I often thought, while at the same time knowing that this was not how I wanted to see things or be, that it was somehow even addictive, definitely giving you shots of emotional adrenalin, the roller coaster of my life with my husband. It was also somehow like having some kind of special (and I was fully aware, messed up) bond…the cycle of discovering that he had lifted/taken/stolen another item because of his gambling/debts, the waiting for him to return (terrible, it was often several nights and days) and to see what he would confess, that “closeness” of our conversations when he was feeling all remorseful (briefly and I now don’t know how much he was faking it to manipulate me to pay his debts)…like some kind of secret dark world that only we shared, that was the basis of our intimacy. Then the hope that it would all be ok, although I knew that things were too far gone, but I fell into all the cycles and fantasies. Yes, it felt very messed up, but drama sucks you in and then things do feel kind of dull without it. It was “my story”…a more interesting narrative of my life, craziness in Cuba, far away from anywhere that offered me stability and perhaps the environment to see things more clearly, like some kind of movie that I was acting in and had forgotten that it was not real….did not have to be real….And then when I did finally decide to end the relationship, the calm did feel good, the gradual departure of all the physical sensations of stress in my body, the going to bed and sleeping, not wondering all night if and when he would come home, shaking in bed, desperate for it all to go away. And not having to guard my things, being able to safeguard my money and only be spending it on me. Not being sucked into the vortex of the drama that he created. So, Jilly, I can very much relate, and it is something that can be so hard to climb out of, but the world opens up again when one does and it is like coming out of a thick fog.
