Sixteen Tons
My relationship with my ex-spouse was one of ongoing, catastrophically mounting, crippling emotional debt. Not because I asked for anything extraordinary, or because I did anything to them. It’s just that their idea of human interaction was 100% transactional. Everything was on condition. Every thought, feeling, moment, was on loan with interest and payment in full expected on demand.
They made it abundantly clear that any consideration they gave me, any time spent, and concession they made, was going right on the total. Same with any unsolicited sharing on my end. They didn’t ask for it, they didn’t want it. How dare I inflict extra emotional labor on them.
It got so I was terrified to ask them the most basic questions. Every time they looked at me there was that cold demand, accusation, rage behind their eyes. I had no right to deny them any service, any favor, any command, because just look at how much I owed. They could always just come and take what they wanted—but it was on me to anticipate and pay up. If they had to come and demand their dues, if they had to tell me what they wanted, that was just another debt for the pile, and again how dare I. If they did ask, then I’d better drop everything and hop to it; no “five minutes.” I was in the shit.
From the moment I met them, I was never not in shit. Never not in the wrong, often over the most incomprehensible things. Got to keep me on my toes, apparently. Got to keep me scared. Got to keep at least the appearance of being busy.
After the first eleven months or so I was chronically ill from the stress, and it just kept getting worse. The illness got worse. The terror got worse. The debt became staggering. They dropped all pretense of holding me in anything but contempt. As they told me in so many words not infrequently, I was only as good as my function. And they would get back their investment in me, no matter what it took. One way or another, they would make their profit out of this relationship. It was no concern of theirs how it affected me, and even bringing up my own feelings added to the debt. How dare I, who was I to presume.
I gave up my human rights the moment I gave into the pressure and turned myself over to them. I didn’t even want a relationship to start with. But you don’t say no to them.
It’s a lot to get over. It’s a lot to deprogram. The random panic and terrors and nightmares, they’re less now after like three years. I’m no longer jumping at every sound. I’m able to go outside now. Just physiologically, I can breathe again. The coughing only took a few months to ease up. But I still have very very bad days. It can take so much to break out of all that—to remember where I am, who I am. To talk myself down, be kind to myself, reestablish that grounding; that relationship with me, now.
I’m safe. I’m okay, I mean, I’ve got other shit. I’m not okay in so many other ways. But now is now. That person is no longer real. They can’t hurt me anymore.
I wish I had local friends I could call, when that panic hits—just to treat me as me. To remind me what’s happening. Help me to live again. Just by osmosis, less through any particular action than through being there and affirming that I’m real too. That there is something greater than my fear.
Maybe someday.
I wish somebody could hold me.