The Beginning of Everything by Andrea J. Buchanan

Author:Andrea J. Buchanan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

26

This is what I do when I am startled, or confronted by an argument: I freeze. If I can become very still and wait it out, become invisible, then it will stop, and I will be safe.

This is not a great strategy for dealing with confrontation. And yet it is a powerful reflex, one against which I have to actively work to fight in a moment when I find myself in a combative conversation or stressful dynamic. This is why I end up staying longer than I intend to, or agreeing to things I don’t necessarily want to do, or losing an argument I should win. This is not a pattern that works in my favor in the long run.

My marriage has been a long argument, and I am perpetually freezing. It’s true that over the years I have gotten better at responding, at not holding myself so still that I can barely breathe. And it’s true that when the argument is about something that’s not me, when it’s about the kids and what’s right for them, for instance, I am able to resist the urge to hide and instead fight on their behalf, or for what I know is the right thing. But my first instinct is always to not break, to not allow myself to shatter. And so often, against my better judgment, I agree, I soothe, I capitulate. I freeze.

I think about this, as I lie in bed, frozen in place by my leaky brain fluid. Have I been choosing this? Is this another way to hide? Am I resisting the stress of my life, of my shattered marriage, by lying here, hiding in place, a kind of pain-riddled, cognitively impaired Snow White in a glass coffin, waiting for someone to wake me up?

The kids think I am under glass, for the most part. Shut away in my room, in the dark, lying still, not moving. They see me sometimes, surprising them by being upright for a moment, massaging the back of my head, wincing; but that’s just another thing grown-ups do to be annoying, like complaining about dumb grown-up things that don’t matter. Headaches. Taxes. Traffic. Those darn kids. I’m a sitcom mom clutching my head, complaining, frowning over a laugh track. This pain is a thing I am doing to them, or doing to avoid them, or to inconvenience them. I haven’t told them how serious or scary it is, because I don’t know whether it’s truly scary or serious, and because I don’t want to make them worry. So I allow them to find it vaguely irritating. Of course I can’t go to the store, or run an errand, of course I can’t take them to a friend’s house—ugh, moms. But I see their anxiety, slightly, just beneath their evolutionarily protective buffer of normal, developmentally appropriate teenaged narcissism. I see them wondering, nervously: What is really going on?

I have protected them from my pain, because pain is so impersonal, so pointless, when it’s happening to someone else.

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