The Family Snitch, page 23
Each time, she displayed the same old hotline to call. No answers.
“Aw, c’mon. Fuck you.” I tossed my phone out of bed and heard it hit the wall.
* * *
—
When I realized that I might literally no longer be able to live like this, I sought out treatment. I entered an exposure and response prevention program at the same hospital Ryan went to for his BPD treatment. The compulsions got worse before they got better. My clinicians told me that would happen, and I had relayed that to Ryan, but he was still upset. I wasn’t getting better, it seemed to him. I got the sense—rightly or wrongly—that he thought I wasn’t working hard enough. I tried harder.
After some months, I “graduated” from my solo exposure work and entered group therapy. My clinician strongly recommended another group to me, a family support group program for patients to complete with their parents or spouses. I told her we were absolutely interested. But when I asked Ryan about the group, he balked. He was too busy with extra work and his studio. He was overwhelmed. He’d had some recent injuries and was at long last free of follow-up visits and other appointments. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do it.
I asked him if he would reconsider down the line, maybe in six months. He equivocated. He stressed that I should focus on working on myself first. He was still finding strands and clumps of my hair around the house, after all. I wouldn’t admit to myself that I’d been stunned by his refusal. I’d read so many books about BPD, done so much research and supported his treatment. I’d looked for support groups for patients and their families, wishing for something like this group that the OCD Center offered. If the roles were reversed, I knew I’d have made the time. But I didn’t let myself dwell on that. Otherwise it would’ve broken my heart.
On a sunny afternoon, around my twenty-ninth birthday, I left work early on a Friday. I told one of my editors that I was ill. And I was, in a way. I’d been sitting at my desk, admiring the late-afternoon light streaming in from the windows, when I felt a cold sweat wash over me. A sudden burst of pain on my left side radiating out from my shoulder and down my arm. A tightness in my chest. I couldn’t believe it. I was having a heart attack. At work.
I was lightheaded and clumsy, having to use only my right arm to gather my things and sneak out to the elevator, my left arm hanging at my side. I recall only one cohesive thought: I can’t have a fucking heart attack at work. That would be so embarrassing.
Instead, I wandered into a Walgreens and found some aspirin. The checkout line was far too long, and the pain was getting worse. I shoved some cash into the hand of a security guard and left, chewing on a grainy bitter pill. I couldn’t figure out my phone’s map—my eyes were growing heavy—so I called 911 to ask for walking directions to the nearest ER. Despite my weak protests, they sent an ambulance instead. Still embarrassing, I thought as an EMT helped me into the back. But better than dying in the newsroom.
After an EKG, X-rays, tests, and hours of waiting, the doctor felt comfortable sending me home. He had ruled out a heart attack and stroke. He wasn’t sure what was causing my pain. Maybe neuropathy—a pinched nerve—something like that.
Mia was relieved that I’d gotten myself to an ER and that nothing dire had been the cause. After a couple of hours, Ryan showed up at the hospital. He wasn’t happy. He was trying not to show his frustration, to say he was glad I was all right, to make the best of the evening as we took the train home, but it seeped out all the same. Again, I was surprised—that he was upset, that he didn’t seem the least bit worried or loving. It seemed like he thought I’d made up the symptoms in my head, out of anxiety. Again, it hurt my feelings.
“You shouldn’t have gone to the ER. And you definitely shouldn’t have gotten an ambulance.”
“I was just calling for directions…and I was in really bad shape, when I looked up my symptoms…they were all pointing to a heart attack —”
“Yeah, because it’s the internet and that’s what happens when you look that stuff up. But see? You’re fine.”
“I’m not fine.” I moved my left arm as much as I was able, which was not much at all. “This side is still fucked up, I’m in a lot of pain—the doctor said I’m safe to go home, not that nothing’s wrong. If it still hurts on Monday, he said —”
“I know, I know, I heard you. I’m just saying, it really seems like this is an OCD thing and you’ve really got to get it under control.”
That night I resisted sleep as long as I could. I was afraid, and the fear made shapes and shadows on the ceiling. The ER doctor was wrong…the Big One is coming for me…don’t close your eyes…you won’t wake up…
I woke up in the morning to a short burst of relief and a long drip of shame. I felt like such an idiot. The weekend passed; the pain slowly subsided. One night, I was googling pinched nerves when I was struck by a memory. That afternoon on Friday, before the heart attack that wasn’t a heart attack, I had been cracking my neck. Why hadn’t I thought of that when the doctor mentioned neuropathy? I thumbed through possible answers:
Because I thought I was having a heart attack—I was thinking about my chest, not my neck.
Because I was in a lot of fucking pain—I didn’t have the clearest head.
Because I’d ramped up my smoking lately—it sure seemed possible that all that selfishness was coming home to roost.
Eventually, the simplest answer came to me. Why hadn’t I thought of that twenty-minute span I’d spent in the bathroom cracking my neck? Because my life now occurred in the breaks in my compulsive fits, not the other way around.
I avoided the topic with Ryan. In secret, in a small part of my brain that I tried not to dwell in, I knew he was wrong. I knew what I had felt. It wasn’t just an OCD panic attack.
But he was still right about the OCD, I thought. Just not in the way he thought. It was from cracking my fucking neck. That meant I was still wrong, which meant that it was my own fault if my feelings were still hurt. Tough shit. Move on.
27
Nostalgia
Nostalgia creeps in quietly. Its paws are padded; it makes no sound. One day you’re walking through the park. Some sense—the scent of rain, or the chill in your boots—transports you to the past for half a moment. A small voice in your head purrs. Maybe it all wasn’t so bad.
A few years ago, before we got married, Ryan and I were walking down Ludlow Street in Manhattan when he pointed out his old dorm building from art school. That was where it found me. I imagined visiting Eugene with Ryan.
There’s the university library—did you ever know it’s actually “the truth will make you free,” not “will set you free”? I know, right? I thought so, too. And there are all the campus bars. And if you go down that street and take a left, you end up at my old apartment —fuck, what was that place called? Eugene Manor. Man, how could I forget?
I knew the facts of the memories—that I had been sick and sad during those years, that the autumns were hopeless—but all the old vitriol had evaporated from the sights and sounds that rushed back to me. Before I could catch and interrogate the thought, it came and went: Maybe it all wasn’t so bad.
I had made an enemy of nostalgia. I was dedicated and vigilant. It found me anyway. If the purpose of memory is to learn, what is the purpose of nostalgia? To cope.
Nostalgia—from Greek, nostos and algos, the pain of returning home. The wish to go back and find things as you left them, when you know that you can’t go back. You may realize they were never that way at all, that you long for a home that never existed. It’s a peculiar state—doctors used to think it was a disease—and still scholars debate whether nostalgia is healthy or maladaptive, whether it encourages social bonds and acts as an emotional balm in hard times or signals a poor adaptation to life’s changes or trauma.
I know people are more likely to see the past as happier than it was as we age. But I want to remember things as they truly were, so I fight the siren song of nostalgia.
Of course, there are times I feel nostalgic for genuinely good times. I feel a warm ache when I hear the albums Mia played in the evenings of our first Oregon summer; when I remember my brother as a baby, his eyes growing heavy before he nodded off on my shoulder; when I find old photo-booth filmstrips of Ryan and me. These moments are not as complicated as others, like when I remember falling asleep with Al on his worn recliner in his office, long before he went away. Less warmth, more ache, because I know what comes after.
But there are times I wish I’d stop resisting. Then nostalgia would work its magic. I might become a person who owns sweatshirts from their alma mater, who cheers for the football team and shares throwback photos, who maintains decades-old friendships for the sake of the tradition. But I can’t. I keep my watch.
My parents are polar opposites when it comes to nostalgia. Al ignores all but the good times that he remembers or invents, the highlights, the hits. That’s where he lives; his longing for the old days seems so great that there’s no barrier between his present and his past.
Mia feels none of the nostalgia she hears about from her sister. They had the same childhood, the same struggles, and yet Jackie can reminisce on Facebook. She can stay in touch with Joey and all their old friends from the old neighborhood. Mia knows no one from her past, and she likes it that way. She has a few nice moments that she keeps close to her, but the rest looms too large. What she can’t will herself to forget, she boards up and leaves behind.
Looking at my parents, I saw two paths: You ignore the past, or you want it back. Is there no other option?
I think there is. I opened myself up to the past, let it consume me, and found a way forward as I build a new life for myself. My mind finds new places to wander, and I let it roam. I am not so haunted by my father, not anymore.
Lately, when I do think of Al and our double grave, there is no great sadness. I mostly feel relief. Panic comes only when I imagine myself, decades from now, falling victim again to sentiment. Trusting my imperfect memory to show me Al as he was. Letting the thought cross my mind: Maybe it all wasn’t so bad. Going back to my father and believing time and age might change him. Going back to see if it might turn out this time.
But I won’t, I tell myself. I won’t go back. I won’t let myself forget.
Nostalgia does good for our relationships with ourselves and others, for our self-positivity and social connectedness. The narcissist is likely to care far more about the former than the latter. In fact, studies show that nostalgia doesn’t serve its social-connectedness function for grandiose narcissists. So when I wonder how Al remembers, and what he gets from his memories, and why he chooses to live in the past, I can understand. And when I wonder how he remembers me, and what those memories mean for him, and what self-positivity he can drain out of them, I can understand.
I’m a little surprised that I don’t feel any nostalgia I need to resist when it comes to Al. I feel something for Frankie, my little self. But for my father? The memories don’t carry any kind of spell for me, even as time widens the space between him and me.
When nostalgia finally finds me vulnerable, as I am now—when it strikes me between the ribs, as it has now—I’m in a place I never thought I’d be. After all, I never imagined I would choose to leave Ryan.
* * *
—
I left in the summer, a few months before my thirtieth birthday.
I wasn’t planning on it. The whole thing took us both by surprise. I came home one night and couldn’t stop sobbing. I thought I needed a break, that I might need to be somewhere else for a while. I had the feeling that I might not be able to hold on anymore. I took it all back when I saw Ryan’s face. I told him to please forget what I said. I didn’t know what I was talking about. But the next night, I crossed the threshold of our apartment and burst into tears. I had to go.
The leaving itself was sudden, but looking at it from a distance I could see that there was a kind of accumulation taking place.
Yes, I had been lonely. I had been depressed. I had been suffering from my compulsions. But I was working on it, and everything was looking up. I had gotten everything I ever wanted: a clean, warm, happy home that I owned; a job that made that home possible; a partner I loved, with whom I got to share that home. I was putting myself out there, making new friends. I was trying.
But loneliness has a way of coming out sideways. And I spent a lot of time alone. Ryan had his studio practice, and every week or so he’d end up pulling an all-nighter or two, letting himself get swept into the flow of his work. Sometimes I got a little blue after a couple of nights by myself. But I was all right. I had a rich inner life, I thought. Still, from where I stand now, I can see that I was doing weird shit. If I knew I was spending a weeknight alone, I’d sit at my desk in the newsroom until the cleaners had come and gone, wandering around the building like a ghost. Or I’d hunt down a happy hour, clinging to shreds of affection from the new friends I made. I made them playlists and bound them handmade books. I was always there for the last round, no matter how early a meeting I had the next day, trying to cajole everyone into just one more without seeming too pathetic. Then I’d make my way home, drowning out the silence with the same three documentaries on repeat. I’d trade my suit jacket and trousers for my “inside clothes”—usually covered in old paint or ink, always subway-germ-free. I’d feed the boys, make myself air-popped popcorn for dinner, and fall asleep in my jeans.
I didn’t think anyone could see through my act. But one of my friends, a fellow reporter, saw something and said something. We were wrapping up a deep talk over coffee about families, generational cycles, and where our lives had led us. I alluded to all my past struggles: with love and relationships, with grief and shame, with loneliness. I spoke of all of them in the past tense, breezily, as if I wasn’t lying awake at night reading the terms of my life insurance policy—arranged to be split three ways, among Ryan, my brother, and Mia—and doing the mental math of whether I was worth more dead or alive. I’d forgotten about one of the hazards of befriending another journalist: setting off the finely tuned bullshit detector.
“I think you’re lying to yourself. I think you’re really lonely.”
It wasn’t an indictment or an insult, nothing like that. It was just an observation, something seen and shared. For me, it held up a mirror and let me get a good look.
Something inside me cracked open that day. I was afraid. I walked all the way home from my office in Midtown to our uptown apartment. And when I made it into our home, my body knew I was leaving before I did. All the sobbing I did that I couldn’t understand.
If I am honest with myself, I was lying to myself. I tried to sublimate my needs. I tried very hard for a very long time. And I was not strong enough to continue. I loved my husband. I wanted to take care of him. I wanted to grow old with him. I still have all the love, and I still mourn that path that I wasn’t strong enough to take, the life that I’ve taken away from us both. But I knew if I had carried on, the love would have rotted from the inside out as my loneliness and exhaustion turned into resentment and bitterness and contempt. I couldn’t bear to witness such a cruel disintegration, let alone be complicit in it. I believe I will never forgive myself for what I’ve done to us, for what I’ve chosen to do.
I tried to describe—poorly—what had compelled me to leave during a session with Ryan and our therapist. The only analogy I could think of was a game of Double Dutch—a game I’ve never played. I had been on the edge of something for a long time, something I didn’t understand. I could only feel surges of urgency from time to time, like counting the slaps of the ropes on the pavement, trying to make sense of the rhythm as you look for an opening to jump in. But the ropes twirled too quickly, and an opening never presented itself, so I stayed in the dark, aware only of that rhythm I didn’t understand. Then there was a beat—an opening—and instinct took over. My body knew before I did. I took the opening. I jumped. I got a hotel room that weekend, and I never went home again.
For weeks I lived in hotels and short-term rentals, seeing Ryan each week during our regular couples therapy session—which had become “uncoupling” therapy. We wrestled through the question of why, figured out how to move forward through the separation, made space for all our grief.
Early on, I had to contend with the possibility that my blowing up our life together was self-destructive. Ryan suggested it might’ve been, or at least that it was rash. But I didn’t think it was a giant act of self-harm or some premature midlife crisis. All the same, I questioned myself the entire summer. For all the relief I felt at being lonely by choice instead of by circumstance, I was homesick. I imagined taking the train back uptown and using my keys to let myself in and curling up on the couch as if I’d never left. It was torturous, the lure of comfort and an end to the suffering I was doing alone in southern Brooklyn, in a neighborhood I didn’t know.
I thought of Ryan back at home, alone. However difficult it was for me to be away, I knew the pain of living among the remains must’ve been worse. I imagined him tending my garden without me. After my leaving, he mentioned that he was keeping up with it. I had always hoped it would be something we’d do together, maybe on lazy Sunday mornings. But it never came together like I’d imagined, and I gardened alone.
And I thought of the Study, my chair and my desk. My library, my circulation cards, all gathering dust. I thought of our cats, whom we’d have to separate. I thought of every single thing I loved about Ryan, every time he made me laugh, the sound of his keys in the door when he came home.
It’s only a train ride away. The siren song. You’re so close. Why torture yourself? Why not go home?
