my (ex)husband has never been open with his feelings, which puts him squarely in a category with every other man i've ever known. because of this i think i became too good at wielding a crowbar to pry the occasional morsel of emotional information out of men, because i just figured i could get him to talk about things i really needed to, and then he could go back to being macho the rest of the time. i don't need to live in an oprah winfrey show, i have stuff to do. anyway i supposed i thought with time we would grow closer, and he might tell me more if only because he was talking to himself and forgot i was in the room. i didn't imagine it would get harder year after year, until anything but smalltalk was like trying to get a clam shell open. i never thought it would be pervasive in everythinghugs he'd shrug off that eventually stopped being offered, "i love you's" withheld for no reason except that he could, pretending not to understand when i asked about it, pretending to understand when he said it would change, pretending not to notice that he turned it on and off like a switch.

it wasn't until 9 months ago that the ground started to shake and i suddenly, absolutely knew in the pit of my stomach that felt like it was covered in astroturf that this was on purpose. that these little hurts and silences and passive aggressive brutalities were consciously and maliciously delivered to keep me down, broken, sick, depressed, and bent lest i threaten his insecurities which are many and much, much, much more important than i am. i would move furniture and paint rooms. he would come in and act like he didn't see anything. if i said "what do you think?" he would say "ok" in a tone that implied "aaaaaannnnnndddddddd..?" i went out in a hurricane to pick him up from the train station so he wouldn't have to walk home. he got in the car and said "i didn't ask you to come and get me." then i would watch him fawn over a friend's artwork, on and on with how wonderful it is, follow up questions about inspiration. turn it on, turn it off. every argument, he replies with different versions of "i don't know what you're talking about." he says i shouldn't care what he thinks, i should do things for myself, so i live with silence in the face of my accomplishments, and i shrink from a warm, affectionate, snuggly person as i lie in an ice cold bed facing his back and two feet of empty space. i become depressed, i struggle, i stupidly, STUPIDLY tell my fears and vulnerabilities to someone who has been poisoning me for so long it's making my skin tan, and then wonder why they are all used against me.

i was bewildered, and i think that's the first time i've ever used that word, by a series of life events that i think kept me just off balance enough that i didn't put the pieces together for an alarmingly, pathetically, depressingly, long time.

after we were married about a year we separated, for all these same reasons. and i was so hurt, and so so unable to let go of all these things i dreamed of and this future it turns out i totally bought into, that i let him and my marriage counselor (who sucked) convince me that i was just depressed. and if that was fixed everything would be fixed. and as soon as he walked back in the door, i knew that it was a lie, and that everything was going to be exactly as it was before and i had to just accept that this was life. and 4 days later i swallowed a bottle of pills and woke up in a psych hospital. he came to visit like i was at summer camp and nothing was happening. when i was released 3 days later i came home to an empty apartment, he acted like nothing happened. of course i never waited for him to ask, when i tried to talk about it he talked about how awesome he was, taking a day off work to bring me to the hospital and stay with me while i was unconscious. my god this is pissing me off just writing it. anyway i chose life, they doped the bejesus out of me and i dealt with it alone. then i found out i couldn't have kids and i dealt with it alone. then we adopted (thank you universe, a win!) then my father was diagnosed with cancer and kicked ass for 3 years. and then he died. and every minute i was alone. crying in bed at night with him pretending not to hear me. yelling at me and walking away in a huff because i asked him for help, for a fucking hug.

yeah, it's crappy, but why the heck would i be surprised? i mean, i understand linear time. i see the same thing happening. as a character, he's pretty predictable. if he were on tv he would have been eaten by zombies early on. in a predictable way. but the drunken voice in my head, the one that said " it's always going to be like this, you know" was starting to break free of the tequila coma i kept her in. and then i said "why did you never acknowledge my daytime emmy" and he said "because one time i said i like brown dogs and you didn't say you liked brown dogs too and i was mad" and i knew. i knew all of that was punishment. all of it was calculated and targeted at everything i did to pull myself up, and then to kick me when i was down. mad at things he never mentioned, grudges held from when noah kicked him off the arc. the earth shook. the walls fell. i took off my sunglasses and saw the words "we're working on things!" written on the side. and then every moment of our life together clicked in an awful way, like when you bite down on tin foil.

the rage that overwhelmed me nearly soldered me to the ground, and i began a hulk-esqu rampage unlike anything seen beyond a bette davis movie. i started screaming and yelling and throwing things. and i don't mean in one argument or one moment in time. i mean i hit that and stayed there until, um, 1 second ago. i mean i walked around for months hoarse from yelling and taking pictures and just flinging them until they smashed holes in walls and hitting lamps over a dresser until they broke away from my hands. then i would paint a smile on my face for chitchat with my son's teacher, and then i'd take him out to eat and tell him not to walk on the kitchen floor because of the glass. it overwhelmed me and burned me, the fact that i now saw his constant lies and manipulation didn't mean he stopped it, and he continually reopened the wounds, wanting to keep me angry, thinking it would distract me from divorce i guess. sometimes it felt great. love notes he never acknowledged or appreciated went up in flames deliciously. but it was hard to control, and still i had yet to realize he wanted to bait me, he wanted me to snap.brain damage, stroke, coma..any of these work for him.

did the man i thought he was ever exist? was there ever anything but lies? is this what passes for freakin love? what the hell is happening?

so i had to do it, alone. yeah i know, it surprised me this time, too. every time. i pushed him so far away from me his lies quieted, i limited myself to breaking things i didn't like and things that were already broken and still on the floor. i pushed him exactly where he wanted to be all along, close enough to be the guy who takes his son to birthday parties but far enough that he doesn't have to pretend to give a crap about anything i say. and of course he had to destroy everything in a 9 month swirl of the drain passively, and like all passive aggressive people should be shot from a cannon into the sun.

so after carrying an 8 year marriage on my back while getting kicked in the shins i had to initiate and push my way through this separation with his dead weight on me so i can fulfill HIS wishes, while having to now maintain the entire house myself and be the happy mom who goes christmas shopping for the kid who says "i like dad better." he is happy as a clam while i have nothing but unresolved issues and unrecognized hurts and new fears about paying the mortgage. and the anger. oooohhhhh the anger. i don't smash things as much but i could. i've done my best to keep it away from young eyes but eventually i'm bound to be caught wearing ripped clothes post hulk. and god help the person who cuts me off on the highway.

how do i get past this? how do i live with it until it happens? my body is breaking down from the stressheadaches, backaches, mini panic attacks that wake me up in the middle of the night as if to say "i didn't want you to sleep through this.isn't this just like being in a coffin?" please don't say healthy food and exercise and meditation, i tried it. and then stopped doing it because it's hard and i'm tired from being so mad. and i have to stay alive because i have an amazing child that i don't want raised by a jackass. i write, work with my hands creatively and because i don't feel like waiting to get things fixed properly..what else? what else can i do short of walking until i circle the globe to get rid of this anger and forgive myself for doing a really good impression of a stupider, smaller, less evolved version of myself? how do i get myself free?