Saturday, July 9, 2011
this is your life
November, 2009, my long-alienated partner of 24 years, Janna (a psychotherapist)—from whom I’d been more or less separated for 15 months—killed herself soon after discovering I’d fallen in love the year before with a woman in my department, Terese, who reincarnated a love decades ago, when I was 27. I expect one would react like “You must be joking”: Psychotherapists are the persons who prevent suicides. Janna had a veritable village in San Francisco of persons who loved her, including professional colleagues who were dear friends—and me.
Even though we remained family to each other in the few years before her act, she gave me no advance sign that her despairs (which I knew intimately) were overtaking her. I was so shocked by her sister’s email to everyone on Janna’s contact list that my first reaction was anger that Janna hadn’t let me know she was overtaken. I expressed my anger in a blog, including a photo of one of her clients who’d recently stopped chemotherapy, as if that was Janna surrendering to her empathy (which was one of Janna’s issues: difficulty bearing so much of others’ suffering she couldn’t dissolve).
I received a long letter from Janna via snailmail two days later. She had not let anyone know of her plan, which wasn’t sudden but deliberately hidden for months.
In retrospect—but over a year later—I realized that I might have seen it coming. It was not about us, she insisted. Janna’s learning of Terese wasn’t mentioned in her letter. The topic had only come up in conversation, due to offhand comments from a mutual friend. My infatuation with Terese happened the fall of 2008—no “mid-life crisis,” just luscious inspiration and fun. Janna and I had been non-partners, but still family, since 2006. For several years, our separating lives had seemed to be good for each of us (after two decades). We still loved doing things together.
However, there were points of evidence I might have kept in mind that might have gelled presciently. Janna’s letter intimated as much (though she was occupied with her own despairs, intent on absolving me and everyone else of responsibility). I could have been more sensitive to her immersion in her practice, 2006 onward (giving less and less time to her own needs, evidently), as if—now it dawns—she was letting herself merge with their lives (which she knew better than to do, I presumed). She was not terminally ill physically. My life was not the reason for Janna ending her life. She was haunted; she became a therapist in light of dealing with chronic issues from her youth (including anorexia, then bulimia—surface syndromes of deeper issues). The fair story isn’t short.
But hindsight can be a cruel shadow. Couples drift apart, not fully understanding why, as they pursue the differing validities that drew them apart. Abstraction about it is partly compensatory, I recognize. But we’re all unwitting players in being human: New parts of oneself emerge in relationships, without intrinsic guidance for “Us”—or older parts (once younger, thus potentially prevailing newly) or just other parts of oneself emerge into already-diverging courses of shared lives that often fail to find new, durable ways to continue sharing most of their time and interests and plans with each other.
Anyway, we reach for explanatory patterns that may dissolve the shadows. We want to believe our specialness is irreplaceable—or that our capabilities can match any challenge; then discover how commonly that belief turns out to be true for those who moved on, cherished their vulnerability (found enough self compassion), or did not.
