Kendal has been in lockdown since Christmas. Fortunately, I can walk my dog with friends who also have dogs, so I get some real physical connection with people every day. But even with that, I’m still having a very hard time. Activities that used to fill time reasonably well are not working. So I went back to reading my own journal. I’ve gotten to 1992, which was a difficult year.
In 1992, I was living with Dana in the house we built, and I spent a lot of time trying to help a friend of ours. Eleanor was the oldest child in a very abusive working class family. She was dealing with complex trauma, multiple early traumas. She was unable to work, and had managed to get on SSI disability. She also had housing assistance for an apartment in the town, but she needed a lot of help just to get through the day, and was at our house for hours.
from journal for November 7, 1992
I’m in an enormous amount of pain over the Eleanor situation. Dana and I had an emotional go-round last night, and I’m going to try to write it all out here, hoping to ease the pain or gain some clarity. I have a cup of tea and a lit candle — I need all the help I can get.
Dana said something that sounded like Eleanor wanted to tell me her side of it, to say how painful it was for her that I asked her to leave at a time when her therapist was gone, but she didn’t want to hear my side of it. I reacted with upset and fury, not so much at Lynelle as at the idea of having to listen to accusations and not being allowed to state a defense. Dana reacted as though I were blaming Eleanor, and that hurt a lot, because my tendency is to blame myself rather than her, or else to not blame anybody. But it’s such a tangle, of course if I say I kept putting off telling her to leave because I knew she’d react badly, then it sounds like I’m blaming her for reacting badly, instead of blaming myself for letting myself be manipulated by her reactions which is what I’m in fact doing but unless I spell it out very carefully — and even when I do — it sounds like I’m blaming her. And in the heat of my pain and anger of course I’m not careful about my language. So it’s clear to me that there’s still a lot of hurt and anger inside me, I’m mostly denying it, which is why I’ve been feeling so dead lately. Some came out in the session with Karen, but not enough. Obviously, I consider anger at Eleanor unacceptable, so I don’t let myself feel it. But the truth is I’m not angry at Eleanor so much as at the situation, which made it impossible for me to take care of myself without hurting her, and the situation is not my fault, not Eleanor’s fault, but the result of our dysfunctional behaviors conditioned in our abusive childhoods. ……
I told Dana I understood exactly what was going on for Eleanor, her pain that someone she thought she could count on was rejecting her, that this was a bad time for her because hiking season is closing down, Sara’s gone, etc, her blaming herself for not seeing it coming and moving out earlier — I can see all that and sympathize, and that’s exactly the problem — I sympathize too easily with Eleanor’s position, I have no similar clarity or compassion for Jenny’s position. I said that the first week or so I kept trying to imagine how to explain myself to Eleanor, really wanting to be justified in my action, until I began to see how it was a futile effort, I needed to justify myself to myself, not have Eleanor “understand” and of course it’s clear that no matter what I say, she’s going to take it as me blaming her, just as Dana did. So I gave up needing to have her know what’s going on for me, and I’m quite willing to go ahead and try to build a new relationship without trying to process the ruins of the old. But Eleanor’s not yet in a place where she can do that. She needs to tell me how hard it’s been for her. She told Dana that she didn’t see how I could ask her to leave when her therapist was going to be away unless I was deliberately trying to be mean. Dana said he saw that as an example of how Eleanor saw the world as revolving around herself, she couldn’t conceive of a reason that I might have that had nothing to do with her. This helped restore some sense of perspective and some sense of us being on the same side.
So why did I ask her to leave when her therapist was going to be away? I knew it would be painful and difficult for her.
Because I hadn’t asked her to leave earlier because she’d just had a visit from her parents.
Because I hadn’t asked her to leave earlier because she was scared because of the prowler.
Because I hadn’t asked her to leave earlier because she was scared to plug in the refrigerator.
Because I hadn’t asked her to leave earlier because she was scared of Judy.
Because I had no understanding of my own needs for privacy and space in my own home.
Because I had no sympathy for my position as the rich person with a house and a husband.
Because I didn’t understand how having her stay overnight prevented me from being able to do anything for myself in the morning until after she had left.
Because I never felt that my own needs were as important as hers and so was not in touch with them.
Because I wanted to do what was best for her, and failed to consider that that had to be based on a foundation of what was best for me.Why didn’t I hold on a week until her therapist was back?
Because I was desperate, because something reptilian and concerned with survival had awakened in me and was lashing out.
Comment from later, probably when I was typing up November 1992 in 1993: Dammit! because I was afraid that I would die in a car accident if I didn’t do something quickly. The last time I had a warning that things were not right, it was only two days before a worse thing happened. I fell in the parking lot on Thursday, and fell down the stairs and got concussion on Saturday, because I failed to take care of myself because of Eleanor, dammit. I had forgotten all this and was in a panic that I thought was unjustified, until I reread February 1989.
Because when I couldn’t respond during the prowler episode (I was angry that Dana went down to help and felt bad about myself that I couldn’t stay up all night with her like her friend Deborah did, but I had no feelings of sympathy for Eleanor) I took it as meaning that I was cold and unfeeling instead of the correct interpretation which was that I had gone past my limits long ago, had no resiliency or energy left, needed to have her out of my space right then, and held on, and held on, and held on… and then nearly had an accident in Tiga — and broke.
Comment from the present: Tiga was Dana’s sports car, I was driving back from a play in St. Johnsbury. I was on the highway, and had to move out into the left lane because a car had slowed down. There was a cardboard box in front of me, and I drove right over it, didn’t even consider putting on the brakes, until the box caught fire. I quickly got into the breakdown lane, and thank goodness someone stopped to help me, and he either had some kind of tool, or just was able to kick the box out from under the car. The car could have exploded. I asked myself why I hadn’t slammed on the brakes when I saw I would hit the box, and then asked where in my life was I failing to put on brakes, and then saw that I needed to ask Eleanor to not be around so much.