The fish...

Here, I am lost at sea with out a compass or star. Something happened. Many things happened. Or was I right the first time that something happened? When I describe to my husband what that something was, he throws all the reasons why he reacted as he did to me then, back in my face. I am drenched in pain, unheard, gasping for air, unable to speak or breath. He tells me, 

"The past is the past, it is gone. Done. No more. Do not bring the past up again".

But what happened then keeps on happening. I've had decades to define its structure and I know that it cannot change until I learn to avoid the entry points. It isn't what went wrong at the time that matters. What continues to hurt us is, that when I managed to express what had happened to me in that catastrophic night of despair, nothing changed. I expected something and then fell into the hole of empty-nothingness, a void where I know repair and action should be. In my mind it is like this 'a person who loves me would not want to see me suffer, we found a bad wound, I need your help to repair it through love...and please, I need to be told that you can love me despite the wound'

The reassurance never comes.

Since then, decades ago now, that something has multiplied into hundreds of similar instances. The same shape occurs again and again, and I react the same. To cut it short, what happens is this. He may appear to listen, saying nothing, giving eye-contact and even if words come from his mouth that sound like engagement and care, nothing, nothing changes. There is no revisiting, no replaying, no restoration of any kind. As soon as I start to say what I need, the metaphorical floors fall away and I am lost. Speaking about it kills it and me dead. I disintegrate within the void.

Reassurance in words or deed would catch my hand as I begin to tip. Holding me tight, telling me I am loved and wanted would mend me.

It doesn't happen.

The nature of my wound is three-fold. It begins in childhood, where I was left to scream silently through nights of long despair and nightmare. My parents were not cruel, but they were overwhelmed and my mom couldn't deal with a child who could not sleep because something awful was happening, in that very house, to my Nana, my mom's mother. Her radium implants made me feel dangerous, I couldn't hug her. I could just stand at the threshold to her room and look at her in bed as she was dying.. So, I learnt early on, that if I show distress I will be rejected - for I wasn't to upset Nana, and, my mom couldn't cope with my distress because her own was too much already.

Move on to my teenage years and first marriage. Add rape to my time-line, and severe threat of violence. Result, I am a mess held together with duct tape and string.

The next wounding comes after I met my true love, my soul-mate, who left me pregnant to become religious. So I married the man who promised that he would always love me and be by my side. He entered into my life as the prince I never believed in. Literally, tall, dark and handsome. I was never a princess waiting to be rescued and I thought that would protect me from the fantasy. He rode swift and direct to me in my house of misery. He told me everything was perfect and I knew that he was lying...but that kind of lie is as hard to resist; like a jug of ice-water offered to a person struggling under the blistering desert sun. I didn't believe but I needed to so, so, so much. 

I closed my eyes and drank deep. 

And I felt like a wolf who had to chew away her paw to escape the trap of loving a man who obviously didn't love her and was able to leave his un-born child...In short, when I married my beloved husband I was frozen. In shock. Unable to mourn for the father of my beautiful son, for my mom who had recently died.

I made myself agree that this new life was ours alone and we would work out all our problems through talking.

Reader, strange to say, beloved husband used to believe in talking and I soon learnt that it isn't talking that matters, it is dialogue.

When I spoke about my raw feelings, my beloved prince was hurt...as in, "I don't want to hear it, you are mine." And that little child who was once all of me still needs to feel owned and protected so much...Those words made her feel loved and protected.

And then I got scared.

Disdain met me when I needed my beloved to hear me, love me, I felt that I was unreasonable, that I needed too much.

So, where are we now.
Recent months have seen beloved husband telling me that "he is done" because he can't stand me "going on and on and on" and leaving the house, which has made me a total psychological wreck.