Love after Death, Part II:
Dancing into Mourning
The joy of our heart is ceased;
Our dance is turned into mourning.
Lamentations 5:15, KLV
“I don’t feel like I have a place here,”
Mikhail muttered as he hauled in the last one of his enormous blue-plastic Rubbermaid bins, stacking it in the middle of the living room beside the others.
This also was the last of three massive road trips from his Midwestern town, 650 miles back and forth to relocate to Dallas. With his precious dog, Honey, along for every ride, he wedged those bins in the back of his practical SUV with the precision of a Jenga master.
Sweat trickled down his ruddy cheeks.
“We’ll make it work, sweetie,” I assured him. “We’ll just have to be creative. It’s what we do, right?” I persisted, “I didn’t count on a special fella when I bought this place, ya know. It will be OK.”
He did not even look at me.
The move and moving into the condo I had been in for just three months was fraying the raw edges of our increasingly brittle nerves. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. Admittedly, the quarters were tight, as I had found my cozy mid-century home after an exhaustive search only a couple of weeks before Mikhail swooped back into my precarious life.
One evening after he had officially moved in, we were deciding what to watch on TV after I finished up work. Truth is we were probably at our very best as a couple just streaming—binging great television, like The Wire, The Sopranos, The West Wing, Abbott Elementary, Devs, and The Last of Us, a gripping new one on HBO. Some of these had been on my list for years. There were many pleasant times, but some days and many nights were more like scenes out of a Sartre play—and I did not know my lines.
He was checking his phone on the couch. He seemed distracted and contained. Ease often eluded us in real-time.
“Did you say you were ordering i Fratelli’s tonight?” I asked as I handed him two fingers of a bourbon we would share.
Pizza was the great leveler, and the delivery was free. His eyebrows furrowed and his body stiffened.
“I didn’t say that, but I suppose I can,” he quipped.
“Uh. Oh, that’s OK,” I said. “I’ll get it,”
“No, no, no,” he said with mild irritation. “Clearly, you think I should be buying the dinner again. You think I’m not doing enough. You think I should be buying everything, but you know my situation. I have a limited budget. And . . .”
What is happening here? I thought. “Mika, it’s OK. Really, it is . . . I’ll do it. I’ll order the pizza.”
“I can’t do anything right. I can’t even order a pizza. You just don’t get me at all, do you? I told you. I told you what I could and could not do. I told you I was a lot,” he snapped. “You said you understood. I knew this was a bad idea.”
“What? I lost you somewhere. I can see you are agitated. Take a deep breath.”
He did not like it when he thought I was trying to “manage” him. He began to stroke his legs repeatedly with his hands and then his hair, pulling it back over his ears. And he started hitting his forehead with the heel of his hand repeatedly.
“Oh no, Mikhail, stop! Don’t worry about it.” I said, not knowing what to do.
It was like a switch. His eyes went cold and dark. Then, he began rocking back and forth on the couch crying like a toddler in timeout—now punching his forehead with both fists.
The memories are fragments at this point, as my therapist says that trauma often impedes our recall. That’s true of the days around Elliot’s death, too, and my parents’ deaths. It’s like trying to remember a dream or a nightmare. The images and flashes of action are often outnumbered by the gaps and non-sequiturs.
I felt my heart bouncing around like a ping-pong ball against my ribs. Adrenalin kicked in as thoughts of what I should do next overwhelmed me. But I couldn’t move, and I could not find the right words.
“I’m nothing; I’m worthless; I’m a piece of sh*t,” he barked in an almost staccato chant. “I don’t want to be here anymore . . . I feel awful. You have to do something.“
Then, without warning, he abruptly stood and stomped over to his guitar on a stand where he had left it after singing Thunder Road to me last night.
He picked it up without uttering a sound, and hurled it across the living room, crashing it into the wall to the left of me behind the couch.
“What are you doing? I cried, shrinking into the pillow.
Then, he walked over to it and stomped on it multiple times. I was terrified.
“Stop! Stop!! Mikhail! Your guitar. Your music! Oh my God.’
The worn, wooden instrument cracked and crumbled like the surface of a barely frozen pond under the weight of his heavy, black-soled shoes. It collapsed on itself as the strings whined and twanged with each crushing kick. It reminded me of a breakaway prop designed to shatter.
I realized I was holding my breath. But the violent act diffused his rage.
He stood motionless, his damp hair clinging to his face.
I could almost hear my heart beating, but I was still frozen. I was beginning to breathe. Who was this man? And what would he do next? Oh my God. Oh my Heavenly God.
“You need help, Mikhail, and I’m scared.”
“Oh yeah, yeah,” he muttered as he appeared to be coming out of a trance. “You can’t do that. You can’t put that on me. I would never hurt you. You know that. You’re not scared. That’s what they all say. That’s not fair. . .” he said coldly.
The events of that night are more like a mosaic than a movie. I think I said something about 911 or 988, the suicide hotline.
“Oh, no you are not, “ he bellowed as he swiftly attached Honey’s leash, grabbed her food, and flew out the door, slamming it behind him.
I had no idea where he was going or what he planned to do, but I blocked both of my doors with chairs wedged under the doorknobs since he had a key. I would not change the locks until weeks later. I called my therapist and did not sleep. This was not the only explosive episode during our fraught tenure.
He struggled mightily with unhealed trauma, among other things, and I felt for him with the dense empathy of my own trauma.
Just after dawn, he texted.
“I want to come home.”
What time was it?
He came home.
I guess we picked up where we left off. With no lasting resolution. Just stasis. There was probably a gentle, caring hug, and I uttered some soothing words through my tears. It was as if he had no memory of his behavior or awareness of its impact—as if it had been a different person.
He made me coffee. I always appreciated that.
“I needed a new guitar, anyway,” he said, as he picked up the pieces.
Thankfully, Mikhail agreed to seek help, but there was still light between us. How did all the magic become an untenable obstacle course? No stranger to mental health challenges in and around me, including my Elliot’s struggles with bipolar disorder, I have had lots of therapy. I am a work in progress, indeed, but I have come a long way. This dynamic was exceeding my ability to cope.
Eventually, with the help of my therapist, I mustered the strength and the grit to set a boundary. I loved him so much. I did, and I wanted to give our relationship every chance. It was like nothing I had ever experienced, but we needed to take a beat and a breath.
I asked him to move out.
It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but standing up for myself was tantamount to survival. We needed the space to learn how to be together—or not. I was relieved he did not balk; however, for him, this flipped the switch. I soon discovered it was all or nothing emotionally with Mikhail. Black or white. Splitting, as psychologists term it . . . evidence of the idealize, devalue, and discard cycle.
He located a place quickly. A friend had a rental house available. As I watched him pack up his bins once again, I felt a sadness down to the marrow. His energy had shifted dramatically. I could see he could not tolerate my boundaries.
He was as interested in me as yesterday’s trash. Actually, he probably gave the recycle bin more tender loving care.
You just have to find the humor where you can.
Yes, the music had stopped. And so too, the dancing.
(Part III to come.)