Midsummer of my pregnancy, we were living in the third sardine can of a two bedroom trailer. It was in the same park as the second so we didn't have far to go, but it was still hard on me being big, hot, and pregnant - and having to move.That was the middle of July. The baby was due the second week of September. You'd think that an expectant father would want to be at his wife's side helping her tend to things and anxiously awaiting the arrival of his firstborn. And I guess in a 'normal' or 'typical' family, he would be. However, my family was never normal or typical. Sometimes things become such a pattern in your life that your mind tries to make you believe that the things you're enduring are normal and typical and that you just need to find a way to cope. That everybody has the same troubles and you should just suck it up. It's a self defense mechanism that kicks in, in an effort to spare yourself some amount of grief - a subconscious survival tactic.
It works for a little while until you realize that your life pales miserably in comparison to interactions you see between couples around you. You realize that people really are kind to each other and that not everybody screams obscenities to each other. That not every husband calls his wife names and sometimes daddies really do take their families on outings together. You learn that people are loving toward one another, they tell each other how much they love them, and that couples still hold hands and give kisses goodbye before leaving their homes. That their house doesn't feel like a pressure cooker from all the stress and that they really are enjoying life.
When you come to those realizations, you go through the gamut of emotions. First you feel jealous of them so you immediately have to hate the loving couples, so the jealousy turns to anger because people you hate make you angry. Those are more self defense mechanisms, courtesy of your subconscious. If you hate them, they won't matter. Then you remember that everything you hate in someone else is a reflection of yourself - of something you don't have or wish you did. That's when the sadness and longing set in - when you realize what you don't have and everything you're missing out on. Then you get angry again because of how your life turned out and how dare you be suffering when everybody else seems to have it all. Finally, when you're done of feeling all these things because you've spent so much energy and have nothing left to feel - the final self defense mechanism kicks in and that's numbness. You shut down completely. You grow cold. Numb. Desensitized. Not because you want to be, but because the only thing left to feel is nothing. Your mind is out of survival tactics so your senses shut down and you go back on Auto Pilot, pretending you don't need the basic human needs of love, kindness, compassion, sympathy, company, and closeness. Defiance. Your final stand. You don't need it. Fuck 'em. You're tough. That shit's for lame people anyway. Who does that stuff? Who needs it?
You do.
But the defiance survival tactic won't let you show it because it knows that showing it would make you vulernable to feeling again and that's what hurt you to begin with.
Living a life of solitude is hard, but living a life of solitude in the physical company of someone would be unbearable to a feeling person. I've spent more nights alone since getting married than I ever did as a single person. I don't know why he drank. I don't know why he didn't come home from work most nights or come home at all on most nights, for that matter. I don't know if he hated me that much or loved the alcohol more.I never asked. It wouldn't have done any good to ask. Our communication consisted of tirades of curses, insults, threats, and the occasional physical contact punishable by law. Living like this forces you into a life of solitude. You learn to keep the peace by keeping quiet. Not because you're scared, but because you're just so.....tired. You're mentally and emotionally drained all the time and you end up not having anything left in you to care or fight with. So you let it go. You let it build up. You let it slide. You forget it. It might seem that you're giving in, but you're trying to keep your sanity - what little of it you have left.
The day of my last prenatal visit, the doctor sent me to the hospital for some tests. They decided to keep me there and induce my labor. The induction wasn't going well so the doctor called for an emergency Cesarean section because the baby was in distress. I called The Expectant Father at work that afternoon about 5:oo PM when I got the news. He told me he was 'working' and that he 'wasn't sure he could get off'. Some how, I wasn't surprised. Par for the course, it was. He did show up, though. While they were wheeling me down the hallway to surgery. He says he was there for the whole procedure. He wasn't with me when I went to sleep. He wasn't with me when I woke up. So who really knows? Or cares, for that matter? I mean he had been drunk and/or gone my entire pregnancy. It's not like I depended on him for any kind of moral support. I learned a long time ago not to do that and I wouldn't be disappointed.
