One Year Later

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

So, it’s now been a year of bloodletting, purging my body and mind of all the insanity after years of exposure to my wayward and intemperate ex partner.

Reaching this milestone isn’t the emotional equivalent of enjoying chilled Sancerre in celebration. No, it has the same long finish on the palate as gargling with a mouthful of Listerine instead.

A quick précis for those of you unfamiliar with my departure from my relationship last year: I was living in Nova Scotia, and the largest forest fire in the province’s history was making its way towards our rural home. I chose to defy the evacuation order, and my partner accepted her friend’s invitation to stay with her and her husband in town. The friend had carved a niche for herself, making a craft industry out of her personality disorder by becoming a regression therapist, and laid claim to being Queen Guinevere in a past life. The friend disliked me intensely, was an unapologetic misandrist…and was a seething termagant. She also treated my partner like her lap dog, the fact of which was rubbing me very raw. I eventually quit my watch on our house when I learned that it was causing my partner considerable distress, accepting her friend’s invitation to stay with them in town.

With factors like these, what could possibly go wrong? All it took was a bit of alcohol to set the whole comic Rube Goldberg apparatus rolling to its doom.

It’s been a year of working with the hand that fate has dealt: a Blackjack 16. A tricky thing to pair that hand with Aurelius’ “Amor Fati” (“Love the hand that fate deals you…”)

It was far easier to mentally accommodate my poor hand by thinking of a dour and indifferent croupier arbitrarily dolling out the cards at life’s gaming table, instead of dealing with a smug-faced, pontificating Aurelius.

A year later, the day did not dawn with the lyrics of “La Marseillaise” commemorating the grand event, drowning out the bird’s early morning chorus, and ushering me into an epoch of liberty, equality, and fraternity after my personal revolution. No, the event was marked by the vestiges of a grim nightmare about my ex partner so vivid that it roused me from my sleep.

Like the rest of you, I’m still treading water some days at Point Nemo, barely floating at the most inaccessible place on the planet.

Like everyone else, I spent months running on a Mobius Strip, working myself into an early grave in my attempts to reach some logical conclusion to this grim business.

There isn’t one when you pursue a route paved with the maddening dichotomies inherent in BPD.

As the expression goes, man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor, and by God, it was a searingly painful experience that stripped me raw over the last year.

I’m not the man that I was. That poor misguided person who’d dedicate himself to any lost cause died a grim death in a house in Nova Scotia a year ago, surrounded by a raging fire, and 6000 kilometres away from the nearest friendly face.

I have one friend remaining in my life, as all the others warmed to me like gonorrhoea when I left Nova Scotia and returned to British Columbia. They filled the air with choking clouds of Lysol at the mere whiff of my name, suspecting my misfortunes to be contagious.

I don’t take it personally, as it’s human nature, and there was no loss worthy of mourning at that point.

So, where does this leave me?

We all potentiate relationships in their absence. In their presence, you rise one morning years later to discover that it has now become a routine, with all the nuanced glamour of mopping a floor.

We become victims of life’s ingenious contrivances. One thinks of them in terms of the feast of Cana, but at the end of the day it’s just natures way of disguising cheap pedestrian pablum.

There’s no glamorous victory to celebrate today. This experience has stripped me of my belief in life’s ingenious contrivances, making me feel like I can never go home again…

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time-back home to the escapes of time and memory.” Thomas Wolfe

[Augustine]

So, it’s now been a year of bloodletting, purging my body and mind of all the insanity after years of exposure to my wayward and intemperate ex partner.

Reaching this milestone isn’t the emotional equivalent of enjoying chilled Sancerre in celebration. No, it has the same long finish on the palate as gargling with a mouthful of Listerine instead.

A quick précis for those of you unfamiliar with my departure from my relationship last year: I was living in Nova Scotia, and the largest forest fire in the province’s history was making its way towards our rural home. I chose to defy the evacuation order, and my partner accepted her friend’s invitation to stay with her and her husband in town. The friend had carved a niche for herself, making a craft industry out of her personality disorder by becoming a regression therapist, and laid claim to being Queen Guinevere in a past life. The friend disliked me intensely, was an unapologetic misandrist…and was a seething termagant. She also treated my partner like her lap dog, the fact of which was rubbing me very raw. I eventually quit my watch on our house when I learned that it was causing my partner considerable distress, accepting her friend’s invitation to stay with them in town.

With factors like these, what could possibly go wrong? All it took was a bit of alcohol to set the whole comic Rube Goldberg apparatus rolling to its doom.

It’s been a year of working with the hand that fate has dealt: a Blackjack 16. A tricky thing to pair that hand with Aurelius’ “Amor Fati” (“Love the hand that fate deals you…”)

It was far easier to mentally accommodate my poor hand by thinking of a dour and indifferent croupier arbitrarily dolling out the cards at life’s gaming table, instead of dealing with a smug-faced, pontificating Aurelius.

A year later, the day did not dawn with the lyrics of “La Marseillaise” commemorating the grand event, drowning out the bird’s early morning chorus, and ushering me into an epoch of liberty, equality, and fraternity after my personal revolution. No, the event was marked by the vestiges of a grim nightmare about my ex partner so vivid that it roused me from my sleep.

Like the rest of you, I’m still treading water some days at Point Nemo, barely floating at the most inaccessible place on the planet.

Like everyone else, I spent months running on a Mobius Strip, working myself into an early grave in my attempts to reach some logical conclusion to this grim business.

There isn’t one when you pursue a route paved with the maddening dichotomies inherent in BPD.

As the expression goes, man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor, and by God, it was a searingly painful experience that stripped me raw over the last year.

I’m not the man that I was. That poor misguided person who’d dedicate himself to any lost cause died a grim death in a house in Nova Scotia a year ago, surrounded by a raging fire, and 6000 kilometres away from the nearest friendly face.

I have one friend remaining in my life, as all the others warmed to me like gonorrhoea when I left Nova Scotia and returned to British Columbia. They filled the air with choking clouds of Lysol at the mere whiff of my name, suspecting my misfortunes to be contagious.

I don’t take it personally, as it’s human nature, and there was no loss worthy of mourning at that point.

So, where does this leave me?

We all potentiate relationships in their absence. In their presence, you rise one morning years later to discover that it has now become a routine, with all the nuanced glamour of mopping a floor.

We become victims of life’s ingenious contrivances. One thinks of them in terms of the feast of Cana, but at the end of the day it’s just natures way of disguising cheap pedestrian pablum.

There’s no glamorous victory to celebrate today. This experience has stripped me of my belief in life’s ingenious contrivances, making me feel like I can never go home again…

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time-back home to the escapes of time and memory.” Thomas Wolfe

[Tangled mangled]

Augustine,
Thank you for sharing this.

Nice to see that you are able to creatively reflect on your experience.
I’m at a similar point in my separation/ divorce but still struggling with writing about my experience.

I’m guessing you are a writer, you do have a sophisticated way with putting your thoughts across.

One year on, I can relate with that sense that the old me died with the relationship. Yours was in the fire. I  think mine was following DV/ attempted strangulation.

I’m still figuring out this new person I’ve become. Due to my profession I come in contact with people all day and one thing is certain, I see right through people and can comfortably remain distant or perhaps robotic in many ways. No smiles and unnecessary pleasantries with people I don’t know.
My bpd tinted lens is on most of the time but no longer on hyper vigilant mode.

I hope you continue to heal and grow in your creativity.

[EyesUp]

@Augustine.

Thanks for sharing.  Bonus points for a surprise Point Nemo reference.

The thing that I'm coming to accept is that the only thing I can potentially control is me, and - surprise, surprise - I'm accessible to myself, all the time - never truly far away...   

How convenient.

When I stopped thinking about my uBPDxw, I had more time and energy to direct inward.

Shifting my thinking in this direction feels potentially narcissistic, or at least self-involved.  Naturally, I'm distrustful of this inward focus after experiencing how wrong it can go...  but... as the saying goes, moderation only works if you don't overdo it.

Maybe caretaking isn't so bad if you're taking care of yourself, to a certain extent.

[PeteWitsend]

...

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time-back home to the escapes of time and memory.” Thomas Wolfe

Thanks for sharing this.  I'm kind of in a similar boat, in that years ago, I moved to a state I had no intention of living in long term, with no friends or family nearby.  And then I got divorced here, and so must remain in order to have regular contact with my D and be part of her life growing up. 

And in the meantime, my old friends have married and moved on, bars & clubs we used to go to have closed, real estate prices skyrocketed, making some of those neighborhoods completely unaffordable to me now, and I'm no longer young and able to eat and drink with abandon... I have to worry about blood pressure and cholesterol... and increasing rates of heart disease among younger people, and worry about pre-maturely dying and not being there for my kids. 

But at the same time, while those youthful dreams of glory and fame are gone, I can move forward more focused on material results; I no longer care what others are doing, what I'm not doing.  I'm not worried about missing out; I missed out.  Now, I have to live the rest of my life as best I can for those dependent on me, myself, and the society I'm part of. 

Find a new cause, without expecting fame and fortune or even gratitude for doing it.  Find something you can pour some of yourself into, while being mindful of your own needs; don't do this with naive, youthful expectations of dramatic results, but long term health and wellness for those concerned.