I'll never forget driving home from San Antonio with my husband one night. We hadn't been married long, six months or so. I was a child, I had just turned 25. I had been given the task of presenting a speech to a large group of conventioneers for my job at the time. Being an ineffective and nervous public speaker, I had asked my husband to come along for moral support.
After presenting my speech, I mingled with the crowd. I was networking and working. I spent a little more time than my husband was comfortable with chatting with one man in particular. This man was an integral prospect for my business, I needed him on my team. I wasn't overly flirtatious or solicitous, but make no mistake, I was flirting. It was business and I've always believed in using whatever tools you have at your disposal to facilitate getting what you need. I could feel my husband's disapproving stares.
Just as I've got this man against the ropes with his pen poised to sign my contract, my husband tells me that we are leaving. His hand is on my elbow, gripping tightly. I smile at him and tell him that I need a few more moments. He sulks off, but the moment is ruined. The prospect feels the chill and shuffles off uncomfortably. I plaster the smile on my face, say my good-byes and strut off to the car.
Once inside the car, I turn to him and tell him how inappropriate his behavior was and try to explain just how important that man was to my business. I was stunned that he was even remotely concerned about the flirting given that the man was a rotund, balding chap easily 30 years my senior.
I'm livid, my voice shaking and cracking as I spoke which is what always happens when I'm that angry. Tears follow shortly thereafter, something I've always hated about myself. It's hard to convey anger when you're voice is quivering and you are crying, but it's my way. Fortunately, I'm rarely that angry. I lambasted him in my weak way for 30 minutes, my voice getting louder and louder with tears literally shooting straight out of my eyes, landing in my lap.
He pulls the car over on the interstate, gets out, come to the passenger side, opens the door and drags me out of the car. It's an unusually cold night and he holds me against the car and grabs the sides of my face. I can still feel his fingers in my cheeks, I can still hear his voice through clenched teeth as he shouted, "You have no idea how to let anyone love you. By falling in love with you, I've already accepted the fact that one day, you're just going to up and leave because deep down inside, you just don't believe that love can be eternal."
I stood there shivering against the cold, against my coldness, unable to speak. He pushed me back in the car and drove home. We didn't speak again the rest of the night. I wanted to tell him that he was mistaken, but I could not utter a word in my own defense, largely because I believed him. I spent the next decade believing those words while simultaneously fighting to deny his prophecy.
I always knew that I never loved him the way he loved me. And should I have attempted to forget that fact for a moment, he was happy to remind me. But the way he loved me was almost parental - possessive and controlling. He was always available to me, but I had to weigh every word I uttered with caution. He was free to say what he wanted to, to be who he wanted to, while I had to watch my own actions as if in a mirror.
His words of that night have haunted me for many years. I'm so afraid sometimes that he was right then and that he's right now.
I'm sure Freud would blame my father. Ultimately, it's just me. Deep down, I fear that I'm not ready to welcome someone into my life, even though I so sincerely want to. I tell myself that when it's the right one, the worthy one, I'll love him with the plentitude that I am capable of. Ironically, the men that are emotionally available to me are dismissed with about as much fanfare as Sarah Palin, while those that remain emotionally unavailable are welcomed, embraced and fought for.
Take Dallas for example. He flew in Tuesday evening and we went out for dinner. We had a lovely evening and he was quite different one-on-one. I do think I underestimated him. He's smart, quick-witted, fun to be around and incredibly open. He's very attractive, I watched the waitress the other night fawn all over him within 2 minutes of our arrival. I've woken up every morning since to an amazing email telling me all sorts of wonderful things about me. He's actually given me a paper ticket (didn't even know you could get those anymore) to come visit him "whenever I'm ready" and he's called regularly to ask when he can come back to visit.
Meanwhile, I have less than zero interest in him.
I have many theories as to the "why". Ultimately, the truth lies in my own twisted sense of goodness. I've caused pain and the guilt is hard to manage. I need the aloofness as a shield.
Beat me to the heartbreak and I can't break yours.
1 comment:
Don't you mean "crime" and punishment? Dostoevsksy? You can't have one without the other?
Crimes do occur first in the brain, hatched in some dark primordial space in the lizard brain (flirting lives here, too. That is REALLY criminal) where all crimes are held in suspended animation until we think we need them to empower ourselves. They are waiting to be put to good (bad) use by men(mostly, usually) and women (why do you think we call you "bitch", sometimes?)when we are most unsure of ourselves and/or the future.
I have a collection of these accomplishments, in a book, called, "Great Moments in History When I Screwed up Something Important", or "How to be an Inelegant Jerk".
Being livid after the ludicrous jealousy attack beats the hell out of cowering, but it just seems to have occasioned his lizard brain to go on the next step: stop the car and threaten you; ME TARZAN, YOU JANE. He also accidentally confessed his fear about the probability of the future.Oops. After a non-adult moment like this, during some kind of eerie silence, we eventually either begin believing the wrong thing or believing nothing at all. But we have memories to use to feed the lizard, keeping it healthy for the next big event. And be sure to blame yourself alot in the process.
Your father or your mother and your lizard brain's "fight or flight" responses all probably had a hand in what you did or didn't do and what you brought along for later. You can never "think better" of what you have done, you can only keep it with you for next time. In moments like these, who cares what Freud thinks? What YOU think, and who you have become, is far more important. Be more existential.
We are always sizing up the current situation, wondering about and waiting for the next replay of the last long instant that went sour. It is all about Adam and Eve, the lizard and the apple, and who will hurt whom first with the first angry bite. Jealousy (the worm) and individuality(the core) do not live well in the same apple.
Aloofness is one layer of protection, I suppose. And I have an extra Ph.D. in Speculative Causality laying around here, somewhere: you could borrow it.
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