I saw this meme online {No one should have to live their life in silence because they’re scared of being invalidated.} and it really made me think about the circumstances that I accepted surrounding the reconciliation with Lena last fall. Last October, when Lena told me she wanted a divorce, I was in shock and desperately wanted to work things out with her. I was so desperate that I agreed to circumstances that had no chances of survival. I gave Lena everything that she asked for and asked not nothing in return, other than to not get divorced. Part of what Lena needed from me was for me to be in Westchester full-time, to get along with everyone there and for us to have a “normal life” in Westchester. In order for me to make this request a reality I had to constantly bite my tongue. Day in and day out was an exercise in me keeping my thoughts and feelings to myself both inside our home and in public. Even our therapist, Ralph, said this was an impossible scenario to keep up.
This notion of a “normal life” had come up numerous times during our seven year marriage. Lena married me knowing all of my history. She knew about my suicide attempts. She knew about my depressions. She knew about my totally dysfunctional family of origin. She knew about my first failed marriage to Ava and the fiasco of a relationship I had with Jessamyn. Lena knew about all of my hospitalizations and all of my psychiatric history. So, one can imagine, it came as somewhat of a shock a year into our marriage when Lena said, “I am a normal person. I want a normal life and a normal marriage. I need you to be normal.” This totally blew me away!
Aside from all of my psychiatric history, which was obviously significant, separate from all of that I was never “normal.” I never wanted to be “normal.” I had always been an outspoken critic of our government and politically correct social trends. I had been a long-time and vocal supporter of various underdogs. I had a long history of writing about my thoughts and predictions for the whole world to read. I had always been known as someone who told people just how things were; there was no beating around the bush with me. There was no way I wanted to be a quiet, sheltered, spineless, voiceless suburban mouse!!!!
The first time Lena brought up this issue of desiring normalcy I really wasn’t sure how to react and probably just ignored her. If she wanted normal, she married the wrong guy. I am not sure if she had any idea of how hurtful this was on her part. Her expressing her desire for normalcy was a direct act of invalidating who I was. She married me knowing exactly what and who I was; and then immediately expected me to change to something completely different. Why do women marry a man and then try to change him? If she wanted me to be different she should have told me before we got married.
I don’t remember exactly when certain things were said, but at some point Lena went as far as to say, “You are not a mental patient anymore.” I assumed, at the time, that she was saying this in a positive way… as in, look how far you have come from the days when your mental illness dominated every aspect of your life. She may have meant it nicely, but in fact, it was very dismissive of me, my history and in part of my very identity. There was a point in my life where I allowed my designation as a mental patient to define who I was. At some point in life, starting before I married Lena, I no longer defined myself by my illnesses. There were, however, some things that were still important to me that Lena never gave credence to… such as the anniversaries of my suicide attempts. She never remembered them… she never asked how I was around those times. To people who have been through what I have, those dates are important. There were also times of each year that tended to be harder for me, specifically the months of March and November. I always seemed to struggle more in those months. Again, Lena either didn’t remember this, despite me telling her several times, or she just didn’t care. Our marriage ended on a horrible note… in March.
Perhaps I expected too much of Lena because of her work. Lena is a molecular biologist who studied the biology of suicide. I thought that she had a better understanding of psychology and specifically of suicide. Apparently, one can study the biology of suicide, and be good at it, and not understand the psychology of suicide at all. I also mistakenly thought she was more in tune to me.
This self portrait displays how I felt… I could not speak because Lena had a gun to my head… If I spoke my mind, she would end the marriage. I was being emotionally held hostage. I feared Lena would become my Natasha; my father’s third wife who beat his spirit dead and held him emotionally hostage.