A little over a week ago, Ted told me that I had an unusual ability to be both emotional and rational about my depression. Today in therapy, Madeline pointed out something similar: when I communicate with Sandy, I (and he in return) intellectualize my feelings rather than feel my feelings. This resonated with something that my mother likes to remind me regularly. As a child, I was aptitude tested or something. The results showed that I was unusually equal-brained – meaning that I excelled at left brain activities as much as right brain activities. Try to refrain from rolling your eyes. Remember, this was the seventies, and lateralization of the brain was a popular notion. The point is that she likes to remind me that I have a full-spectrum of talents – even ones that seemed at odds – basically things that require the ability to be simultaneously rational and intuitive.
Of course, often I vacillate between rather than embody both. In high school I aced every math and science class I could take, then I went on to major in English (Literature and Creative Writing) at the university. Consistently, during both my high school and college years, however, I was drawn to the crazy women of literature: characters, authors, auto-biographers. Zelda Fitzgerald resided in a special place in my heart. I consumed voraciously Anne Sexton and Sylvie Plath. Cassavetes’ movie, A Women Under the Influence, starring the brilliant Gena Rowlands, hypnotized me. In many cases, I would study them, using them as subjects of papers or performing extracts for speech competitions. And it comes as no surprise that I was pretty good at playing crazy. I like to think it was less romanticizing the characters and more identifying with them. I would wring a work for every gram of meaning and understanding. I did not want to be these women, but I wanted to understand why they were the women that they were. Why did the crazy exist?
The fascination lulled for a while, but then I read Sybil in my mid/late-twenties. Immediately I rented the video (yes on VHS, I am that old) and have forever loved Sally Field. Sybil’s story differed. The source of her madness was unquestionably and horrifically clear, but how it manifested veered far from the traditionally suicidal and tragically self-destructive women I had previously studied. Here was a women who disassociated multiple portions of her inner being in order to protect herself. Somewhere under a mammoth amount of loathing, she loved her self enough to create and shelter her beings. I imagine her as a many faced marionette or puppet. The head spins around and a different character can speak at anytime. What skill it takes for a puppet master to switch readily from one character to another. To think that she did this unconsciously and furthermore, managed to muffle the turned faces so that they were unaware, awed me.
Predictably, my journaling at the time referenced my inner persons, as separate characters in my head. The few entries in my journal written in first person plural tempt me to roll my own eyes, but I get how important it was to my then suicidal me to adopt any safety measures I could to stay alive. Of course, at no time did I ever have the skill or the severity of need to disassociate. All characters were aware at all times of the happenings of any individual one.
Then at some point after I met Sandy, I stopped thinking of myself as a collective. I stepped fully into rational mode, embracing it in all of my choices from professionally coding to socializing with coders at dinner parties where the topics of debate were less art and film and more politics and ecology. I stopped writing altogether. The euphoria that someone loved me, coupled with the energy required for each challenge we faced from home buying to child rearing, helped me forget my multi-faceted being.
Today, Madeline reminded me to be aware of the ever present other facets. She stressed that during conflicts with Sandy – no matter how academic the conversation – both my intellectual and emotional/spiritual sides are present. While the intellectual me can concede a point, the emotional/spiritual side may experience it as a blow. Possibly the same is true for Sandy, or maybe does not experience life like a multi-faced marionette, maybe he and others nest their inner, sensitive selves like Russian dolls.
In my Sidewalk post, I shared that I was reluctant to rely upon Sandy for emotional support for fear that I would drag him into my black hole of emotional need. Undoubtedly this is true. But maybe some of the fear is less concern about protecting him and more about protecting myself. Maybe the fear stems from the emotional bruises he unknowingly delivered in a completely rational conversation. Maybe I fear any more blows.