Author: spilledtea

Almost 20 years ago, I woke up from a dream and felt an extreme emptiness. In my dream, my partner had forced me to have an abortion.

A few days later, I found out I was pregnant. I had gone to bed after a negative pregnancy test, only to pull it out of the trash in the middle of the night to see a faint second line. I tried to wake up my boyfriend of 3 years: “I’m pregnant!” He didn’t wake up.

The next morning, I shared the news again, scared but excited. My heart sunk. He didn’t feel ready. He wanted to abort it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, but was making $28k living in an expensive suburb of DC. I didn’t want to tell my parents because I knew they’d call me home. And I was just starting my career, working at the National Cancer Institute. It wasn’t my dream job, but it was a starting point at my dream workplace. So I looked into WIC, hoping I could somehow make it work on my own. But I made just enough to not qualify for WIC. I felt trapped. I decided I couldn’t live and raise a child on my own, which meant I had to give up the baby.

I remember walking into the Planned Parenthood building, protesters telling me I was killing my baby. And other volunteers blocking them from me and shuttling me inside. I remember sitting in the waiting room with my boyfriend. Some guy across from us kept looking our way. It turned out he and my boyfriend knew each other, but neither of them said a word. I remember going in to see the doctor to get an ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy and bursting into tears when I saw that tiny speck on the screen. “You’re 8 weeks along,” the doctor told me. Just 4 more weeks and many expectant mothers are announcing their good news with the world. I didn’t want to go through with it. Not after seeing what I just knew in my heart would become a little boy. The doctor patted me on the shoulder, “It’ll be OK.”

As he injected local anesthesia into my cervix, I remember embracing the pain, telling myself I deserved it. I deserved it for failing this little mass inside of me. After the procedure, a nurse gave me some pills and then I sat in the recovery area, eating a saltine cracker. I remember having sushi as my first post-procedure meal and feeling oddly happy. My boyfriend even remarked, “How can you be smiling right now?” As if he never wanted this loss. (For the longest time, I felt guilty about this, but I later learned that patients are often given Valium or some other sedative following the procedure.)

The days and weeks that followed were just awful. I didn’t feel I could lean on my boyfriend with my emotional pain because he was a big reason behind it. I resented him. After a huge fight one night, I left and drove to a park. I sat in my car, looking at the stars, bawling, apologizing to my unborn child over and over and over. I came back home, my boyfriend already in bed, and crawled into bed next to him.

I couldn’t sleep. And there he was, soundly sleeping. Not a fucking care in the world. So I got out of bed, swallowed a bottle of Tylenol PM and a bottle of ibuprofen, drank some water, crawled back into bed, and hoped I wouldn’t wake up. Some time later, I did wake up, my stomach cramping. I started to vomit all over the living room carpet, loudly enough to wake my boyfriend. He came out, at first trying to hold my hair back, but then he saw that my vomit was blue. “What is this???” When I told him, he was furious. “How could you do this?? How can I ever trust you?” He didn’t take me to the hospital. He didn’t hold me. He just watched me vomit the contents of my stomach out and went to bed.

The next morning, as I sat on the couch drinking water and eating a piece of dry toast, he left to play golf.

Our relationship wasn’t the same after that. I was incredulous when he told me one day, a couple of years later, that if I got pregnant, he felt he was ready. But I stayed. Then he suggested we buy a house together. I told him it was important to me that we were at least engaged first, but after signing the paperwork for a house I picked out and he paid for, we were still not engaged. So I left him.

All of this came up today as I drove back from the hospital where my friend’s daughter had been admitted after a friend found her unconscious, vomit in her lungs. She had tried to take her life. She was on life support, and nobody — not even her own mother — can visit her in person because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pain my friend is feeling, her immense despair… and then holding my own babies, hoping they never feel so hopeless that they might try to take their own life… and then thinking about the circumstances that led to my own attempt. It all kind of just came together and made its way to the surface as one big emotional glob. The pain of it was almost enough to push me back into an abyss. And yet, I have to keep going right? Because now I have two precious little boys to love and protect. And I still feel an enormous well of guilt for not being able to protect the very first one.

Chris calling me, after I expressed needing his expertise on a project, perfectly captures the kind of relationship we had. I looked up to him, and he graciously offered his help whenever I needed it.

Our relationship didn’t start out on the best footing to be honest. It was maybe my second week at this new job (nearly five years ago), and I sent a group email that included him, expressing interest in utilizing the medical encounter data we have access to. Chris replied all, questioning my ability to use these data appropriately. I worried I had stepped on toes, and was quickly reassured by a number of people that I had not — Chris was just a difficult person. So difficult, in fact, that one of our coworkers had tried to get him fired a number of years prior.

Me being me, needing approval from everyone, especially authority figures, made it my mission to get on Chris’ good side. I started to compliment him by asking for his guidance — often. I looked for common interests (it wasn’t hard… we’re both epidemiologists… obviously we love data and coding). I’d try to nerd out with him. Then one day I discovered what has become my favorite SAS procedure: PROC EXPAND. It’s a relatively obscure procedure but oh so glorious when working with medical encounter data. Chris agreed. He encouraged me to submit an abstract to a regional SAS conference describing its utility (I did, and even won an award for it). I had his approval.

Over the years I would consult him when I had questions about medical encounter or pharmacy data. He’d offer me snacks, I’d bring him chocolate. Last fall, I found an opportunity to work with him directly. We decided to co-lead a vaccine study proposal. The last time we met in person was just before I went on maternity leave. We had a meeting with our military collaborator, who Chris greatly admired, to plan our study approach, though there was a good amount of banter too. Over the next few days Chris ran preliminary analyses for me, and sent a million different things for me to consider as I finished writing our proposal.

It didn’t get funded. But at the end of that 45-minute call (photo for this post), Chris suggested we resubmit the proposal to some other agency. In so many words, he expressed how much he loved my research and thought I had written a very strong proposal — it’s just that the funding agency didn’t get the budget they thought they would. He was trying to make me feel better about the rejection. “It’s not you, it’s them.” I had his approval.

Chris reminded me of my dad. A bit abrasive, geeky, a food lover, and very set in his ways. He was surprisingly endearing — you just needed to get past his rough exterior. He was an Air Force veteran, and the PI for a study of Marine recruits (turns out my husband took his survey in 2016, long before we met). Having his approval was healing. It was like getting the approval my dad never expressed.

I don’t know yet the nature of his death, so I feel my grief is a bit stunted. Did his mental health suffer due to the isolating effects of the pandemic? Or did he die of “natural” causes? Either way, he died alone, which kills me to think about. Nobody should ever have to die alone. Since his death was announced, colleagues have posted stories about Chris and the things they appreciated about him, which has helped my grieving process. Still, I don’t think I’ve quite processed everything yet. And maybe I won’t until I see an obituary, or attend his funeral (if there is one — yet another consequence of this pandemic)…

I went back to our Slack messages to reminisce a little and noticed he still has his status set to “working.” If there is an afterlife, I’d like to think that he is happily coding away, immersed in data, and eating some fine chocolate.

“Maybe it says, ‘Thank you.’”

My therapist, Dave, shut his eyes and gently shook his head before giving me his full attention again. I was explaining to him how my narcissistic ex/co-parent had inquired about guests we recently hosted. And how I had initially responded vaguely — and succinctly — something I’ve learned to do over the years to avoid becoming entangled in messy, pointless “discussions.”

My first response wasn’t sufficient.

My ex emailed again, begging me to “put the past behind us” and provide more details. Wouldn’t that be convenient. As I shared this with Dave, I could feel my heart beat faster. My ex was asking me to quiet myself and — like I had many times before — attend to him. And you know what? I fucking did. I gave him a few details, hoping that would be sufficient.

It wasn’t. And I should’ve known it wouldn’t be. A few weeks ago, when talking about the immense anxiety I feel every time I get a notification that my ex has emailed, Dave said something powerful to me: “Nothing you say will satisfy him. So I want to free you of that responsibility.” I know it’s true, but I haven’t truly, deeply, fully pulled that message into my core just yet. And so, I believed that maybe my email sharing a few details would be enough, and that my ex’s response to that email would be, “Thank you.”

Dave was right. My ex’s response asked me to share even more details.

Feeling empowered after my therapy session, I was ready to make an attempt at extinguishing my ex’s continual demand for more details. I pointed out that while I understood his concerns, his behavior seemed at odds with the narrative he was feeding me — the narrative he was using to justify his demands for more details.

Never question a narcissist’s reality. What followed was a word salad filled with anger… and a heavy dose of gaslighting: “I admittedly feel offended, frustrated, and hurt by your outburst.” I responded with a two-sentence email. Predictably, I received another lengthy email telling me how irresponsible I am. I have not responded to it, nor do I intend to.

The worst part of this is that my older son will inevitably be put in the middle as a result of this. My refusal to share details means HE will now be the victim of his dad’s interrogation. Until recently, I would have blamed myself for not meeting my ex’s demands. And I would have — in vain — tried to appease my ex to an extent so that this, abuse really, might not happen.

It took me years to finally free myself of the false narrative my ex fed to me. One where I was a horrible mother, incapable of caring for her child. I actually believed that bullshit. Now I can see the many contradictions in his narrative. And that what it comes down to is you can never be enough for a narcissist.

It didn’t matter that for two years, I battled postpartum depression. And for most of that time I worked full time, wrote my dissertation after my infant son was in bed, and worked part time (to pay for day care). I woke up every day at 2am to drive my ex to the yoga studio where he taught so he could practice before teaching (because he didn’t want to practice at home and we had one car)… only to come home, and wake up again at 6am to take my son to daycare before my daily yoga practice and going to work. When this daily schedule became too much for me, my ex took the car himself, and I would take the bus with my son to daycare/yoga/work. I still remember the tantrum my ex had when I suggested he practice at home, or perhaps ride a bike to the yoga studio. The bus was often crowded in the mornings, which made commuting with a toddler challenging at times. It wasn’t enough that toward the end of this period, my father was in and out of the hospital, dying from cancer. It wasn’t enough that I also left my cancer research career so he could teach yoga.

I realized in session that all of this comes up whenever my ex emails me — especially when he’s asking me for something. Because I’ve never really allowed myself to feel the hurt and anger that resulted from that whole experience. I’ve conditioned myself to push those kinds of feelings away. So it is ESPECIALLY distressing when he asks me to “put the past behind us” and attend to his needs. To this day he is still asking me to put his needs first. And this single email string proves that even when I do that, it is still. Not. Enough.

I started to cry as my therapist tied my wild, chaotic thoughts together and pointed out that I was “packaging my thoughts” in order to “protect [him]” and that it really is OK for me to basically unload. There was no need for me to “parent myself.” He went on… it also makes sense that I tend to ruminate (my word, not his) because as a child I had to figure out a lot of things on my own. I didn’t have certain types of support, and I didn’t always have help.

I “didn’t always have help.”

I immediately thought about an incident I experienced as a child, and how I had described it to my husband. I was 5 years old, riding my bike near my family home, when a man (who I mistook as a woman) approached me. He had a dress and makeup on, and used a high-pitched voice when he told me he liked the flower I had placed on my handlebars. I thanked him, and he said he knew where I could find other flowers to add to my collection. Then he invited me to follow him to the side of an apartment building just 10 or so meters away. I naively followed.

He proceeded to pull my pants down and opened his mouth as he brought his face toward my genitals. I realized in that moment he was a man. I also knew I was uncomfortable. So I pushed his head away from me. And he pushed his head against my hands, mouth wide open. I pushed harder. He finally gave up and took off. I pulled my pants up and ran home, leaving my bike by the building.

When I told my husband this story, he asked me, “Did you get help?” My response was, “No. Who was going to help me?” I never told my parents. The heartbreaking part of this is that I did not feel I could turn to anyone, not even my parents. I didn’t feel shame, I simply didn’t want to burden anyone. As an adult, my soul breaks for the little girl who felt THAT alone.

To this day my mom is unaware of this incident, and honestly will probably never know.