Debbie's farewell

In my post yesterday I promised I'd say something about a farewell letter I got from Debbie just about two weeks ago.  The background is that way back in January when she left, she suggested that we get together in April and again in the summer, just to test the waters.  So at the end of March she wrote me to say that here it was almost April, and she thought it was too soon.  I thought so too, but it didn't stop me from being really sad when I get her letter.  Then I pushed a bit to ask if we were really delaying or really saying Goodbye, and she said that yes this was probably Goodbye, ... unless things changed suddenly.  I asked her for one favor:  she had said over and over that she thought I had psychological damage to work through after years with Wife, but she'd never given me any specifics.  Could she now send me a list?  Something I could take to my current therapist?

I didn't expect her to follow through, because I had come to believe that her reservations were all just a smoke screen for inchoate fears that she couldn't articulate ... all because up till now she had not articulated them in a way I could understand.  But I was wrong, and glad to be so.  She sent me a letter and then asked me not to contact her again.

I'll post the letter here.  My therapist suggested that I write a reply (with no intention of ever sending it!) just to capture where my head is at today; then in a few months I can check to see whether I am in the same place.  Usually when I post something really long that I've written elsewhere, I look back on it later and wonder what I could possibly have been thinking to inflict it all on you.  But in the spirit of yesterday's post -- in the spirit of getting content out there -- I will post it.  Not all in a lump: I'll break it into pieces and scatter it over a couple of days.  No, I don't think this gets me off the hook of writing something every single day.  It just breaks up the monotony of my whiny self-justifications.  Or I hope it will.

Anyway, here is her letter:
__________

For Hosea 03-25-2014

A couple of things I have noticed:

1.       You seem to compartmentalize different parts of your life and keep them very separate.  When one person strays from one part of your life into another, it seems to make you feel extremely anxious, even if you have planned the crossover and want it to happen.  In general, you seem to put a lot of effort into planning, orchestrating and managing your life and events in it in order for things to go as smoothly as possible and to not have anything unexpected happen.

2.       A specific event that seems important… the morning we were going to drive from my place to visit your Aunt and Uncle.  [I talk about this trip briefly here. -H.]  I was somewhat scattered and having trouble getting it together with my last packing to get out the door and go.  This little bit of chaotic behavior on my part triggered a full blown reactive response from you that lasted all day.  Yes, my behavior was irritating and even maddening, but your reaction seemed way out of proportion to the stimulus and seemed to be about more than just me.  In addition, you expressed that you had made a decision to just go with the flow and accommodate whatever I ended up doing, but in fact you seemed angry and reactive all day long.  The next day, you didn’t seem to remember much about what had happened and that suggests to me that you may have dissociated.

These two things seem to me to be related to living so many years with a person whose behavior was chaotic, unpredictable, often threatening and sometimes actually violent.   Anyone would develop similar coping behaviors in the same circumstances, but they make me feel cautious.

3.       This is something we have not talked about.  I see a pattern in your Mom’s relationship with your Dad and Wife’s relationship with you that worries me.  Your mother is very, very passive in her relationship with your Dad, and remains super-calm and non-reactive in response to him.  While Wife is not passive – she acts out- over the years she became helpless.  I really don’t want to step into this pattern of women who do not function to their full capacity. 

 I suggest that you tell your therapist the whole story of your relationship with Wife.  Tell her about how you met, what the early years were like, how Wife’s behavior changed over the years.  Tell her about the incident with the kitchen knife when Son1 and Son2 were little.  Tell about the many affairs and about Boyfriend4.  Tell about Wife’s many episodes of taking her medications and drinking and passing out.  Tell about Son2 coping for and “parenting” Wife.  Tell about the many threats and accusations and about the dramatic suicide attempts.  Tell her about how you behaved in reaction to all this and about measures you took to protect yourself and the boys and to get free.  Tell your therapist everything from beginning to end.  This will be difficult and you won’t want to do it, so start with what you are able to tell her and go from there.

  [And as I post this I stop to wonder ... have I told you folks all of these stories? I've told so many it's hard for me to remember, and my indexing system isn't the greatest. Hmmm ... this could give me a lot to write about, I suppose. -H.]