Making myself crazy

The story from a couple nights ago continues. Friday, Son 1 drove Wife the three hours to where Mother lives, to do Wife's taxes. Apparently they spent the night. And in the middle of this afternoon Son 1 called me to say they hadn't left yet so he wouldn't be back to my apartment until tomorrow.

On the one hand, I'm enjoying the time alone. On the other hand, I started spinning all kinds of stories in my head.

See, I was really startled to hear that Wife would be spending the night at Mother's in the first place. Wife is so unpleasant that, well, why would Mother ever allow it? Of course the answer is that Wife probably asked ("You know, the drive is so far and with my illnesses I'm just not strong enough to make that long a drive both directions the same day.") and my mother is a gentle-enough soul that she hates telling anybody No. So she probably agreed just to keep the peace. And probably the real reason that they were still there by mid-afternoon is that Wife couldn't get her shit together to get out, and Mother was too sweet and gentle to throw her out. Or perhaps Brother and SIL decided to come over for a visit -- God knows that could stretch things out. Brother is always late. When I get together with the extended family for Thanksgiving, people make it a sport to guess how late he'll be, not whether.

But at the same time I know that Wife wants to be invited to spend Christmas with us. That's her end game. And if people don't stand up to tell her No, I start to worry that she will be able to get her way simply by pushing her way in. And this in turn led me to imagine all kinds of melodramatic fantasies where she becomes a permanent fixture in my family's Christmases, which in turn means that I never show up there at all and in fact become completely alienated from them. Melodramatic, overheated, and intensely self-centered. But yes, I guess that's my fantasy life when it slips its leash. Or maybe it's just that Wife still frightens me even after these years apart, so that I overreact to her as a threat.

Because I am still afraid of her in some ways. But this too figured into the fantasies. I pictured myself saying, "No, don't invite her over. I lived with her abuse for 30 years, don't make me endure more of it," ... and then Brother asking, "Did she hit you?" Well no. "Did she jail you or starve you?" Not that either. "Then what do you mean by 'abuse'?"

And I have trouble answering that. I feel some reassurance when I read victim advocates say that it's really not up to outsiders to decide if what the victim suffered was bad enough to "count" as abuse, with the implication that otherwise she [spousal abuse victims seem always to be iconically she] is just being hysterical and over-emotional ... or else that she's trying to trap her spouse with some kind of non-objective complaint for nefarious reasons of her own. [Sorry, where was I?] Oh right ... that it's not up to outsiders to decide if something "counts" as abuse -- in fact if it shows up for the victim as abuse then that's enough to count. So the fact that I was afraid every single day when I came home from work and opened the front door, that I always felt trepidation over what kind of shape she was going to be in that day, and over how bad it was going to be that night -- my living in a constant state of fear is enough to call it abuse. Even if it was emotional rather than physical ... even if so much of the time her weapon against me was just her own unhappiness and rage and refusal to be reconciled with things, all phenomena that made her suffer as much as they made me suffer ... it still wore me down. It still made me afraid to be around her. It still made me fantasize about escape or death (mine or hers but mostly mine) every goddamned day, even when I still believed that divorce was unthinkable. And then the crazy financial irresponsibility, the serial infidelity, the actual fighting, all those were icing on the cake.

Wow, how did I get here? You see what I mean, though? My mind wanders into terrible places when I start thinking about Wife more than superficially. And all this anxiety informed fantasies of failure, despair, isolation, and estrangement. What if Wife pushes her way back into my family and I have to cut all ties with them ever? What will that look like?

Overheated. Self-centered. Melodramatic.

Later this evening I got a text from Son 1 (by now they were back at Wife's place): "I'm not coming back here for a month minimum. I need to be anywhere else."

So Wife was being horrible, at least from Son 1's perspective. That makes it likely that she was being horrible from everybody else's perspective too. So maybe nobody's going to invite her for Christmas.

Maybe I can settle the fuck down now. Sheesh. Making myself crazy.