Case In Point

As a companion to my earlier post


Diary, 1998

There must be something wrong with me that I keep seeing this.  That I…obsess on it.  That when it's present I can’t see anything else I feel so anxious about it.  There must be something wrong with me that I feel so anxious about it it becomes huge.  There must be something wrong with me that I see it but they don’t.  I have to be nuts and arrogant to think I see ^nuancesthings in their behavior that they say aren’t there.  My sick jealousy drove a wedge between me and Gary while his grandmother was dying and I have only myself to blame.  I’m building their relationship all out of proportion and then I do things to come between them.  I’m the one who’s sick.  I must be crazy.  I was deranged so badly by having a sick little sister that I read threats into their relationship where there are none.  The only solution is to confess everything to them both and ask their pardon, and see Darlene at least once a week.  Darlene is rude to me because she’s justifiably angry with me for asserting my relationship with her son.  I deserve her to ignore me, and to take my seat in the car, and to talk only to Gary.  I deserve her treatment of me.  All this resistance to her is shadow boxing without a shred of evidence.  The reason I can’t defend myself is because I have no defense—my feelings are indefensible.  There is no inappropriate attachment between her and Gary—only my imagination.  I couldn’t sustain eye contact with her at the beach because I knew I was in the wrong & knew I’d behaved indefensibly—wanting to be able to finish so we could be home in time to rest a little bit because we had to be up early to take Connor to the doctor…that was a selfish want in comparison with a need for closure to have dinner in Cannon Beach and pay for it too.  Even though we don’t really have much money and some big bills coming up we should suck it up and do it anyway.  And I shouldn’t want it to be known that its because of me that Gary could do that.  I’m just narrow and twisted inside—I’ve got to be, to be jealous of a man’s relationship with his mother, and arrogant enough to think I can analyze it and presume that they’re in denial about it.

  I feel kind of sick inside, to think of ending this entry here.  I don’t think I can write my way out of this, though, and I needed to write my worst fears about all this—that this is all a fabrication of my mind ^and that I’ve been subjecting Gary and Darlene to needless pain.

  If I were going into counselling, from that point of view—I would be asking for treatment to help me with obsessive thoughts and feelings that cause me to act in ways that are counter-productive and may ultimately threaten my marriage.  I would ask to find a way to ignore my feelings that cause me to feel possessive of Gary and competitive with Darlene.  There must be something wrong with me.

  What set this whole thing off was that I discovered today that Gary’s mother had come over here yesterday when Craig came by with Jenny; and Gary had concealed it from me.  (But why should he feel he should have to tell me?)  She’d brought over some pie—only enough for Gary, and her, and Craig, and Jenny.  He and I had had a soft and productive talk about her, and the trouble in our relationship around her both last night, and the night before…yet he still felt he had to conceal that she’d come.  I found out by finding a bakery box in the recycling when I went out to the garage.

  I feel a heaviness in my heart—a weight.

  I have to let this go unresolved—dream on it some.  I will embrace this circumstance as an oppurtunity to grow—even if it means away from Gary (a complicated matter when we have a child).  I will embrace this as an oppurtunity to grow, even if it means all my worst fears I wrote on the past few pages are true and that I am very wrong.  I need to permit that possibility, even if it makes my heart just sink, sink, sink.  (Perhaps what I sense is the temptation to give in; let Darlene have her way & then maybe what’s left over will be OK—and maybe there’ll be relief from the painful strife that’s gone on so long.

I was articulating my worst fears.  What I see now was that it suited her just fine that I was hamstrung by these doubts, because they made me that much less likely to interfere with  her access to my husband.  She would rather not consider that maybe her relationship with her son was enmeshed, because she would not "bear the trial of being disagreeable" with herself.  Therefore if anything in my behavior reflected a hint of this, the accusations were harsh.  My achilles heel was my fear that maybe I was these things.  How could I prove to myself that I wasn't?  Wasn't I just rationalizing?  She believed these things about me, and she would have me believe them too.  I made it convenient for her.*

*One of the biggest perks of this separation from Gary is that I'm no longer obligated to be around her --except maybe weddings and graduations. I can live with that.