The Act of Chosing Myself, First
CW: mention of rape (only the word), mention of intimate partner violence research, mental health/outcomes of violence (nothing explicit), discussion of alcoholism.
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The only thing harder than losing you, is knowing it came from the act of choosing myself, first. Ten years of choosing you led me here. Ten years of losing myself. Ten years.
Or:
120 months
521 weeks
3650 days
87,600 hours
6,307,200 minutes
I guess that’s not entirely true. At the beginning things weren’t so difficult. Before you, a majority of my relationships were with men who only valued the amount of time I spent on their pleasure. I was an object. A placeholder. A stepping stone. A good time. Before you, most of my time was spent deconstructing the social construction of the concept of love. It wouldn't hurt to never be loved if love wasn’t real. But, you loved me. You told me before I was ready to hear it and it made me cringe. But, you kept saying it. And deep down, I wanted to be loved.
For the first few years, we danced around each other's issues fairly gracefully. You ignored the amount of time I spent deciding what to wear and putting myself down and I ignored the amount of time you spent drinking to forget your bad day at work. I was insecure, but you didn’t seem to mind. Maybe that should have been my first red flag. All the time I spent talking down to myself and not a single second spent hearing words of encouragement from you. Hundreds of hours spent on trying to make myself pretty enough for you, and not a single reassuring compliment about the effort. Nearly 1,261,440 minutes of our time together, obsessed with being as perfect as possible, and you didn’t give me one minute of admiration in return. But, you loved me.
Things got more complicated as I started becoming more successful. No amount of shaming myself could erase my accomplishments. You never told me this explicitly, but I think it was hard for you to accept I was smart. As smart as you. Smarter? I remember one evening at dinner with friends, we were talking about my latest publication on the impact of intimate partner violence on bisexual women’s mental health outcomes. I was discussing the role of bisexual stigma, toxic masculinity, and other forms of inequality (like age and disability), on the severity of post-traumatic stress disorder among survivors. Our friends were enamored with me that night. “How intriguing!” “We didn’t learn about these types of mental health outcomes during our training!” But, you didn’t seem impressed. “Well, you’re not a real doctor,” you said. Surrounded by you and three other M.D.s, it was clear what you meant. You were on your fifth glass of wine, so I excused it. But, I reasoned, you loved me.
The more entangled in my work I got, the less insecure I became. I recognized the deeply personal connection between the things I was researching and my life before you. I named my experiences. Rape. I recognized the outcomes. Anxiety. I sought therapy. It was working. I was changing. I stopped obsessing over how I looked, because I realized even with little effort I looked good enough. I realized that I had triggers. That when I couldn’t leave the house or when I had to leave a party early, it wasn’t because I wasn’t any fun. It was ironic, if not poetic, for me to realize just how much of my life I had given to fear, without ever having acknowledged myself as a survivor. The final 315,360 minutes of our time together, I questioned whether or not I was also surviving you. But, I convinced myself, you loved me.
The more entangled in my work I got, the more I also started to see your drinking for what it was. Maladaptive coping. It was more and more difficult for me to accept the person you were after six o’clock. You were becoming a trigger. You wouldn’t touch me anymore. You pulled away when I tried to reach for your hand. You either refused or simply could not sustain eye contact. Sometimes you’d reach out for me, for sex, after waking up at 3am, as if nothing had happened before we went to sleep. It pained me to know that you spent all day fixing broken hearts, but couldn't fix yourself. At only 34, you were one of the most talented cardiothoracic surgeons in all of Boston, but you drank yourself to sleep every night. Was I willing or able to spend even one more minute of my time wondering when you’d finally drink yourself to death? I knew I couldn’t live the rest of my life the way I’d spent the last 6,307,200 minutes. But, I imagined, who else would love me?
In the final days before I made the decision to tell you I was leaving, I spent most of my time reconstructing the concept of love. It was easy to settle for any love at all, if love wasn’t real. So, I had to think more critically about if I wanted to be loved or if I wanted to be respected. Cherished. Honored. Held. Acknowledged. Seen. Did I need to be loved by you?
It was in this simple reconstruction of love, that the answer become clear. You weren’t the only one who loved me. I loved myself, too. In fact, I loved myself so much, I knew it was time to let you go. But, you didn’t let me do it without a fight. You dragged it out for about a week. As you cycled through the various stages of grief, it took all I had to not continue to care for you. It took all I had to not give in. In some ways, it took more than I had. At first, you denied you had a problem.
“Are you kidding me? I drink too much? You drink wine, too? Everyone drinks wine. They recommend one or two glasses of red for your heart.”
So, each night, I counted. I recorded. You got angry at me.
“Fuck you. You drink, too. We’ve been drinking together for years. If you had a problem with it, you should have fucking told me before now.”
I told you that this anger, this resentment, was one of the biggest reasons for my decision. So, you bargained.
“I can stop. I’ll stop. We can go to couples counseling. I promise, I can get a handle on it.
When I told you it wasn’t just your drinking, but also about how you had been undermining my knowledge, expertise, and worth for a number of years, it made you really sad.
“No, babe, I love you. You’re so great,” you cried. “You’re one of the smartest people I know. You’re so beautiful. All of my friends are so jealous of what I have.” You choked back sobs. You couldn't catch you breath. “How can I lose you? This? I won’t survive it.”
But, I held steady.
“I need not only something more, I need something different. It’s not you that has to change. It’s me, who already has. I will always love you, but my love for myself is too strong to keep me here.”
Finally, you resigned.
“I’ll never stop thinking about you. I’ll never find anyone like you again. But I love you and if I love you as much as I say I do, I can’t trap you here with me.”
I was grateful, even though I shouldn’t have been. I didn’t need your permission to go, but I waited until I had it anyway. And, with a promise to be here for you whenever you needed, but a knowledge that you’d probably never speak to me again, I left.
To this day, with the exception of a series of very depressed text messages on my 40th birthday--three weeks before your 40th birthday and no doubt born out of a drunken evening home alone--you haven’t spoken to me. And while there’s no doubt I still care very deeply about you--dream about you, wonder endlessly how you’re doing, worry endlessly about whether or not you’re happy--I haven’t spent one minute of the last eight years regretting my decision. Eight years without you. Eight years.
Or:
96 months
417 weeks
2920 days
70,080 hours
4,204,800 minutes
Over four million minutes of actively choosing myself, first. Perhaps the only thing harder than losing you. But more likely, the only endeavor more worthwhile.