Triggered

Saturday night, when it happened, the shame was crippling, and I couldn't breathe or think. Everything was a muted wash of gray.

Until the waves of rage and nausea, and the fantasies – beating holes in the wall with a microphone stand, slicing my wrists open, shrieking obscenities into the night. Then the addict, slamming me with euphoric recall. Escape this body, plunge into ecstasy, get what you deserve, Eli. I'm a strong swimmer – I've trained in these waters for years – so why the fuck was I drowning again? I was fighting for breath, but my cognitive and recovery tools were failing me.

I got through the night and slept (eventually), but at 5:00 Sunday morning I was begging Linsey for help. I'm so depressed I can't get out of bed, I told her. I can't do this today. Somehow I found myself leading a worship rehearsal three hours later, and I did fine, because when I'm behind a piano I know what I'm doing. I cried in between lyrics, and thanked my God for this moment of competence and peace. For deliverance.

But all of life is not a song. I went home and curled into the fetal position under my covers, and hated my body for convincing me again to approach her with my guard down. One of the ways I cope when I'm triggered is I step back, out of the moment, and imagine retelling the events at some later time. This way I get some distance and perspective. It usually helps, but not this time. Because it sounded so stupid when it came out like this:

“Saturday night everything was right for sex. We'd flirted and hinted, the kids were in bed, the chores were done. I allowed myself to feel desire. I thought I could handle the risk of being vulnerable. I came up behind her at the table and loved on her with a back rub and gentle kisses. She closed her eyes and sighed. Then she jumped up and started turning off lights and putting things away, and disappeared into the bathroom. I tried to hold on to the moment, but I went numb. We never recovered.”

I told our therapist Heidi what happened, that I was emotionally broken and unsalvageable. You shouldn't descend into despair when your wife has to go to the bathroom. But with work, we isolated this part of the story: I had asked Linsey, “Don't worry about the lights, just come to the bedroom with me. I'm coming back out here later and I'll close up.” But she can't do this. The abused and frightened little girl inside my wife still freaks out when an excited man starts touching her, so she looks for ways to stop the flow of intimacy, and to regain control.

And then I'm triggered.

And I tell myself, she's just turning off the lights, just kissing the kids goodnight, just making a quick phone call, just washing her face, but it's a lie, because these silly little games echo all the way back to our honeymoon. And someday, I'll be strong enough to say “IT'S NOT MY FAULT” instead of “what the hell is wrong with you, Eli?”

Someday I'll say It's not my fault.

It's not my fault.

[Photo by whisperwolf under C.C.License]

Boring Technical Post

I've retitled my blog from "Eli's Addict" to "Eli Hornby." Basically, I was tired of seeing "Eli & # 39 ;s Addict" in places where the HTML was not rendered correctly. (It doesn't seem like an apostrophe should be that big of a deal, but whatever.)

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Forbidden Grief

I think I loved her.

There, I said it.

I want to put some kind of warning at the top of posts about Elena (the emotional affair) so that Linsey (the wife) won't have to read them. But why bother? Linsey knows everything anyway. I call her Sherlock Holmes because she's so freakin' hyper-vigilant. Over the years she's become a better and better detective, while I've become a better and better liar. The codependent vs. addict arms race.

Back to Elena. It's hard enough for me to express the officially sanctioned emotions, like gratitude or joy or excitement. So I guess I should go easy on myself for avoiding the grief I feel over ending a relationship with someone else's wife. But feel it I must, as I've been told many times by my therapist brigade.

Elena was a sexual abuse survivor, just like my wife. She was hard on the outside, desperate and scared on the inside. Like all the girls I've been drawn to, she was maddeningly hot and cold. One day she'd flirt, enticing me past my boundaries with warmth and danger, the next day she'd pretend she didn't know me. Women like this get under my skin, and I become obsessed with getting through their defenses. I've lived for this buzz since middle school. I've come to view it as my earliest addiction.

I can honestly say the prize I'm after is their trust. I want permission to tease and talk intimately with the most intriguing girl in the room, while other guys chase after the skirts. Yeah, I'm that guy. The one you can't complain about because he's been a friend to your wife, and you know he's not necessarily trying to get into her pants, but you keep tabs on him all the same. Except Elena's husband didn't know, or care, because he was too busy flirting with the girls at his work.

What made Elena different than all the rest? I'd been drawing bull's eyes on women for years, in classes, in choirs, at work. Basically, she was the first one who truly reciprocated. The rest had flirted back, then moved on. They knew that if you let a guy flirt for too long, he begins to feel entitled, possessive. Elena didn't mind. I was always trying to figure out exactly what was going on, what each of us was getting out of the relationship. My answer was: She likes that I pay attention to her. I like that she lets me.

You must understand where I was at that point. I had long given up on my marriage, and more significantly, me. I'd read the books I was supposed to read and tried the stuff I was supposed to do, and none of it fucking mattered. Each time Linsey tensed up when I touched her, every urgent phone call she remembered just as we headed to the bedroom, each little rejection left me feeling more and more repulsive. I must have been a pretty sick person to take all of her shit and conclude it was entirely my fault. Today, when I get paranoid about what she talks about in her support groups, Linsey likes to say “it's not all about you, Eli.” Oh how I wish somebody had told me that back then.

So it was a big deal when the Starbucks girl flirted with me, while I was buying hot chocolate for my son's preschool teacher, who happened to be Elena. (Who didn't like coffee, hence the hot chocolate.) And each day when I dropped off my son, the Starbucks was payment for Elena's affection and attention. And I ate it up. She was tiny (Linsey says “elfish”), Latina, a little psycho, and had poor boundaries – all the things that turn me on. We texted and talked on the phone, instant messaged, MySpaced. Then we each carefully covered our tracks, erasing our call logs and internet histories, so our spouses wouldn't find out.

Eventually it all came crashing down, but I'll have to tell that story another day. I'm exhausted emotionally, because despite my resolve, Elena still pulls strings in my heart. Don't tell me the difference between “love” (the mature commitment) and “love” (the high school feeling) because you know as well as I do that every human being yearns for both. Elena and I both grew during those years, and for what it's worth, she was a beautiful person. We laughed endlessly and she was kind to me when I was heartbroken.

I remember crying to Elena on the phone over a mess I'd made by relapsing. I understand it cost her nothing to comfort me, to tell me I was going to make it. I understand she didn't have to live with me. I understand our feelings for each other were illicit, addictive, destructive, selfish, reckless, and short-sighted. But they were real, and I miss them. I miss her, her voice and her eyes. Most of all I miss her friendship.