The House

I like comparing human psyche to a house. 

We build the fa?ade, the rooms – some are for us only, some are for inviting guests in, some we use as a storage for memories, in some we rest, in some we create, etc. 

It is a life long project that we start as children and continue until the very end. Family and parents then should be the very foundation of the house. The support, the ground, the floor, on which the whole construction is based.

Family is the base, the support, the ground. So, it seemed that in my house the floor has cracked when my parents split up. Adults around me didn’t know how to fix the crack, most likely because they had their own houses full of cracks. 

Mental health, emotional support, trauma, therapy, no one thought of these concepts at the time. My mom distanced herself even more from me, my father kept the usual distance, my grandmother blamed my mom, other relatives followed my grandmother. 

I was not a part of a single conversation about the divorce or anyone’s feelings. Everyone seemed to move on with their lives as if nothing important happened. So, I followed their lead and learned to walk around this crack and pretend it was normal and didn’t need to be fixed.

Later on, when my own marriage was collapsing, all of a sudden it became very hard to pretend that the crack wasn’t there. It grew and became more like a black hole sucking everything around me into it. 

Or perhaps was it an invitation to look inside and understand what was happening?

配圖/The Movie"Inception"

At first, I resisted, I tried my best to save my marriage. I tried to talk, to plead, to fight with my husband. I went to therapist myself and I begged him to go to couple counselling to help us overcome our problems.

To which he replied that he was a perfect husband and a father, and that he didn’t have any problems, it was only me and my problems and I should deal with them myself. That was the moment when I completely lost my footing as I realized there was no longer us, I was all alone. 

Was there ever 'us'? 

Were we actually together in our marriage? Anyway, I finally stopped resisting and started falling into my crack/black hole.

Here I was, back to the zombie mode again. I disconnected and internally shut down.I can’t recall any feelings, emotions or conversations from that period. I remember being overwhelmed but at the same being numb like after concussion with all the ringing and muffled sounds. 

Externally I probably looked normally. I started looking for an apartment for me and my son all the while continuing to work full-time and packing my things. 

I didn’t have good friends I could talk to, and I was also afraid to bother anyone by asking for help so I just did everything quietly, all alone.

I asked only for one day off from work for moving my things into the new apartment. I didn’t realize back then that it was very traumatic and painful for me. I didn’t know that I could have asked for more days off from work and take some time for healing. 

I didn’t tell my parents about it because it wasn’t a big deal when it happened to them. why should it be important when it happened to me, right? I unconsciously followed my mom’s example when she left my father. She also did it very quietly, without asking for help, without getting support, without her family being there for her. 

Wait, or maybe she did, and I just didn’t see it? 

A few months later more questions started coming to mind – What should happen to a person that she doesn’t feel she is hurt? Why she doesn’t ask for help? Why she doesn’t tend to the wound? How come no one around noticed?

If I went through the divorce now, I would ask for time off from work. I would tell my parents. I would tell my friends. I would ask for help. I would allow myself to become a mess and grieve. 

But back then I was unable to do any of these.

配圖/Helen

So, I pretended I was okay and became a workaholic for a while. That was quite a period and it should have its own name like “A Diary of Obsession”. 

Interestingly my obsession and depression came together, taking over my mind by turns. And the intensity of one would predict the intensity of the other. I was obsessed with work and would often stay late till the cleaning ladies would ask me to leave so they could lock the school. 

I got obsessed with martial arts, I signed up for every class in my gym so I could exhaust myself physically as much as mentally and emotionally. 

I became obsessed with reading and learning about mental health hoping to make sense of what I was going through. Now I know I was just afraid to face the pain and all the mixed-up feelings that came with the divorces. It was way more than I could handle so I tried everything I could to escape it.

I needed to stop but I couldn’t do it myself, so the help came from an unexpected place. I started to notice that every time a holiday or vacation came, I would fall sick and stay in bed the entire time. 

On weekends or evenings when I was alone at home while my son was with his dad I would start falling apart and cry and would go back to being depressed. I felt so ashamed and guilty for crying as if I was wasting my time when I could get so many things done like cleaning, homework, reading, cooking, and preparing for work. 

Oftentimes I would cry till my face was all swollen and ugly, or I couldn’t cry anymore. There was a lot of crying, almost 6 months of it. I mostly cried when I was alone, occasionally when I was talking to friends. 

I despised myself for not being able to stop crying, so I was forced to learn to appreciate crying. As if tears helped to soften up and wash away a lot of frustration, disappointment, disillusionment, resentment, and resistance. 

Now I don’t stop people, especially children, when they cry. Instead, I try to stay with them, hold them if they allow, and tell them it’s okay to cry. Because I wish someone did the same for me when I cried alone.

All that time I was talking to my therapist and I had one friend supporting me very much for which I am eternally grateful. 

Yet I started having burnout after burnout at work. I started to notice that my son was highly stressed and thanks to him, my little mirror, I finally noticed that it was me who was stressed and was stressing everyone around. 

Crying also greatly helped. I felt slightly less overwhelmed, just enough to come back up to my senses and face my pain and my reality. I found myself miserable, messy, and exhausted. 

My house was in ruins. There was nothing left but the floor with the massive crack and a very deep and dark basement that I just discovered and came back from.

To Be Continued...