The First Fight

Because something this dark had to be documented….

You know how it’s been.  With me, on the meds.  How many times have I said I’m a different person?  How many instances have I pointed out of The Mormon trying to get me to talk to him, and I couldn’t say anything because nothing came to mind except death?  That isn’t me.

For that reason, I refuse to consider anything that happens before I am off the medication and back to normal a fight.  I don’t want to be unfair, but I really do want to see just how long we can go without having one, and if I am not me, then somebody else is fighting with my fiance about things and in ways that the real me never would have.  Make sense?  It makes sense to me, and I’m the only one who matters in this case; I don’t care what anyone else says.

But based on what happened the other day, I have a feeling that fighting with us will be rare, and it will be dirty and epic and frightening when it does occur.

I was in one of those moods.  In particular, besides the usual, there was also the fact that I would be having a bit of skin cut off the following day and would have to stop working out for a while, and that someone had honked at me on my way home.  (It wasn’t my fault; I was waiting for another car to go by before I turned into traffic.  The car behind me was just being a dick.  So I responded by flicking them off, yelling, and revving my engine frighteningly as I sped off angrily.)  But I was still angry about that when I got on the phone with The Mormon, and I was sulking about medication and the surgery, and I stopped talking like so many other times, and then I told him exactly what was on my mind, and he got really frustrated and saw that he wasn’t making a dent on my stupor, and finally he said, “I’ll call you later” and hung up on me!

At first I wasn’t even hurt by it.  I was actually satisfied that I had pissed someone else off about as much as I was.  But then when I knew his class was over, and had been for about 45 minutes, I got concerned that he wasn’t calling me back.  I wondered how long to wait before maybe calling him back.  I finally decided I was too proud to call him back when he had hung up on me in the first place.  But I knew I had to leave my mark.

So I left him the most evil text message–in fact, one of the most evil things I’ve ever said ever.  My poor love.  I felt horrible afterward.

I texted, “That’s a great way to leave your mentally ill fiance.  You could have at least said you loved me before hanging up on me.”  Because in a way, yeah, it had angered me and upset me.

The phone rang immediately thereafter.  I gave it a couple rings as I tried to decide whether to answer it or not.  And finally I picked it up and said, “What?”

He was very quiet and serious, and I calmed down after a minute because he had called me back, and I apologized, but he did not.  He was sorry for hanging up on me, but not for being so frustrated with me, because as he explained, I need to do something to handle all of this.  If that’s talking to a counselor, or going off the medication altogether, or just dealing with it until it was over–something.  It’s my responsibility to deal with it.

We ran out of time and I went to work, unsatisfied and still incredibly sorry for what I’d said to him.  He had said he would probably come to see me at my dinner break, and I was waiting impatiently for that moment so I could go and apologize to him and hold him and whatnot.  And at 7:30, he appeared, and I did just that, and I teared up a bit, but I don’t remember if he noticed that or not.  He got dinner and went to sit and wait for me.  I thought things were better.

But when I went to sit down with him, he wasn’t sitting with the group like usual–he was at a two-seat table.  This led me to believe that something was still wrong.  And it was.  Dinner was awkward.  I kept looking at him funny because I wasn’t sure how to look.  How can you apologize for saying something like that?

When we both finished eating, I moved my chair around so I could speak to him quietly, and again I apologized for the horrible thing I had said.

He was frightening.  I’d never seen him so solemn and quiet and frigid, and had certainly never expected to see him react to me that way.  And then he gave me a speech.  I sat and listened to it silently until the end.  He said things like, “This is not a relationship” and “I felt like I was sitting across from a stranger just now–I really didn’t even want to come out here tonight” and “I don’t know who you are these days–you’re not the same girl I proposed to or asked out to begin with” and “If this keeps up, I’m going to leave–I’ll get out now because this is not a relationship.”

These were some of the most frightening things that had ever been said to me, ever.  Most of them were repeated a number of times.  He had obviously been thinking about this all day.  All day while I was feeling miserable and wanting to apologize to him.  But I don’t blame him for any of it.  I know I’m not the same person, and have even wondered a few times how he could stand to be in a relationship with me when I’m not the person he asked out.

Hearing it from him was totally different.  There was a brief silence after he finished speaking, and then I started sobbing.  Loudly.  And hyperventilating, and grasping his arms and clutching him around the waist and trying to get closer and closer and closer to him so he couldn’t get away from me, and I was panicking.  It was a revolting display.  He kept telling me to breathe and to calm down, that I wasn’t going to lose him, he wasn’t going anywhere.  And I’d calm down briefly and immediately start up again with the bawling and trying to hold him closer and closer to me.  I thought I was going to die.  Losing the only light in my life would be death.

Finally, finally, after we’d sat there about twenty minutes, I calmed down to a degree that I thought would enable me to finish cleaning up for the night and leave.  I didn’t totally lose control anymore that night, but I did keep crying.  I didn’t even say good-bye to anyone, that last night before spring break and my surgery.  No–I said good-bye to Tyler.  I’d told him what had happened that afternoon and how much I wanted to see him that night, and Tyler saw me looking miserable and asked me if things had gotten better or worse, and I told him I wasn’t sure and cried some more and he hugged me and wished things well, and I went outside to meet The Mormon.

By this point I was a little irritated at what he’d just put me through, although I still don’t blame him for it.  For a few minutes I did.  But he had offered to come to my house with me and just lie down on my bed and rub my back or something, so he did.  He read to me a bit from the book he was reading, a Terry Pratchett novel.  And after a few minutes of not being able to concentrate, I kissed him a bit and just held him tightly and asked if he would leave me if I didn’t see a counselor.  He kissed my forehead and told me he would never put that ultimatum to me, that he loved me and had been frustrated and needed to say those things so I knew what he was experiencing.  And I understand; I totally do.

For the next few days I felt slightly awkward around him.  And one day, I think Tuesday, I told him that, and he kissed me again and told me we were just fine.  I think that may have been the day we had sex that week.  Maybe the next day.  Either way, everything has been normal since then.  He’s been quite wonderful, in fact, coming to the hospital and helping me in so many ways.  I told him I’m going to love being married to him so very much.