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part 2 of the story
Dissociative States

Gale Fraser
(see the previous issue for part 1 of the story)

    In 2017, when I was 37, David received orders to Madrid, Spain, where again he would serve as a commander. It took us a month to move in. Once we did, a Navy spouse named Ginelle invited me out for brunch. At El Perro y La Galleta by Parque Buen Retiro, we both ordered cafés con leche and eggs benedict. I paid for our meals. This was a tendency of mine when I went out with my husband’s subordinates’ spouses; this was my way of eliminating an uncomfortable conversation and assuaging my deep-seated insecurity.
    Our talk, light at first, centered upon life in Madrid. But as we finished our food, Ginelle shifted to business. She told me the former commander’s spouse had handed the Spouse Social Roster to her; Ginelle maintained that roster and emailed spouses about upcoming events. My guess now is that Ginelle got the roster because Ginelle pressed for it.
    Ginelle appealed to me: “We need someone to unite our group. I noticed on your Facebook profile that you were President of the Spouses’ Club at Dyess.”
    “Yes...” I was wary of this turn in conversation. Serving as spouse club president was tumultuous, political, draining. I needed a break. My husband agreed. But also, she’d been Facebook stalking me...?
    “Well, that’s exciting to a lot of us!”
    “Okay – if spouses want to be gathered and more cohesive, I support that.” I wondered how much work she was thinking.
    “This is a challenging assignment for many families,” she continued. “Some are hoping you guys will fail.”
    Wait – what? “Uh...” Why would she say that to me?
    “So how much are you willing to do?” she changed the subject. “Do you want to take over the roster and emails, or should I keep it?” Her eyes prodded. Prodding for what? What does she want? It’s not her responsibility.
    “Of course, I’ll do it,” I said.
    The remainder of that conversation, after her comment about failure, is lost to me. I never fail. I invited all 26 American spouses to my house for dinner and asked what they wanted. We initiated a flurry of social groups: buncos, themed parties, dinners, clubs, etc. Some launched, others did not. I developed a monthly newsletter. My husband and I spearheaded a Key Spouse Program in liaison with Ramstein Air Force Base.
    My load grew, yet at regular intervals, Ginelle notified me in person, via phone, or through gossip, of all the ways I fell short. The newsletter had errors. Parties were underattended. There weren’t enough events for spouses without children. Enlisted spouses found dinner events too expensive. Why hadn’t I created the “new arrivals” binder yet? I took each recommendation personally and tried harder, did more, corrected every error, yet the more I accomplished, the smaller I felt...

#

    I have recurring dreams of being wrapped in big, strong arms. In these dreams I interpret a yearning to be held safe, coveted, close to someone’s heart. It’s not sexual. It’s spiritual and psychological. I want to be approved of – without conditions – just as I am.

#

    On a warm sunny day at Madrid’s Parque Buen Retiro, when I met with spouses to discuss Halloween Trunk-or-Treat plans, I recognized I was fading. My best friend Maria was late, and as I looked out over our picnic blankets at these women and described the event, they stared blankly back at me. Whether it was my own jaded perception or whether there truly was some distaste there, I cannot say. Either way, I felt a negativity radiating off them, and I wondered: Why am I planning this event if nobody wants it? What’s in this for me?
    I wasn’t asking much. I wanted them to see I was trying – for Ginelle, for them – to create a community. But they didn’t seem to care, and this was not me. I wanted to be who I am and be loved for who I am. In doing what I did not want to do, then finding neither success nor joy in it, I thought: Why bother?
    Like Wile E. Coyote, I stood there, having run just past the cliff ledge, taking a moment to realize that my feet were no longer on solid ground. I hung in mid-air for a few blinks – then fell and fell...
    Everything collapsed. Life faded. Faith in God faded. Purpose faded. Reality faded. I tried to care. I tried to continue – to find feeling in the motions. But nothing was there. Sanity slipped through my fingers. Days and nights merged. I ricocheted between two states: nauseous hyperventilation and numbness. At night, Xander haunted my dreams.

#

    What instigates a psychological breakdown? It could probably be just about anything, depending on the person. It’s unhelpful to generalize, yet it’s fascinating to trace one’s diagnosis back, to speculate about its origins.
    When I crashed at 38 in Madrid, perhaps it was the isolation, or my traveling husband, or attempting to be everything to everyone all at once. It’s too facile to blame Ginelle, so I don’t. Could it have been the result of 30-plus years of quashing my emotions and needs on behalf of others – a disconnect from the self? Interdependence suggests it was all the above. It suggests the roots of my anxiety reach all the way back to infancy.

#

    Medication saved my life in Madrid. I bobbed along in that pharmaceutical life preserver for over a year, blissfully numb...
    David was hired as a Commander once again at Minot in 2019. Our transition to Minot went smoothly, but because of COVID isolation shortly after we arrived, I had few friends. Fall 2020, I instructed my first hybrid Composition class at Minot State University. My schedule allowed half the class to attend in-person either Monday or Wednesday, and we’d meet virtually Fridays. Our first session, Leo asked if he could attend both in-person classes weekly; as long as there were seats available, I was amenable to that. So he did.
    Leo was...different. I didn’t understand why he showed up daily when other students took my lax attendance policy seriously. But I’m different too, so I didn’t judge. He often challenged my lessons and frustrated me, yet he had perfect attendance, submitted assignments on time, and prodded class discussions most often in a profitable direction. It was his personal narrative, describing how eastern philosophy shaped his worldview, that grabbed my attention. Still in the murky process of grappling with my collapsed faith, I read his words and thought, What does this kid know that I don’t? I want answers! When I provided the class my own essay to illustrate what I was seeking in their literary analyses, he complimented my writing: When was the last time someone complimented me? I couldn’t recall...I was grateful for his kindness. Eventually, in conversation, he shared that he has ADHD. My gut, subconsciously, made a call my mind was reluctant to allow: Leo was safe.
    One morning, about halfway through the 16-week semester, I arrived at the classroom, but Leo was not there. As I initiated the hybrid session, Hailey asked, “Where’s Leo?”
    “Oh, he’s always coming from another class, I’m sure he’s on his way,” I said. At that moment, Blackboard Collaborate logged in, and Leo’s face appeared on my screen. I swallowed my tongue. I stammered and scrambled. “Oh there you are, Leo!” I tried to recover...as I did, he took over, showing the class first his pet kitten, then his blue-tailed skink.
    I didn’t need to check my email to know what was up, but during his impromptu show-and-tell I checked anyway: there it was, official MSU Health Services notification that my odd student with perfect attendance had contracted COVID. I fumbled through class, half-present. Afterward, I stumbled down the two flights of stairs to my office, slammed the door behind me, locked it, and collapsed into my desk chair. What the fuck is this? I’m worried about this 23-year-old! Why do I need him to be ok? What does it mean?

#

Raw wound or scar, unresolved trauma is a constriction of the self, both physical and psychological. It constrains our inborn capacities and generates an enduring distortion of our view of the world and of other people. Trauma, until we work it through, keeps us stuck in the past, robbing us of the present moment’s riches, limiting who we can be...it blights a person’s sense of worth, poisons relationships, and undermines appreciation for life itself...

~Gabor Maté, MD, The Myth of Normal

#

    Leo recuperated quickly, but the acute realization of my feelings for him engendered terror within me. His constant presence in my classroom, his kindness toward me – and my mistrust of my subconscious regarding my history of male attention-seeking – led me directly to my husband. “We need to talk, away from the kids,” I said.
    We drove off one night in David’s Civic and parked facing a vacant field. Digital time shone blue on the dash as I bawled. “I don’t trust myself around this student! Why am I so drawn to male attention? Does it even matter that I’m not attracted to him? I don’t understand!” We sat and breathed, I hiccupped between squeaky sobs, and David’s eyes prodded. Then, it flooded out: “I don’t know why I let anything happen with Xander – I didn’t want him. He’s nothing compared to you. I wanted you. I always wanted you! I was so weak.”
    He placed his hand on mine and said, “I know all that, Gale.” He rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb. His eyes were soft and emotional in a way I don’t normally witness from my steady husband. That he could emote to my rhythm touched me.
    Then I said the words that hounded me twelve years: “I don’t deserve you.”
    David paused, then shook his head, looked me in the eye, and said, “Why would you even say that? Of course you do.”
    ...and that was it.
    At those words, every emotional barrier I’d erected between us since 2008 crumbled. I am enough. My husband says I deserve him. I trust my husband more than anyone else. He is honorable and reliable; he doesn’t lie to me. Therefore, it must be true. Shackles unlocked and dropped from my wrists, my ankles, my throat. Twelve years of never thinking I was doing enough as a wife, a mom, an Air Force spouse – that my husband would leave me if I didn’t continue to do more to prove my worth – dissipated. He never felt that way. I lied to myself. I am enough.
    Things started to change. I stopped doing things because they were expected of me as his wife, as a mother, as a spouse, and started doing what I wanted to do. And you know what happened? Nothing. The house didn’t collapse, his career didn’t collapse, the kids didn’t go hungry or emotionally neglected. Quite the opposite, frankly.
    I went back and read journals from my early twenties. I read the emails David and I exchanged during our courtship. I fell in love with the girl I used to be before I got married, before I had kids, before David’s career turned wacky – who I was, as I was, just me. And finding my way back to me meant finding my way back to us. Our banter changed: it became playful, intelligent, and complex. Within a few months, we had fallen back into the love of our twenties.
    I read Virginia Woolf and realized that I should no longer stifle my voice. I began to write again. I shared my writing, and friends responded favorably. Per Leo’s recommendation, I researched nondualism (Buddhism and Taoism specifically), and they made sense to me. The two major tenets of Buddhism are interdependence and impermanence. This concept of impermanence was troublesome yet undeniable. What did impermanence mean for long-term relationships like my marriage? If David is a different person every day, if I am a different person every day, then what is marriage? I learned the Buddhist view of love and marriage: you choose your person every day. Moment-by-moment, you choose faithfulness. You choose love. You choose effort. Certainly, you cannot guarantee that a relationship will last, but you don’t fret over that. You live for today, for now, doing the best you can in the decisions you’re making – to minimize suffering for yourself and those around you. I had agency.
    Leo’s arrival in my life forced me to dress my core wounds – and that attention to my wounds permitted healing.

#

    Gale: If my wounds are mother wounds, not father wounds, like I believed, why do you think I’m so much more comfortable with men than women? Why do I prefer men’s attention?
    Therapist: Your mom, your sister, two of your stepmoms – Gale, none of your early experiences with women were safe. Of course you feel safer with men.

#

    Nondualism uses the breath to represent mind/body connection. I ask myself: in my breath, where do I begin and where do I end? I can control my breath, and the second that I think about my breath, consciousness of it floods me. If I were to stop thinking of it, it seems I would stop breathing and cease to exist – yet this does not happen. Releasing conscious control of my breath, my body grasps it subconsciously. So then, where does my physical body end and cognition begin?
    Breath is the gateway to comprehending duality as a fallacy. I am always both. Even my thoughts are physical: electricity and charged particles. And when I see that there is no distinction between body and thoughts, I begin to see how everything is connected. I see isolation as a fallacy: the space between you and me is full, not empty, and even when we do not touch, we connect. Interdependence. Cause, effect. I am as much a sibling to my sister as I am a sibling to trees, mountains, fish. There is nothing disconnected from me. It turns out, I am never alone.

#

    In 2021, we moved to Albuquerque. Leo and I text regularly about his life, classes, writing. We email about literature, psychology, philosophy. Sometimes we Facetime over coffee. He calls me mentor and says that I’ve taught him more than any other teacher, but I can’t speak to that. He compares me to his mother, and I try not to be offended because I know he means it as a compliment. I call him kid as an endearment and shithead when he requires correcting. I’m not sure if he benefits as much from our connection as I do, but I cannot think that way. He brings me joy.
    I believe in dreams. I believe Xander’s appearance in my dreams in Madrid was my subconscious begging me to stop numbing, to knock off my piteous self-loathing, non-forgiveness, victimhood, feeling insufficient, my self-estrangement. My subconscious was exhausted from being splintered and begging to heal. I don’t blame anyone anymore for the mistake I made at 28; it’s a subtle shift, but instead I take responsibility for it. I own it as my decision at the time, without judgment. I forgive myself. I accept the hard consequences and allow grief.
    Whenever David travels, that hole in my belly reopens. If his trip is long, it mutates into a gaping, sucking black hole. I understand now that it’s not his job to fill that hole; he can’t fix me. When I thrash from loneliness, I tell him so...as I writhe and flail, he holds me with words in his arms’ absence. He doesn’t judge or condemn my vulnerability. He never has. I think this is love.
    I don’t know whether that hole will ever heal or disappear – maybe that’s ok. I’ve given up alcohol and busyness and medication and numbing; instead, I talk to it: “I feel you, my ravenous need. How can I sate you, today?” Sometimes it takes a good chat with a friend. Sometimes, a run with loud music. Writing poetry helps. Mostly, it needs to be seen.
    David is in command yet again, but I do a lot of nothing these days. I read and write. I rock on my swing and marvel at my mountain sister, Sandia. She would not exist without the earth’s need for release – what is a mountain minus pressure and passion? If her emotions and needs were what made her so beautiful, and if we are sisters, why not the same for me?

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