How It Works

Here is how it works:

If something bad happens, it’s my fault.

One week after Gregg and I got married, his dad was diagnosed with leukemia. Three weeks after that, he died.

Obviously, he would have been fine if we hadn’t been married, if I wasn’t completely ruining his son’s life by being a part of it.*

Obviously, this was my fault.

When we visit our in-laws in May, we find out that Gregg’s sister is having troubles on her organic farm. It turns out that the farmer before them didn’t disclose all the pesticides he used on his GMO corn, and now nothing will grow in the soil.

Obviously, this was my fault.

Keshav has trouble reading in school. My fault.

Sachin trips and falls. My fault.

Gregg has a bad day at work. My fault my fault my fault.

The way I described it to my therapist was like this: I have a limited amount of good things, and every time I try to get something more, I’m greedy, and my greed is punished. I have to have tight control. I can’t be too happy. I can’t possibly have it all, so to speak, because that surely means that Sachin will end up dead in the street or Gregg will have a torrid affair with a woman much prettier than me or Keshav will have a nervous breakdown. (These are all scenarios I think of at night, when I am NotSleeping.)

There is safety in misery. There’s safety in not reaching for too much. There’s safety in a small, controlled life. Every single time I feel a bubbling of happiness (like, say, when I married Gregg), it gets knocked down.

When I was little, if I did something good, it was almost always completely ignored. “Oh, you won an art competition? Who cares. You made the honor roll for the seventh semester in a row? Big deal. Do better next time. High honor roll or bust. Your English teacher pulled you aside and told you you weren’t trying hard enough, and that you were amazing? It’s not your chemistry teacher saying that, is it?”

But if I did something bad? Late for curfew by three minutes? Screams. Left my shoes out in the living room? Slaps. Have a fever and someone has to stay home with me? Selfish cow.

It’s now just coming to light how this is Not Normal. How of course I have crippling anxiety. How of course I think doing something bad leads to a punishment, and something good doesn’t matter at all. Of course. This is how it works, for me anyway. I’m the keeper of bad things. If your kid is sick, it’s definitely my fault. If you lose your job, it’s probably because I had a good day. Or worse, because I had a really, really bad day, and didn’t manage to school my features into feeling absolutely nothing. Because that of course is the key. Feeling nothing.

This is how it works: when you’re trained to feel nothing, sometimes the feelings will come out of your throat and try to kill you. Sometimes you will think, “You selfish cow. You’re ruining the world with your feelings.” This is how it works.

And sometimes, your husband will tell you, when you finally admit that you killed his father, “*But it was a good thing. He got to see us married. You got to be with me. I had you to rely on.”

Sometimes, you need to let go of how you think everything works, and start over completely.

This is how it works: now, breathing, looking at things, figuring my life out all over again.