AskPolly: “If you’re going to save yourself, you need to start melting out in the open. Right now you are tidying. Stop it. This is no time to seem fine”
This the second time I’ve written anything in many years. The first time was about a month ago, when I tried to squeeze my entire life story into a single paragraph on a therapy clinic’s intake form. My husband and I were married five months ago. A lot of my family couldn’t make it to the wedding, most notably my older brother, who reported to county jail on the morning before we walked down the aisle. When I finally did get to see my brother, just after Thanksgiving, it was at his funeral.
When I returned home, after four days of bereavement leave, my husband jumped back into his 60-hour workweek without taking a day off. Most of my evenings were spent alone, sobbing, clutching my phone but calling no one, and standing in the hallway like a zombie in our dark, cold apartment.
I fear that grief and contempt are destroying my marriage before it’s even had a chance. I feel like someone on the edge of insanity, unable to conquer the many barriers to healing that lay before me. Before all of this, I wanted to start a family with my husband.
Facials and mani-pedis and chocolates are not enough. These are the stand-in consumer signifiers of love and caring that we’ve slowly come to encounter as a replacement for the real thing. When the actual love and caring never arrives, we are meant to accept these purchased substitutes into our hearts. Calling haircuts and massages self-care is like calling constant tidying “therapy” .
This is a moment to be an authentic raging, sobbing mess. This is a moment to say to someone, anyone, “I am falling apart. I need you.” This is a moment to show up, in all of your wretchedness and fear, and ask — no, actually, demand — that your brand-new spouse very quickly learn to show up, too. He will express disappointment, too, of course: My brand-new wife is mean and sad and won’t fuck me. Prepare to hear that.
Being brave right now means FEELING THIS. You need to feel this. You need to be where you are, out in the open, so everyone can see you. You need to stop playing along with bullshitty sullen hugs and bullshitty consumer gestures and you need to demand more broken, frightened, intense, awkward, on the spot, jagged SHOWING UP. You need to ask for ugly shared moments.
I know that you’re angry at everyone in your life for being so inadequate, for being so scared and weak. And you have a right to be angry. I was furious at almost everyone after my dad died. So many people disappointed me. I had befriended a bunch of chickenshits and I didn’t even know it. But I was also a chickenshit who didn’t show up for people when they needed me. I had no idea.
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