So, I was exhausted and angry all the time. I remember looking through the phone book for a counselor and finding one that my insurance would pay for. I called and got a voice mail and left a rambling message about really needing to talk to someone and feeling like it would be so much easier if I drove into a tree. Once again, I didn’t want to die or get permanently injured, I just wanted to stop feeling as if I was responsible for everything. I wanted an excuse to lie down and sleep and have no one be able to point at me and say I wasn’t carrying my weight. I must have sounded pretty on edge on my message because the therapist called back and asked if I felt like I could wait a couple of days or if I needed to see someone right away. I made an appointment for later that week.
My therapist, Marilyn, was great. I felt like I clicked with her right away. There were a couple of times that I wondered if she was right for me. Once just after I started seeing her she asked me where I felt pain when I was upset. I wondered what the heck she was talking about. She told me that when I got upset or felt like I was going to cry to close my eyes and feel where I was feeling the pain in my body. I thought she was nuts. But I did as she asked and I realized that whenever I was really upset I would get a sore throat. She just nodded and we continued talking. Later we were talking about my parents divorce and the aftermath and I started feeling upset, but as usual I would cut myself off from it. She said, “you know it’s okay to cry.” And the floodgates opened. It was as if I finally had permission to cry. I realized that when I was little we were always sent to our room when we would cry or we were made to understand that it was not acceptable behavior. It’s not like we were abused or anything. My Dad loved us a great deal and was fond of using reverse psychology to get us to behave. But somehow his dislike of tears and crying became all wrapped up in my head with his leaving. And so when we went to live with him after my mother died I created this new image of myself where I would choke it off when I got upset because I figured if I was the perfect child he wouldn’t leave again. It’s not like I realized this at the time. It was only years later when I was going through therapy and started asking myself questions of why I did certain things that little by little I uncovered my own thought processes.
So, a while later when Marilyn and I were talking one day I began to cry quietly and she said, “you know it’s okay to make noise when you cry.” Suddenly I was wailing and shrieking like I never had before. There was a part of me that was embarrassed, but it was like once I let it loose I couldn’t control it. I wailed until I was exhausted and when I finally quieted down she asked me where I felt the pain in my body. And I realized that I didn’t feel it at all…my throat was not sore. And then I realized that I always got a sore throat because I was clenching my neck muscles to keep from losing control, to keep quiet and not to let my emotions show.
After we talked about a lot of my issues with my childhood I began to talk about my marriage and all of the things that my husband did that made me angry. After several sessions where I complained about the things my husband did that drove me crazy Marilyn said, “you know it’s not his fault.” I just looked at her in amazement. What in the Hell was she talking about, I’d just told her of several things that he had done that made me angry and probably would have made anyone else angry. And she said, “He’s just being who he is and you can’t get angry at him for being who he is. Now if you don’t want to be with him that’s one thing, but you can’t blame him for being who he is.” I was furious. I think I skipped my next meeting because I couldn’t believe that she had listened to all of the things I had told her and she was taking his side.
I don’t remember exactly when I had the epiphany, but one day I realized she was right. There were several things that my husband had done that made me angry, and rightfully so, but I was holding on to the anger because I needed it to be his fault. The day I had chosen not to tell him I was ovulating was when I think in the deep recesses of my brain I realized our marriage was doomed. But there were many people who figured we would never last and I hated feeling not only that they were right, but that I was a failure. So if I held on to all of the things that he had done and made it about him, then I could be absolved of guilt for wanting to end the marriage. I could absolve myself of guilt about the fact that in divorcing I was possibly placing my daughter in the same position that my parents had placed me in. I didn’t want to be the bad guy, so I was making him the bad guy to make it easier for me to explain to myself and everyone else.
But the funny thing is, that once you acknowledge these little lies you tell yourself, they cease to have power over you. Suddenly my anger at my husband just evaporated. I knew that I wanted a divorce and I had no idea how I was going to bring it up because I didn’t want to hurt him and I was scared about what would happen to my daughter in the ensuing process, but I knew that I had to figure it out because continuing with the present charade was only going to bring all of us more pain.