Tag: stress response

“It Happens Everyday,” But it Shouldn’t

It Happens Everyday, Carly Simon

It happens everyday
Two lovers with the best intentions to stay
Together, they decide to separate
Just how it happens, neither is certain
But it happens everyday….
Well, you make him a liar
Turn him into a robber
Well, it happens everyday.

I have had to go to two pre-trial conferences related to my divorce from Lena. I recognize that divorce is often ugly; it doesn’t need to be, but it is. Like the lyrics above say, “Well, you make him a liar. Turn him into a robber.” It’s very sad how two people who once were so much in love can twist history and try to tear one another apart. I have sincerely tried to not go down that road. It’s not what I want at all, but then again, I didn’t want the divorce either. In these two pretrial conferences Lena’s lawyer has said somethings that are just patently false. I don’t know if the false information comes from Lena or this is just a standard page out of her lawyer’s playbook; but it sucks.

I would much rather be told that I got fat and unattractive, that I was a lousy lover, that I was too grumpy or just a plain old asshole, than have lies said about me.

1st Lie

Lena’s lawyer claims that I was unfaithful throughout the marriage. This is plainly and simply FALSE. I never cheated on Lena. I never wanted to cheat on her. I never had eyes for another while I was with her. I was so in love with her and thought she was an amazing, smart and stunningly beautiful woman. I thought we were very compatible sexually and I never felt any reason to look for something anywhere else. Period. Seriously.

So, where does this lie come from? Is it merely a standard page out of the divorce playbook of lawyers? Maybe. It doesn’t make much sense in New York State as it is a no fault state — so infidelity doesn’t matter, if it were true, which it is not. Is Lena projecting? That’s a possibility, but I never thought she was cheating on me during the marriage despite the fact that she openly admitted to cheating on her first husband several times “after she knew the marriage was over but before getting out of it.” I was so in love with her and thought that she was so in love with me that I never thought either of us would cheat. But… maybe she did and now she is projecting; I just don’t know. I do know her mother often accused me of cheating because I spent time at the upstate home without Lena. During the marriage Lena said she knew her mother’s accusations were crap and just part and parcel of her soul cancer. I would have hoped that by now Lena would have realized that nothing good ever comes from allowing her mother’s psychotic mean spirited drivel into her head; again, I just don’t know.

2nd Lie

The second lie is that I never lived in Rivertown with Lena and her children. In last night’s blog post, I wrote how hurtful this lie is because it completely negates everything that I did there for seven years.

When Lena and I were talking about getting married in 2010 and 2011, I was 100% open about my mental illness history and suicide attempt history. I told Lena that I needed to keep the home in upstate NY and spend some amount of time here because living full-time all of the time in Rivertown would not be good for my mental health. I agreed to spend 50% or more of my time down in Rivertown with Lena and her kids. But we both agreed to the idea that we would not necessarily be together 365 nights a year. The first couple of years I thought this arrangement was working OK and I did spend more than half of my time in Rivertown. I drove the kids to their before school program and picked them up from the same program after school. Later I drove the kids to and from school often. There were several times when I closed up the upstate house and spent 4-6 months 24/7 there in Rivertown. I was on the pickup list from the high school for the kids… Why would I be on that list if I never lived there or only came down on weekends? I can subpoena school officials to prove this.

I drove the kids to soccer/basketball/lacrosse/dance practices. I have photos from mid-week practices and games; not just weekend events. I attended dance and concert and play rehearsals; again, I have photos from all of these things. Again, these are mid-week practices; I wasn’t just around on “some weekends.” Dance teachers/coaches and friends can confirm that I was an involved step-parent. One coach wrote in a text message to me that for some period of time it was obvious to him that I was more involved in the lives of my step-children than either of their biological parents… because I wasn’t working (as both parents were) and I took the time to be involved. I was there. I was involved. I was part of a family. I was part of a community. Again, I have tens of thousands of photos proving I was there and that I was involved. I have a list of a dozen people willing to testify under oath about my being there and my level of involvement. I have doctors that I saw regularly down there with records showing visits etc.

It’s a bald face lie that I never lived down there. Did I sell the upstate home and move down there 24/7/365 when we got married? No. I did not. But I spent a significant amount of time there investing in the family, home and community.

Below is a slideshow of just a smattering of the tens of thousands of photos I have of the time I spent living in Rivertown:

View Thumbnails

OK On the Outside, But Inside…

Watching the walnut limbs swaying in the wind.

Yesterday was a very hard day for me. I have been trying to work on my book a little each day. Yesterday morning I was writing about a relationship I had where I was repeatedly lied to, used and manipulated… much to my significant detriment.

As I was writing I found myself getting angry… muttering things like, “Fucking Bitch!” or worse. However, in typical fashion for me, my outward anger quickly turned into inward anger… anger at myself and feelings of wanting to hurt myself. I had errands to run after writing which had me driving more than 80 miles from here to there.

As I was driving and interacting with various people I looked fine on the outside. I drove the speed limit. I wasn’t driving erratically. I smiled at people when I met them in stores and asked them how they were. On the outside I looked perfectly “normal.” But on the inside… I was dying, or wanting to die or hurt myself. I had thoughts of burning my arm with cigarettes, or cutting my arms with razor blades, or crashing the car, or asking a friend to literally beat the shit out of me. Externally induced physical pain is much easier to “process” and heal from than the emotional devastation I was feeling. A physical bruise heals… my heart, not so much and certainly not nearly as quickly!

So why write about this? Because much of the stigma of mental illness comes from the fact that it is “hidden.” Most of the time it’s an internal condition unlike a broken arm or even cancer that can have visible symptoms. Someone can look perfectly “normal” on the outside but truly be struggling to hold on to life on the inside. You never know what someone is feeling inside by their outward appearance… so maybe cut someone a break once in a while.

Misnomers on Impulsive Suicide

The Last Person on Earth

A mother considers her son’s final thoughts and a type of suicide we don’t fully understand.

By 

https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/a-mother-considers-her-sons-final-thoughts.html

 

Firstly, let me say how sorry I am for this mother’s loss.  Losing a child is always a heart wrenching experience, but especially to suicide.  That being said, there are so many erroneous or questionable aspects to this story.

 

The author states that there were no red flags prior to her son’s suicide, yet she mentions several in her story.  According to Ms. Greene, Sol went to college specifically to play soccer and then didn’t get off the bench.  Sol also asked his parents to stop coming to the soccer games.  These would be two big red flags to me.  I also have the feeling that there must have been some other “impulsive” activity in Sol’s life that is being left out of the story.

 

Ms. Greene writes about Anthony Bourdain and how his mother said she would never think of him as committing suicide.  Bourdain was an addict… who still drank alcohol.  Substance and alcohol addictions often start as maladaptive stress responses… and I would argue that suicide is also a maladaptive stress response.  Through the view of this new paradigm, so called “impulsive” suicides can be seen less as outliers of behavioral patterns.  Also, most of what I have read regarding impulsive suicides deals with young people, mostly teens.  I can’t remember reading anything about people in their 60’s committing impulsive suicide without a pattern of impulsive behavior.

 

Ms. Greene quotes Kevin Hines regarding his suicide attempt… “Kevin climbed over the railing, leaned back, let go, and felt, he says, ‘instant regret, powerful, overwhelming. As I fell, all I wanted to do was reach back to the rail, but it was gone.’  He plummetted [sic] 220 feet in four seconds, going 75 miles per hour and wracked by the thought all the way down: What have I just done? I don’t want to die. God, please save me… He wants everyone to know that the act of suicide leads not to a final sense of satisfaction and relief but to panic-stricken sorrow.”  When I shot myself through the heart with a 9mm handgun in November of 1998, it was one of the most peaceful things of my life.  After I shot myself, I fell to the ground.  I reached out for someone to hold my hand because I did not want to die alone… but I still wanted to die.  I was not sorry I had shot myself.  I was not “hanging on to life.”  Laying there on the ground bleeding and gasping… in the 60 seconds before I passed, was very calm and peaceful.  This fact always scared most therapists from working with me afterwards.