I can’t remember if it was days, weeks, or months that I lived with the grim certainty that my mother was not my mother at all, but really just the evil fawn in human form. I do remember that I wasn’t always afraid or worried about the changeling. Sometimes it could even be a comfort. My mother would yell and I would think, “Oh, that terrible, terrible fawn,” and recall with longing my real, true mother. Missing her allowed me to be less wounded by the angry fawn who sometimes took her place.
As I skipped around the kitchen this morning, dispensing kisses and cracking jokes in silly voices, the thought crossed my mind that my children might wonder if some mystical or extraterrestrial creature had not invaded their mother’s body and replaced the moody bitch who normally dwelled inside it.
My daughter, after I’d planted yet another noisy kiss on her cheek, rubbed her face and said, “You are being so annoying! What is wrong with you? Did you put, like, LSD in your tea?”
Day 15
Normal Day
Physical Sensations: None.
Mood: Good at first, but then it all went to hell.
Conflict: It definitely feels like some people are more annoying than they need to be, and some of those people live in my house.
Sleep: Eight solid hours. Overslept.
Work: My first unproductive day.
Pain: Moderate discomfort.
Even though it happened nearly two weeks ago, even though last week I achieved some real peace by boxing up and putting away the few things I kept in his studio, and even though my husband and I had been getting along so well since his return, we used our hour in couples therapy this week to rehash our argument about his studio. At least, that’s how things started. But after more than twenty years of marriage, our arguments inevitably devolve into the meta. We might begin by arguing about whether or not I should rent my own office, but almost immediately we find ourselves fighting about whose fault it is that we are fighting, who fights fair and who doesn’t, whether this fight is the same as those that came before, what’s really going on underneath it all.
This time was no different. Almost as soon as we described our argument to the therapist, I told her that the real problem wasn’t whether or not we should share the studio.
“The real problem,” I said, “is that he’s angry at me.”
“I am not!” my husband insisted.
I ignored him, and continued talking to the therapist. “He’s sick of dealing with my moods. And who can blame him? It’s my fault things have been so hard between us recently.”
He said, “I wish you’d stop saying that.”
“It’s okay. You’re right to blame me. I blame myself.”
My husband turned to the therapist. “I don’t blame her. Can you please help her understand that?”
“Do you love your husband?” the therapist asked me.
“Do I love him?” I said. I couldn’t believe she’d asked such a stupid question.
“Yes. Do you love him?”
“More than anything in the world.”
“So why do you threaten to leave me when we fight?” my husband said. “Why do you pack your bags every time we have an argument?”
It’s true. If an argument becomes intense, I will often start flinging clothes into a bag. Sometimes I’ll even walk out the door and drive around for a while, before coming home chastened and sorry. Not so different from the child who puts a sandwich in her backpack before loudly announcing that she’s running away forever. Having watched my parents struggle within the confines of their marital strife, I respond to crisis with a desperate, if fleeting, desire to escape. This behavior drives my husband wild. A child of divorce, he cannot bear to be left, even if he should know by now that I always come back. It triggers his fears of abandonment.
“You can’t do that anymore,” the therapist told me. “You can’t threaten to leave. It’s cruel.”
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “It’s because I love him that I should do him the favor of leaving him. He’d be better off without me.”
My husband flinched.
“I should leave him, but I won’t,” I continued, speaking to the therapist, not to my husband.
“Are you saying you want to leave him?” she asked.
“Of course not! It would make me absolutely miserable to be without him. I’ll never leave him.”
“Because it would make you miserable.”
“No! Don’t you get it? My misery isn’t the point. I deserve to be miserable. What I really want is for him to be happy, and I know he’d be infinitely happier without me.”
“So you threaten to leave because you think that’s what’s best for him?”
“Exactly. But here’s the problem. I can’t trust him.”
My husband cast his eyes to the heavens.
“He has terrible taste in women,” I continued. “He’s attracted to the neurotic and broken. He specializes in fruitlessly trying to fix the unfixable. I’ll never leave him, because there’s no point in leaving him. He’ll just go out and find someone even crazier than me.” If I died, he probably wouldn’t marry my actress friend, the one to whom I thoughtfully provided comprehensive Ambien-fueled instructions on how to take my place. He wouldn’t be into her, because she has her shit together.
“For God’s sake,” my husband muttered.
The therapist said, “Do you believe him when he says he loves you?”
“Of course! Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s his love that’s the problem! It’s proof of his terrible judgment.” Using the logic of Groucho Marx: “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.” Unassailable!
“Say it,” she said. “Tell him you know he loves you.”
I turned to my husband. “I know you love me, even though loving me is a terrible mistake.”
The therapist shook her head. “Just tell him you know he loves you. Leave off the rest of the sentence.”
I tried again. “I know you love me because your problem is that you are only attracted to awful women.”
“Try again.”
“I know you love me, but you shouldn’t.”
“Try again.”
“I know you love me, but I don’t deserve it.”
“Again.”
It took about a dozen attempts before I finally managed, sobbing, to bite off the rest of the sentence and let the five words hang in the air.
“I know you love me.”
My husband’s eyes filled. He pulled me close. I collapsed in his arms, crying so hard I soaked his shirt.
The hour was up.
He cried, he told me after, because it made him so sad to see how hard it was for me to say those five words.
Since then, all day long, I’ve been saying them lightly, almost as a joke.
“I know you love me,” I said in the car coming home from therapy.
“I know you love me,” I said when we walked up the stairs to our porch.
“I know you love me,” I said as we cooked dinner together.
“I know you love me,” I said as we made love.
Every time I said the words, I finished the sentence silently in my head. But maybe that’s just today. Things might look different tomorrow. Tomorrow, after I dose, maybe I won’t need to finish the sentence at all. Or, better yet, maybe “I know you love me” will finally feel like a complete sentence.
Day 16
Microdose Day
Physical Sensations: Stomach upset.
Mood: Tired but good spirits.
Conflict: None.
Sleep: Average.
Work: Productive.
Pain: Some minor pain.