Toxic

David Matthews asks in one of his songs, “do you remember when everyone wanted to be us?”  I remember.  We were far from perfect, but god, could we have a good time.  We partied like there was no tomorrow, all the time.  A rollicking good time.  For a while, at least.  At some point, years had passed, and my man decided it was still party time, but by then I was living in the world of grownups.  By the time he surfaced and took responsibility for his life, the rest of us had moved on to something different.  When your learning curve is too long, people stop waiting.  Somebody has to pay the bills and raise the kids and learn the everyday basics of home maintenance.  It’s called functioning.

And then when you wake up one day and decide to be responsible and adult (after you’ve already burned down the house, so to speak), the party is over.  You don’t get my sympathy, hanging out the 14^th floor (thank you, Radiohead).  Because you did it to yourself.  We all do.  We have to accept the product of our choices (since we made them), even when we don’t want to.  And due to all the personal baggage and compromises and bullshit we both create for ourselves and endure from others, we then accept the love we think we deserve (to pilfer from another better-than-me writer named Stephen Chbosky).  So I accepted this shitty, watered-down version of love and life, knowing all along that it wasn’t what I wanted.  More stealing?  Yes.  Albert Einstein this time:  “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.”  Einstein knew what he was talking about there.

I changed because someone had to grow up and raise children and pay the mortgage and have a real job.  He wanted me to be the same crazy, happy, fearless girl I was at 21.  I truly believe that it is unhealthy NOT to change.  People are supposed to grow and change and amend and adjust their lives to fit the circumstances which surround them.  To not change is to stagnate.  Not changing also leads to pretending  – because whether you like it or not, life morphs around you. You can make-believe it’s not happening, or you can acknowledge and act accordingly.  To not acknowledge is toxic.  The very action of ignoring something shows your inability to deal with it appropriately, which in turn shows childish naiveté.

 tox-ic-i-ty (noun) 

1.        the degree to which something is poisonous

2.       the state of being poisonous to somebody or something

Our relationship became this thing.  Poisonous.  Venomous.  Don’t get me wrong; the venom took a very long time to work its way through the veins.  A long period of denial and compromising, which amounted to nothing in the long run.  Now, when I am around my husband of 15 years, I feel like I’m having a root canal.  I am anxious and angry and fucking annoyed (accidentally all A-words).  I asked him about five years to go away so that we could have time to regroup and get it together, and he refused,  I told him that we could maybe fix it if we could have some time apart, but he insisted that pretending everything was okay was the better route.  And now? 

in-ter-nec-ine (adjective)

1.       relating to or involving conflict within a group or organization

2.       damaging or injuring participant on both sides of a conflict

a.       mutually destructive

Now this word has happened. 

When your significant other tells you that they have thought about killing themselves to alleviate the mental angst, and your response is … “oh” … then the relationship has failed.  It’s dead.  Stick a fucking fork in it.  This is your own personal Waterloo (to steal from Andrew Bird, the best intellectually musical snob of all).  No one wins.  Guess who else loses (over and over and over)?  The kids.  As much as you pretend that shit is fine; everyone else knows it isn’t.  My niece said the following sentence to me the other day:  “You better not do anything – you know he lost his dad too.”  WTF?!  She is six.  When I asked her what she meant, she said, “I don’t know!” and skipped away.  She doesn’t know what she’s talking about; she’s only parroting something she heard her parents say at home, and my face probably reminded her of it. 

How lovely to know that other people are talking about your relationship as if they have any idea what’s going on.  How inappropriate to even have an opinion on something so personal that has nothing whatsoever to do with you.  And how ironic that your brother seems to have no opinion on the whole matter, since talking about things is completely out of the question.  Talking = bad feelings.  Conversation about reality = arguing.  (Apparently, in his particular family, that’s the order of things.)

It didn’t have to be this hard.  Sometimes, the only way to repair something is to release the stranglehold you have on it.  I used to think that we could be cool, divorced parents who get along, but every day we are trapped in this “No Exit”, Satrean hell, the anger and bitterness and animosity and anxiety blooms into a palpable wall.  His insistence on pretense has created such a deep division of priorities, that I don’t see how it can ever be fixed.  His approach to the problem backfired in such a profound way, that I can’t even stand to look at his face anymore.  He is making me physically ill. 

Mostly, I blame him (obviously, based on the ranting…), but I also blame society’s ridiculous insistence that marriage has to be forever.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, lasts forever.  Things might change and grow, but everything changes.  You can either go with it or drown in the riptide of the past.