Letting go is not running away

People end marriages all the time. It isn’t easy for any of them. Emotions are nearly always complicated and messy, sending you mixed messages that you have no hope of interpreting. If it were just that, perhaps I would feel more capable of making a decision, but for someone with a dissociative disorder it is much more complex.

The feelings of love and attachment for my husband refuse to live with the feelings of resentment and distaste. And before I knew I was dissociating, I thought I was simply crazy. I couldn’t understand why some days I loved him and some days I didn’t. As for the resentment, I wasn’t able to access those feelings until last month.

In a ‘normal’ body, I would be able to feel those emotions and process them, but thanks to dissociation, feelings that are too overwhelming (which includes love) are bottled away. I float through the rest of the days, trusting that somewhere in one of these bottles inside me are those feelings that are keeping me here, with him.

It wasn’t always so easy to float. Sometimes, when depersonalised, I’ve been pushed. We have a conflict, and because I’m not emotionally attached, I find it easy to reject and leave. The next morning I wake up in horror at what I’ve done. The bottle, now open, is overflowing with love, and I feel betrayed by myself.

It’s a horrible feeling.

When I started with my second psychotherapist, I had very little trust left in myself. Every morning came with it a possibility that a new part of me, with different emotions and desires and needs, might appear. How am I supposed to negotiate the world when I can’t even rely on knowing myself?

Looking back, the work I did to get to today is incredibly complicated. I still struggle with accepting how dissociation f*cks up my life. It is no more obvious than in my relationship with Drew. Which am I:

the part that doesn’t love my husband OR the part that does?

Who do I listen to? Who do I make choices for? They are worlds apart. I can’t begin to bring them together, so I concentrated on just being me (sometimes in love, sometimes not) and made plans for the future I wanted (as a mother). When facing the reality of being an adoptive parent, Drew finally admitted he was unhappy in our relationship. He could no longer live with ‘sometimes a wife’. He finally was able to make a decision. I teetered over the wall.

It’s easier for me: letting go. Grieving is built into my system. What is different this time is that I’m not running. Letting go is not running. I’m letting go of Drew, of our relationship, our future. I’m holding on to me and everything else I have left today.

I know I will get through this.
I feel like dying would be kinder.

But I am patient. I am strong. I am comfortable swimming in the river of loneliness. This is a chance to do things differently. My future is wide open. I am freeing myself to grow up in a more organic way, to discover myself, to make mistakes, and to learn from them. To become an Individual. To be me and to see what sort of impact I can have on the world.

My heart is broken, but I’d rather have the pieces of a broken heart than no heart at all. And for so many days of the last five years, my heart has been in hiding.