5/31/2007 Love At First Site: Sarah, Break My Face.
My ability to talk about my experience in my support group is limited. I certainly cannot use real names, and I cannot talk about what happened in group. Only in a general way can I communicate what I need to get across.
First of all, while individual therapy was an unmitigatedly positive experience, group was the opposite.
I don't think I said much the first session. Second session I said more. But I was shocked at how fast I became “the quiet one” again.
I thought that I was going there to find people like myself; alone, fighting depression. Instead these people had friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, roommates. They just had a variety of panic attacks when they got around people they didn't know. They were far more “well adjusted” than me. In the waiting room they made chit-chat like pros. How humiliating it was, to be the shyest of the shy, the most anxious of the anxious. Soon most of the discussion around me was why was I so quiet, why wouldn't I share anything with the group.
But things became more complicated. There was this women at the group. I'll call her “Sarah”. Sarah was the worst S.A. Case outside of me. The difference was that she drank to calm herself. She only felt she could be herself after a few drinks. The first day, when I saw her, I thought that this is the kind of girl I could fall in love with. She was slender with big, expressive brown eyes. I was kind of stunned that all the girls in the group were attractive, not even one dud. I would have been more comfortable with the duds. But the first week I felt attraction to Sarah, and I knew that if I spent more time with her, I would probably fall in love.
That first week was sheer hell. Not only was I scared to come to group, but My car got a flat on the drive there. I went to group and then came out and called the roadside assistance. They took like three hours to get there and then they told me they couldn't bring a new tire, only replace the old one with the spare that was in my trunk. I could have done that in twenty.
So then I drove around to three different auto places before finally finding one that had my tire. I waited in their waiting room for three more hours while they were apparently refusing to work on the car because the rim was bent, and calling my apartment to tell me so. When I went up to the desk to ask what was the problem, they asked me where I had been, apologized profusely, and then when I was still angry, they cried, “We can't put the tire on sir. You bent the rim! See that? You bent the rim!” As though I took to the rim with a hammer or something.
But it was in the waiting room that something happened to me. I fell in love again. She was a gorgeous little latina with a baby. The baby would take the cell phone from her and yell gibberish to whomever was there. I hadn't felt that profound attraction to anyone since Jen, some four years before. I was beginning to wonder if I was capable, if my soul had died. Well, right there, in the waiting room, some three hours after I met the women who might turn out to be my soul mate, the love of my life, I was in love with this girl. She would hold the child in her arms and I could feel the love she was giving from across the room; profound and divine. I tried not to stare at her but every time she looked away I couldn't help myself. All the feelings I felt for Jen were back and I was alive again. I couldn't have made much of an impression on her when I got pissed off at the guy at the counter. I'd probably never see her again, but somehow I felt like it was Sarah that had woken me up. And the next year would be about Sarah.
As the group went on, it seemed uncanny how similar Sarah and I were. I really couldn't expect to find someone more like me. We both had very similar family situations, and had both basically reacted the same way. My relationship with the other members wasn't good. It wasn't hostile, but not social either. They told me that I was defensive, that it was like I didn't want them to talk to me. My relationship with Maura wasn't much better. I would occasionally try to reach out to her, but she was having none of it. My feelings kept growing anyway. Every week she had a new horror story, and eventually her tears became a common occurrence. It was so hard for me to sit there and listen to her talk about her pain and not be able to hold her, to touch her and try to make everything ok. When I was outside the group, every love song brought me joy, no matter how Celine Dion it was. But eventually it turned to self-hatred when I couldn't tell her how I felt. On top of it, Sarah seemed to be developing a crush on this other guy in the group who was gay. Shit, I thought, this is getting to be a stupid soap opera.
In time she dropped out of the group and I haven't seen her since. You might think that this was the most intense “love” I've ever had, since I actually “knew” her, but it wasn't. It didn't seem any more real than Jen. In time I came to understand something about myself: I always fall in love with women in peril. Christine was out of place in art class, that's why I was initially attracted to her. Jen had an abusive ex. Sarah was in the throes of her own family situation, and it was tearing her apart. Always women in pain. I was the Christ figure, or at least I saw myself that way, who could sacrifice myself to feel their pain and save them, protect them. All those years, and I was still trying to rescue my mother from my father. Love at first site my ass.
That makes me wonder, is love about issues? Is that why children of alcoholics often marry alcoholics themselves? Is that why we love? Does every love story have a past that the couple is trying to deal with by loving one another?
As for the group, it didn't last much longer. I kept coming in, thinking it would be good for me, but it wasn't. To be honest, the group leader said that it would take at least a year before the group really started to be comfortable enough to work together. That never happened, there was 100% turnover in a year. I did try to connect with some of the other members, but whenever I spoke to them they became curt. They told me that much of it was because normally I was shut off and when I spoke to them it came as a shock. But I think that part of it was that no one in the group wanted to be the one person I connect with. Of course, they're right about me being shut off. If I could walk in and smile and shake their hands and tell them jokes, I'm sure they would have opened up to me. But sometimes it feels like a smile would break my face; I had to force myself to open up and when it happened nothing came of it. That and whenever the group talked about me they said they felt sorry for me. SO I became a pitiful figure and was liberated when I walked out. Seeing me through the eyes of others did nothing but confirm the worst. I much like seeing me the way I do now: with imagination.
But what does this do to love at first site? Now I know the reason why my feelings for these women were so strong despite not even knowing them. This was the “mom paradigm”, I'll get more into my idea of sexual paradigms much later. But, while on the one hand, there is a reason that I was so drawn to these women that has to do with my past. But then, if we are soul-mates, then wouldn't we naturally be put in a position to notice one another? Isn't that part of fitting together? Perhaps, but there is something else that tears at me, and that is the appearance of these women. If any of them were my soul-mate, then why are they all so beautiful, when I am so...uh...well...not? We've gone around and around here. Next post, time for some answers.
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