It Ain’t Me

Have you ever seen the music video for the Selena Gomez & Kygo song “It Ain’t Me”? It’s been my go-to song for the last year. At first I dug it for the beat and because it feels so buoyant; but then I realized what it was about—the first time I saw the video, I cried—it’s about addiction, the damage it can cause, and how sometimes you have to leave the person with addiction behind.

Who’s gonna walk you through the dark side of the morning?
Who’s gonna rock you when the sun won’t let you sleep?
Who’s waking up to drive you home when you’re drunk and all alone?
Who’s gonna walk you through the dark side of the morning?
It ain’t me

It’s coming up to the one year anniversary of the last night I had my ex in my life. March 1, 2017 she assaulted me in the bathroom of a Tim Hortons in Springhill, N.S. Leading up to that night was no picnic either. I’d spent the better part of three years supporting her as best I could. It was a nightmare. But nightmares get normalized quickly. The last months were particularly awful. I don’t know where to start with that.

I’ve spent the last while trying not to think of that night or about that relationship in general. And, more broadly, the relationship before that, which was also with a person in active addiction. But I guess these things seep out sometimes, and the upcoming one-year mark is making me think about it. I don’t even know if I can engage with the emotions of it; but I can maybe talk about some of the facts.

One of the reasons the video made me cry is because part of it is a hospital scene where the person with addiction lays in a hospital bed unconscious. I visited my ex many times in hospitals. One of those times occurred when I was driving her to a hospital in another town to get into its detox unit. When we were about five minutes from the hospital she started convulsing and seizing, then went unconscious and limp in the passenger seat, slumped up against me as I was driving. I thought she was dying or had died. I tried to hold her up as I raced to the hospital because I knew we were close and it was quicker than stopping and calling an ambulance. I screeched into the parking lot but it was an unfamiliar hospital in an unfamiliar town so I didn’t know where the ER entrance was. I pulled up and called 911 because I couldn’t carry her into the hospital. She came to, disoriented, but also annoyed I’d called 911. The paramedics arrived and eventually they got her to go inside. She was annoyed because now she would have to go through the ER rather than right to the detox unit. I stayed with her in the ER for a while, where she’d periodically have lengthy seizures where her whole body would convulse and she’d be unresponsive; I’d try to hold her, keep her from falling or at least make sure she didn’t smash her head too hard on the gurney. That was just one day. Many of the other days seem like a blur, but that one is in sharp focus.

I went to an appointment with a therapist through the criminal injuries counselling program for the first time this week. I had hopes it would be a place I could unload some of this stuff. But I wasn’t very impressed with the therapist (“Well, at least she’s not stalking you!” “When it’s men, they usually end up stalking the women.” Etc.). And anyway my next appointment isn’t until April, well after the one-year mark. So if you’ll indulge me, I will perhaps make periodic blog posts about the experience of loving and leaving someone with addiction.

I don’t even know what I’m saying here. The song. That day where I thought she died slumped up against me in my car in a strange town. My close friends who knew the score had already been telling me for months and months to walk away. But I kept going. Until I couldn’t, until she beat me up. I got out of the assault relatively unscathed physically; only bruises and bent glasses, a headache, some shock. And maybe it was a useful thing in a way because it was, in the end, what made me walk away and never look back. That night itself was fucked. Lies she had told me for three years seemed to come out, and any remaining belief I had in her ability to be an honest, caring person vanished. I have great empathy for people who live with substance use disorder. But for myself, I don’t have it in me anymore to support someone in active addiction. Not as a partner, a lover, a friend, or even an acquaintance.

In the video Selena Gomez walks away. Every day I am grateful that I did, too.

walk on by

i haven’t left home today. that is rare. but i just couldn’t today. i feel like my skin is onion paper with invisible ink hiding all the words of my past.

yesterday i managed to go to town. even when i’m at my lowest, even when i can’t seem to talk to a single person, i still crave connection and activity. so i went for a walk on the landing. vulnerable and emotional, but i still went.

along the way i passed a couple who were holding hands, two women probably in their early 20s. so sweet and obviously so in love. after they passed by, i started crying and couldn’t stop, had a panic attack.

seeing something so simple and beautiful like that, it broke me open again.

i’ve dealt with depression since i was a teenager, probably since high school. i’ve done a lot in my life so far, had experiences that most people haven’t. but one of the things that has marked my entire adulthood is repression. one learns to make do. i yearn to connect with the world, with people, but sometimes the beauty of the world is overwhelming. to say nothing of the horrors of it. i venture out and it tears me open.

there are so many things i don’t talk about.

i grew up catholic. today i hate catholicism as a religious institution. it engrained in me that sex was bad, that i shouldn’t talk about it. that touching myself, something i discovered when i was young as many of us do, was evil. so i felt guilt and shame. no sex before marriage. women were inferior. “homosexuality” was a sin. all of that shit.

when i was 17 i had my first relationship and it was with a 19-year old boy from the city. i was so naive and so trusting. up to that point, i had spent most of my time with books home in the country in clydesdale. we met on the train. at the time i thought it was so romantic. i couldn’t kiss him, and i don’t even know if i really wanted to. i thought there was something wrong with me. so he tricked me by creating a distraction where i looked the other way and he got in. the first time we made out was in a hotel stairwell in halifax with an easy view from the street. i didn’t know what i was doing and i had to pee so badly that’s all i could think about. he bit my lip so hard it bled. he shoved his hand down the back of my pants and underwear, and his fingers into my vagina. i didn’t enjoy it. i couldn’t say anything. i thought that was what you did. i didn’t know you were supposed to enjoy such things. didn’t know what “enjoy” would even be. he broke up with me maybe a couple months later.

what i remember most about my 20s is loneliness. the girls on the softball team in missouri, i didn’t fit in with. i left missouri in 2000 and it broke my heart to leave my friends and jesse. later, i remember drinking rum and coke in a clayton park apartment listening to janis joplin while it rained. this was while i was doing my bachelor of education. i wrote a lot of poetry, was probably self-harming. i was still in the closet. it was around this time that my brain got rewired and masturbating/orgasms became associated with loneliness and despair. pleasure got all mixed up with displeasure and pain. i did that all by myself. i didn’t need anyone to help with that. (and around that time, i met up with that guy who had been my first boyfriend. turns out he was a total creep. said i was “hot” and wanted me to show him my tits in the middle of a city park, sleep with him so his girlfriend would break up with him because he didn’t have the guts to do it himself.)

the last relationship i was in with a cis man was in fredericton before my education days. it physically hurt to have sex with him. it burned and made me cry. i wound up thinking there was something wrong with me, again. i was open with him about how i was also attracted to women. he said he was cool with it. a lie. the first time i slept with a woman was during a threesome with him. i didn’t know it at the time but he had secretly arranged it with her and with the help of friends of ours who were a male gay couple. they said it was so i could “explore my sexuality,” a lie. it happened. we were all drunk. i didn’t feel well. i kept leaving the bed. i remember she didn’t go down on me. i did on her. mostly i remember them fucking like it didn’t matter i was there. he turned cold after. a week later he broke up with me and told me to move out. they were together. i heard they’re still together now and got married. fuck it. it doesn’t matter. it’s the past. the long past.

see. those two young women looking happy holding hands. i never had that. my youth was not about positive experimentation and being my true self. it’s not like i was trying NOT to be myself. i just didn’t know. and i never had the chance to be young and queer and out and happy. so as much as it brings me joy to see young people free and out, it also kills me a little because i never had it. there were no good old days. i wish someone had told 16-year-old me to expect more, that joy and pleasure were okay.

walking down the street i might look in control. mostly i’m just a pile of mush. just walk on by. or don’t. kiss me. like you mean it. wake up.

rue

the landscape has changed in the four years since i’ve written on this blog, all the old posts of which I have hidden. a changed landscape not just with me, but with so many things. social media is different, more all-encompassing. politics feel more polarized than ever. some misogynists are losing their jobs. some are presidents.

my last postings were from november 2013, and i had made somewhat vague reference to a relationship that had ended just around that time. it was a terrible relationship. the person was an active alcoholic and had serious mental illnesses. basically, none of my needs were met in the relationship and the person treated me like shit. now it’s four years later. another relationship ended last year. it was with a person who was drowning even more in active addiction – drugs and booze – and again with a variety of debilitating mental illnesses. that last relationship lasted the bulk of three years.

i am so angry. so angry and sad these days. in large part for the amount of my life i wasted in those shitty relationships. i should have known better. i should have walked away. i shouldn’t have gotten into those relationships in the first place. wish i had just walked on by when our paths crossed. or yet, never met either of them at all.

the thought has crossed my mind that there is something wrong with me because the last two people i got into relationships with were very ill people. the answer to that is no, i guess? even if part of me still doesn’t quite believe it. i know some of the reasons why i got into relationships with them. people with mental illnesses including substance use disorder deserve love, support and relationship just as much as anyone else does. i have experience with my own mental health issues, namely depression and anxiety; am i not worthy of relationship and love? further, i fell for both of them because i could see so many of the good things about them (or so i thought anyway). possibly to the point of delusion, not able to see lies, cheating, chasms of imbalance in the relationships, meanness or their neglect toward me. maybe also influenced by what they chose to let me see, especially in the beginnings, to the exclusion of other aspects. they both pursued me. i live in a rural area with few dating options. and in both cases i didn’t realize until i was into the relationships how ill they really were. by then i was already connected, committed. when you love someone, you do everything you can for them, and you don’t walk away because things are hard. right? anyway, unhealthy behaviours and upsetting treatment can become normalized really quickly. i did everything in my power to support them and show them care. more than what i would have thought i was capable of given circumstances and how i was being treated. i have that capacity, for deep love, for cherishing someone. but the thing was, it didn’t matter, because their addictions were paramount. i was just a tool, a crutch, a resource. and it’s way easier to be discerning in hindsight.

the second of those relationships was singularly damaging and came to its end because of physical violence done to me by the other person. but that was just the end. the rest of it is another post. i plumbed the depths of my patience and foolishly gave and gave. but that’s what you are supposed to bring to relationships: sacrifice, love, commitment and patience. right?

**

i had made so much progress in the last while. was eating healthier, got onto a fitness program with a topnotch personal trainer, joined the gym, continued doing yoga once a week, bought a mini-home last winter. hell i even came off my anti-depressant escitalopram because i was feeling so good about myself these last few months. and i have been coming off the pain medication nortriptyline i was taking for chronic pain.

but things feel like they are spinning. i feel so angry and so sad. angry that those two people are still on the periphery of my life, living in the area or are friends of people i know; even though i have blocked them both in every fashion possible, changed my phone number, all the things you do. i spin each time i’m reminded of them. i wish i could expel their existences from my memory. i wish someone had warned me to stay away from the first person. i wish i would have listened. i wish i trusted my gut. i wonder if any of that or something else would have changed the trajectory.

i feel overwhelmed by my emotions these days. i get teary-eyed and choked up at the slightest things. pop songs, my cat, upcoming holidays, the sky, having to function as a normal person, the netflix show sherlock, the possibility i have started to have hot flashes….

i feel emotionally spent. when people ask things of me it feels really hard. meeting people on the street feels overwhelming most of the time. i walk around with my hands in a fist, ready for self-defense, always. more like wolverine in logan than kitty pryde in days of future past.

i realized i have never told any of the people who have treated me poorly (and i don’t mean just those two people) what they’ve done to me and how their actions or words affected me. and we just don’t get that chance in life most if not all of the time. things are being brought up from some well deep inside. i feel like i’m choking on those words, those feelings. i don’t know who to talk to, or even if talking would help in the slightest, and i don’t have the energy to go through the process of getting a therapist again. so i’m writing this on here. i don’t want sympathy and i don’t even expect people to understand or say anything at all. i just want some relief from these feelings. just need to keep going.

like my doctor, who, i shouldn’t have been surprised, turned out to be a homophobe and a misogynist, said to me in the ER in the wee hours after i was beaten up, “you’re almost 40. what are you doing with your life?”

i don’t know. i am not sure what to have faith in anymore.