or feeling does not match up to who you are or what you truly want.

Leaving me would be a form of suicide. Finding a way to harm yourself at the deepest levels. It is braver to realize you need help and accept it than to soldier on, however you are working from whatever template your mother seems to have for you. Or did you forget the fate of your maternal grandmother? It is in your genes, but it doesn't need to be in your soul.

[...]

I have gone through all of this before. I don't want to have to go through it again. I will try to believe you when you have confidence in our relationship and I will try to listen to you without catastrophizing when you have a bad day. I do believe that you are clinically depressed and I do advocate therapy (I would insist upon it if I thought it would do a bit of good, but you won't seek it until you admit you need it). Clio is wonderful, but she isn't enough. Buddhists have a saying: "meditate an hour a day, unless you are very busy. Then meditate two hours." You are very busy, both from necessity and inclination. You are not making time for your emotional/personal/psychological issues, which are manifesting in this discontent and depression. I know what it is to be depressed, I know how different it is than sad. You can't hear the good things right now, can't believe this is temporary and situational. Having suffered through this undiagnosed and unhelped, I want so badly for you to accept the helping hand that likely needs a PhD. It can't be me or your parents or your friends. It must be someone adult, professional, experienced, and uninvolved. And it needs to be someone soon, before you break.

Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.