I have recently related my relationship with Sandy to taking medication for mental illness. When I met Sandy it seemed like the exact thing I needed. My world was melting around me, and functioning was an an increasingly a high cost. Sandy was so easy to be with from the onset; he, or more accurately, ‘we’ offered stability and cogency. He made it possible to construct a life.
Maybe not obviously from the beginning, it has always lacked extremes – it is largely pleasant and comfortable, if at times restrictive. What it isn’t is frenzied, tumultuous, despairing, impassioned. It is a home with double-pane windows.
I wonder, like with medication, if over time the relationship’s ameliorating power and effectiveness has started to fade.
Not only have the foundation’s cracks become noticeable, but the confines feel more restrictive every day. The sun looks awfully shiny outside. The desire to leave, to stop consuming the drug, grows increasingly alluring. Even if I don’t actively open the door, the erosion continues, the foundation crumbles.
The question is do I accept or encourage its eventual collapse for the sake of a run outside, or do I continue to shore up the foundation with counseling and couple’s therapy?
I must remind myself, that after swinging open the door to march out, it will be a just matter of time before I am raw and stumbling home.