There are a few things I've learned since the winter of 1998, when my life changed. Some of them involve the nature of rivers. Rivers cannot be stopped, and all rivers eventually go to a place of calm water.
October 1998 marked the beginning of a very turbulent time in my life. I was a full-time college student, majoring in Computer Science. To call CS a rigorous course of study is an understatement. At my university, only Physics is more challenging an undergraduate degree. I had three children, ages 4 years, 3 years, and 3 months. My 15-month-old second marriage wasn't going so well � we hit a crisis point the third time I caught my husband making arrangements online to meet another woman for sex. I was dealing with postpartum depression. I had started experiencing flashbacks to my violent first marriage. And of course, there were the usual stressors of money, housework, child rearing, and just whose job it was to change a diaper at 3 a.m.
Things got worse from that point. When I spoke to LDS church leaders about my distress over my husband's online activities, it was suggested that I seek counseling to deal with my own sexual issues, so I could solve the marriage problems by having sex with him more frequently. At the time, I didn't question the wisdom of blaming a husband's misbehavior on an overstressed, depressed wife who was still staying up nights with an infant. I sought out a counselor at my university. It didn't help much; because instead of making everything all better, it brought things to light that I'd been working very hard to keep covered up. I had to admit to myself and my counselor the degree and range of violence in my first marriage, that I'd been date-raped as a teen, and that things weren't so peachy in my current marriage. My depression deepened. In December, I began feeling suicidal and started taking Prozac. I began having panic attacks. The marriage problems continued, marked by such events as the time my husband stuck my middle son�s head in the toilet for the crime of throwing tissues into the toilet instead of the wastebasket while cleaning up a mess.
During this time, I became friends, or perhaps I should say I became dependent, on a wonderful instructor at the university. I found myself in "Anna's" office again and again, crying and seeking support. I'd met her a year before, and had immediately liked her. I enjoyed talking with her, and always left the conversation feeling stronger, more capable, and calmer than when I'd arrived. The problem was, I was also having dreams about her, and they weren't "friend" dreams. As a devout Mormon, I was very disturbed by this. It was hardly the first time I'd felt a sexual attraction to a woman, but it was the first time I hadn't been able to explain it away to myself and make it stop. Soon I felt I was being pulled apart. I felt wrenching, seething guilt, fear, and self-loathing for the way I felt about her and the thoughts I couldn't seem to control. She was a happily married woman, and had no idea of my interest in her. I was very fond of her husband. I wanted to stay away from her. I couldn't stay away from her, because I felt so much better about myself, and my life, after spending time with her. Things continued in this vein through the winter.
By February 1999 I wanted so badly to die, I sometimes wondered if I could end my life simply by willing it hard enough. I attended classes only because it got me out of the house and away from my husband, and because being on campus meant I might see the much-idealized Anna. Two friends were responsible for the fact I didn't get Fs that semester. The panic attacks had become much more. They came two or three times a day, and were literally paralyzing in their intensity. They would last 2 hours. If I could call a friend during the first 15 minutes of an attack, they'd be able to talk me through it. If I missed that 15-minute window, however, I was on my own for the duration of the episode. I would lie on my sofa or curl up in my bed, shaking as wave after wave of pain, terror, guilt, and self-hatred washed over my head. I was unable to move. I felt like a 50 lb. weight were placed on my chest, making it difficult for me to breathe. Things lost the edges. I experienced the furniture as blending into the walls and floor, with no clear distinction between objects. I experienced myself melding with the furniture, having lost my defining boundaries. It felt for all the world like I was in a raging river, clinging to a tree branch for my life, being pushed under by the incredible force of the rushing black water.
I became more suicidal by the day. I carefully researched my method. Though I felt I was a burden to those who cared about me and they'd be better off without me, I didn't want them to have to deal with a failed attempt. If I were going to end my life, I wanted to do it right the first time, not end up in a mental health facility. I remember well the day I spent 6 hours online, searching for the lethal doses of the various medications I�d collected with suicide in mind. I was beside myself with fury when I found that though I could make myself very ill with that I'd been sure would kill me, there was no way my collection of pills would end my pain. I laugh now at my reasoning, but at the time it made perfect sense. Why on earth, knowing how depressed I was, would the doctor prescribe a drug that couldn't be used to permanently solve my problems? Finally, I found a database of suicide methods and felt some relief at knowing that I did have some small degree of control over my life, or, at least, over the end of my life.
Finally, I started talking about my attraction to Anna. I told a mutual friend first. We sat across a study table from one another, Calculus texts between us, both ready to bolt at any instant. I cried, and she kept repeating, "You're not a lesbian." I agreed, again and again, "I'm not a lesbian. I'm not a lesbian." I told my husband how I felt about Anna, and he was surprisingly supportive. I think he was intrigued by the idea of having a bisexual wife. He seemed to enjoy fantasies of having two women in his bed, him in the middle. I didn't tell Anna. I couldn't tell Anna. She'd feel so betrayed that I'd been entertaining such horrible thoughts about her. She'd be disgusted, I was sure. I'd certainly lose the friendship, which seemed at times like the only fragile thread keeping me alive. The "terrors" continued. One friend told me I could call her at any time, even 2 am, when one hit. Anna talked me through multiple episodes, assuring me I'd be okay, distracting me with her own stories.
By April, I couldn't take the pain of being around Anna any longer. I was sure that her gentle husband somehow knew how I felt, and hated me for it. When I was with her I was in agony, wanting to touch her hair or hold her hand, yet terrified she'd somehow know. When I was away, she was all I could think about. Things couldn't continue this way. I had three choices. I could break off all contact with Anna. This would leave her hurt and wondering what she'd done. I could tell Anna how I felt, and risk her disgust and rejection. I could kill myself. After spending an evening with her, crying my eyes out in a movie theater while watching "Life is Beautiful" and knowing that only a small portion of the tears were for the movie, I decided on the third option.
I readied myself for death. I cleaned the house and put things in order. Tomorrow, I thought, would be the day. I planned how to keep my children from seeing my body. I made my "shopping list" of needed items. I'd written up plans for my funeral some time ago, along with my goodbye letters. Before leaving the house to buy the required supplies, I got online and read over the methods database once more, to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I hadn�t book-marked the site for fear my husband would find it, and so I had to search for it each time I read it. While reviewing the database, I glanced over a few other suicide-related sites. One, www.metanoia.org/suicide, caught my attention that night, and I spent several hours reading it. Somehow, the words held me and I wanted to read more. I went to bed that night too exhausted to make my purchases. I still credit that site with the fact I'm alive. The next day, I decided that since I was going to die anyway, I might as well let Anna know how I felt. There wasn't much to lose.
I called Anna and said I really needed to talk with her. She said she'd be at my house in five minutes, and so she was. I stammered and fled to tangent after tangential topic. She kept gently reminding me that there was something I wanted to tell her, and that she was there to hear that, not about the flowers my mother had planted recently. Finally, I picked up my baby daughter and held her, her body in front of my face. I couldn't deal with gaze just then. Looking her in the eye was unthinkable. After another small time of inward dying, I managed to say in a very small voice, "I'm attracted to you." To my shock and confusion, Anna burst out laughing. She replied, "Well, that's hardly something to lose a friendship over! I thought you were going to tell me something bad, like that you'd decided to kill yourself!" I lowered my baby to the floor as I stared in disbelief. Anna hastened to explain, "I'm not interested at all. I've thought about it a lot, and I'm just not gay in the slightest. But it's not a bad thing to be gay! I have friends who are gay, and they're wonderful people! I'd be happy to talk with you about it while you�re trying to figure everything out." We continued to talk about it for a while, and then she asked whether it was okay to give me her usual hug. I said it was, and we hugged before she left.
Interestingly enough, the next day Pride Week began on campus. I walked to classes to discover gay-positive messages written on the sidewalks in brightly colored chalk. It was suddenly springtime, a radiant week filled with light and wonder and possibility, before the reality that nothing had changed sank in and my depression returned, along with the 2-hour stretches of hell-time.
In May, Anna and I went mountain biking. It was a strenuous ride. We biked and climbed to the top of a mountain, then flew back down. I'd recently oiled my bike chain, and some of the oil had gotten onto my tire rims. The brakes weren't great to begin with. About 300 yards from where Anna's truck was parked at the trailhead, I hit a series of moguls in the trail. I was going far too fast. By the way the trees blurred as I whizzed past them and the wind stung my eyes, I figure I was going around 40 mph. After each of the first four launches, I managed to get the bike back underneath me before hitting the ground again. I didn't on the fifth. The back of my head hit the ground first, and my bike helmet literally saved my neck as it skidded along the trail and its Styrofoam crushed with the impact. I tucked into a ball, and when I came to a stop, both ears were scraped and raw, as were with both arms and thighs, though it was a cold day and I was wearing several layers of clothing. I couldn't inhale. Pain radiated through my body from my right collarbone. Anna came around the corner about a minute later, with a loud exclamation. She helped me walk to the pickup truck, and I waited there as she got both bikes into the bed. She rested her hand on my knee as we drove to the clinic. I saw spots, and heard her telling me stories about her son walking up walls and blowing bubble-gum pizzas while sitting on the ceiling. She laughs at this, because obviously she didn't say anything like that.
Once there, I asked her to please sit next to me and hold my hand as I waited for the doctor and the blessed relief of Demerol. She sat there, rubbing her thumb over my knuckles and relating stories of her own mishaps while biking and skiing. The moment seemed crystalline. I felt fully there. Until that time, this awareness and connection had only happened during childbirth. I'd been living behind a sort of emotional wall, a mild form of dissociation. I usually viewed my life as though through a window or television screen. Suddenly, there with Anna, I was present. The pain was so intense; I was unable to maintain my emotional distance. It was a relief when they wheeled me away for X-rays. When I returned, the Demerol had taken effect, but the wall was still down. It happened to be Staff Appreciation Day at the clinic, and I was brought a bowl of hard ice cream. I wasn�t able to feed myself, as hard ice cream required two hands. Anna offered to feed me, but I was unable to stand the intimacy of having her spoon ice cream into my mouth. She loaded the spoon, and I placed it into my own mouth. Anna loaned me some button-down shirts, since my own supply of pullovers wasn't going to work with a broken collarbone. Each time I wore one, it was like her gentle care was wrapped around me. It was hard to give them back once I was able to wear my own clothing again!
A few weeks later, I was sitting on the lawn, talking with a bisexual friend. I told her about the episodes of terror, and how I felt I was drowning, battered by unstoppable waves of emotion. She surprised me, telling me that she had experienced the horrible waves. I asked, what did she do to make them leave? She explained that she had learned that she couldn't make it leave. She simply let it be there with her, and after a time, it left on its own. This seemed nonsensical to me. How could I stop fighting the thing that threatened to overtake and destroy me? How could I simply let it exist with me?
The next time the terror came, I tried what she'd suggested. I loosened my grasp on "safety." It was hard, but I let go and let the waves carry me. I didn�t know where I was going. I didn�t know if I could ever come out of the water, since I wasn't hanging onto anything. To my surprise, the episode didn't last as long as usual. I wasn�t as exhausted by it as I had been before. Over the weeks and months, I practiced letting go when the flood of emotion came. I started entering a meditative sort of state, where I began to see metaphorical and symbolic scenes and beings. I began to understand where the flood of pain came from, and I started learning to heal the wounded places I saw in my head. I was sure, in my meditations, that the healing I was instructed to do wasn't real, that I wouldn't feel any better the next day. But while the flood raged, the meditation and "healing" scenes brought comfort and seemed like the thing to do. So I did it.
I was surprised, and still am, that the healing-images during those times did carry over into my daily living. I was becoming more peaceful, less fearful. Things didn't upset me as much. I didn't have as many "trigger points" of overwhelming emotional pain. I had learned to let the river carry me, and each time it came and I let go, the river took me to a place of calm and peace.
Elusive Gorgons: my writings