antiversaries: fucking october 16th.
One year ago today right this minute, I was wasting the last hour I had with the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Wasted because I had that deranged urgency that comes from semi-conscious doomsday knowledge. I didn't *KNOW* it was the last hour I'd spend with him, but I knew, a little, or it wouldn't have felt so unquestionably like my guts were coming out, and I had no say in it. I don't let people control much of anything in my life, let alone my guts coming out or staying in.
It's not like me to sit in a hotel room, screaming and crying, begging someone to stay. I don't ever recall a time I felt so robbed of agency. For awhile I felt like that was the worst of all his indiscretions, that I was reduced to being in that disgusting position.
We had a broken heart (like a best friends necklace from when you were 10) that said 'mizpah' in script on one side, and 'g-d watches between us when we are absent from one another' on the other. I wore my half, with the chai my mother gave me, every day. In the middle of the fighting and crying, I took it off and said "I don't want this unless you bring it back to me." I can't remember what i was thinking in the moment, only that it was plainly the right thing to do. It's obvious now. The idea of wearing it throughout the horror that was inevitably to come, under false pretenses, without the reciprocation that made it hold so much meaning, was unbearable. So I preempted that particular indignity. I always protect myself, even in the hour of defeat.
I don't understand what we did that took up that whole last hour.
I remember stuff before the last hour pretty well, like when Temim and Eli picked us up at my grandparents house and everything was awful, but normal.
And how we drove to Miami from Tamarac, and went to the fancy hotel on the bay that I was so so excited to stay at. (It was a typically sketchy situation I had gotten us into, using an expired gift certificate my boss had "gifted" me with in a fit of guilt. I couldn't waste it, of course. But unlike when *he* booked a hotel, there was the distinct possibility that we'd have to argue with someone, convince them to let us stay, or go somewhere else entirely. Naturally, for me this only added to the fun. Probably not so for him.)
How I was so excited for a vacation with him, but he didn't want to do anything with me.
How this somehow turned into a fight like every other, about the line between his depression and his ability to love, and whether he in fact, loved me at all anyway.
How he went and hid in the closet and looked *so small,* like he was a little kid who didn't know what to do with his feelings.
How I couldn't quite bridge anger and care-taking the way I wanted to.
An eternity of crying and yelling, but I don't remember any words or content, just that it was different and weirder and worse than usual.
How we were supposed to play a show that night, and how I knew we weren't going to.
How I told him it was ok not to play the show, ok for him to quit the band, that his health was the most important thing.
How I felt so incredibly uncared for, and also incredibly selfish for feeling that way.
How I got him out of the closet and made him call his therapist.
How it felt to sit on the giant bed alone, holding onto his shirt, because it smelled like his cologne and sweat and warmth.
How he came back and called his parents, and left again.
Then, how he was all business: "my dad is getting me on an 8pm flight to Chicago."
And then, I guess, it was the last hour and I couldn't not cry and cry and cry and apologize. I was about to start bleeding; I was overemotional. I gave him the necklace. I asked him if I could keep his shirt until he came back. It was so soft, much softer than he was. I asked him to promise me I would see him again. Funny, I honestly don't remember his response.
Temim and Eli had to fix everything at the club and stand outside to apologize to fans for canceling. Then they came to the hotel and I know we bought whiskey. We watched True Blood, I think, and Rachel Maddow, and ate something horrible, but I don't know what it was. Did we all sleep together in the giant bed? I have no idea.
I talked to Tara and told her everything. She, like me, and like everyone else, assumed he would be back soon. People have nervous breakdowns and freak outs and act badly and then they take care of themselves and get help and explain and apologize. She made me feel a little better and I texted him to tell him I was optimistic, that I hoped being at home would help him get better, that I missed him so much.
At the time, it was inconceivable that things would unfold as they did. As awful as Miami was, it is really what happened after that colors it permanently migraine-pastel-hell. So I am more dreading the next antiversary, the one next month. Because the month that comes after being abandoned is much more shameful, particularly when you didn't know it was really, truly abandonment at the time. Just waiting and waiting, wanting to be supportive, not knowing anything about what's happening. Holding onto a whole life and world that has really already ceased to exist, only nobody told you.
It makes me dizzy to think about that month. We drove for a million hours back to new york from miami. I was staying at my sister's house and wearing his shirt every night, knowing his smell was fading from it. Trying to get a job, babysitting all the time, starting to drink coffee again, and drinking too much beer. Worst of all, November 1, moving back home to our apartment, with all of his things, but not him. and not hearing from him; not on the schedule we made, not at all. I didn't know then that our life together and our future was totally undone. So while I waited to hear from him, I planned the flowers I would greet him with at the airport, and the things I would cook, and the dress I would wear. Somehow, in desperation, I *always* fucking think if I dress nice, and brush my hair right, and put my makeup on more neatly, maybe people won't leave. Last-ditch internalized misogyny never works, I promise.
One year ago, right *this* minute, he probably had just left for the airport. The view of the bay had become the most depressing thing I had ever seen. I wished I had the mobility and money and lack of care for other human beings to get on a plane. I didn't know then, what I know now - that it was much worse than it seemed - that he was going to redefine lack of accountability for me, never explain, never apologize, never clean up his mess, never give me back my necklace or give me any new words to hold onto in its place.
We need to think about how we hold people in crisis accountable for their actions. I stand by my decision to support him in going home at the time, and in doing whatever he needed to do to get out of a particularly horrible moment. But, in the big picture, I was taken advantage of, lied to and betrayed. His crisis doesn't change that. Had he come back, accounted for his actions, apologized, treated me like a human being... (not to mention accounted for leaving the band without ever telling us he was doing so, leaving all his friends and community in New York without so much as a goodbye, without responding to a single email or voicemail....) - I would have forgiven him for everything. It's not even really a question. The depth of betrayal really comes in the form of this year passing by, without a word.
I was pretty shocked when I emailed one of his friends, a radical white feminist non-trans man, and he told me that it was unreasonable and unfair and maybe even a little BIZARRE for me to have accountability expectations of someone who was so depressed that he wanted to die. I guess being that I failed as a wife-mom, I am not allowed to have an opinion on the matter, but I think that's disgusting. I wonder what this guy would have thought of my actions, had I indulged in one of the many fantasies I had this winter, when I was so depressed I wanted to die. Funny, I don't think it would have been forgiven through the same tragic narratives that work for him. Instead, I think it would have been viewed through one of the myriad sexist courtney-killed-kurt-type narratives that seem to suit me better here, as the demanding, critical, overemotional, nagging jewess, disaster-wife.
Life lesson learned: don't date unaccountable faux-radical rich white dudes who don't care about anything. (Why didn't I remember this from the FIRST TIME I LEARNED IT?)
It's not like me to sit in a hotel room, screaming and crying, begging someone to stay. I don't ever recall a time I felt so robbed of agency. For awhile I felt like that was the worst of all his indiscretions, that I was reduced to being in that disgusting position.
We had a broken heart (like a best friends necklace from when you were 10) that said 'mizpah' in script on one side, and 'g-d watches between us when we are absent from one another' on the other. I wore my half, with the chai my mother gave me, every day. In the middle of the fighting and crying, I took it off and said "I don't want this unless you bring it back to me." I can't remember what i was thinking in the moment, only that it was plainly the right thing to do. It's obvious now. The idea of wearing it throughout the horror that was inevitably to come, under false pretenses, without the reciprocation that made it hold so much meaning, was unbearable. So I preempted that particular indignity. I always protect myself, even in the hour of defeat.
I don't understand what we did that took up that whole last hour.
I remember stuff before the last hour pretty well, like when Temim and Eli picked us up at my grandparents house and everything was awful, but normal.
And how we drove to Miami from Tamarac, and went to the fancy hotel on the bay that I was so so excited to stay at. (It was a typically sketchy situation I had gotten us into, using an expired gift certificate my boss had "gifted" me with in a fit of guilt. I couldn't waste it, of course. But unlike when *he* booked a hotel, there was the distinct possibility that we'd have to argue with someone, convince them to let us stay, or go somewhere else entirely. Naturally, for me this only added to the fun. Probably not so for him.)
How I was so excited for a vacation with him, but he didn't want to do anything with me.
How this somehow turned into a fight like every other, about the line between his depression and his ability to love, and whether he in fact, loved me at all anyway.
How he went and hid in the closet and looked *so small,* like he was a little kid who didn't know what to do with his feelings.
How I couldn't quite bridge anger and care-taking the way I wanted to.
An eternity of crying and yelling, but I don't remember any words or content, just that it was different and weirder and worse than usual.
How we were supposed to play a show that night, and how I knew we weren't going to.
How I told him it was ok not to play the show, ok for him to quit the band, that his health was the most important thing.
How I felt so incredibly uncared for, and also incredibly selfish for feeling that way.
How I got him out of the closet and made him call his therapist.
How it felt to sit on the giant bed alone, holding onto his shirt, because it smelled like his cologne and sweat and warmth.
How he came back and called his parents, and left again.
Then, how he was all business: "my dad is getting me on an 8pm flight to Chicago."
And then, I guess, it was the last hour and I couldn't not cry and cry and cry and apologize. I was about to start bleeding; I was overemotional. I gave him the necklace. I asked him if I could keep his shirt until he came back. It was so soft, much softer than he was. I asked him to promise me I would see him again. Funny, I honestly don't remember his response.
Temim and Eli had to fix everything at the club and stand outside to apologize to fans for canceling. Then they came to the hotel and I know we bought whiskey. We watched True Blood, I think, and Rachel Maddow, and ate something horrible, but I don't know what it was. Did we all sleep together in the giant bed? I have no idea.
I talked to Tara and told her everything. She, like me, and like everyone else, assumed he would be back soon. People have nervous breakdowns and freak outs and act badly and then they take care of themselves and get help and explain and apologize. She made me feel a little better and I texted him to tell him I was optimistic, that I hoped being at home would help him get better, that I missed him so much.
At the time, it was inconceivable that things would unfold as they did. As awful as Miami was, it is really what happened after that colors it permanently migraine-pastel-hell. So I am more dreading the next antiversary, the one next month. Because the month that comes after being abandoned is much more shameful, particularly when you didn't know it was really, truly abandonment at the time. Just waiting and waiting, wanting to be supportive, not knowing anything about what's happening. Holding onto a whole life and world that has really already ceased to exist, only nobody told you.
It makes me dizzy to think about that month. We drove for a million hours back to new york from miami. I was staying at my sister's house and wearing his shirt every night, knowing his smell was fading from it. Trying to get a job, babysitting all the time, starting to drink coffee again, and drinking too much beer. Worst of all, November 1, moving back home to our apartment, with all of his things, but not him. and not hearing from him; not on the schedule we made, not at all. I didn't know then that our life together and our future was totally undone. So while I waited to hear from him, I planned the flowers I would greet him with at the airport, and the things I would cook, and the dress I would wear. Somehow, in desperation, I *always* fucking think if I dress nice, and brush my hair right, and put my makeup on more neatly, maybe people won't leave. Last-ditch internalized misogyny never works, I promise.
One year ago, right *this* minute, he probably had just left for the airport. The view of the bay had become the most depressing thing I had ever seen. I wished I had the mobility and money and lack of care for other human beings to get on a plane. I didn't know then, what I know now - that it was much worse than it seemed - that he was going to redefine lack of accountability for me, never explain, never apologize, never clean up his mess, never give me back my necklace or give me any new words to hold onto in its place.
We need to think about how we hold people in crisis accountable for their actions. I stand by my decision to support him in going home at the time, and in doing whatever he needed to do to get out of a particularly horrible moment. But, in the big picture, I was taken advantage of, lied to and betrayed. His crisis doesn't change that. Had he come back, accounted for his actions, apologized, treated me like a human being... (not to mention accounted for leaving the band without ever telling us he was doing so, leaving all his friends and community in New York without so much as a goodbye, without responding to a single email or voicemail....) - I would have forgiven him for everything. It's not even really a question. The depth of betrayal really comes in the form of this year passing by, without a word.
I was pretty shocked when I emailed one of his friends, a radical white feminist non-trans man, and he told me that it was unreasonable and unfair and maybe even a little BIZARRE for me to have accountability expectations of someone who was so depressed that he wanted to die. I guess being that I failed as a wife-mom, I am not allowed to have an opinion on the matter, but I think that's disgusting. I wonder what this guy would have thought of my actions, had I indulged in one of the many fantasies I had this winter, when I was so depressed I wanted to die. Funny, I don't think it would have been forgiven through the same tragic narratives that work for him. Instead, I think it would have been viewed through one of the myriad sexist courtney-killed-kurt-type narratives that seem to suit me better here, as the demanding, critical, overemotional, nagging jewess, disaster-wife.
Life lesson learned: don't date unaccountable faux-radical rich white dudes who don't care about anything. (Why didn't I remember this from the FIRST TIME I LEARNED IT?)