Letting Go

A few weeks after J emptied our bank accounts, I sat in a dark movie theater. I felt raw. The divorce had gone from tragic to ugly in the blink of an eye, and I was still reeling from it all. I couldn't seem to reconcile the person I'd believed J to be with the man who now, at every cross-roads, was choosing the worst possible course of action. I was shocked. And yet I was shocked that I could still be shocked.

As the light from the projector flickered, I sought a temporary reprieve from reality. Instead, music swelled, Martin Freeman's face filled the screen, and something 

     within

           me 

              broke. 

When J and I married, I was young but incredibly earnest. I'd always felt older than my years, eager to skip the frivolities of youth in order to get about the business of building a real life. I thought that the largest barrier standing between myself and said life would be finding someone who could love and appreciate me. I was introspective and bookish; awkward, socially anxious, and nowhere near seductive. The man who pursued me would, merely by his interest in me, prove he wasn't superficial. So when I met J and his gaze became one of focused adoration, I was stunned... and flattered. 

Our courtship was brief and exhilaratingly intense. Three months after we met, he proposed, and three months following his proposal, we were married. I was so lucky. 

But things changed. Literally overnight.  

He immediately became distant, indifferent, and often appeared disgusted by me. Our relationship seemed fraught with land mines I could neither see nor understand. If I kissed him, he'd pull away, calling me needy. If I held his hand in public, he hissed that I was embarrassing him. He'd neglect me for weeks on end, only to turn to me without warning in the middle of the night with a fierce and impersonal appetite. It was disorienting.

I was being eaten alive by confusion and heartbreak, often dissolving into tears and demanding to know why everything felt so wrong. J would only look at me, perplexed, and tell me that he hadn't a clue what I was talking about. Our marriage is perfect, he insisted. I'm completely content. Which left me feeling exactly as he'd described me-- flawed and hopelessly needy. 

Sometimes, I'd attempt to suss out the state of my friends' marriages. "Is it... what you pictured?" I'd ask haltingly. No, they would tell me. Marriage is hard. And I'd nod, simultaneously comforted and ashamed. It's me, then, I'd think. I'm doing it wrong. 

So I worked harder. 

For two and a half years, I did everything in my power to earn his love. Until one night, J grudgingly confessed to having a 'little problem' with pornography. He turned his back and slept, oblivious while I lay at his side, silently crying as memories flashed unbidden through my mind. With dawning horror, I replayed every hurtful moment, casting them in an entirely different light until bile rose in my throat. I felt pathetic. 

Used 

Dirty. 

In the months that followed, I was told that his addiction had nothing to do with me. "You didn't cause it and you certainly can't cure or control it," I heard over and over again. "His actions aren't meant as a personal affront."

Well, I thought, It sure feels effing personal to me. 

I was also told that his addiction didn't define him. It was a part of him, but a small part. Everything else that I'd known and loved about my husband was still true. It's his problem to solve, they said, and it's not an uncommon one at that. 

J, of course, was eager to echo their sentiments. You're young and sheltered, he placated. I can understand why you didn't realize that every guy does this. It doesn't mean I don't love you. 

This can't be love, I despaired.

Before long, the cacophony of voices pressing in on me from all sides merged into a single message: Normal. 

I felt betrayed-- not only by J, but by everyone. God, who had seen this coming; my leaders, whose admonitions to forgive felt divorced from my reality; and an entire religious culture that had set me up to believe in virtue and loyalty when clearly, there was an unspoken understanding that they did not exist. I felt duped on a grand scale, angry and humiliated at my naïveté.

My first instinct was to leave; simply run. I was not made for this world, I thought. By that time, however, I had already given birth to our first child, which meant I was invested-- or trapped, I couldn't seem to decide which-- so I resigned myself to staying. But marriage felt like a ridiculous farce; I became a specter of my former self; broken, bitter and terribly afraid.

It was then that I first found myself drawn to House. In times of turmoil, I have a tendency to disappear into narrative, whether it be books, movies, television or my own writing. House was acerbic, cold, quick-witted, cutting and perceptive-- his disgust for all of humanity was only ever tempered by his uncanny genius for solving perplexing medical mysteries; he hated people in general and told them so in articulate, biting fashion. I adored him. 

My fascination with the character had come on swiftly and too intently to be benign. It was a hint; a glimpse into my own inner workings; but I remained blind to my motivations even as I studied him with a ferocious urgency bordering on desperation. 

Everybody lies, he said. 

Yes, I thought. 

In the meantime, our therapist guided me through the faith crisis that had descended upon me after J's confession. As I slowly learned to feel safe with Heavenly Father again, I began to believe her when she assured me that I could find healing independent of J's recovery-- or lack thereof. You control your own actions and attitudes, she said. No one can 'make' you feel anything.

This was maddening, of course, because J managed to successfully hurt me all the time. It's me, then, I thought. I'm doing it wrong. 

My mistake, I decided, was that I'd entered marriage believing I could rely on my husband for love, self-esteem, encouragement and comfort, when obviously he was incapable of providing any of it. One moment he might offer a morsel of kindness, but the next he was just as liable to snatch it back, demand payment or launch some kind of subtle emotional attack. I was continually suffering betrayal at the hands of the one person I thought I should trust implicitly, and as a result, was being forced to navigate an unsafe marriage the only way I knew how: by dramatically lowering my expectations. 

The attitude I saw displayed by House struck me not only as practical, but true: People never change. They just become more of who they really are.

I'd fallen for the fairy tale. I'd bought into the myth, thinking that love would 'complete' me. Disillusioned, I resolved that I wouldn't need. I wouldn't want. I wouldn't expect. I was going to stop caring. I was going to detach. 

For me, it was transformative. With a simple shift in perspective, I concluded: Marriage is not a place to receive love. It's a tool for learning and growth, and the pain seemed to melt away. Radical acceptance of J's inability to make me happy allowed me the freedom to pursue my own happiness. To my delight, I  quickly discovered that I actually had an enormous capacity for joy-- regardless of my circumstances. I blossomed. 

As I experienced this healing, my view of J changed. He still wasn't the calibre of man I'd thought him to be, but I was becoming cynical that any man was. At heart, I believed J was just a wounded, angry child-- untrustworthy, but deserving of compassion even if if he was unable to reciprocate it. I decided that I could love him safely and unconditionally. 

I successfully functioned in this manner for years, until what had started out as a mere coping mechanism morphed into a staunchly held belief. Detachment wasn't just temporarily required, it was the key to all happy marriages. My concept of 'normal' warped, and I became proud of my pragmatism. 

But a decade is a long time to guard one's heart. As the years passed, invariably I would find myself lowering my defenses. One evening, I sat listening to Iron and Wine under the heavy stillness of a September sky. As I sung:

one of us will die inside these arms

eyes wide open, naked as we came

one will spread our ashes 'round the yard

I choked, gripped by an inexpressible longing to love and be loved that deeply. The grief I felt at the loss of impossible ideals gaped like the frighteningly large expanse of stars above me. With difficulty, I tamped the feeling down, reproving my momentary lapse. That isn't my reality, I reminded myself mournfully. That isn't anyone's reality. 

It was a tough lesson to learn, but pain was a valuable teacher; and without fail, pain always followed when I opened myself up to J. I tried to tell myself to expect his duplicity, getting angry not at his lack of character, but at my continued capacity to be hurt. But I was tired of feeling alone. 

When I discovered Sherlock, it felt as though someone had handed me an instructional manual on surviving the life I hadn't been born equipped for.  I watched even more raptly than I had House, my desire an almost physical thing.  I wanted-- no, I needed-- to be him. 

Sherlock lacked House's bitterness, he instead floated above the rest of humanity unencumbered by sentimental attachment. His brilliance allowed him to verbally flay others while his sociopathic dispassion rendered him impervious to their opinions of him. Caring, the Holmes brothers agreed, is not an advantage, and I yearned for that kind of freedom. 

During what later turned out to be one of the darkest years of our marriage and the nine-month separation that followed, I told Heavenly Father that I was going to stop being invested in an outcome; then wrapped myself in detachment like Sherlock's black greatcoat. Not caring lifted me, unscathed and relatively optimistic, through the worst of the trenches; until one day our therapist turned to me and told me that what we had was not a marriage. You need to give him the opportunity to meet your needs, he advised me gently. You need to let him in. 

This, of course, was terrifying. Channeling Sherlock was both my safety and my salvation; but the more that I balked, the more J insisted that detachment had always been the true source of everything that was wrong between us. I've figured out the problem, he said. It's you.

J detested the Sherlock archetype and began to take pains to point out what he felt were our similarities. If I was reluctant to accept physical affection, he complained crossly that I was cold and inhuman. If I sent back food at a restaurant, he hung his head, mortified, and said my tactlessness was embarrassing. If I became prickly over his father's lack of boundaries, he moaned woefully that I wasn't as attuned to the feelings of others as he was. He constantly pushed for more from me --more tenderness, more vulnerability, more affection. Fight for us, he insisted. Do your part!

Until eventually, I began to believe him. 

It's me, then, I thought. I'm doing it wrong. I cast the roles in my mind: he must be sensitive Watson while I was incapable-of-maintaining-a-relationship-Sherlock. I vowed to change; to bare my throat and take the leap. 

It was like living without skin. Raw. Exposed. Breathless. J was incapable of even faking empathy, but I was too consumed with the pain to realize that I had permission to protect myself once more. He demanded and I gave until there was hardly a shell left of me-- I'd conditioned myself to expect nothing from him, but everything from myself; until when, at last, he told the lie that slit my throat, it was almost a relief. 

And so, that night as I sat in a darkened movie theater, I could not understand how it was possible for him to hurt me still. If disappointment was just unmet expectations, how was I still expecting too much from him? Why couldn't I learn? 

It's me, then, I thought. I'm doing it wrong. 

I closed my eyes and breathed out a sigh as the lights flickered and the previews began. When I looked up, Martin Freeman appeared on screen and for one confusing moment, my mind refused to see him as Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit-- he was simply and purely Sherlock's Watson. 

Watson, who was loyal, steadfast and kind; who lived through a war yet believed in the innate goodness of people; who loved a narcissist yet only saw his humanity; who was lied to by his wife, yet forgave and assured her that the problems of your past are your business, but the problems of your future are my privilege. Watson, who was both rescuer and protector, idealistic and moral, quiet and strong, humble, long-suffering and deeply, undeniably good. 

In a flash of recognition, it hit me: J was not Watson. I was. 

With a great, shuddering heave, something broke apart within me and in a rush of anguish, I acknowledged to myself just what I had sacrificed; how much of myself I had had to deny in order to keep loving J-- not because he'd ever earned such devotion, or would even do the same for me--but simply because I believed that that is what you do when you love someone; and I was determined to love well. 

I'm an idealist, I thought, stunned. 

Which meant that Sherlock had only ever been my armor; a coping mechanism that had served its purpose, but had altered my view of the world around me.

As I watched the movie that followed-- Interstellar; a film so powerful and touching that I still struggle to put it into words-- it felt as though icy walls I'd built around myself were calving off, melting in pools at my feet; and in their place, impressions rushed as a flood of feelings and images I could hardly absorb fast enough. 

Cooper said, We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt, and my breath hitched in my throat.  

For the second time in my life, memories flashed, unbidden, only this time I could see how all along, I'd had examples of idealism, nobility, and real love. They'd been as ever present as Watson at Sherlock's side, but I'd always turned away; boxed them up; adjusted my expectations in order to be content with sitting in the dirt. Because looking at the stars-- seeing them, wanting them, and not being able to have them-- that was the real agony.  

I'd given up everything. J had been gravity and I-- I had tethered myself to him. Not because I didn't care, but because I did. I'd loved him. Despite the pain and without reward, I'd clung to the tether, willing to stay earthbound forever just on the promise that someday, maybe, he might glance skyward. 

It's me, then, I thought, with tears in my eyes. I'm doing it wrong. 

So I let go. 

And I reached up.