What happened?

I don't honestly know what happened. It was so sudden, and it escalated so quickly. As words, impressions, memory, fear and grief slowed down, I felt a growing conviction that it was a set-up. That almost anything would have triggered it.

What happened?

One week of kindness, compassion, my beloved was back, followed by three weeks of a slow descent; I was hearing some of last years phrases, and my increasing sense of unease feeding into the nightmare that brings me up each day into the morning light.

The evening before I had been offered my place back on my degree course, and that I think, is what put the final piece in place. All that was needed was for me to be upset and then the thing that was set to happen three years ago...was triggered.

I hear Fanita English say, "could it have been an an epi-script"? 

An epi-script is the psychological equivalent of a family curse. A set of attitudes, reasons and behavior that have been passed down in a family as a pathological way to dump shame, guilt and anxiety via behavior.

It is a punitive and unkind script. The guilty person has to take himself away for the sake of others. But this attitude is sneaky, the others must be compelled to demand he goes. and no matter how much they say this is not what they really want, the epi-script is in play.

The other (me) has to 'buy in' I think...rather like in the traditional transactional analysis 'game'. I bought in...but as I say, I've a feeling that it was going to be bigger than me and get me one way or another. It felt that way. It was out of the blue, the day before we had been 'committed' partners, suddenly he's saying he doesn't love me and he is moving out. So the difference was only that I had my place back on the course...

And my part in this? 

Other than some mysterious 'buying in' process?

I understand why people take antidepressants. Not because they work, I've no idea if they work or not. The reasoning is, taking a pill is a ritual expression of 'being ill' and 'trying to get better', plus the effect of the pill - like having a cushion between me and the world, or so I've been told. People suffering severe distress due to horrible life experiences are 'mentally compromised'. We cry a lot, shake, get angry, we can't think straight. But that is easier for other people to accept, if the sad person takes the pill.

My weeping and needing to be held was perceived as too much. He is going through stuff, or rather isn't, because he isn't weeping or needing help or asking for comfort, so it is easy to be overwhelmed if you don't attend to your own wounds. Especially when you say you are dealing with it, and appear to be fine. I come from the tradition that says, express don't repress - but a part of me is saying taking an antidepressant could have prevented what happened?

But no, I don't think that.

As I woke up I assumed that we were 'working' on what had happened so as to get me back to strong so that I could be strong for him. I though that I had permission to be needy...

But really?

Really I believe it was a trap, he has acted in ways that fill him with guilt and shame. My crying was perceived through the epi-script as accusation whilst I thought crying was an opportunity for him to do right, by offering comfort. It was definitely a bid for comfort!

Underneath it all what fits best is, he just doesn't love me anymore.

No matter how many words or theories I use.

And just because I don't understand or even if I do understand how that has happened, it doesn't make it not so.

"Say what you see" says Fritz Perls.