The Last Surrender

Pictured: Not me

 
Every time I try to post about Sexual Anorexia I end up running. There's heartbreak there, shame and denial - but more than anything else - there's fear. A terror I've never felt before, about anything, ever.

This year I said goodbye to many things - hopefully for the last time. Surrendering drugs and porn meant saying goodbye to ecstasy. More recently, surrendering cookie binges and nicotine meant saying goodbye to comfort. As I begin to surrender my sexual anorexia, it's less "goodbye" and more "hello" - to everything I've been avoiding. Vulnerability. Risk. Need.

Sexual anorexia looks more like avoidance than indulgence. Somehow I broke through that avoidance in my last post. Maybe it was lots of quiet time that helped. Maybe spiritual courage. Maybe giving myself permission not to write in prose. (I wouldn't call it poetry.) The result was raw and black and obtuse. A prime example of "elegancelessness." (Finally an excuse to use that word.) But no matter...here's a commentary!

(If you'd like, you can open the original text in a new window and place them side by side. Like a Shakespeare commentary, except not in iambic pentameter and not, you know, good.)

Sexual Anorexia is starvation
My therapist is teaching me to focus on "non-sexual intimacy" - with my friends, my kids, my dogs. (Sounds weird I know.) But a loving relationship also includes sexual intimacy. When it's there, but I run, that makes no sense. I don't understand it either.

Sexual Anorexia is trembling as you type
I don't know why this particular fear lives in my stomach muscles. Talking about sexual anorexia as a thing, to be fixed, makes me spasm into a fetal position. I hate hate hate saying that. It sounds melodramatic. It kind of is.

Sexual Anorexia is never posting for months and months
In addiction, we try to look "fine." In sexual anorexia, I succeed. I don't show up intoxicated and I don't lie about missing work. Everybody's happy. It's interesting that my readers are sometimes the first to notice that I'm not okay.

Sexual Anorexia is an exposed molar nerve
When I'm giving in to my sexual addiction, short shorts arouse me and make me want to act out. When I'm giving in to my sexual anorexia, short shorts make me feel nauseous and I fantasize about killing myself. Seriously, I wish they'd just stop wearing short shorts.

Sexual Anorexia is another bullshit term
No one's ever said this to me, but I fear they're thinking it. Like when a senator gets caught cheating and blames "sex addiction" and the media start writing that it's a made-up disease. I imagine them hearing "sexual anorexia" and saying what'll they think of next? Sheesh.

Sexual Anorexia is a wicked shift
When I'm anorexic, I don't get in trouble for looking at porn. Yay. Instead I spend hours - days - looking for ways to make my sexuality go away. Banders and burdizzos are tools used to castrate livestock. Yes, I've thought about it. Yes, there are forums where guys talk about it. Yes, people have done it. There's also the (somewhat less insane) surgical option. It's all crazy.

Sexual Anorexia is “fuck you”
It's what I mutter, to fight back against the adrenaline and the nausea, when I am triggered.

Sexual Anorexia is option #3
I've written before about living with a sexual abuse survivor. She's sometimes triggered by affection even when it's gentle and safe, and I have this raw wound that just won't heal - and I'm terrified of more rejection. Then I act out (porn) and I make it worse. I fantasize that if we could just get rid of sexuality it would make everything better. We could just play Scrabble and do puzzles.

Sexual Anorexia is my own religious order
I self injure. I know it's not okay. I'm working on it with my therapist. When I read about Silas in The Da Vinci Code, I began to include whipping myself with a belt. Again, crazy. I know.

Sexual Anorexia is a noxious searing flame in your gut
It constantly makes me physically sick, yet I hold on to it for dear life. Kind of like any other addiction. Drugs and porn and food and tobacco feel like the metaphorical onion layers. Sexual anorexia feels like the core. With this addiction, I'm on step #1. It's the best I can do right now.

P.S. Here's the book.

And Finally

Sexual Anorexia is starvation
a gnawing gut and sand-grit mouth
then burning the bread and pissing in the water
because they're mine
and control's more important than being fed

Sexual Anorexia is trembling as you type
convulsions, doubling over, dizzy blurring vision
a sucker punch that never stops
run away now run run run
embarrassment shame
what kind of sick fuck does these things?

Sexual Anorexia is never posting for months and months
and your faceless cyber friends begin to write and ask
are you okay
what your f2f friends may not see
I know through your silence
and I wonder where you are

Sexual Anorexia is an exposed molar nerve
and life is chewing ice
every skirt or thigh or flirty glance that used to be a zing
somehow becomes an ice chip lodged
a deafening pulse of rage and loss and self-loathing

Sexual Anorexia is another bullshit term
for their diagnostic bible version IV
to excuse your bad behavior
ADHD ODD GAD OCD
WTF I act normal why can't you?
my simplistic answers invalidate your agony

Sexual Anorexia is a wicked shift
of fetishes and fantasies
screen-bound phony lesbians give way to
cattle banders and burdizzos
dark hotel rooms and narcotics
could I do it?
shady surgeons reassign me
to the void between the genders
and there I'd find a paradise
exorcised and free

Sexual Anorexia is “fuck you”
muttered vicious acid
when I'm heading for the toothpaste
and pass the condoms and the lubes
the sex scene in the movie
the frisky couple in the park
“it's all a fucking lie”
and I'm safe

Sexual Anorexia is option #3
I tried the right way #1
but intimacy and vulnerability failed
I can't endure the pain I simply can't endure that pain
I tried the wrong way #2
chemicals and images
that made her cry
so many times she cried so many many times
with option #3 I win
and swallow handfuls of herbal supplements
that I think will take the testosterone out of my blood
a slice-free castration

Sexual Anorexia is my own religious order
linking virtue with abuse
my private ascetic monastery
purple bruises on my inner thighs
pinching penance when my eyes have strayed
self flagellation and with each of 40 lashes
a word through gritted teeth
you
will
not
control
me

Sexual Anorexia is a noxious searing flame in your gut
that you shelter and stoke
and you cradle as an infant
because it's yours
fucking mine and you can't take it from me

You won't touch my friend my partner my comfort
my savior and my hope
and when I relent
finally take that cold-sweat step through that last addiction door

That's surrender

Diving Into Memories During My Fourth Step

The first year Linsey taught second grade, she made friends with several new teachers. We got close enough to Karen and Lynne that they came with us for vacation to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Linsey and I had been married six years. Ashley was a year old, and stayed home with my parents. Why would we bring a one-year-old on a vacation that involved walking around underground for hours looking at dimly lit mineral formations? I just don't get families who would do that voluntarily.

Since it was New Mexico in August, we spent a lot of time at the pool. One afternoon I was feeling frisky and wanted to spend time alone with my hot wife. I invited her to come back to the hotel room and take a “nap” with me. She wouldn't go – she said she felt rude leaving Karen and Lynne at the hotel pool. They knew what was going on and started pushing her playfully in my direction. Go take a “nap” with your husband, they said. We'll stay and read our magazines and swim – you don't have to babysit us. Lynne said “If I had him for a husband, I'd be all over that.” Lynne had poor boundaries, and kind of lost it a few years later. But that's a different story.

Linsey wouldn't budge. She stayed out at the pool with her friends. I went back to the room and masturbated.

Me and Linsey have played out this scenario many times over the years. Too many times to count, unfortunately. You'd think there'd be a limit to how many times I would let myself get excited to sleep with her again. You'd be wrong. No matter how many times she found ways to avoid sex, after the most romantic dates, in the most romantic hotel rooms, we'd “talk it out” and I'd find another way to let myself get aroused by her.

What stands out about the New Mexico day is that it was witnessed by other people. Obviously, not that many people really heard about our sex life. I thought I was imagining our problems but this made the rejection more real, and more humiliating. And I think most importantly, my feelings began to be colored by anger in addition to the familiar shame and disappointment. Because, what was that thing coming out of Lynne's mouth? I'd made sense of me and Linsey's sexual desert by reasoning that I was unlovable. If Linsey responded to my caresses as if my fingers were sand paper, there had to be something wrong with my “caressing technique.” But Lynne's inappropriate comment just hung in the air, “I'd be all over that” juxtaposed against Linsey acting disgusted about the prospect of spending time with me.

Whatever. I feel really fucked up inside when I write that stuff because it dislodges all kinds of searing pain from the dark places I've carefully buried it. But stuff's coming up lately, whether I like it or not. Like when I saw Karen at a dinner party recently. I had completely forgotten about the trip we'd taken ten years ago. Strangely enough, we were talking about taking Ashley to the caves this summer. I think now that she's eleven she would enjoy it.

Then boom. Karen. Carlsbad Caverns. Hotel. It all fell on top of me, like a sequence in a movie with black and white flashback photography and lots of echo-y sounds. Karen started telling old stories about our trip. It didn't matter because I didn't hear much after that.

I took Karen aside during all the goodbyes later. I asked “Do you remember that day” and she interrupted with “Yes” before I finished the question. Karen has been a sweet friend over the years. She's close enough to talk to so we traded a few memories. I told her that trip had been a beginning of sorts. Of many things.

Of marriage counselors and therapists. Of drinking some, then drinking more, then using, and doing whatever it took to turn off the pain. Of figuring out that Linsey had been sexually abused as a child. Of figuring out that I was an addict, no matter what was going on around me or who I was married to.

As we started unwrapping all the shit and looked for healing in therapy and books and in recovery I thought it was the beginning of the end. That we would get better, and that next time Linsey would come back to the room with me and we'd make love. But it's just never that simple. It's just not.

[Photo by Al_HikesAZ under C.C.License]

Sidetracked

This blog needs to be about sex. But, like my life, it has constantly been sidetracked by my addiction.

I live with an emotional abuse and incest survivor. This fact colors every single day of my life. It taints and poisons the most basic and honest of my human impulses – love, affection, intimacy. I need to be growing in patience and love for my wife, learning how to meet her needs and open her heart. I need to be nurturing a place where she can redefine sensuality, in her own time, with someone who loves and cherishes her. This can't happen when she can't trust me.

Shortly after therapy uncovered my wife's abuse, I bought the book Ghosts in the Bedroom, subtitled “A Guide for the Partners of Incest Survivors.” I was desperately looking for help for ME, the guy who felt like a rapist every time he tried to make love to the woman he adored. Instead, one of the first things I read was that most survivors marry people with serious core issues like addiction. The author didn't know me, but he already knew I was an alcoholic.

I was frustrated and angry. I wanted to get to the part that told me how to FIX my wife so she would have sex with me. Instead, I read that our situation could not improve until I took care of my own core issues. I had to deal with my alcoholism before we could learn intimacy.

Here's why this made me mad: because I believed that my drinking problem was her fault. The reason I drank myself to sleep every night on the living room couch was that she was doing her avoidance thing: falling asleep in the kids' rooms, getting a stomach ache, suddenly remembering unfinished paperwork, getting stuck on the phone with a friend. (Her demons were remarkably creative.)

I began the journey of recovery, only to find it much more complex than I'd anticipated. My addiction was “cunning, baffling, powerful.” And it was permanent. I would either be actively working to beat it, or painfully succumbing to it, for the rest of my life. I also learned that it was not Linsey's fault. She could not stop it nor could she cure it. My addiction was, and is, mine.

I never really read beyond chapter three, titled “My Core Issues.” I had a book about supporting an incest survivor, a book that was supposed to help me be the kind of husband who could love her through her hurts and rebuild her understanding of intimacy. But I got hung up on the chapter about MY problems, MY addiction.

And that's what my life feels like. I am angry and disappointed in my marriage. My sexuality and my adoration of my wife feel like heavy, frustrating liabilities. And our progress as a healing couple is repeatedly trashed by my slips.

You might find it really arrogant for me to be complaining. I know I've been the bastard that keeps fucking up. I'd like to stop now. I'd like to allow the books and marriage therapy to work in our lives. There is no shortcut to get there, just a daily choice to stay sober.

[Photo by oba-bobalina under C.C.License]

Unreachable Pie

I'm in that familiar post-relapse conundrum. A poisonous emotional mixture that's usually buried is now very accessible. I know for a fact that these emotions were already bubbling up; my inability to handle them contributed to my relapse in the first place. And once I start using, everything I've been suppressing comes spilling out in an orgy of self-pity and resentment. So it is with the alcoholic. The Big Book nails it on this point.

When I'm healthy and sober, I sometimes find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what I'm angry about. That is not my problem this week.

On the other hand, I'm pretty much in the doghouse, for lack of a better phrase. I screwed up. Right now seems like the absolute least appropriate time to bring up the things in my marriage that I'm mad about. I mean, what kind of a jackass complains about his sex life after relapsing for the umpteenth time?

I broke the trust of someone who has some pretty serious trust issues to begin with: an incest-survivor. For Linsey, the “survivor” part meant becoming a full-fledged adult somewhere around the age of eleven, and building walls that are tall and strong and impenetrable enough that no one would hurt her again, ever. As I've said before, look at us: The untrusting and the untrust-worthy. What a pair.

And yet, here we are. And once she says “I miss you and I want you again,” we get back to work. “Work” is the right word. I used to think about how awesome it would be to go to sex therapy, and come home with sex assignments. That's the kind of homework that you can look forward to, right? Not so much. Turns out it's mind-games, tedious conversations, passionless high-effort encounters, and triggers upon triggers, like walking through a mine-field. And once in a while, if the stars align just so, when we least expect to find nirvana, we stumble into a tenderness that is mutual and full of warmth and excitement. Just often enough to remind us that it's possible, that we're not chasing after a mirage. Just often enough to whet my appetite for more, and to make me realize how truly hungry I am for her.

Restaurants sometimes display your dessert choices using artificial models of apple pie a-la-mode and Boston cream pie behind a glass counter. They know how it works: You might be planning on saving that extra money or avoiding a few calories, but a convincing enough vision of a decadent hot fudge cake just might change your mind. Of course, when you order, you're not served a foam rubber, plastic and spray-paint concoction, but the real thing. At this point, only an actual dessert would satisfy your appetite.

I am married to a woman who is beautiful and charming. She makes me laugh like no one else. I am also married to an incest survivor. I'm tired of staring through the glass at my dessert.

[Photo by DigiDi under C.C.License]
This post also at TheSecondRoad.org

Charlie Brown's Football

Who's the fool, Charlie Brown or Lucy?

My therapist Heidi wants me to stop kicking myself when Lucy pulls the football away. She says we're making progress. That each of us is working through our “stuff” and that I should go ahead and let myself get aroused. That I should jump in, sink or swim, then journal about what happens.

But how many times do you feel sorry for Charlie Brown before you think, why did he believe her again? Why did he run for that football again, only to fall on his ass when Lucy pulled it away?

You codies have to help me here. I hate being on this end of the equation. I'm more comfortable writing about the times when it's me screwing up. Linsey and I like this arrangement. I'm the sick one. I'm introspective and self-critical. I'm good at apologizing.

Linsey's not good at apologizing. She only has two modes: 1) “It's your fault Eli,” and 2) “I don't feel like talking about it.” Our therapist helps with this, if she can shut me up for long enough.

So things seem okay, even good, and I love my Linsey, and I look at her curves and feel her softness and fall in love with her raspy voice. And I tell her I adore her, and help out with the house, and take Ashley to buy boots and to her horseback riding lesson. And it's noisy and busy and there's a bunch of little boys swimming in my pool for the J-man's seventh birthday party, but it's alright. Because we love each other, and we'll have our time tonight.

We'll have our time tonight. I keep checking. Carefully rationing my excitement. Making sure the lane next to me is clear so I can make a quick escape if things slow down too fast. And my neural computer starts to believe it's solved the equation, that I've finally cataloged all the warning signs.

Those warning signs aren't here this time. None of them. She's happy and reciprocally tender. We talk and narrate. We're therapy veterans who know that you have to say what you're feeling, and kill your paranoia with supportive verbal cues.

So Charlie Brown is thinking it's a good day to kick that football. He straightens up the bedroom and turns down the bed. He brushes his teeth and sets the alarm. But when he locks the door, Lucy becomes quiet and withdrawn because she remembers an argument from earlier in the day. She pulls up the ball. And it's too late, because Charlie Brown's already running.

It wasn't some misunderstanding, or some crazy over-reactive trigger, like last time. It was: I know I said things were good and I wanted you, but now I don't, so leave me alone.

So I don't know what to say. I really like this person. I care about her and we have a million things in common, plus there's these kids, and I'm not going to flake on them. And I made vows when we got married. So I'm not going to leave, or cheat, or get high, or stop breathing.

It feels like the only option is to play those tapes in my head again, the ones that tell me: It's gonna be okay - we can be friends but not lovers. I don't get everything I want. Some people have incurable diseases or crushing poverty, I will have a sexless marriage. I will find a way to live with that.

Years of cognitive therapy tells me I'm engaging in “black and white thinking.” At least I've learned to recognize that. And I've learned in recovery that I don't have to do anything stupid. So God, I'm powerless and my life is unmanageable, and I can't fix this.

Magic Trees

On my porch there are two potted trees (not just one!), waiting to be planted. But don't tell anybody.

Our Palm Sunday musical featured Tree #1, which represented the branches placed at the feet of Christ a week before Easter. But really I just wanted to grab people's attention with a giant tree in the middle of the sanctuary.

Tree #2 was a sneaky replacement prop for Good Friday. We bought this tree larger, and trimmed it to match the first tree's shape. Then we cut off every single leaf. It stood stark and bare for our Friday evening service, a symbol of death and the cross.

Tree #1, bushy and green, returned for Easter morning, newly filled with blooms to symbolize the resurrection.

This illusion involved me carrying trees back and forth to a hiding place in the back yard of an associate who lives next door to the church. Yes, I carried my tree-cross over my shoulder just hours before we commemorated the crucifixion. It was painful, thought-provoking, and I'm sorry, but darkly comical.

There's your back story, so let me get to the point. After Easter, this wiped-out music director went on a week's vacation and forgot all about the Easter Tree. It sat unwatered for days in a dark sanctuary until I rescued it, along with the “dead” tree hidden next door to the church. They're now on my porch. Tonight they gave me a handle on the mess that's in my head.

You see, the Easter Tree looks awful. It was cared for and made beautiful for one special day, then discarded and forgotten as a stage prop. And that's what I do – like a magician – I show you something evocative and poignant, and make you cry while I sing you an Easter song. Meanwhile the ugliness of my Good Friday tree is hiding somewhere behind a fence, because it's messy and unsightly and I'm ashamed that I can't really make it come back to life. But I'm an artist and a shaman, and that's what you pay me to do, isn't it?

So I find myself tonight recognizing a shade of a Madonna-Whore complex in my feelings towards Linsey. (Maybe the limited intimacy in our relationship wasn't just her idea after all.) I present her with a carefully edited version of my needs, a simple and wholesome package of easily palatable human desires. Then I take whatever's left, and hide it in the darker, grimier corners of my life, where no one will see these more shameful needs spilling over, soiling my dignity.

But in sobriety I've learned this doesn't work. I can't meet my needs (for affection, intimacy, play) with images and intrigue. Nor can I destroy them through anger and will. Either path leads, inevitably, to relapse. Instead, I have to look at my needs, which for some reason involves self-loathing and disgust, and what's worse, I have to show them to Linsey. And until this last year, the process generally ended there, with me cursing my vulnerability. But things have changed. Significantly. When I expose my needs to Linsey, when I allow myself to adore and be adored, I find I'm no longer alone.

This mutuality in our love has been unfamiliar, satisfying, even occasionally transcendent. But I can never say, “Good job, Eli – You chose to connect rather than isolate.” Instead, I usually spend the morning after feeling sick that I exposed my needs and desires rather than shrouding them in composure and reserve.

And here's where the tree comes in. Not the Easter Tree that withered from neglect, but the Good Friday tree. The one we we almost killed by stripping its branches of all color and dignity. Though painful, the exposure left it pruned for growth, and vibrant green buds now fill every twig and branch.

Do Not Disturb

Day 78

Nothing sends me spiraling off into crazy-land faster than the phrases “do not disturb” and “all night long.” I wrote about “all night long” here. Now for the classic hotel door knob hanger.

Early on there was the sickeningly-sweet anticipation, the arousal, the mystique. As a teen, watching couples check in at the front desk made my heart thump in my chest - someday that would be me. Someday I would drag my luggage down a mauve hallway and into a room smelling faintly of bleach, hang out the Do Not Disturb sign, then triple-lock the door. My lover and I wouldn't be listening nervously for my parents' bedroom door. There wouldn't be a keep-your-underwear-on rule. We'd get lost in a cozy nest of pillows and sheets and blankets, and kiss for hours. Later, in the darkness, warmth and exploration would melt into embrace and ecstasy. I knew that it would be about us, not me, and that I'd need to to balance my desires with attention to hers. It never occurred to me that she wouldn't have desires.

Yesterday we slept an hour past noon. This way we could avoid Sexday, sometimes called “Monday.” The church office takes Mondays off (since every Sunday is like college finals.) On Sexday Linsey's home with me and both kids are in school. We slept because I was all pissy about a little verbal brawl the night before. It's an old argument for us. I have a much easier time breaking for a recharge. When I'm spent, I know I'm not good for much until I take care of my needs. For food, sleep, intimacy, distraction. Then when I get back to work, I'm a focused and efficient dynamo. She can't hang the Do Not Disturb sign until the dishwasher's fixed and we refinance the house. Nothing new for us here. If she ran the world, we'd die on the inside, but we'd look damn sharp while we did it. If I ran things, love would be king, but we'd die of starvation when we ran out of cheez-its.

Don't assume I'm not OK with post-crisis love. In recovery, I'm chipping away at the fantasy, and building something beautiful and tender with the pieces I pick up. We used to understand each other's tastes, in music and movies. Now we understand each other. We're giving to each other the most vulnerable and child-like places in our hearts, like those little macaroni-covered gifts your kids make for you in kindergarten. And it's amazing on that front.

But when it comes to sex, we're still driving a used car that makes lots of disconcerting rattles and might need a tow at any moment. And I don't understand this burning need to know I'm not alone in this. I don't understand why my deepest sighs of relief happen while reading about people with similar problems. Check this one out. First, get this picture in your head: Childhood scars make her reject me sexually, I codependently conclude I'm repulsive and try harder to be attractive and loving, the increased affection intensifies her discomfort and defenses, I crash harder and find stupider ways to get numb; we do this dance for a decade or so. Now read this post at Discovering Recovering. Cool, right?

I just don't know what's “normal” for pre-sex cues. I've accepted that she won't want me like I want her; she's not a guy. I have a responsibility to woo and romance her, to make her feel appreciated and adored. She needs to feel safe and I need to earn her trust by being a trustworthy person. She speaks a “love language” that gets turned-on when she smells Pine-Sol. OK, so I'll clean the kitchen and take out the trash.

But I'm like a chick. I need to talk first, to caress and be caressed. I need her to really love me, and at least kinda want me. Otherwise, I'm not up for the job. Affection=Erection. I keep reading in marriage books that it's a myth that men are always ready to go. When she's verbally dismissive of me, emotionally distant, and flinches when I touch her, the night's pretty much over for me. Then if she asks me when I'm gonna be done “sulking” I start thinking about how fast I'd have to go to punch my van through the guard rails on the 91 East to 57 North overpass. Then I'm really not in the mood. Whatever. We talk a lot in therapy about diffusing our building-up-to-sex booby traps.

I'm angry, I know, and I'm exaggerating and being one-sided and unfair. And yes, I'm sulking. I just wanna hang that sign on my doorknob.

My River Isis

[Photo by ippei+janine under a Creative Commons License]

Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there.
-Otomo No Yakamochi

Day 75

Somewhere in the shadows of my emotional landscape, obscured by dense and long-forgotten trees and grasses, there's a hidden stream. Deep and clear and dark, it runs with forbidden and frighteningly powerful emotions. Tenderness and sorrow spill over its banks. I can place my hand here in the moist earth and feel the cool slip between my fingers, and I can bare it. I've written songs here, sang the songs of others. It's the deeper waters that are swift and dangerous. There are pieces of my life down there, visible in the flashes of sunlight that occasionally stab through the ferns and vine-draped branches. I'm afraid of these pieces and I fiercely protect them. If the undercurrent sweeps them away, some remembered part of me will wither and die. This glade is pungent with the aroma of poetry. Prose is impotent here, as the rational has no power.

This river of memories is where I must go to sort through the lost women in my life. Those I've left behind. One of the things I did when I used (chemicals) and acted out (pornography) was allow myself to bathe in these waters. With my inhibitions artificially lowered, I could breathe life into those buried memories, and re-animate them. The tangled cascade of sensations that make up first love (or forbidden love) would come flooding back. This is no longer an option for me. It wasn't real and it wasn't healing, and it blinded me to life. Authentic experiences are a washed-out gray when you're using. You can't see the earth after staring at the sun.

So as I do my fearless moral inventory, I'm slowly plumbing my River Isis to discover its true nature. I'm trying to fish out the memories, dry them off, honor them, set them aside, and move on. I ran across one today. It was a brief online exchange with Elena. Much of the River Isis belongs to her, and I may never purge it of the scattered pieces of her presence. But I'm trying. Because to linger over the illusion of imagined and immoral love is an artificial experience. It contains none of the risk and effort and sacrifice of real love, and it can never embrace me back with grace and acceptance. This is what I share with the real, flesh-and-blood woman who sleeps in my bed.

I must leave the river for today, walk away and back into my life. If I stay I will drown. But I'll come back because I must. I've avoided this place for too long, and its power over me is incongruent with serenity. I often find myself lost here unexpectedly, and knowing the way out is essential. Most recently, I was whisked here when reading Cat's post on first love. I saw this place from my wife's point of view in a post by Willow. These words (and others) have helped me to pull back the branches and take away the mystique that fills the darkness. Maybe this landscape can be tamed after all.

Intimate Anatomy

Day 74

I found an unfamiliar lump couple of days ago. Somewhere that I don't really want to mention. But being that this is an anonymous blog, what the hey, I'll go ahead and use it as a launching point. Proceed at your own risk. You've been warned.

First of all, the lump. I finally broke down and googled “lump in p*n*s” and found this article about Peyronie's disease. It's not required reading. Basically, it turns out to be a relatively common, not terribly awful, embarrassing nuisance. While testicular cancer is a significant problem, cancer in this area is pretty rare. Gonna get it checked out anyway. Definitely will need a male physician. Feels kinda like I should leave the money on the nightstand.

I do this freak-out thing with medical stuff. First time was at Linsey's lamaze classes. Each time words like “colostrum”, “episiotomy”, or “mucous plug” were used, I had a little mini panic-attack. The attacks began to get closer together, and when they were about 5 minutes apart and lasted for 45 seconds each, I think my water broke or something because I started sweating profusely and hyperventilating. Focused breathing techniques and self-calming talk didn't seem to help much. I had to get up and leave the room. (Still sorry bout that, Linsey.)

This is pretty much what happened in my googling the other night. There more I read about it, the more I started nervously kneading the blankets. Just typing about it, I'm having to stop every few words and do my own little compulsive nervous habit-thingy: kneading the fabric of my jeans between my fingers. Despite my excellent poker face, my fingers are my “tell.”

You may be wondering what all this is doing in a recovery blog. Here's what: It just brings up the intensely uncomfortable fact that so very much of my sanity and insanity revolves around that particular part of my anatomy. It's been comforting in SAA to hear other guys talk about the adversarial relationship they have with it. I spent years alone on the couch at night, gulping vodka and handfuls of Benadryls, desperately trying to drown my rage at it.

About that time I happened to read a book about W. C. Minor, a Civil War vet who contributed to the first Oxford English Dictionary from a "criminal lunatic asylum." He also performed an autopeotomy. (Figure it out.) I was insanely jealous. I learned that monks sometimes use powdered licorice to dampen their sex drive. I ordered a phytoestrogen supplement from a health food store. It was for post-menopausal women, but I had read somewhere it might lower my sex drive. I fantasized about stealing my dad's gun and shooting off the offending parts. This movie played over and over in my head. It still does, like an echo.

You see, Linsey and I were best friends. Still are. I told her last weekend how nice it is to have somebody around who “gets it.” Gets my jokes, my likes, my pet peeves. She's intelligent and witty and quirky. We cry together at movies and passionately discuss books. We laugh together at the idiots on TV. But that damned sex thing kept fucking it all up, making me needy and vulnerable, and her cold and defended. We had not yet unearthed her sexual abuse. I just figured a man's sex drive was some cruel joke made up by God. I thought that everything would be manageable if I could just make it go away. My addict, spiteful and bitter, is still sulking in the corner, hoping that a cancer will come and rot away this anatomical liability. Then I could say to Linsey, You did this to me. You made it die. Are you happy now?

Enter sobriety. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Hating my junk for being horny is like hating my throat for being thirsty. Where I used to feel hopelessly alone, there is now a circle of men, ready to talk at any moment. Many of them are addicted to pornography and chemicals and married to sexual abuse survivors.

Let me say that again.

I used to think that no one, anywhere, would ever understand my own little private hell. I now have several friends I see on a regular basis who are turning over their crap to a Higher Power, cleaning up their own mess, and learning how to love and cherish the women they've married. And I get to be one of them.

We'll get through the sex thing, Linsey. Together. It's just not the Everest I made it out to be.

I performed at Starbucks this week. I sang Ben Folds' “The Luckiest.” I don't know how to say it any better than this:

I love you more than I have
ever found a way to say
to you

That pretty much sums it up.

Another Weekend, Another Wedding

Day 62

Feel awful. Nervous pit in my stomach, plummeting emotionally. Basically, I got all riled up because it was 9:30 and the kids still weren't in bed. I muttered something about Linsey being a permissive-indulgent parent, and locked myself in the den for some quiet. She asked me if I needed to go to my mom's, which really means “stop being a cranky asshole.” I came out when it was quiet again and she was sitting on the couch rigidly typing into her journal, which means she'll be distant and curt for a few hours. Quiet isn't really her default state – her childhood report cards commented “too interested in her neighbor's affairs.” Linsey likes to dig, just not in her own stuff. I apologized; I should move on and give her space. Codependent, codependent, codependent.

Weekend update. Saturday, my cousin Jack married his fiancé Gerri. Let me do that “I statement” thing here: I have a tough time at weddings. And in the last year, there's been about ten of them. Close family, distant family, friends, church people. The church ones included a few that were basically rentals of our facilities; I was just the “sound guy” in the booth, starting the syrupy sweet slide show and playing Celine Dione.

Most of the time, the ceremonies aren't too terribly triggering. I've actually tried to listen, to be teachable and open. I think what hit me the hardest several months back was really hearing the phrase “for better or for worse.” Leaving isn't an option. Using or suicide or checking out isn't an option. Just a good reminder to have on the table.

It's the receptions that kill me. Over the years, I've been in this panic-attack vicious cycle of nervously anticipating that I will feel upset at the reception, then feeling upset at the reception, then remembering feeling upset at the reception and feeling nervous about feeling upset at the next reception, and feeling upset about feeling nervous about feeling upset at the next reception. Whatever.

Our cultural formula is to move from sacred-ish stuff at the ceremony to increasingly sexual stuff at the reception. And each of those sexy little traditions – clinking glasses for kisses, the garter belt toss – is another tripped land mine for me. I have typically responded by remembering what I didn't have (closeness and intimacy and warmth) and concluding that I'll never have it. Then I've watched my body react to the nausea by shutting down my systems, one by one. I stop hearing people talking, I stop tasting my food. I stop being upset or nervous or excited. I stop remembering, and I sever my connection to the room I'm in. The romantic lighting and the dance floor go away, and I stop smelling the catered food and the alcohol. I'm ready to go, now, I tell Linsey. Drive me home and let me sleep.

Some song says “all night long,” again, and I am sick, again, that we never had “all night long.” There's a reason for “all night long,” you know. Endorphins and hormones are released in early courtship that give you boundless energy, that make you invincible. I read it in a book. A book that I had to bury, with the rest, because it triggered me. I had those hormones, that energy, and she didn't. They don't come back, it said. Not like that.

But I made a decision, an act of volition, that I would be Linsey's partner this weekend. Not her sulky, helpless man-child. I wasn't perfect. I screamed at her on the phone that I was going to kill myself on the way to the rehearsal. I was mad because it made her feel uncomfortable that I never made it into the office Friday. I was running endless errands and doing wedding-stuff, I told her. Not using, hallucinating, floating in a delirium of porn, like I used to do. Don't you trust me after 60 days??!? Silly Linsey.

But aside from that little detour into crazy-land, I did a good job. I apologized for being impossible, took a deep breath, and moved on. I took it one moment at a time, and filled a mental scrapbook with memories of being a groomsman, a cousin, and a friend. It helped that Jack has been in recovery with me, and that we were surrounded by program people from the rehearsal to the alcohol-free reception.

Jack's mom asked me to write a song for their mother-son dance. I sang it live, while they danced, and people loved it. Everybody cried. They were speechless and wide-eyed and breathless. They wanted to know if they could buy it for their weddings. Of course, that wasn't enough for me. I felt insecure and stupid and sick. What if I sounded amateur? Or if my dedication beforehand wasn't funny? There's some big bag of psychological crap there, and I'm just starting to tear into it.

Most importantly, I danced with Linsey. Just two songs. But I held her and kissed her. I enjoyed it and experienced it. And I'm still here, writing about it. No drama, no crisis, just a lot of gear to shlep out to the car and an uneventful ride home. What a blessing. That's serenity.

Bad Math

Day 33

Does it make any difference? If I do the things that good dads and good husbands are supposed to do?

I'm realizing something today. And no, it doesn't make me look any better. Actually I think it makes me look worse – more selfish, or shallow, or...whatever. But I can't ignore it now that I can see it clearly. We have this complex codependent dance that we've been sharing all these years, and we're working hard to pick it apart. We look at each piece, turn it over in our hands, and try to figure out whether it's helping or hurting. So when one of those pieces falls in my lap, I have to at least examine it. Here's the piece:

I do all these things (dad things, husband things, pastor things, artist things) so that you'll let me touch you.

Somewhere I picked up an interpersonal mathematics full of false equations. (Or “fucking lies” when I'm feeling angry.) Some book or movie worked its way into the relationship center of my brain, and actually convinced me that “if x then y”.

If I make that trip to the store (in the rain) to pick up something for dinner, you'll let me kiss your face.
If I drive home, and let you sleep on the way, you'll actually want to put your arms around me in bed.
If I break up my work day to pick up the kids. If I make them a healthy snack. If their homework gets done.
If I respond to their fights with that perfect balance of authority, fairness, and loving instruction.
If I'm productive and efficient at work.
If I clean up all the rabbit shit.
If I sing the most heart-breakingly beautiful song.
If I write the most heart-breakingly beautiful song.
Then you'll want me to touch you. You might sigh or even moan softly.
Instead of being ticklish. Everywhere. Or too cold. Or overwhelmed by narcolepsy.

I see it on the screen in front of me and it looks so stupid.

Years ago, I read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It's actually a really great book. But I just happened to have it in my hands during the first few years of our marriage. When I was trying to figure out why you didn't love me back, any more than a benevolent, platonic roommate. And I over applied habit #1: Be Proactive. (buzzword apology) The basic idea is that we are amazingly more productive when we take action rather than simply respond. Don't sit around and worry that you're going to get fired – observe your boss's weak spots and fill them in. Become indispensable. Take action. Make your own luck. And that's what I tried to do. Rather than trying to fix your problems, I thought I could win you over by out-loving you. It didn't work. Again, I see it on the screen and it looks so fucking stupid.

I now see that book as the beginning of a disaster. Of course it wasn't Steven Covey's fault. The concepts in his book are sound. They were just wrong for me at that point in time. What I needed was someone to teach me how to say, “Don't treat me like that. You're being unkind and it hurts me. Get some help.”

Not that it would have made any difference. I don't think there was any shortcut through those dark years. I love you, Linsey, and you're a wonderful person, but I don't think anything short of our marriage imploding was going to get you into counseling. So we did that. Then we picked up the pieces. Now it's counseling, 12-step groups, books.

But I still have that math in my head: If I stay sober, then you'll like sex. And it just doesn't work that way. I know how foolish it looks for me to say all this when I just “celebrated” thirty days, again. So in the interest of being a team player, from a place of humility (humiliation?) can I just ask that you stay willing to work on your stuff? I just need to know that if I pour myself into this task, if I stay away from all my vices, that you'll stay committed to helping that abused little girl inside of you. Because I know you, Linsey. You don't like to be together in the dark. And me being sober isn't all it's going to take to change that. And there's a nineteen-year-old virgin boy in me, still standing at the altar, dreaming of having a lover. Not just a friend, or a partner, but a lover. You.

Black Hole

Day 32

After tucking him in, Linsey laid down with my six-year old. James started talking, rather openly, about girls he had known.

James: Arianna was so mean to me in kindergarten. Yeah, inside, there's like a black hole and I wanna throw her inside. Jalene is so sassy. And she said she likes Christian in my class. She's a little bit nice and a lot sassy. Why is she so sassy?
Linsey: God just made girls more sassy.
James: Daphne is not so sassy, but she's a lot weird.
Linsey: If I were in first grade I'd like you.
James: Ewwww...you're my mom!
Linsey: If I weren't your mom and I were six years old I'd have a crush on you.
James: Yeah......good times, good times.

He really said that. The conversation was a big deal for James. Like his mother, he doesn't like to talk about his feelings. When I tuck in Ashley, she'll bear her soul to keep me there. “Why were my friends so mean today?” she'll ask. What does “catty” mean? How's your addiction going, Dad? Where's Andrew now? Did he molest anybody else?

It gets really deep really fast.

Of course, James also tries to delay bedtime. But it looks more like this:
Me: Good night little buddy. I'll see you in the morning.
James: (frantically looking around) Dad, how do they make walls?

I'm glad he opens up to Linsey. And, frankly, a little afraid of when he needs to talk to a man. Because I don't think I'll know what to say. Specifically, about women, sex, affection. That whole mess. I mean, I was fed the standard evangelical Christian party line all through my teen years. God's plan for sex is that it happens inside the loving commitment of marriage. That I can deal with. It's just the way they sold it to me: Trust us – if you wait, it will be SO MUCH better. So instead of spending my high school and college years learning about what sex really is, I spent them waiting for paradise. And then when I married, I walked into a pretty sucky situation.

It helped that we were best friends. That we shared everything with each other, dreamed about traveling together, laughed hysterically together. We were closer as newlyweds than any couple I've ever met. And our mansion of a relationship was beautiful, except for that one room we kept locked. We learned quickly to never open that door. Our physical relationship was tentative, careful, scary, and emotionally distant. All the things that add up to passionate love-making, to be sure.

What's it like to be married to an incest survivor? A while back I joined an online discussion group for partners of survivors. I stopped reading because it was too depressing and hopeless, and too close to home. Some quotes I kept:

"There isn't a lot more comfort I can offer to those whose relationships are falling apart other than to say: The rest of the world isn't like this."

"I exist. I am tired of being isolated and anonymous. I am 35 years old. I have a wife who will not talk to me and a little girl...who is 23 months so she can barely use words. I share your pain."

"Most of the time, our sexual relationship feels like a task to be completed less than a passionate act we both want to participate in. It's very methodical. I know she loves me and she says she's attracted to me but I never seem to see the passion she says she feels."

"I just thought she didn't want me or was no longer attracted to me. I began pulling away from her and wasn't flirty with her and didn't touch her, kiss her as much as I'd always done. I was tired of rejection."

"I have been told that L has no physical or emotional love for me, only a companionship love, or in other words "FRIENDS", I feel like I have been kicked in the chest, I have slipped into my own depression, its all I can do to go into work each day."

"She made it sound like I was the entire problem in the relationship."

"When we first began having sexual problems, I sulked, threw tantrums, got mad, withdrew, and made demands. In short, I did everything wrong; it seemed like an appropriate, and natural, response at the time…It's hard not to "take it personally." I tried to talk to her about it, tried to explain what it was doing to my self-esteem."

"Other couples hugged, they kissed, reached for the other's hands, laughed, etc. And it all seemed so foreign to me…SO LET ME ASK THE BOARD THIS: IF YOU SUBTRACT INTIMACY FROM A RELATIONSHIP, INTIMACY OF ANY KIND, EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL, WHAT'S LEFT? DOESN'T THAT JUST LEAVE, AT BEST, A FRIENDSHIP? NO SEX, NO HUG, NO KISS, NO CUDDLE, SO WHAT'S LEFT?"

James said, “Yeah, inside, there's like a black hole.” Sometimes, I don't know what to tell you, little buddy.

Today I Was Sober

Day 11

I guess the most important thing at this moment is to break the silence. I've been away – avoiding, waiting, distracting. I started over eleven days ago. I've been wading through all the shit that follows relapse. Mainly that line of people that I must face, one by one:
my wife
my SAA group
my sponsor
my 12-step group
my program friends
my CR group
my psychiatrist
my rehab group
my therapist
my marriage counselor
my cousin
my brothers
my parents

Myself.
I hid and lied and used, again. They tell me to keep at it, that I learn more each time, that things are better than they were. Yeah, I know.

The hardest thing to figure out is Linsey's response. She was calm and supportive the first night. There was none of the screaming and crying and hysteria that has become the soundtrack to my fuck-ups. For the first time, she sounded like a “program” person, talking about my addict as if he were another person, robbing me of purpose and joy. Her feelings towards him were the same as mine. She was angry at him, and afraid of him. Resentful that he pulls me away from my kids and my music, from all the things that I live for. From her.

But in the days since then it feels like I've lost a part of her. And I'm seeing that her coolness reflected two changes. First the good one, that she has grown in her understanding of our situation, and doesn't see my addiction as her fault. She knows that she can neither cause nor stop me, that her only choice is whether to stick around while I take care of myself. That makes me happy. But there is more. There is a second change that it has taken me longer to understand. She is moving away from me. She is becoming less vulnerable, less tender. That thing I've heard so many times - that my wife will only put up with me for so long - is sinking in. Some part of me believes, maybe foolishly, that she will warm to me again.

I cannot control tomorrow, only today, only this moment. I will do tonight as I have each day since I returned to sanity. I will be patient, I will do what a loving husband does, and I will take care of myself. God gave me this day, and today I was sober.

Resentments

Back to day 13. This is a long one, folks.

Last night I was drowning in resentment. The timing was strange, or fortunate, I’m not sure which, since last night was the three-year anniversary of the Celebrate Recovery group I attend. Everything was great – the music, the food, and I couldn’t stop the tears as I listened to one person after another share their stories. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the whole 12-step thing is about, this would have been a good introduction. You won’t find it in a book or a video, or in one person’s experience, but in a room full of people who are all over the map. There’s 24-years-sober-guy, the girl who just lost her kids after a DUI, the guy who went back to the bottle after 25 years when his wife died of cancer. And what we all share is humility. We’ve come to the end of ourselves and asked for help in our brokenness. It’s beautiful.

And thank God everyone doesn’t have it all figured out. I can handle the success stories because they’re bookended by guys I know, guys I’ve cried with, who are still fighting through it. They hurt every day, and rely on God, friends and groups to survive. Every night they remember the Big Book’s advice to search for “selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear,” [p84] and immediately ask God to remove them. (How did “fear” get into this list? That’s a question for another post.)

One day at a time, one word at a time. Resentment. It haunts me and poisons me, it permeates my speech, my thoughts, my sleep. How many times have I sung about bringing my stuff to the “foot of the cross?” How many times have I done it?

Linsey, these are my resentments towards you today. Can I pour them out without prefacing each with my own apologies, my own failures? If I write them here, can I begin to heal? At next year’s celebration, will I be able to put my arms around you when others share about their healed marriages?

I resent the way you drift off to sleep after you’ve hurt me or we’ve argued. Since I am not a survivor of abuse, I do not know how to turn off my feelings of betrayal, anger, sadness, arousal, and most often loneliness. These feelings intensify and fill the darkness like the sound of your snoring. And then I am struck by that odd sense of indignity when someone doesn’t confront you or even avoid you, but rather simply ignores you. I hear: You’re not even worth the time it would take to argue.

I resent the way you responded when I gave you the flyer for a “sexual abuse survivor group.” That night seems like so long ago, when we attended our first Celebrate Recovery. I was broken and hurting, and nervous sick to walk into a church full of addicts, and yet was feeling some hope for our marriage. We had finally put the basic pieces together: I’m an addict and you’re a survivor, and we were going to do this together! Last night, Gerri shared about her first night at CR. She had come to see exactly what it was her fiance (my cousin Jack) did on Friday nights. She decided on that first night that she would be a part of this, every Friday, with Jack at her side. I waited four years for you to come with me. I hear: I’ll get better when I feel like it, but don’t you dare screw up again.

I resent what you said Thursday night after we made love. You had asked me earlier why I had been burying myself in hobbies, why I’d been unavailable. Because you’re dangerous, I said. Opening up my daily life to you costs me, and sometimes I can’t pay. I’m emotionally broke. Trust me, you said. Then, like normal people, we ate and talked, watched TV and went to bed. It wasn’t perfect or awful, just good. (“She didn't make me miserable, or anxious, or ill at ease. You know, it sounds boring, but it wasn't. It wasn't spectacular either. It was just good. But really good.” –Rob, High Fidelty) And when we finished, I let down my guard and felt joy. Those fucking orgasm hormones, they make me love you so deeply, and life turns OK – everything turns OK. And when I told you how I felt, you rolled away and said you wished it didn’t mean so much to me. You wished you didn’t have that much power over my feelings, that much responsibility.

You know, when I got married, the James Dobsons of the world had me convinced that if I just WAITED until I got married, we’d both feel that good. I gave up on that pretty fast. Then I read some other Christian book on marriage, and it said that it’s OK when the woman just finds joy in giving. She doesn’t need or even want "her turn" every time. So I learned, I accepted, that you won’t enjoy sex like I will, and we agreed to find meaning and legitimacy in the nights when I needed you like oxygen, and you let me breathe. But Thursday night, even that was too much. I heard: I can’t tolerate you feeling that happy.

I resent that your recovery is so different from mine. At CR last night, I heard all these women get up and share that they were in recovery for COSA (Codependents of Sex Addicts?), which more often than not means that they are abuse survivors. (I'll never forget when a counselor at Kaiser rehab said, "and we all know that the codependents are worse than us 'cause they do their shit sober.") Some took chips “for various lengths of recovery” which is an interesting variation on the AA phrase “for various lengths of sobriety.” What does it mean when a COSA person takes a 90-day chip? That she didn’t clam up and make her husband feel like a rapist for the last three months? And that’s what pisses me off. I have an addiction – “cunning, baffling, powerful.” [p58] I’ve spent years of my life getting up before sunrise to go to morning meetings of AA, SAA, NA, CR, rehab. I try, read and read and read, fight, surrender, write. There’s this line of people stretching back into the past that I’ve sat down with, one by one, and told that I’m helpless and sick, that I use drugs, look at pornography, steal things. I beg and beg, weeping on my knees in front of God, for release from the constant, maddening drive towards the substances that will put out the fires in my mind and body. They haunt me every single day. And I can do this without fail, for days and weeks and months, then blow it all in a moment of weakness when a handful of pills seems like a more responsible release than suicide, and I have to fucking start all the way back at zero. And tell everybody who loves me that I’m a failure. Again.

And maybe this is more of what was going on last night than I know. Because a couple of weeks ago, I compulsively swallowed a handful of medicine that I knew contained my “drug-of-choice”, and I told Heidi in our counseling session, like I promised I would. And that was it. It’s out. I didn’t hide it like so many times before, the times when I rationalized that I hadn’t gone to the store to buy (or steal) the real stuff, I hadn’t laundered money for some porn site, I hadn’t called that girl from the emotional affair. The last time I relapsed, I did the real thing (except contact that girl) and I laid in bed next to you multiple nights, high for hours, looking at porn on my phone. Yeah I know, it hurts to say it out loud. This time, if it even was a relapse, I took some pills that made me sleepy.

Since I began recovery two markers have gradually moved up a scale which charts my progress. At the bottom of this scale is my addict, at the top is the perfect creation God intended. One marker represents my behavior. It has moved up! I am getting better, I am accepting the strength of my higher power. But higher up the scale is a marker for my standards, my definition of sobriety. It continues to be a few steps beyond my behavior. I had months and months of sobriety in those earlier years that didn’t contain a week of sobriety by the standards I hold today. Through much work and agonizing, I’ve gradually expanded my “inner circle” of behaviors that I choose to abstain from. I’ve come to see that many things that seemed harmless, or maybe just wasteful, have repeatedly led me back to “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.” [p30] (In other areas, I’ve relaxed, and grown to accept imperfections and weaknesses.) Today, I choose honesty, disclosure, vulnerability. As an addict, I cannot wait until the world falls apart to declare a new sobriety date. I took a step, a small step, back into substance abuse, and even though I didn’t give into other addictive behaviors, I must start over. I’ll write it in my Big Book, below the other crossed out dates, like my first sponsor told me. September 15, 2008.

Dancing

Day 38
So Teitur has this song called Let’s Go Dancing. I figure he probably sat in a restaurant with his (troubled) lover and then came home and wrote it.

Our minds run in circles
Racing 'round the restaurant
Searching for what more to say
To say what we really want

I wish I wrote more songs like this one. Some time back, I stopped writing songs to deal with life. What the life of an artist is supposed to look like: the incredible pressure of chaos and pain and beauty creating diamond-like paintings/poems/songs, like that process underground. What the life of this artist looks like: diffused angry frustration simmering under a smothering blanket of sedatives, overeating, antidepressants and fatigue. Just get me to sleep so I can survive until tomorrow. For years, crafting my pain into a redemptive “thing of beauty” has looked unappealing and phony, not to mention difficult. Dumping my problems into a password-protected journal is easy. I sat in that restaurant once. I came home and wrote this:

Then we went out to eat last night and she was bitchy the whole time. I’m sick of it. All I ever do is apologize for anything I ever do wrong, and try to console her when she’s unhappy, which is most of the time.
March 8, 2004

Let's leave it like it is
And stop staring at these walls
Let's not go headlong to that distance
Where you can't come back at all

Have we already gone there? Is it too late to come back? Those walls. God knows we’ve lived there so long it feels like home. Even though I lived my journals, it still surprises me to read them.

She’s so fucking psycho sometimes. I feel like I can’t live with her anymore. All the time, I just want to get out. The happiest parts of my day are when she’s not around. Sex is pretty much always better without her. What does that mean? Making love to my wife is some kind of duty, or the thing I do when I’m being good. In general, she’s probably just kind of a lousy lover, but I guess you can learn.
October 20, 2005

She’s really not a lousy lover. I guess it’s not too big of a surprise that sex is better by yourself when you’re pissed off all the time. Talk about anger being a barrier to intimacy.

Lets go dancing
Waltz around the rumor mill
In your faded dress with the daffodils
Let's go dancing
Let time stand still

Sometimes I take off my seatbelt when I feel like I did tonight, driving home from our marriage counseling session. I don’t think they have a name for that feeling. It’s anger and restlessness, entitlement, a drive towards destruction and “risk-taking behavior.” I played this song on the way home. I cried, a lot. I want that – to turn everything down and just dance for a while, to the music in our heads. To let time stand still for me and her, without the noise of our past or the anxiety of our future.

Once your name was but a whisper
A simple wish upon my tongue
And staring at your shadow
Is like staring at the sun

Eventually I was sobbing. And I put back on my seatbelt, because I have something worth living for. Linsey, you are unspeakably beautiful. And the places in you that are darkest are simply those that cannot accept this beauty, cannot bear to own it and share it with me. It is my hope that you can forgive me for what I’ve quoted here from my old journals, and here’s why: I don’t think it’s possible to get a sense of how much I love you without knowing where I’ve been. Yes, I wrote those things. Yes, there are pages of that vitriol. I drowned in rage for years, and I threw every dysfunctional coping mechanism at it that I possible could. I tried to numb my passion for you, I pointed it at other women, I fought it off like some kind of animal. And I could never make it go away.

And in this dark, dark hour
You still illuminate a room
Oh God give us the power
Got to keep ourselves in tune

Could Heidi (our counselor) be right? Instead of being a couple about to fall apart, are we a a loving couple in the middle of a dark hour? Can my journals from 2008 be about when we got better?

Lets go dancing
Waltz around the rumor mill
In your faded dress with the daffodils
Let's go dancing
Let time stand sill

God give us the power.

Time, stand still.

Linsey, please dance with me.