There is a comfort in this new routine, though, in how it returns us to the way things were before, just the three of us, before the time when there was tension and grief and worry and sadness and guilt and anger about it being just the three of us. Now it is the relief of just the three of us, coming up with ways to fill the days together, being creative about the fact that I need to be lying down most of the time.
How to remain lying down while in the process of getting to Duke for my procedure is a game I haven’t figured out the rules of just yet. Flying seems impossible: I understand the physics involved in flight, but the physics involved in my getting myself into a cab and then standing up and walking through the airport and then sitting through the flight, unable to lie down, and then standing again and then getting another cab and then getting to the hotel seem impossible to understand or execute at a time when my cumulative daily functional upright time is measured in minutes.
More than that, when I ask about whether or not I can do this all alone—theoretically survive a flight, take cabs to and from the hospital for my tests and procedures, recover at the hotel, and get myself back to Philadelphia after five days or so, if all goes well—the doctor says absolutely not. I need to have a person with me; this is not something I can do alone. I check in with the leakers in the Facebook group, and they all concur. And yet who can I impose upon to do this with me? I can’t ask Gil, as he will need to be with the kids during the time I’m gone, and also because spending five days in a hotel room with me while I’m incapacitated is likely the last thing he wants to do at this point; his parents have kindly offered to help in whatever way I need, but I can’t possibly ask them to do this, mainly due to the awkwardness of sharing a hotel room and being cared for for five days by people who are now my ex-in-laws, and also because it is too much of an imposition, too much to ask.
It feels too much to ask of my sister Jessie, too, but when I tell her I am to be treated at Duke, she arranges for the time off and says she will drive me to North Carolina, take me to my appointments, stay with me while I recover, and drive me back home again. I can lie down for the seven-hour car ride, and I do. We make our way through seven hours of true-crime podcasts and conversation, a cooler loaded with snacks and drinks within arm’s reach as I lie fully reclined in the passenger seat, and I’m grateful to not have to do this alone, grateful to not have to hold this fragile hope all by myself as we get closer and closer to the place that may offer me some relief, finally, that may even possibly, unbelievably, unimaginably provide a true end to the lying down game.
26
This is what I do when I am startled, or confronted by an argument: I freeze. If I can become very still and wait it out, become invisible, then it will stop, and I will be safe.
This is not a great strategy for dealing with confrontation. And yet it is a powerful reflex, one against which I have to actively work to fight in a moment when I find myself in a combative conversation or stressful dynamic. This is why I end up staying longer than I intend to, or agreeing to things I don’t necessarily want to do, or losing an argument I should win. This is not a pattern that works in my favor in the long run.
My marriage has been a long argument, and I am perpetually freezing. It’s true that over the years I have gotten better at responding, at not holding myself so still that I can barely breathe. And it’s true that when the argument is about something that’s not me, when it’s about the kids and what’s right for them, for instance, I am able to resist the urge to hide and instead fight on their behalf, or for what I know is the right thing. But my first instinct is always to not break, to not allow myself to shatter. And so often, against my better judgment, I agree, I soothe, I capitulate. I freeze.
I think about this, as I lie in bed, frozen in place by my leaky brain fluid. Have I been choosing this? Is this another way to hide? Am I resisting the stress of my life, of my shattered marriage, by lying here, hiding in place, a kind of pain-riddled, cognitively impaired Snow White in a glass coffin, waiting for someone to wake me up?
The kids think I am under glass, for the most part. Shut away in my room, in the dark, lying still, not moving. They see me sometimes, surprising them by being upright for a moment, massaging the back of my head, wincing; but that’s just another thing grown-ups do to be annoying, like complaining about dumb grown-up things that don’t matter. Headaches. Taxes. Traffic. Those darn kids. I’m a sitcom mom clutching my head, complaining, frowning over a laugh track. This
