Every few months or so I have played with the idea of making this thread. So, I figure I might as well start it. I'm not sure anymore that it has much value to me, but perhaps it can have value to others. Please note that I'm keeping this thread focused on my experiences, realizations, and growths. I'm not going to go into the details of specific instances or the irrelevancy of right vs. wrong. I really, really don't want this to turn into a thread about justification or the blame-game. I'm beyond wanting, or needing, either one.

The biggest value this thread has to me is informing some people that I care about what happened after I "went dark". (That's what I call it when I stopped posting much of anything about my own situation, or posting at all.) Very few people know much of anything about this time in my life, only my fiance, my best friend, and myself.

I guess it is best to go chronologically, and pick up from the time just before my ex and I separated. I'll do one post each for the months, and try to get up to the present.

September 2005

At this point, I was about 75% of the way recovered from my childhood abuse and getting stronger. I was doing HEALS, and really addressing my feelings and disfunctions stemming from my past.

My ex and I were no longer sleeping in the same room. Ostensibly, this was due to the fact that I couldn't sleep with him in the same room. He would snore when he inhaled and hum when he exhaled. He was diagnosed with moderate to severe sleep apnea and given a prescription for a CPAP machine. He never picked it up. (He may have since we separated. I wouldn't know.) At any rate, he would waken me dozens of times during each night. I would nudge him to wake him up. He was irritated that I kept waking him up. Meanwhile, I couldn't get a decent night's sleep, and was becoming increasingly agitated about that. He began sleeping in the spare room.

I say ostensibly, because the truth of the matter was that I was emotionally happier and felt emotionally safer with separate bedrooms. I think that is why I didn't make a bigger issue of (persist more in) the CPAP machine. I don't think insisting on it would have made any difference, but I do realize that one of the biggest reasons that I did not was because I didn't want him sleeping in the same room with me. Yes, I knew this even then.

I was still having night terrors, and had a migraine about once every three nights. Unfortunately, if I was sleepy at all, or in any way less than 100% intellectually, it was interpreted as a migraine and I was treated the same as if it were. In Sept 2004, I was diagnosed with a moderate disc herniation at C-6, to which my doctors attributed my migraines. I never did attribute my migraines to this. I guess I should go into the migraines, as they are an issue known to a few people here.

I am not migraine-free to this day. I have them about once every 3-6 months, same as I always have since I was a teen. That's it. It is hard to explain why I believe I had so many migraines, but I'm going to try. I think my migraines were, for want of a better word, psychosomatic. It was a point at which the stress, what was happening to me, overwhelmed me to the point that my body just shut its cognitive processes down. I just literally couldn't take it anymore, but I refused to give myself a break from it. Thus, my body would go into a critical state. I'll probably hit on the causes of stress and types as I go through the various months. At any rate, please note that I always had an awareness that the migraines were linked not so much to my physiology, but to my psychology. Certainly by September 2005, I was fully aware of this.

At this time, I had fully realized that becoming stronger and healing was likely going to mean the end of my marriage. I was learning to love myself. I was learning to protect myself. I was learning to believe in my own boundaries. I began to have an admittedly shaky belief inside myself that I was actually worthy of love. I was also aware of my own mistakes. My personal history is riddled with them. I had a cycle of giving way too much - everything - to relationships of all types with people just to maintain that relationship. I basically bribed - emotionally, sexually, financially - people to have relationships with me. It is impossible to overstate my abandonment issues, and my own behavior in maintaining unhealthy relationships to protect myself from dealing with those issues...to protect myself from the feeling of inadequacy that accompanies the end of any relationship (what I saw as emotional abandonment). I stayed in situations that no emotionally healthy person would, and I would cling to them with an almost unbreakable grasp.

I also had a tendency to form relationships with people who were equally, if not moreso, emotionally unhealthy. My ex certainly wasn't emotionally healthy. I don't think he was in any way capable of giving what I needed. I don't even think he was willing, if he'd been honest with himself. Perhaps he was honest with himself about it.

I began having talks with my ex a few times a week. Calm talks, actually, just telling him where I was in regards to our relationship. I remember once walking out to the waterfront pier in our community with him, and talking about it. It wasn't a fight, not confrontational, just...well...tired. Very, very tired. Almost completely out of steam tired. I told him that I didn't want to end the marriage, but I wasn't sure I had much choice. I told him I wasn't happy - hadn't been happy for a very long time - and couldn't continue this way. I also told him that I didn't see any sign or hope of things ever being any different. I told him that perhaps he just wasn't capable. I remember telling him that what he had to give would probably make other women very happy, and I hope he one day found one of them. I just never could be one of those women.

At this point, my ex contacted someone from SYMC and began working with her again. I'll make no bones about my resistance to this. Through no design of anyone who ever helped with my marriage, these instances of contacting people were as much a part of the cycle as everything else. I'd talk about him leaving, us separating, ending the marriage (whether calmly or not calmly), and he'd contact someone to intervene. The problem is that he'd follow up no more than once or twice. I'd become re-engaged in the process, and then he'd stop participating. For reasons I'd rather not get into, it became a tool to continue the status-quo, not to end it or make any real change.

The truth is that, for whatever reason(s), my ex was happy with the status quo so long as we weren't having to talk or fight about it, at least to the point that he didn't make any real steps to change it.

Thus, I cannot say that I had no interest whatsoever in the process, I actually had an active resistance to the process. By this time, it was crystal clear to me that this was part of the cycle, and not a solution to it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: *Antigone Rising*,

Good title. I'm looking forward to reading the whole story. I really, really am.

October 2005

October came in like a lamb and went out like a lion. It began the same way that September ended. At this point I had taken, and was at the time taking, some extensive classes in sociology, socioeconomics, psychology, comparative religions, contemporary international problems, and comparative international political systems. My understanding and view of the world was rapidly changing, as was my view of my role in the world. I was rapidly changing. I would never be the same again.

Where those who remember me from back in 2002 when I first joined Marriage Builders will recall that I was Christian, I no longer was. To be honest, it started with a realization that I hadn't been for a long time. If I articulated my beliefs, I had to admit that they could no longer be reconciled with Christianity. For a while I didn't use any label. I studied some Neopagan beliefs, and eventually began studying Wicca under a High Priestess of the Isian tradition. In September and October of 2005, I was studying under her. Her primary statement regarding the Path was "Know Thyself". She is a full professor at Johns Hopkins, and I learned a lot about myself in a short period of time. It fit in quite well with the HEALS and social studies that I was doing.

My career had become a chore, and the company I was working for was not doing well. There were problems in solidifying a revenue (customer) base, and some very poor business decisions being made. However, I worked long hours, and I was also realizing that the long hours that I worked were a form of escapism from the real problems I was facing. I also no longer had any doubt that my career wasn't where my passion was. Yeah, I was (and am) good at it, but it was chosen for that reason. I'm good at logic, and I can easily make a computer do anything and everything short of reading minds. At first it was a challenge, and I enjoyed it. However, it was no longer a challenge, and I felt I could train a monkey to do what I was doing. The spark and the drive were gone. Part of the spark and drive had always been to be financially independent, and the career path was chosen for this reason. I made good money. In software engineering, that is easy to do if you are even mildly competent. The bumper sticker, "I thought I wanted a career, but it turns out I just wanted a pay check," was true for me in a profound way...but I felt trapped by almost 8 years of experience and a degree in that field. Add my financial obligations to that, and I just didn't see any way out.

I also realized that I took way too much of my self-identity from my career. To a very disproportionate degree, I defined who I was and how I felt about myself from my career and my success in it. If things were going well, I felt relatively good about myself. If things were going badly, I became depressed and almost dysfunctional. The portion of my self-worth and self-identity that wasn't tied to my career was tied to my marital relationship in the same way, and probably more strongly. All the years I thought I'd been finding myself, I'd really been busy assimilating key elements in my life into an identity. This wasn't a comfortable realization.

I also had come to realize that the time and energy I put into helping other people with their marriages was also escapism. In fact, it was substitution. It gave me a sense of having some handle on marriage and having some measure of success with it to compensate for my feeling of impotency when it came to my own marriage. I also had a sense that what I've come to think of as the "Takola Brand" was becoming a burden to me. It all began by me posting 100% transparently all the feelings, thoughts, and events I was going through. It turned out, to my surprise, that people read and actually valued what I said. It evolved into a feeling of having to live up to something that was clouding my ability to just be REAL. I don't know if that makes any sense. I never posted anything I didn't believe in, or didn't think. However, I did feel a need to tailor some things, and I also didn't say many things that I believed. Rather, the Takola Brand had become a type of translucent window through which my real feelings and thoughts were refracted until they only showed the outlines in a vague way.

All of this was going on in a relatively calm period. It wasn't a period of peace, though, certainly not inner peace. It is also not accurate to say that this time was conflict-free. Rather, it was a period of conflict avoidance, but the conflict was there. It was the calm before the storm. Actually, it was probably more the eye of the storm. In late October, the storm broke.

I still remember the exact weekend that the storm broke. It was my little sister's 11th birthday, and we were travelling 250 miles to my family home to attend her party. It is necessary to talk about this incident, because it was truly the storm breaking and was a critical turning point.

On the drive, we talked about the state of our relationship. I now know that my ex felt trapped by such discussions. He was trapped by them. That is probably why I discussed them during the drive...he was a captive audience. I was tired of him running away from it. However, he wanted to avoid it and run away from it. He's a conflict avoider, and he certainly felt that he was trapped into something he viewed as tantamount to torture. Even if I had realized this on a concious level then, I doubt I would have cared. I say this because I don't, even now in retrospect, care. I was tired of the verbal "yes", but no follow up. It was a verbal "yes" to what I asked for, but in reality a denial of it. What I asked for never happened. It was a placating "yes" to stop the conversation, shut me up, and go on with life (status quo).

Of course, this was the answer. My intellect knew it even then. This was a, "No," and it had been a consistent no for years. I cannot excuse myself by claiming that I didn't know this. I did. I just wouldn't accept it. I wanted a straight answer from him. No more waiting. No more games. No more hoops to jump through to get my needs addressed.

I also felt equally trapped. I was trapped in a situation to which I would never have agreed, and kept there perpetually by manipulation. Saying, "yes," but doing, "no". Always just enough to keep me from ending the relationship, but just barely enough. I did not have the understanding then to accept that I was trapping myself in that situation by pretending that the, "Yes," might someday have some substance behind it. Cognitively, I knew better. I just didn't like the answer, and wasn't ready to accept it.

We didn't have a present, so we stopped at the Walmart in the town near my famiy. We were having a conversation about something inane - I don't remember the topic - and were walking towards the toy section. I was saying something, and he interrupted mid-sentence to ask a worker where the Littlest Pet Shop toys were. That kinda irked me. We walked on and I began to finish my sentence, and he turned off and went in the other direction.

Small thing. Petty thing. Not to me. His inability to really engage in a conversation with me was one of my biggest issues, and it was a small instance of it. It wasn't the single instance that broke the storm. It was the years of the same, unbending, unending habit. I didn't follow him. He came to find me, and I told him to just go away. I bought some presents for my sister, and went out to the car. I started to drive. I was not calm. I was angry and distressed, and my body posture was rigid, my tone clipped. I didn't say much. He was angry (name calling angry), sarcastic, dismissive, and rude.

I don't recall the events getting to my family's house. I remember going through the motions - happy, presenting a facade that all was well - during the party. I know we left and began the trip home, and I was driving. I remember telling him that if he was going to be sarcastic, dismissive, and belligerent during the ride home that he wasn't going to ride with me. I was adamant that I couldn't make him handle the situation the way I wanted, nor could I make him refrain from sarcasm and name calling, but neither did I have to give him a ride home.

The ride home was 4 hours. It went in much the same vain as the ride from Walmart to my family's house. I was trying to talk to him about what happened and why it had upset me, and he was having none of any type of discussion. I should have known better than to even try. I was met with all the same sarcasm, name-calling, obstinate refusal to listen, etc that characterized most of the discussions following any disagreement in our entire relationship. I shouldn't have expected anything else, but I was still not at the point of acceptance. At one point, I pulled onto the shoulder of the interstate and told him to get out. Yet, I'm not the type of person who can do that, and we went on home in the same vain. It calmed down about halfway through the trip. I didn't know to what extent then, but the dam had burst and there was no holding back the flood.

This incident sparked the involvement of many SYMC members. I hope Just J doesn't mind me identifying her as one of the people who took me to task for my behavior. She didn't justify his, but she did a, "What the heck where you doing?" talk with me. I can't say that it was unwarranted, either. Sorry, J, but I just wasn't at the point of accepting. I am quite certain, though, that she was refraining from giving me several of my own wet-fish slap emoticons.

Even to this day, I am not sorry about this incident. I don't think I behaved well. I don't think that I did anything of which I should be proud. I am not sorry about the incident because it was the catalyst that finally broke the dam and freed me from my own entrapment. I think it also freed my ex.

After this, the eye of the storm feeling returned, but it was much more charged with electricity. We made it through Samhain/Halloween. We celebrated as usual. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and has been for quite some time. I did the front yard up with an entire graveyard - kids would come every year specifically to my house to see the decorations and haunted yard. I also gave each kid a handful of candy, so they came in large numbers and we had a good time with the fog machine, strobe lights, etc. We did a Samhain party with the local Pagan Meetup group (which was headed by my High Priestess). For the next week or so, the surface was calm, but the currents were running violently underneath it and couldn't be stopped.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: *Antigone Rising*,

quote:

Good title. I'm looking forward to reading the whole story. I really, really am.

It is a good title, I wouldn't have stolen it otherwise. I wonder, though, if a more apt title wouldn't be, "The Rising of Antigone." or even, "The Death of Takola and the Rising of Antigone."

It will be nice to have it down someplace before it gets muddled beyond recognition...I might have plans for this in the future.

quote:

This incident sparked the involvement of many SYMC members. I hope Just J doesn't mind me identifying her as one of the people who took me to task for my behavior. She didn't justify his, but she did a, "What the heck where you doing?" talk with me. I can't say that it was unwarranted, either. Sorry, J, but I just wasn't at the point of accepting. I am quite certain, though, that she was refraining from giving me several of my own wet-fish slap emoticons.

In point of fact, one of the reasons I want to hear this story is because it's not just about you -- though it primarily is about you -- but it is also about us as a community. The things that happened with you are going to happen again, and I want to learn from the story. I recall many conversations you and I had during that time, and I give you my full permission to share any or all of them in any amount of detail you think is relevant. Because the stories we tell are vastly important. In fact, they define us as people, as a community, as a species.

quote:

"The Rising of Antigone." or even, "The Death of Takola and the Rising of Antigone."

Or perhaps, "On Becoming Antigone"?