Hell weekend - Part 4 (aftermath)

Read Parts 1 through 3 First

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She's come back. The kids have literally run for the basement. I give her a hug. Her body is rigid. I say "Let's talk. In the garage."

It's about 8 pm.

We go out to the garage (if you are wondering - it's an attached garage). We talk. We talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk.

We talk until 2 in the morning.

I can't even tell you what the hell we talked about. It was all the usual. It was who did something right and who did something wrong and who did something.

The emotional devastation of this discussion is impossible to describe. I want to describe it to you and give a taste of just how horrifying and excruitiating an experience these hours were, but I can't even remember the details of the conversation.

I have a very good memory for the most part. I can remember things in detail since the day I turned 3 - yes, the day I turned 3 is the day my conscious existence starts. I can remember many things before that, but sorting it all into a coherent and chronologically catalogued set of memories doesn't start until my 3rd birthday.

I can't remember a goddamned thing about the conversation. She had me tied up and spun around and tossed and turned and I don't know what. I was agreeing with her by the end.

Brainwashing. Stockholm Syndrome. I have an understanding of it.

Things had ground down by around the 2 am period. We were going to bed. She had said that she loved me more than anything in the world and didn't want to split. I agreed that I didn't want to split. I agreed that I would try harder to make her feel special and to give her the emotional connection she needed..

The thing that caused me more trouble than anything was the pain she was in. I couldn't cope with the pain she was in. Or appeared to be in. The tears. The sobs. Mine didn't matter to me - I didn't want her to be in pain.

The conversation was unreal.

If there was an emotional ploy or guilt trick left unused, I don't know that it exists. Or at least I remember thinking every now and again about the specific tecniques she was using to knock me down. I was beginning to disassociate. I was actually observing the discussion from outside. I was judging the nature of the words and making judgements about their utility as argumentative props and tools.

It had stopped. But I still can't remember the details, only my observations.

As we were getting ready for bed she looks at me and says "Make love to me".

I began to cry. I couldn't cope with it.

I cried a racking cry that hurt to release.

She realised immediately that she'd gone too far. She said "No, don't cry. We don't have to. I'm not making a demand of you, I just wanted the closeness. I just wanted so much to be close to you. We don't have to."

I was fully aware that it wasn't a demand. That is not why I was crying.

Over the years she has pulled out every bit of my emotional being - like pulling a mussel out of its shell - and exposed it to air. And minced it. And then shoved it back in, or let me gather up the bits and try to recover.

Sort of like when you hear about the rapist demanding their victim pick up the clothes scattered around and put their clothes back on "Why are you naked? Get dressed!!!"

This conversation, on top of all of the rest over the last year or two, had left me with nothing left to be extracted for torture.

Emotionally it parallels my fibromyalgia pain. At the worst of it, the fibromyalgia pain was so bad, and the muscle spasms so racking, that all I had left to allow me to continue was my will and my rationality. By abandoning my body and my physical experience I could survive - survive by just cutting out physical experience. The pain endured and clawed at my consciousness every minute. I knew it would not kill me, but I knew that it might end - if not that day, then the next week, or the next year. I had rationally arrived at goals and I knew I had the choice of either abandoning everything for the pain or choosing to follow the choices I made and brutally enforcing the dictates of my will against my own body.

She asked me to make love to her.

I began to cry.

I cried because I had nothing left to give her, and to ask me to make love was too much. There were times with my fibromyalgia that it did become too much for even my will to sustain - usually at the end of a very long day - up at 6:30am kids, work, taxi, teach, cleaning, household chores - by the end of the night I would just have no will left and it would be all I could do to crawl - and I mean crawl into bed and just shake. I couldn't hold the pain at bay anymore.

I couldn't make love to her. There was nothing left in me to make love to her with.

She realised she had gone too far. She held me for awhile and we went to bed.

I slowly drifted off. Someplace around 3am she woke me to snarl about some discrepancy she had been able to extract or cause by jumping all over me during the 6 hour discussion. A discrepancy in her mind about how and why I didn't take her to the barbeque.

She announces she's leaving again. This I time I say to myself "Fuck her!"

She gets dressed - all I can think about is how much I need to sleep. I watch her get dressed. She does it in these short, angry, bursts of motion that she uses when she gets angry or pissed off at me.

She's verbally whipping me about how I don't really give a shit about her or our marriage and how self-centred I am.

I get out of bed and follow her down to the front door - only because I know that I'll pay for it if I don't. I've lived around this drama queen for too long to miss when the applause signs are supposed to be obeyed.

She makes some demand about me saying I love her and me saying I never want to leave. She says that I should say it or she's gone. I say "GO!" She whirls and slams out the door to her car.

I'm thinking "Please stay away until at least tomorrow so I can sleep."

I go to sit on the couch in the living room until she really does leave.

I do this because if I don't - if I go back to bed - and she comes back in, my suffering will be incalculable. I will never be allowed to sleep. I know in my own mind that if that were to happen I would have to go to my parents house. I need to sleep. Oh god, I need to sleep.

The lights in the driveway don't go away. I wait. And then the lights go away. I don't look out the window. I think - OK - she's gone.

The door opens. It her.

She says in a quiet voice with a tiny element of embarrassment "I tried to leave, but I have no place to go"

I say "You could go to your home. [pause] Let's just go to sleep."

We go upstairs and fall asleep.