A Few Last Words, Part II

If you've ever been in therapy or read an interpersonal psychology book, you know about the bad habit of mind reading, or the assumption that upon hearing another's voice or watching his/her actions, we can determine how someone feels or what he/she thinks. Often when applying such lack of skill, we get people wrong because we have our own biases that hinder our understanding of individual's motivations and/or character.

Morpheus never explicitly told me he wanted his wife back, only that he never wanted to lose his family. He never told me directly that he was still in love with his wife. I made a leap in interpretation, and as always, could be incorrect in my evaluation of the situation.

I'm all for Morpheus contacting me and telling me that I am wrong. But I don't foresee that happening.

You see, it takes two to marry, but only one to divorce. You cannot be forced to stay married (not that there may pressures to remain in the union like threats about child custody or other influences from one's family and/or church). Obviously if divorce was something he or she wanted, it would have been finalized in 2007 (or perhaps 2008). As far as I know, the papers weren't even initially filed nine years ago when Morpheus told me frankly that he was getting a divorce. If a separation was in place, The Wife probably would never have been pregnant with number three. So, two people wanted to remain married, but why?

All sorts of scenarios are possible. Couples who love each other can recognize that they are not good, not healthy staying together, and therefore need to move on. Couples who like each other, but realize that they are missing something in their lives can separate in order to pursue their version of love--and so on and so forth.

What I read about consistently is that divorce is highly traumatizing, for both patries, no matter who filed first. Morpheus wanted me to sympathize with him, ending one letter with a telling that he's going to spend a "long night of thinking and planning." He then adds at the end, "kinda sucks." I told him I did sympathsize with him, that although I couldn't fully understand his situation because I had never been through it, I did comprehend the feelings of aloneness and depression. He talks like this is something being done to him (by his wife), that of which he has no control over.

Despite recognizing the tragic nature of divorce, in which no one ever really wins, I struggle with my own emotions and prejudices. I find myself consistently angry with him, and being angry through a dumb email is not productive. I want the reputation of being well controlled and level-headed, even if this may not be the truth.

A Few Last Words

If you, in your heart and in that deep place inside you, want your wife to come home and be your life partner again, then I understand completely. I want you to be happy, and I cannot guarantee or even speculate that you would be happier with me. With that said, if you feel this way, then I don't think we should see each other. Echoing your words, I don't want to be with anyone who doesn't want me. It would hurt too much not to be someone's first choice after knowing that person as long as I've known you...

--my latest email to Morpheus, sent August 17th, 2016

Another Way to Look At It

If you really don't want this divorce, and you haven't resolved or processed your feelings for your wife...then what makes getting re-involved with me a good idea?

--last email to Morpheus

I'm ready for any answer (silence, even), including the ominous "I don't know."

What I am wanting, however, is a little more complicated. I want assurance of my value to him--some significant experience shared between us that cannot be denied or collectively put aside. That it demands attention.

In short, I want to be special--as I confessed to him in an earlier email that he was very special to me.

Human beings are famous for constructing blinders to truths that they are unable or unwilling to process. In fact some psychotherapies are attentive to this fact, and thus help individuals move beyond digested fantasies and fallacies to the greater, awaiting realities that govern ourselves and others.

I have this limitation as does anyone else. I am especially conscious of it when it comes to my involvement with Morpheus. What am I not seeing? Does he love his wife (as I accused him of being) or does he simply tolerate her because they have grown accustomed to each other through time and shared experiences (including the strong hold of parenthood)?

Furthermore, why does this affect me? And how?

And, yes, should it? At the danger of creating unsightly anxiety?

I can't live in The Wife's shadow, trailing behind her on my hands and knees. Perhaps earlier I should have asked the same questions I am proposing now--maybe that would have provided a better guide. Would I have heeded the warning at the time or would I just have blazed through despite evidence that he was not capable of being emotionally free and available?

And even if he loved me like I desired, what kind of relationship would we have?

So far, in recent email history, he has not admitted to his feelings for me, neither good nor bad. Over the last few months, I have asked over and over again if he loved me, only to get no reply.

Now, again, I am pressing the issue--trying to gain insight into his motivations for carrying on with an affair for years despite social stigma and the effect it had on his family. Surely, he must have a reason even if it is not readily evident.

Will his reasoning give me hope or harm?

Blunders, Part III

The LSU Professor wrote to me, saying that Morpheus was in a position to do "real damage." Not because he is mean or hateful. But because he doesn't know himself.

Blunders, Part II

You have to understand that I am asking these hard questions because I am trying to protect myself, I stated in the final paragraph.

Blunders and Other Difficult Confessions

"Maybe," he responded yesterday late afternoon. He continued, "I've never wanted to [lose] my family, ever."

I was upset by his letter. I read it once, felt that old anxiety creep back (my anxiety was horrible after the Stanford team took me off of clozapine and on Invega--I was taking almost daily Ativan, which was moderately effective), and then decided to go out into the apple orchard and walk my dog, Beck.

I hadn't had too many problems with anxiety since the Stanford doctors put me on 1,000mg of Seroquel (recommended highest dose is only 800mg). It just went away in the same manner in which it arrived--mysteriously.

When I came back from walking Beck (during which the property manager found me in the field and told me directly that no dogs were allowed in any of the orchards), I decided I was calm enough to send a reasonable response.

"However, I believe..." I started in the second paragraph. There's no "maybe's" in love. You either are or aren't in love with your wife.

I brought up then obvious point that maybe he didn't want to face (who likes to look at his faults or have it pointed out by someone else?). If you never wanted to lose your family, never ever (I am not talking about your children here but referring to the stability with your wife), then why did you risk that by sleeping with another woman? It wasn't a one time mistake but for years!

In the next paragraph, I continued, And if you consider me a blunder in the history of your marriage (a belief for a long time that I held--which was hard to swallow because I am in love with you), then why are you talking to me now?

Distant

"I'm just sorry I've been so distant."

--written to me by Morpheus on August 10th, 2016

Logical, Sound Realization, Part III

"I hope [the Wife] returns home--and soon."

--most recent email to Morpheus

Logical, Sound Realization, Part II

So why did the news of his divorce only made me more upset, instead of happy?

I had to think about that for a few days.

Wouldn't being with him make me joyous? Of course. I've been waiting for him to say that he's ending his relationship with his wife and wants to be with me. Waiting for nine fucking years.

Gathering from the most recent emails, I came to the conclusion that he doesn't want this divorce, and at the chance that the Wife said she was coming back--despite the bitter words between them--he would welcome her with open arms. I wrote to him this afternoon, "How can I blame you for loving your spouse?" I can't. And I can't even fault him for wanting to salvage a relationship with the mother of his children and someone who he has shared his life with for years and years (as I explained in my last email).

"The real problem is me..." I write. I'm still in love with you.

Logical, Sound Realization

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To The Lighthouse, Part IV

"...she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation."

--To The Lighthouse pg. 117, by Woolf

To The Lighthouse, Part III

"She had done the usual trick--been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst...were between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere."

--To The Lighthouse pg. 105, by Woolf

To The Lighthouse, Part II

"...and the two senses of that vastness and this tininess...flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world, for ever, to nothingness."

--To The Lighthouse, pg. 86, by Woolf

To The Lighthouse

"...an unmarried woman has missed the best of life."

--To The Lighthouse, pg. 56, by Virginia Woolf

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part XII

Initially, I admit, I was feeling a little smug (it's these bursts of confidence that kept me from quitting the class--that and the fact I really liked my instructor).

We were all in the computer lab as a group, doing something I don't remember. Earlier, I had handed over my first essay to the English instructor so he could give me feedback before the final draft. I anticipated mostly positive remarks--the piece was the best writing I had been able to do in well over a year. I hadnt written anything in over a year, besides short entries in a journal at my last stay in G2P.

I felt like I had lost my creativity forever, only to be granted it back in the form of an essay called "The Devil Dyed Me Blue" (a clever title that made no sense in the first draft). This showed promise like opening the gates of the mind and riding the river flood to some new, fertile forest.

In short, I could write again after countless rounds of ECT and after all the psychotropic medicines I had taken.

Plus, once I started that draft, it came to me so easily. I felt blessed.

The English instructor has my paper in his hands.

And then I see it. There are marks upon marks of his writing on the edges of the essay like small cuts on the arm as the blood just starts to dry, turning the vibrant red into an almost black.

Was it really that bad? I'm thinking, Did I misjudge it so? My heart slips and slides down into my gut, hallmark of disappointment--in myself.

The English instructor wheels himself in that short chair over towards me, and angles the paper so I can see better.

That Man You Dated

I'm in a little corner office with my new therapist. He asks, "Did you ever hear from that man you dated?"

At first I'm confused. I don't know what he's talking about. Then I remember. He's referring to Morpheus, although Morpheus and I never dated.

He has the whole picture all wrong.

Incomplete

"Art labours to make whole what is incomplete..."

--Introduction to Woolf's To The Lighthouse

Building Up

Joseph is driving me home (the last time we saw each other). He says, "Doesn't it just build up?"

No, that's why I have a vibrator.

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part XI

"The Dog Ate My Flashdrive And Other Tales of Woe" by Carolyn Segal

Read here: http://my.ece.ucsb.edu/York/Bobsclass/134/Handouts/The%20Dog%20ate%20my%20disk.pdf

Somehow you just think more of professors--all that time in graduate school for learning and reflecting--and hours spent contemplating the depth of the universe (because none of them had a job while in college, right?).

"Do you think she's a good writer?" The English instructor challenges me.

I already called--this dear English professor who's essay we are reading--"callous" and "narrow-minded" for poking fun at students who use a suicide in the family as a way to extend time given for writing assignments.

After all, no one ever dies from suicide.

Case in point, my yoga teacher at the adult school cancelled class for a week because her boyfriend died in an accident. How would she feel if I sent her an email saying, "Stop! I know you're lying. You're just trying to get out of showing up to class--and for attention!" Not only would my letter be extremely rude, but also very cruel to discount her pain like that.

Back to, do I think she's a good writer? No, I'm thinking, She's an idiot. Just because you know grammar rules and how to spell doesn't make you a writer--much less a good one. But I don't say that because I don't want to seem like an obnoxious ass, any more than I already do. So, I simply respond, "In what way?" Put the ball on his court.

But the English instructor wants to highlight her positive qualities, and talks about her organizational skills.
After all, can't I see the talent of her writing, even ignoring the subject matter?

The Chance That Flew By

I don't remember what time it was, what year, month or day. I don't even remember what we said to each other.

We were sitting in a truck (either his or mine), and from what I recall, I'm in the driver's seat, which doesn't seem right because wasn't the truck black? Shouldn't have he been in the driver's seat?

He and the wife got into a fight and he left. Found me, just outside of a hotel.

We're sitting in a parking lot.

I said something because I was upset.

I just remember the look on his face--like I broke his heart. All that ice shattered.

"He loved you," The LSU Professor says to me as we're standing on a sidewalk in Yuppieville. "It's just that love was not equal in many ways."

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part X

"Maybe you should talk to someone about how upset you are, maybe someone at the disability center," my mother suggests after I walked out of class the second time.

Close to tears, I had called her while she was at work.

The truth is that probably no one gave a shit because no one besides me had ever directly dealt with the stigma of mental illness--or watched how it influenced even the most open minded people.

"Maybe you should tell your professor what happened so you won't lose credit," my father said.

I thought about sending the English instructor an email about discrimination against people with mental illness. So, I did. I wrote about how ignorant my peers were (without saying it directly, of course), and then I intended to shut up about it.

I couldn't miss the third day because we were taking our midterm.

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy VIV

My classmates were never directly mean to me or disrespectful. In fact, while I was in the computer lab after I ditched class the second time, one of the students approached me and asked if I was okay. She said the whole class wondered what happened to me.

I gave her a vague "I wasn't feel well" and left it at that.

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part VIII

I don't even remember what they said specifically.

Most days starting English 156, the English instructor would put up a news article (strangely nothing about Trump or anything overtly political), and our duty was to write a short response to it in our journals (which I lost, and therefore didn't obtain any credit despite doing the work).

This particular morning the English instructor displayed a news item about a boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder, who brought two guns to school. The question posed was: should the boy be allowed to return to school? The article briefly mentioned that he was now doing well due to taking a mood stabilizer.

The answer to this is fairly evident because of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 which insists on fair and equal education to delinquent children and children with disabilities.

When asked by the instructor to discuss the topic, no one brought up the Act, including myself, who didn't learn about it until shortly after we had moved on to something else.

And because of this, many of the students were against the boy returning to public school.

"This article just perpetuates the stigma of mental illness," I began. "People with bipolar disorder or any other type of mental illness are much more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators."

Of course the students made various comments about bipolar disorder (no one stopped to think that perhaps his bringing the guns to school had nothing to do with his mood disorder since the vast majority of people with bipolar disorder are not violent).

Finally, one female student behind me said, "I worked at [state hospital]..."

"Yes, I remember you telling me about that," the English instructor comments.

The woman continues with the statement that the patients would attack without being provoked, and that "people with mental illness don't change."

In her defense, I know of the hospital and its bad reputation. It treats forensic psychiatric patients, people who have committed crimes. Individuals with mental illness do break the law, just like individuals who are mentally sound.

Never mind that. I was instantly pissed off. "I don't believe that's true--" I start.

The English instructor holds up his hand, signaling for me to stop. He wants to continued onto another task for that day.

I was unbelievably upset. If it were left up to this group of students, I might possibly be denied a right to attend college because I was deemed a hazard to myself and other people. After all, hadn't I been psychotic once and held against my will in a locked ward?

I sat in my seat with emotions swirling around me and overwhelming me. I couldn't think nor concentrate. I gathered up my belongings and left class. I didn't return.

When I told my mother about the incident, she said, "That's hate speech. It's like saying 'niggers are too dumb to attend college, so we just shouldn't send them.' "

Hate speech in the classroom is protected by the Supreme Court (with exception when speech means to envoke violence). Students can say whatever the fuck they want no matter the effect it has on other people. That's Freedom of Speech.

I almost withdrew from the class over the incident. But it just would be another "W" on my record and more time wasted without getting anywhere.

The next day, I tried to attend class. I made it to my desk, and then just exited out again. I spent my time in the library.

Woolf's Darkness

"Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or will decline from it..."

--The New Yorker, "Woolf's Darkness: Embracing The Inexplicable" by Rebecca Solnit, April 24th, 2014

Rough Divorce, Part II

In his most recent email, The LSU Professor warned me against Morpheus, saying that I should be very careful with my heart. He stated that his divorce was rough too--but it never finished.

In my reading, I learned that on the average, people who stay married (even through difficult times) seem to be happier than those who divorce. I blame that on how we grow accustomed to even dreadful circumstances if we accept them and are unable (perhaps temporarily or perhaps more permanently) to change them without giving something substantial up. For instance, my situation at the hospital is always very restrictive, and I have few personal freedoms and/or privacy, but after a day, all of this seems normal and comforting. Granted being in a psychiatric ward is not the same as being in legal union. But don't you give up certain freedoms anyway for the stability of a marriage? You are forced to make choices--especially if children are involved. So many women (and men) lose their personal development and goals to become a full time parent. Not to say that individuals don't find great fulfillment in being a mother or a father--but others concede that they put off their own personal interests because of the family responsibilities--never to get that time back.

Everybody's Depressed

" 'You aren't depressed,' Raquel said. 'That's another excuse. Everybody's depressed. You're just you, whatever you is.' "

--Romantic History, pg. 393 by Michael Harris

I Reserve The Right to be Boring

"I reserve the right to be boring. I reserve the right to go on and on about my day to people who aren't listening."

--'You're Just So Interesting to Have Around,' The Huffington Post, 7/29/2016

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part VII

The English instructor had a peculiar habit.

Sometimes during our ten minute break, he would take his Nature Valley bar (that he brought from home) out and sit down in the chair that's in front of the classroom. He would grab the garbage canister, put it between his knees, and then lean over the bin and eat his snack, nimbly taking pieces and putting them in his mouth, gracefully letting the crumbs fall into the container, never leaving bits of oats or processed sugar on his hands.

Rough Divorce

And nine years later...

I'm peacefully passed out in the backseat of my little SUV, with my head resting on a folded up blue sweatshirt for a pillow. I'm parking in an almost empty lot with the back of the Mazda facing the streetlight.

The noise from my cellphone wakes me up. It's 7:12 in the morning. I was up at 4:30am to take my mother to work.

I pull out the phone from the holster on my hip and look at it in almost disbelief. It's notification of an email from Morpheus. I think about some of the responses I could get out of him. "Hey, stop writing me. It's annoying." It has to be a minor irritation to keep receiving messages from someone week after week, despite refusing to reply. Like bad spam that sifts its way through the trash folder.

I put the device back on my hip, and curl up again on the bench seat. I wait for sleep, but I am wide awake now.

I open the email, expecting the worst. Morpheus apologizes first for "leaving [me] hanging" (a phrase I originally concocted in the last email I wrote him). He mentions the "rough divorce" and that he's traveling a lot for work. He concludes with the fact that he'll be back next week.

Maybe he enjoys my dogged insistence with writing him notes, or maybe he finds it ill taste and just doesn't share.

Regardless, the email proposes absolutely nothing. Just because he is returning to Yuppieville in a few days, doesn't mean we will see each other or even speak to one another when he comes home. The only information to gather is the mention of the terrible and always painful divorce.

In one of the last emails he wrote me, he said that he had had so much happen in his person life and that essentially he didn't want to see me, that he wouldn't bother me anymore. I naturally assumed then that he and his wife reconciled at the time.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Maybe he figures I'm easy bait, as all people are when they're in love with you--easy pickings. "Oh, I can't have so-n-so, but I will always have [Jae] around."

Or maybe he's secretly in love with me too after all these years and months of silence.

After all, isn't it simply wrong to use someone, who only allows it because he/she feels great affection for you?

Romantic History

"Maggie is convinced--and has experience to back it up--that nine men out of ten will risk their marriages, their families and everything else for five minutes of pleasure."

--pg. 327 of Romantic History

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part VI

"Who wants to go first?" The English instructor says to the class.

The assignment was straight forward enough, give a ten to twelve minute presentation on one of the articles in the course's textbook.

I raise my hand. I had all weekend to flip through the handbook and pick a work to publicly digest, and I forgot about it completely. I'm diving into the pages as he speaks.

"Okay, [Jae], what are you going to do it on?"

I had five seconds to find something--and there it is--dutifully waiting for me--so obvious. "The Suicide Note," I answer.

The next day, I presented. I gave my lecture the title, "The Easy Way Out," being sardonic, an attitude that at least the vocal classmates missed--if not the entire class (although I do believe the instructor caught the point--he doesn't overlook much).

In fact, at least some of the students not only missed the point of my presentation, but also the gist of the poem itself, which was a naked composition of the disordered thinking of someone who is suicidal.

"So," I ask the class at the end of the short lecture, "Do you believe that suicide is 'the easy way out'?"  

The answer is plain to anyone who has ever been suicidal, or lost a family member or friend to suicide.

"Yes," one girl answers. "People just don't want to deal with their problems."

I don't respond. Nowhere in the assignment are there points for arguing against one's classmates. Nothing I said or wrote did anything to generate sympathy or empathy for the suffering girl in the poem--a tragedy that is very real to me.

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part V

"Why is it that no one ever agrees with me?" I finally say in frustration. As a class we discussed a story about a woman who whored herself out to a friend to catch a ride across a river in order to visit her lover (and after she confesses her indiscretion to her lover, he cruelly and promptly rejects her).

Earlier, I called the whole essay "slut shaming."

"That's a good thing," my instructor replies to my question and my obvious, growing irritation, smiling.

I can't tell. Is he smiling to me or to the rest of the class?

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part IV

"If you were spending that much time on one class, I don't think you should take three classes next semester," my mom comments after I finished my final essay for English 156, which I spent days reading and reading and doing more research for, only to be confused and grossly aware of my own ignorance toward my subject.

We got into a minor argument over that.

As time went by during Summer Semester, I begin to slowly feel odd and old (which is a relative term). A few of the students were eighteen and straight from high school. Many worked while going to class. One girl had night shifts, but still manage to show up some days for nine o' clock morning lecture.

I remember being eighteen and at the University, starting Summer Quarter 2001. It was then that I realized I needed help, and went to the student health center for my depression. I was struggling already and just beginning my college career.

Despite the mood issues, I loved the University, even though I knew I wasn't a good fit for the Animal Science Department because they focused on agriculture and mostly food animals while I believed, and I was often alone on this, that horses should be considered "companion animals," and I was a haughty animal welfarist.

Even though back then I was too liberal for my major, I danced around and took whatever courses spurred my interest, many of which were not part of my degree.

But I failed, as early as Fall Quarter 2001, and throughout the years in college, I would fail more.

Despite the fact that I felt a lingering sense of superiority over my fellow English 156 students (I took AP Lit my senior year of high school and also attended multiple English courses at the University--plus I'm older and have been writing for personal enjoyment most of my life), I couldnt help but recognize that many of my classmates would succeed where I did not. They would go on to complete their Bachelor's in a reasonable amount of time even if they needed an extra step to freshman composition.

Perhaps they wouldn't make the large, hindering mistakes I did--like binge drinking instead of studying the night before a midterm.

I started taking college classes when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. My mother was worried I would fall behind the other students and forced me to attend community college classes over the summers.

Why, if I've spent all this time in college, am I taking a basic reading and writing course?

I was hospitalized a few weeks after my last ECT in July of 2015. I tried to play Scrabble with a fellow patient but couldn't spell simple words like "world." I was reduced to a drooling, soft baby, learning to play with small blocks.

After that, even as my cognitive abilities improved, I had little confidence in returning to any level of college.

I was essentially starting over. All those courses at the University? I don't remember them.

Downhill

"I noticed you withdrawing during your junior year in high school, and it's been downhill ever since."

--Mom when discussing my history of depression

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part III

It's the first day of Summer Semester 2016. The instructor walks in to the front of the class with his bag over his shoulder and sunglasses and an distinguished frown.

"Why is he frowning?" I ask myself. "Did I make a mistake in coming?"

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part II

Stanford doctors and staff during my last admission kept bugging me to either get a part-time job or go back to school in order to "structure [my] time."

I registered for Spring Semester while I was still hospitalized.

The social worker comes up to me in the hallway after learning I was headed back to college, and asks, "On a scale of one to ten, how excited are you?"

I'm depressed, I'm thinking, I don't get excited. "About a three," I respond honestly.

"Why so low? Maybe you should pick another class?"

What do these people want from me? I'm ill! If I could function in normal life, I wouldnt be in the hospital. 

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy

I'm sitting in the front row, where I always sit, in order to hear better because I'm partially deaf and so I can talk to the instructor or professor without raising my voice.

The instructor (who I often call "Doctor" to everyone else out of habit) is one desk away, looking down at some papers.

"Is it just me or is this class unusually conservative?" I ask to no one in particular, hoping to get a "Oh, no, I'm a Democrat" out of one of my fellow students.

No one responds.

Nine Years

"It doesn't take nine years to get a divorce," My mother says to me.

Goddamnit! It could.

A Kiss And a Hotel

"It's not like he drove you to a hotel," my mom commented after I told her what happened between Joseph and I.

The MS Threat

"If you had cancer, you'd be dead," The Neurologist says looking up at me from behind her desk and smiling.

It's called "paresthesia," which is simply unusual sensations such as burning or pins and needles usually in the extremities.

"I'm not worried about it," The Neurologist states.

"Do you think it could be something like MS?" I ask.

"No, not really...I don't know." She thinks about this further and then toward the end of our appointment, she adds, "Let's just get it out of the way"--referring to screening me for multiple sclerosis.

I have a brain MRI on Thursday and then some additional nerve tests concerning my eyes and ears.