Impasse

Another Sunday and another day in the Heron Household a year after check mate.

Life is too strange. As I drove home from my therapist's office Friday (ironically the one year anniversary of the 9-1-1 call that in my reality started all this) after completing a difficult session with my therapist mostly focusing on my work with the first chapter of the PTSD workbook she has suggested it might be helpful to work through, what in my rear view mirror should appear but the flashing lights of a police car. I pulled over and it turns out that the Smart car I drive had six month out of date license plate tags. Typically we receive those license expiration notices each year, the renewal form is sent in, and we receive the new license tag in the mail to affix. Reconstructing events, I would have been in jail last January when the expiration notice would have come out for this year. Everything was in great turmoil here and nothing much typical was occurring. The license was never renewed. None of us realized it. And so I was cited. I held it together quite well during the traffic stop I thought, even thanking the state highway patrol woman for the ticket. Internally I was freaking out. I have been told any police contact beyond superficial socialization (like a socialize with cops a lot) will violate my probation and I will serve my sentence. I am required to report any police contact as soon as possible to my probation officer, or the failure to report it is an additional violation. I drove home (I was about fifty miles away....our therapist has moved) and phoned them immediately. The probation office appeared to be closed so I left a voice mail for my p. o. It turned out she was on leave so I left a voice mail as well for another officer as her voice mail away message directed. Then Sue and I left for the license bureau to go renew the plates. Of course we arrived at the license bureau just as they closed.

I was (am) terrified that I will be arrested and serve a year in prison. Sue and T feel certain that my thinking that could happen is absolutely nuts. Sue had her session with the therapist yesterday who concurred there is no real reason to imagine this could violate my probation. Now I feel like I am being told once again that I am just stupid, and paranoid, and crazy for even imagining the "system" could ever be that unfair. This is the same "system" that sent men out to shoot me when they were called because an IM comment led to concern I might harm myself.

It doesn't matter that when I was in jail I met people serving out terms for probation violations more minor than this.............I am told that everyone in jail lies, and how do I know what they really were in for. Who knows.......certainly not me? Increasingly I believe I know nothing and I truly am insane.

I was depressed, freaked out, and afraid all Friday night and Saturday morning. We got up Saturday, had breakfast, and Sue was off for her session with our therapist. I went over to renew the license tag which was not difficult....just the usual wait in line and fee plus a $20.00 late fee (which will combine with the $125.00 fine for the citation to "cap off" the most tremendous year of legal expenses in my/our history). I affixed the new tag and settled in to wait and wonder if the police were going to come and get me. I had to go do my required AA meeting at 1:00. I had exercised before that, and had had enough interaction with sue who came back from her therapy session acting as though she was angry with me, to glean how ridiculous she thought it was for me to be feeling afraid there would be any further consequences from the ticket for the expired license tag.

I came back from AA, and remembered we had discussed all week going to see the new movie Anonymous. I found where it was showing on line, and we decided to go in time so we could come home and see the Ohio State University football game that night. We went, and all three of us loved Anonymous. It is not a movie we imagine will have lots of mass appeal. It is complex, cerebral, and esoteric, but the three of us are steeped enough in theater, history, and literature background and interests, that we were enthralled. On the way home we found a restaurant the three of us had not tried together before, and we all really enjoyed dinner together. (By the way if any of you are part of the debate that is growing up around Anonymous, we happen to think whether the hypothesis that Anonymous is built around , whether Shakespeare really wrote the works commonly attributed to him, is valid or not, is meaningless).

Then we came home and that evening watched one of the most exciting and nail biting Ohio State football games ever. I was thrilled and whooping and hollering over the last minute victory OSU pulled out. Sue watched it with me and was right there as well. She has converted to become an avid Buckeye fan in her time here, and I felt really happy and close with her (I am giving up ever again trying to interpret what sort of feelings she may be experiencing.) I had forgotten about the police. I just said to myself, Sue, T, and our therapist all think it is absolutely ridiculous to think the police could come for me for an expired license tag. I was just sick and wrong to even be concerned (as usual), and so forgot my fear, and had a good time.

We went to bed last night and I expected today we would continue to build on the kinds of positive steps I thought we both have been feeling really happy about the past couple of weeks, as in Sue's post "Small Things" that precedes this post.

Then Sunday dawned. I have come to dread Sunday's. Even before all this happened this past year, Sue has had a pattern for several years of being depressed and angry many, and in some periods most, Sundays. I am accustomed to awakening to her being withdrawn or angry, or some mixture of both, on any given Sunday, but last night felt so wonderful, especially in contrast to how Saturday had begun, that I had imaginings of a pleasant day together today possibly loving, maybe even playing some, watching football, having some good food, taking a walk, and being happy together again, as we had last night.

I woke up this morning and thought we might begin relating with some love making. She was stiff lying next to me. She had little emotional response and no physical response. I tried a few times to get her to tell me what was going on with her and was always told it was nothing. We did finally make love........or she basically tolerated my fucking her while she was with me, as is all too often the case anymore.

I tried again to find out what was wrong..............what had happened................what I had done................what could I do..............our usual 20 questions game. Finally she shared that she had had a difficult session with the therapist yesterday. The therapist had explained to her that in dealing with me right now she was effectively dealing with a hurt, raging child because of my history as a child abuse victim, which has linked to the events of the last year, and that needs to be the basis of her response to me. She told her that if parents of severely behaviorally disturbed children tantrum, the parents are taught to lock themselves in the bathroom, with food and books and blankets and whatever makes them comfortable, until the sounds of the child raging outside stop. Then they can try to relate to them again. That is essentially what she suggests metaphorically for me, in that I am a raging child in a man's body. That if in any way I discuss that I have problems because she called 9-1-1, I am being abusive, and she has to end the communication, or go to another room, or leave. That I am going to keep telling this "story" as long as it works for me, and that she should not listen to it. That if I continue telling it I will destroy our relationship.

I was momentarily angry, but then quickly felt too crushed to maintain anger. This is not some story I have made up or that I go over and over because it pleases me, or gets me some sort of proverbial "cookies." It is what happened to me, and I am hurt to the point of being broken about it. And yes my worst pain is mostly about feeling betrayed that it was initiated by the people I thought I could always trust to not harm me, and that does absolutely tie in with my feelings about my parents who harmed me when I thought they were the most important people in my life I could count on to take care of me.

I became a mess. I tried to talk to her and got a classic "talk to the hand" straight arm move body language along with the equally classic, "I cannot discuss this with you." I told her how devastated I felt. I sensed from her reaction that that is expected, and perhaps desired, and is just part of the process that she is implementing. I feel manipulated and crushed. I got up and tried to watch the Sunday morning talking heads doing political banter on TV, something I usually enjoy almost obsessively, and I couldn't follow the conversation. I tried watching Sunday morning football commentary and I couldn't follow that either. I even, in the aftermath of watching Anonymous last night, went to a website and began reading Shakespeare on line. I just feel at this point like anything I can do that will get me through the pain of being alive another minute is something I can do to try to pull myself forward. Finally I couldn't stand being here any more. I went out and drove around in the car. It is a nice day out.........................bright sunshine. Somehow moving aimlessly about in that capsule in the sun felt OK....better than sitting at home. I tried listening to radio and finally I did find something I could relate to..............the mindlessness of AM radio sports talk .............I despise AM radio.............but it was all I could seem to follow the thought pattern of.

I came back home. Sue was out. I called her to find out where she was....was she OK.......just out shopping.

I have no one I can talk to about this or who will take how I feel seriously, or not discount it as a crazy story I have concocted to get attention, or to work out my childhood trauma, or whatever. I feel desperate. I am just trying to kill time until I feel like being alive again.

It struck me I could write here. There is no need to respond. I just need to feel I can say this and that someone else will see it.

Tom

Unlike chess, in life the game continues after check mate.