A week in September under control

Two rooms, five days.

• 9:00am return from school run
• 9:01am assemble makeshift wardrobe in hallway downstairs
• 9:30am move clothes from wardrobe room 1 to makeshift wardrobe
• 10:00am remove all remaining items from the room
• 10:30am sandpaper doorframe 1 outside
• 11:30am sandpaper doorframe 1 inside
• 12:30pm sandpaper doorframe 2 outside
• no time for a break
• 01:30pm sandpaper doorframe 2 inside
• 02:00pm sandpaper doorframe 3 outside
• 02:30pm school run
• 02:45pm get homework done
• 03:05pm begin cooking dinner and sandpaper doorframe 3 outside while things cook
• 03:30pm eat dinner
• 03:45pm wash dishes (we don’t have a dishwasher)
• 04:00pm apply wood filler to all imperfections doorframe 1
• 04:45pm apply wood filler to all imperfections doorframe 2
• 05:30pm apply wood filler to all imperfections doorframe 3 etc. etc.

Five detailed days to go. Every hour of all five days accounted for. Each day broken down to the n^th degree just like that. There wasn’t a minute to spare but I was determined to get it done.

I had every intention of preparing the woodwork, walls and ceiling for two separate rooms and then painting them. Both rooms contain a walk-in wardrobe (of sorts) and an en-suite. Neither room had been painted properly before. We bought a fixer-upper house a few years back and I was determined to finally get the upstairs fixed up so we didn’t have to live in a building site anymore. We could finally have a nice home.
Patching and painting was a necessary first step towards that end.

I was delighted to get the chance to do this work, I had been looking forward to it. Work (as in work work / employment) had been extremely demanding lately. I had been working crazy hours. I had a week off and I was delighted with the change. I knew it would be busy but I wanted to enjoy it.

Little did I know that it would be the week that broke me. It would be the week that I realized our marriage was a sham, our relationship was a sham and everything I ever did from the moment I met my wife was all for nothing.
It became the week that I cried my heart and lungs out harder than I’ve ever cried in my life. And trust me, I’m not a crier. I wept bitterly, alone, isolated, betrayed, broken. This week ended our marriage.

It began with a massive tantrum about having moved her clothes to the afore mentioned temporary rail safe and sound under the stairs. She raged and she raged.
She even started bringing clothes and other items back up to the rooms despite the wet paint up there.

I’ll never ever forget it, for as long as I live. Her undiluted rage lasted weeks.
She hated on the color. She hated on the disruption. She hated on the quality. She hated on me. She packed my clothes into bags and tried to kick me out of the house. She raged and she raged.

I didn’t get it all finished before I had to go back to work (exhausted and exasperated). I never finished the rooms. Years later there’s no flooring or carpet, no baseboards (skirting boards). The en-suite bathrooms remain unfinished with loose and inadequate fittings. One shower is unusable, the other remains leaking.

She’ll want the house in the divorce proceedings. She’s more than welcome to it. I wouldn’t have the emotional energy to even think about finishing those rooms.

Why did she behave that way?

So maybe I surprised her, didn’t give her warning about the disruption in advance?
Nope, she knew. She had no interest in choosing colors and just nodded passively at the choice in the end.

So maybe I mis-handled her clothes, damaged them? Dirtied them?
Nope, I took perfect care of them.

So what was it?
I’m not a psychologist but I guess maybe…

“Envious of others”: she couldn’t be upstaged. Allowing me to do this would diminish her importance relative to mine.

“Lack of empathy”: She was cruel to me and didn’t seem to care.

“A belief that she is special”: Her stuff (an extension of herself) cannot be messed with this way. Her stuff is far too valuable to be disturbed like this. She is far too special to have to endure such disruption like a lesser commoner.

“Sense of entitlement”: (A) That she can treat me that way and (B) That things get done but not at her expense.

“Fantasies of success”: In other words, “magical thinking”. A belief that getting things done happens by magic with no disruption.

Or some such, I really don’t know. In any case, this was one of the worst weeks of my life. Years later the pain of it is as bad as ever.

That was control. She stopped me. She disabled me. She broke me. She deactivated me. She broke my spirit. The shame of never having finished the upstairs hurts bad because it’s embarrassing. Other parts of the house met the same fate and those are even more visible to visitors. It’s embarrassing. People must think we’re lazy, dirty and happy to live in squaller.

Can I ever explain to people what actually happened? Not really. It’s not a believable story unless you’ve lived it and understand it.

That is narcissism. That is what narcissism does. Narcissism, breaks, prevents, disables.

Narcissism controls.

But the logic behind the control is twisted. It doesn’t make sense. It’s a self-serving warped logic that serves only defective needs. It knows nothing outside of that. It sees the situation very differently. The vision of completing a house was quashed by the need for control. The “narcissistic perspective” saw things very differently to how most people would see them.