Chapter 20 - Questions & Answers

While all of this has been transpiring around me, I am carrying on my life. I am still on my course for work. It is not an easy thing to do, to carry on your normal everyday chores while your world is crumbling around your ears. I was in therapy but it is a very slow process and I was not really sure why I was there. I asked my therapist for a list of things to do to make me feel better, to help me cope. I am a Type A personality. I have always worked very hard, given my all to my job plus some. I have a house and a husband. And I have this other life that I have been living. That's how it felt, as if I were living two lives. One in the present and the other in the past.

When I started this process I told myself that all I wanted was to deal with the issues from 26 years ago, but somehow it was spilling into my current life. My boundaries were blurring. I had never asked a question of Rett concerning his current situation. I had never asked if he was married, or if he had children or even what he did for a living. Nothing to do with his current life. Those questionnaires that we filled out where general questions that dealt with miscellaneous things like - what was the last meal you ate? Or your favourite childhood toy? But somehow Rett worked in items from his current life. He did it deliberately.

One such question was "How do you vent anger?" His reply was "I don't know, learning a whole new skill set post divorce. Not much to get angry about these days, but I do believe it is a choice." I could not have anticipated the response I received from that question.

Another question was "What is your favourite day of the year?" Rett's response was "March 4 - Duh. Used to be Dec 25 when the kids (step) were around. Any day when the kids are here." I had never asked him about children, nor would I ever have asked, and that was a premeditated, deliberate choice on my part. It was one of the only things I definitely did not want to know. I had always felt that he had not had children, and I can't explain how I knew that. There are just some things you know. But he had managed to work it into that simple, harmless question. He wanted to share those two pieces of information.

I remember reading the response concerning his favourite day and seeing the word children, and could feel a tightness around my heart, I could feel the colour draining from my face. I was so afraid of his referencing children in any way. I had never been sure how I would feel if he started talking about children...if he had children, would I feel jealous, and if he didn't, would I feel guilty? It was too close to my hurt feelings and I didn't want to go there...but there it was, and it was okay. But he put it there deliberately. I can see that now.

It was odd to think about Rett as a 48 year old man. When I would think about him, I only had his image from 26 years ago, and that's what I saw. I tried to age him in my head, but it isn't easy to do. I wasn't really interested in what he looked like, I was more interested in the man he was, what his personality was like. That's why those questionnaires and the questions I asked were so important in sculpting an image of who he was.

At least I had a reference point to draw from. Rett kept telling me, over and over that he may not have remembered my name, but he remembered my face, my smile, my laugh and my personality. So, I called him on it. I asked him to tell me exactly what he remembered. I (as always) knew the answer before I asked it. He made an effort, but all he had was that I was vertically challenged (at least compared to him), my laugh, that I was intelligent, and he remembered my cry and a couple of phone calls. Nothing specific except for the reference to my height which he had gotten from me in a previous e-mail questionnaire where I made reference to the fact the I was short. He had nothing.

When I replied to this e-mail I called him on this because it was so apparent he remembered nothing of the physical me. At the time when we were together I had extremely long hair...to my ass. If I had asked ANYONE to describe me from that point in time, that would have been the first item they would have listed.

But I explained it to Rett in a way that would make him feel better about his memory loss. I told him I understood, because he had spent the last 26 years trying to forget the physical me...and all he remembered was my voice, my cry and conversations we had over the phone, and those he truly did remember better than I. Those are the memories that have dulled for me. I had absolutely no recollection of the sound of his voice - NOTHING. And I knew why...because that is where my trauma with him was...over the phone.

Our minds help us deal with these traumas in ways we are not ever aware.