Me and Mr. Unavailable: Women Who Love Too Much

At the risk of sounding stalker-like, Zoe and I started going to BookWorks on a regular basis, avoiding Fridays because that was #111's volunteer day. By way of excuses, BookWorks really does have the best atmosphere in the city for doing work—free wifi in a spacious, open, airy, warehouse-type place. And in Soho, no less.

On our very first outing, I hunkered down in the café to write as Zoe perused the bookshelves. After about 30 minutes, she came up to me and handed me a fifty-cent copy of Women Who Love Too Much, the classic 1980s relationship tome by psychologist Robin Norwood. Much like the original title of the book The Drama of the Gifted Child was probably something like Spoiled Children, Narcissistic Parents, the original title of Women Who Love was likely Codependent Women. I felt pretty blasé about it until I scanned down to the subtitle: When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He’ll Change.

I solemnly closed my laptop. That was me. Too impatient for answers to start at the beginning, I skipped ahead to the chapter, “The Need to Be Needed.”

“Wow, you’ve gotten right into that, haven’t you?” Zoe said.

“Listen to this,” I said, and then read a few eerily familiar passages aloud.

“I wasn’t able to leave him until I could finally see who he really was, instead of who I wanted him to be…. Only my hope that he’d change for me kept me going all those years…”

That was what people had been saying about #111: “He’s shown you who he is,” I remember Nora saying, “and that is who he is.” Instead of accepting it, I’d fallen into a black hole from which only medication could retrieve me.

In another chapter, Norwood describes a woman who met a man and, from the moment they met, he showed his true, misogynist colors. But, instead of retreating, the woman bounded forward, thinking that once he got to know her he would see he was wrong about women—that, because of her, he would start to see things differently.

I had a sinking feeling as I read that, remembering several early dates with #111. He made disparaging comments about “women in their ‘30s” or “women who watch Sex and the City,” saying they were shallow and didn’t really care about men, only wanting them for two things—sex and babies. At the time, my thoughts on what he said ran like this, “Oh, he’s just joking, that’s just some kind of shtick, he doesn’t really believe that. He’ll see that I’m not like that and change his mind.”

I made excuses for him without even realizing I was making excuses for him. I also remembered how, in a conversation with Nora soon after the breakup, the truth struggled toward the surface. “I don’t think he even likes women,” I said.

The rest of Women Who Love was geared toward women who found themselves stuck in codependent relationships and needed to fix themselves through self-love instead of trying to fix their mates. While I could use some more self-love, for me, however, I didn't get stuck in my relationships because none of them could get past the four-month mark (when I generally got dumped). I didn’t have trouble getting out of them, I needed to avoid getting into them.

I needed to be attracted to the right guys, ones who could handle intimacy and commit. Was it me? Was I unable to pick the right guys because of my own fear of intimacy? Or were there just a lot of the wrong guys in New York and it was just a matter of weeding through them? It was the never-ending chicken/egg dilemma. Was it me or was it this city? Maybe it was both.

Me and Mr. Unavailable: Zoloft and Zoe

There's been a bit of a blog silence, I know. January is never a good month, but add the beginning of the New Year to what happened in late Q3 and Q4 of 2010 and the resulting emotional carnage of January pretty much bled all over February.

Let me summarize my January/February state: I was waking up every day with crippling anxiety and all-consuming panic. It was as if there was a fire, somewhere, but I couldn't find it to put it out. I'd go to therapy and cry. I'd attend gatherings of likeminded uptowners and downtowners and cry. It felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, and, speaking of the world, it was about to end. Every tiny task felt monstrous. Getting the mail was terrifying. Calls from unfamiliar numbers paralyzed me. I began to think about #111 again. Maybe he'd change. Maybe he'd come back.

Then, just as it seemed that sanity would leave me forever, two things happened.

Thing #1: Zoe moved to town. I'd met her last year on the sailing trip in Australia. She and her sister had joined the boat on the second leg of the journey. They were the only good things about the rain-soaked, sour-crewed three days. Then, in January, she left London for New York and wound up moving into an apartment on my block. Zoe—voluptuous, vivacious, a little bit crazy—had come to New York with all kinds of project ideas, set on bringing them to fruition. She was encouraging me to pursue my own projects and we made study dates at coffee shops around town in the name of productivity, but my anxiety only came with me.

On one particularly shaky Monday morning, we decided to try out the New York Public Library. Free wifi, books, space, peace and quiet, what could be better? What we didn't know we discovered through four out of five senses: New York Public Libraries are actually homeless shelters. After an hour, we escaped for lunch and I broke down. "I'm barely functioning," I confessed. "I can't even describe the amount of anxiety I feel. I'm in a constant panic." But the real confession was that, after lunch, I was headed to Kevin's office to borrow his Tony Robbins CDs. He swore by them, and I was so broken, I was willing to try anything.

"Right," Zoe said. "You go get those CDs and we'll get you sorted out and then we'll start you working on your projects. That's what you need, I reckon. We'll fix your head and then the projects will come after."

Thing #2: I went to my doctor and told her I was anxious and depressed.
"Any suicidal thoughts? she asked.
I nodded.
"Any plans?"
I smiled and shook my head. It was sweet of her to ask.
And then she gave me a prescription for 50 mg of Zoloft.

Having for much of my life operated under the motto "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," I had always been against anti-depressants for myself. But at this point I was too pained to be principled. It took a few weeks and a doubled dosage, but I began to rise from the torpor.

As I did, I started to notice how all of my music leaned toward the bleak--The Cure, New Order, Depeche Mode, The Smiths. In the past year, I'd downloaded only a handful of songs that could be considered upbeat—like Rihanna's “Umbrella “and T.I. (featuring Rihanna)'s “Live Your Life”—but whenever I'd go to make a Genius Playlist of any of them, I'd get this message: "This song does not have enough related songs to create a Genius Playlist."

It's entirely possible that I've been depressed for the last 30 years and just didn't know it. After all, I know all the lyrics to "Girlfriend in a Coma."

Back on the path toward something resembling sanity, Zoe and I took up our study dates again. But I still had #111 on my brain.

"Right, I think you need to face your demons," she said. "You need to go to that bookshop where he works and see him and if you feel anything, you give it another go. If you don't, you're done."

See him? As in, "Surprise, here I am." She couldn't be serious.

On the appointed day, I couldn't do it but sent Zoe so she could check him out and report back on how miserable he looked. She called from the store. "I don't think he's here," she said. I was headed to that part of town anyway, so I told her I'd meet her out front. When I got there, we scanned the front windows. I didn't see him. It gave me hope. Maybe he'd stopped working there.

"Unless that's him," she said. “But that one looked so serious.”

She pointed to the back of a plaid-shirted man in the window. It was him.

"Oh yeah, that's him," I said quickly, grabbing her and ducking out of sight. We crept along under the windows until we were out of range.

I felt sick, and interpreted the feeling as something akin to desire. Later, things processed a little more. From seeing what the back of him looked like, I could extrapolate on what the front of him looked like. Serious, brooding, “intense,” as he liked to say. He hadn’t changed. It would be ludicrous of me to think he had. Getting in touch with him would be like going back in time. That chapter had ended. There was no reason to reread it. There was nothing more to learn.

I’d been so upset for so long. So many people--friends and strangers--had been so nice to me. It finally dawned on me: I had all these people who loved me and I wanted to get this guy to love me? I wasn't just insane. I was stupid.

Diagnosis: Just for me this time: I've been keeping myself unavailable by holding onto the fantasy of #111—because I'm terrified of accepting that I’m alone. Because if I’m alone, that means I have to keep moving forward, which means I could get hurt again. The #111 I created in my head never existed. He was just a convenient excuse to keep myself safe from new pain. But, good news, I'm already moving forward--because there's someone else in the picture.