I find a note from a draft of this timeline:
1972--I'm feeling desperate in the marriage.
I realize I wrote this down b/c I remembered that it was 7 years after the wedding that I could no longer contain my feelings of dissatisfaction and loneliness. We had a painful conversation on the porch at 1201. Ed said he had been treating me as an extension of himself--Karen was to say the same thing, years later, when I was in crisis in relationship with her.
Here's another item:
1980: (before that, I think...maybe as early as 1978; oh, I see I corrected this to 1978) - Ed is going to Vin.
This was Vin Rosenthal, a therapist Karen referred Ed to to try to break the obsessive compulsive disorder that was ruining his life: the first of the many benefits, as well as challenges, that Karen was to bring into our lives. Julia also had consulted with Karen early on, when I was in therapy with her, about a neurotic symptom involving someone chasing her up the driveway at 1201. My kids told Karen stuff they didn't tell me....like all this phobic stuff going on with Julia, and that Jenny had fallen off a horse during her riding lessons, which Jenny told Karen in the kitchen as I was cooking the night we had her over for dinner in the spring of 78, after she'd taken the job as our new Director. I was horrified to hear this and asked why she hadn't told me...she looked at Karen and said, "That's why.", meaning, I guess, that she knew I would freak out.
1980: Things come to a head with Karen. I tell her I can't go on in the therapy b/c I'm in love with her, she tells me she thinks she's in a reenactment of her seduction by her own therapist, this is a whole story in itself. I'm horrified, traumatized, furious, and in another piece of myself, glad.
I think maybe this is the story I really need to write.
1980-81: We all go to est, except for Julia, who's too young. Or am I mixing that up with Julia being too young to sit with the meditation master and receive a mantra?
1980 or 81: Ed's therapy with Vin comes to a climax: he's to practice not washing his hands after he pees. This is an agony for him, and he sits with me on the bed in our room at 1201: "Do you understand that tomorrow there will be headlines in the newspaper that malaria has spread here?": -- he meant b/c he hadn't washed his hands. I was appalled, frightened, and wanted to reach him. I said, "Is there any part of you that knows that's not true?" I can't remember what he said, then, but this moment between us feels still vital to me, a moment we shared in his tortured life, in which I felt very connected to him and honored, even, to be a part of confronting at last the demons that had controlled his life and cost him so much.
1981: I ask Ed for a divorce. I remember his body rising from the bed. I do not forgive myself. Later that day, I tell Karen that I have been 'very brave,' and she says, "I hope you have not been braver than you can afford to be," and, "If you hurt Ed or the kids, I'll kill you." Right.
I go to Morris Sklansky at the Institute for Psychoanalysis to tell him my plight and ask for advice. This is Karen's referral for me. He interviews me twice and says, "You are desperate for the love of a woman." I say, "I don't think I can give her up." He says, "Well, you're not eighteen." He refers me to Dr. Jensen, the monster of Michigan Ave. I am falling apart, of course; I know this is absolutely terrible news, my loving Karen, made worse by having been in treatment with her. Jensen is brutal, tells me I'm acting like an infant, won't hear of anything like a real love for Karen. I begin to fantasize about smashing her windows on my hands or hanging out of the window, several stories up. Eventually I tell her I'm quitting b/c she doesn't like me. She says she doesn't like my behavior. I quit. Go back to Maurice Sklansky, tell him I'm desperate and it's not working with Jensen, he refers me to Lieff. She tells me I'm about 14 months old, emotionally, and that I'm going to leave my kids like my mother did me. For some insane reason I arrange a session with her for the kids, she tells them (I think she was drunk) that she had saved them from my leaving them.
I'm getting worse by the day.; At first, if I were with Karen, I'd be okay. Then one day I was with her and 'it' didn't go away. 'It' was the beast that was now chasing me. I never knew when it would appear....irrational, insane fears that I couldn't shake, appalling experiences of .... I didn't know what to call it. There were several weeks during which I prayed I would get breast cancer b/c it would kill me. I knew I couldn't commit suicide w/o hurting my kids, but to die of a disease was acceptable. Then I started closing my eyes when I was driving. I want to say, 'my eyes would close,' b/c I didn't have a sense of doing it willingly.
I can't remember how I got to Polly Everett, the intake social worker at the Institute, probably through Karen. I went to see her twice a week in her tiny office, just room for a desk and a chair next to it. I supposed that's all they thought she rated. She helped save my life by just listening....she wasn't appalled, as the psychoanalysts had been, by my being involved with my therapist, she let me just talk, she didn't say I was bad, as the others implicitly did, she didn't challenge my love for my kids. She just listened and didn't judge, and I slowly slowly began to heal. It took six years, and by the end of that treatment, I felt ready to do psychoanalysis. I told Polly how she'd helped me with my deficits...she said she didn't see any deficits, just depression, and that she knew I'd be okay if I could feel connected. She said Ed hadn't met my self object needs. She too was dubious about Karen and said something just once, like, "She--referring to Karen-- didn't really understand anything." That could have ended the relationship right there, but I forgave her b/c could see how she would see it that way. She never said anything challenging about Karen again and just focused on whatever I presented. Of course she would have to attack Karen; Karen had violated every rule of psychotherapy by becoming involved with me. I understood this.
1981--divorce, Ed in terrible pain, I'm falling apart, gone to be with Karen a lot. There are times when we try to repair...
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