"Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak."
In which Borderline Personality Disorder rears up and roars.
The title of this post is from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and serves as a kind of refrain throughout my memoir.
Our marriage had been rocky. The fighting began almost immediately once she completed her move from Maryland to Kansas, 11-year-old daughter in tow. When I would pull away, she’d cry and beg me not to leave, apologize, and offer promises, “I love you. I’ll eat peanut butter and jelly with you in the streets if we have to.”
Every two to three years, we experienced a major upheaval, a new doctor for her, suicidal ideation, anti-depression and anxiety meds. She fought with her father, she fought with her mother, she struggled with raising her daughter. We bought a house, which she rejected. We tried to have children, but a combination of slow swimmers and something else prevented conception. We’d get down the road with fertility testing, two or three months in and she’d grow frightened and stop charting and taking her temperature.
When her father died and my brother committed suicide a day apart from each other and on opposite coasts, our lives seemed to pull together. Cataclysmic events. As with most people, difficult straits in lives brought us together.
We stopped fighting, though we were mortally wounded. We shuffled through our daily life anesthetized. And then I was fired. Step-daughter was out of the house by then, and we, the empty-nesters, could go anywhere. She chose San Diego, and set her sights on finding a job there. She did, and I followed, found a job at the same University across campus, replicating our life in Kansas, one university, one car.
We moved, a continent away from her mother in Virginia to within two hours of my mother, now also a widow, in Los Angeles.
On my birthday in 2005, we awoke for the first time in our new apartment near Mission Bay in San Diego. We quickly set up house and settled into a routine - work, dinner, and nights spent at our computers, she at one side of the apartment and me on the other, twenty feet away from each others, her back to me. We didn’t own a television or a couch.
Several weeks went by, and with stiff backs, the silence grew. There had been silences before. Breaking them meant risking a fight. But this seemed different. We had survived a year after the major deaths in our life, the move to the coast, new jobs. We had survived all the turmoil of raising her daughter, of meeting on the internet and getting married. We were a month shy of 10 years since having first chatted on the internet, which led to a phone call, which led to a plane flight, which led to her leaving her husband and moving to Kansas, which led to us moving in together.
This silence felt fraught. But it was no way to live. There were no outstanding debts, no unresolved tensions looming. I could only guess, and I had long since stopped assuming anything about which she might be thinking. So I tried, as gently as possible to break the ice.
What follows is chapter 19 from my memoir.
19 - Where Fishmen Lounge at Noon
We set up the computers on opposite sides of the apartment 20 feet from each other. A few weeks after our move, QT played Bejeweled, resting her chin on her hand, while I learned more about HTML and CSS. Night after night, she sat with her back to me. We had not argued since the move. In fact, the silence had grown louder than the waves of the nearby beach. I was hesitant to crack open whatever kernel QT had latched onto. It was usually an innocent remark that led to World War III.
My nerves tonight . . .
‘Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
‘I never know what you are thinking. Think.’
I screwed up my nerve. “So, do you want to do something?”
QT stood up, stretched, and took a deep breath. Her hair was wild and her eyes shone fire. She fiddled with her ear and said, “No,” casually, as if rejecting ketchup with her French fries.
She folded my fingers around her wedding ring and diamond stud earring that served as an engagement ring. She grabbed the car keys and her purse and slammed the door.
“Nooo! What the. . .”
My tears hit the floor before I realized what had happened. I stood for a moment looking at the closed door, holding the jewelry in my hand.
Nothing led to this. Nada. No fights. No topics left undiscussed. No work crises. No pressures from family, her mom, my mom.
An empty glass sat on the floor by her computer. Those wild eyes.
I ran to the car and caught her as she revved the motor, looking for music.
“Don’t you dare drive that car. I will report you. Come back and let’s talk.”
“I’m not coming back in. Just leave me alone.” She rolled up the window.
I stood in the damp air for a few minutes, catching my breath, growing cold in the night air, and then went back inside.
Half an hour later, I checked the parking lot. She was still there, seat reclined, listening to music loudly with her eyes closed.
I went to bed anxious and alone. She came in later, said we’d talk another time. We never did. She never would--or could--explain why she took off her rings. I gave her the rings back in the morning, and she put them back on.
I received an email from her.
Re: Happy Thursday –
Lee:
I’m so sorry you’re feeling frustrated but I can certainly sympathize with you. Looking back, I haven’t been “out of my box” and have been acting “closed.” I’m sorry. I think I’m in that dreadful “change, change, cope, cope, close out the world” survival technique. I think I’m just feeling out of balance. Now this DOES NOT mean I am unhappy with our move and everything – I think I’m just feeling temporarily displaced – I get this way when I move, even when I moved to Kansas BUT I’ve never looked at it and in the middle of all of this I never thought about it – I’ve been running on auto-pilot. but bringing it to my attention – I can see what’s been going on and I’m so sorry I’ve been doing that!
You are my home and my heart and believe it or not, that has given me a great peace but unfortunately, I’m treating you like my comforting woobie (in existence) instead of like my pacifier that I suck on when I’m nervous (make sense?) One just exists, one has an active existence.
Thank you for talking about this. Yes, it’s been a month and life is new and exciting, things are settling in and our little pad is starting to feel more like home (it’s got TOO much stuff – too much clutter) :)
I love you!
Let’s have a great weekend and make nekkid chocolate chip cookies!
Kisses!
Love QT
(End Chapter 19)
Active fighting resumed after this incident. It was neither better nor worse than silence.
Shortly after this crisis, QT found a counselor to work with and a psychiatrist, a candy doctor to prescribe her meds. They diagnosed her with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Despite years of cyclical fighting and individual and marriage counseling, her counselor and psychiatrist did not reveal to us their diagnosis. It would be 5 1/2 years before I was even introduced to the term Borderline Personality Disorder. By that time, the break had happened and it was far too late.
Let me know what you think of the above scene in the comments below.
Next time, we’ll look more at what it takes to convert memory to memoir.
Take care and stay safe out there.
Until then, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!