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7:17

The last day (30 hours or so) has been surreal.  I wrote on Sunday that Daniel hated me, but writing is different than feeling. On Monday (yes, after my therapy session) I started to feel it. She said it to me, and I said it to her, and then it concretized around us. I said I wasn’t scared of it.  She knew better.

It doesn’t make sense for Daniel to hate me, except of course it does to him.  Daniel’s hatred of me is doing some extremely important work for him, which is why he clings to it so tenaciously.  I have lots of hypotheses about what that work is.  Well, one big hypothesis, which I started to type and then deleted. I don’t want to use this space to get inside Daniel’s head. Protecting this space is part of the dethroning project.

It doesn’t make sense to me for Daniel to hate me, but knowing that he hates me makes sense of many other things.  Why he has been reluctant to go out to dinner with me, much less go away with me, for years. Why I refused to see what he needed, because that would mean seeing the whole picture, and I couldn’t do that.  Why certain places made me so very sad (because they were full of couples without hate).  Why, for so many years, things felt just not right. Why he’s always mad at me. So, that’s comforting in a way. I know one level of why.

Except — holy cow, Daniel hates me! After… everything, he hates me. I wonder if he knows it. That’s where things get surreal. The man I live with, and have loved and have built a life on, around — but never with, because he refused — hates me. Or rather, he hates his wife. I think he likes Dorothea. That may be why he’s been so supportive about my work situation. He likes me. But he really, really, really hates his wife. Which is me.

I know that things will be so much better on the other side of this hate, but I don’t know when I’ll get there. It looks fearsome, to divide a household, to say nothing of the emotional damage to Milo. People do it. It’s mostly a logistical and financial matter, and I’m good at those things. Daniel will make it significantly more terrible and therefore more expensive than it has to be. I wish I could start today.  But, Milo. I don’t want to give up seeing Milo every single day.

Then there is the huge question of how I can ever ever trust my own judgment again. It’s kind of funny, actually. I have huge trust issues, which predate Daniel. I am very upfront that I don’t trust people not to hurt me. And those trust issues absolutely did not protect me. (Pause for that earthquake to settle in.) Maybe I should be trusting as fuck, and see what happens then. As it happens, a lot of people are being very very lovely to me. I couldn’t always see the love that surrounded me, because that might have required to see the laser beam of hate. Maybe I should believe that I am a very trusting person. Believing that I was mis-trustful caused me to discount (maybe) what was happening: I only think it’s that way b/c of my trust issues, not because of the real thing. But it was the real thing!

This is what I mean about things being surreal. I am moving through the days as if things are entirely normal. As if I don’t know what I know. As if this knowledge doesn’t make me wish to the point of tears that my parents lived in the same city as I do, so that I could just go back to their house, and start all over again. They have furniture. I’m going to need furniture — and I’ve already decided it will be used furniture, because I’m going to have to get more new furniture when I move from my emergency landing pad apartment to my “this is my real life now” apartment. And I will just throw money at someone – throw all the money I’m saving with that responsible, environmentally sound used furniture – to find it and buy it and arrange it until I can make real decisions.

We will go to my cousin’s wedding in a month. We will make plans about Milo. We will celebrate holidays. We will act as if all this is normal — and, to be honest, for us this is normal. Daniel hating me and me acting as if I’m not hated, is totally normal and status quo.  I will consider waiting to leave until Daniel has stabilized after his crisis (his hating me long predates this crisis.  This crisis might have saved me 10 years of continued blindness). I will stay nicely put until Milo is older. As if all this is normal.

Oh hell, I will have to go on Facebook, won’t I, once I’m divorced, so that hopeful exes can find me and at least I’ll have someone to sleep with for a while. Oh hell, I really don’t want to go on Facebook. I will go on a hundred shitty dates. I’ll write wry, witty blog posts about them. I will be invited to a hundred Shabbat dinner tables with visiting single men. Oh hell. When will it end?

I am now suffering alongside Daniel. Daniel wants his crisis to end, but he seems to do little to hasten the end.  Me too! I am in crisis. The difference is, he wants what he once had to be restored. I know that I never had what I thought I had (maybe I had it, in the beautiful 1990s). I am in crisis, I want it to end, and for some period of time I will do nothing to bring that end about. I will live surreally. Where is the joy in that?

7:51