Why I’m Fairly Certain Love Is A Mental Illness

Okay, I am open enough to admit that I am no relationship expert. At 31, I’ve been married twice. In this past year alone I had three boyfriends and a handful of half boyfriends. I’m a big suck-tastical failmart when it comes to making things work.

But I thought I was getting better. And I haven’t been in serious crazytown for a while now. Sure, when the British Jewish Filmmaker posted naked photos of me on the internet, I was extremely pissed. And we’d been together for a year, so it’s not like deporting him from our bedroom was an easy thing.

Then with the next guy, things were pretty much over the moment we decided to be monogamous. We clearly hadn’t thought through the major glaring differences in our lives. That break up was painless, and I only fell into the post break up booty call trap once with that one.

But this time, I am a fucking lunatic. Please call the hospital and have them prepare the cutest little padded room in the world, because I’ve done lost my mind. Do you need proof?

Well, take a look at my phone log. According to this, I have tried to call my ex 33 times today.

He hasn’t answered. Of course not. And when I call that number, I don’t think I am even expecting him to answer. Same goes for the texts. (You don’t want to see those.)

Then there’s the can’t eat or sleep matter. Then there’s the staring into space with tears dripping down my chin. Then there are the pages and pages of love letters, hate letters, letters that make increasingly less sense. Some just say “Why?” over and over.

And the good question is, why is this making me so insane? I’ve been dumped before. I know in a few months I’ll have forgotten the intensity of the pain. I’ll live through this, but for right now, right at this moment my head is just screaming with it.

I think it’s the nature of the break up itself. It’s been going on for two months now, and up to two weeks ago it was all up in the air. I didn’t want to let go and he kept showing back up, making it clear that he wasn’t my boyfriend but acting like he still was. And I could have done the right, sane thing and said goodbye to him then. Instead, I grew needier and sadder until anything that was cool about us was killed.

Then on the last night there was a fight. Heads were lost. Things were thrown and smashed. Every bit of bottled frustration came pouring out and my love for him turned to rage. There is being sorry for an action, and I was sorry for every crazy bit of that night, but worse was the remorse. I haven’t felt that much anger in years, and I thought I had gotten to a much better place in life.

Since then I haven’t seen him. He hasn’t talked to me aside the occasional text asking me to stop texting him. I really want to stop texting him, too. But I lay there at night, awake, laying on my side of the bed, smelling a t-shirt he left here and crying, and that’s when the texts happen. I beg him for closure. I want to see him and say goodbye properly.

So, the next time I get an email from someone in love who can’t shake it despite the need, I don’t think I’m going to know what to say. Destroy your phone? Get a hobby? Do lots of drugs that cause memory loss?

Or maybe I’ll tell them about this book by Frank Tallis, which examines love as a mental illness.

For now, I need to psych myself up enough to take a shower. If any of you send me those bracketed (((((((((((hug)))))))))))) things, I’m going to send you a bracketed (((((((((((((((((((kick)))))))))))))))))).

I’ve noticed the way my son likes to have one-upping contests with his friends about his town, his school, his worst teacher ever. It’s sweet to hear them describe the cafeteria food or getting kicked out of class, and I know there is a “big fish” element to the story telling.

When I was his age I was living in the Edgar County Children’s Home in Paris, IL. I was in the system; a “state kid”. This meant that I had to go to a lot of gatherings and events for other state kids, most of them in foster care. They were retreats, meant to help foster parents form a network, learn skills, and give us kids a chance to- I don’t know. I guess the adults thought it would help us understand that we weren’t alone.

Mostly it was just a snitch fest, as I recall. I’d run off and kiss a broken boy or two and my foster siblings or the other kids at the home would tell on me. Or we’d all gang up on Paula, calling her Shamu, throwing rubber gloves filled with milk at her, glad as hell that nobody was making fun of us, until eventually Paula would cry and we’d all get in some form of trouble. Normal kid stuff.

Part of that normal kid stuff was the story telling about our towns, schools, worst teachers. You’d think we had darker tales to tell, but I don’t think we knew they were worth telling at that age. I do remember that we kids of the Edgar County Children’s Home would say, eyebrows raised and arms crossed, that, “Oh, yeah? Well Paris, IL has the most pregnant teenagers out of anywhere in the country.” Adults who heard us saying this always said, “Must be something in the water.” At the age of 12 I had decided that I wanted a baby, and had told my case workers as much, so I upped my water intake that year.

Now, I don’t think that factoid was true, and I’m too lazy to care enough to look it up. But I do know that in eight grade I had three pregnant classmates. In high school there were even more, but I moved right after my freshman year, so I lost interest, needing to learn the details of another town that were screwy enough to prove to the world that I lived in the worst place ever.

One girl I remember really well from 8th grade year was Dee, the edgy but quiet girl who had (as many of the girls in Jr. High did) a mucholderboyfriend. Bobby was 19, and already out of high school. He and Dee were totally in love. She had the kind of hickies that we swooned over, seeing that they weren’t placed out of showmanship, but given in a moment of intense passion. He didn’t try to get with her friends, and she didn’t have big stupid fights with him. They’d just stand together, just on the parimeter of the playground, hugging and smoking cigarettes.

Dee got pregnant in the summer. We were all pretty excited when we found out, referring to our 13 year old selves as aunties and asking about names and outfits. There were other pregnant girls, but none of them were like Dee, who had Bobby and who stopped smoking cigarettes.

By the time we had health class, second semester of that year, Dee was showing. And the day that Dee wore a shirt to school that said “Baby on Board” was the day that our health teacher kept Dee after class, asking her if she was pregnant. None of us had thought about what the adults would think- or do- if they found out a person was pregnant. And I still don’t know if that day is related to what happened, but right after that Dee was gone from school. We carried on, as kids do, every now and again wondering about the baby.

In the fall we started high school. The world expanded by a few hundred people, and we were busy getting acclimated. I didn’t even notice that Dee was there until I saw her by a locker one day, staring into it. She looked like ashes and silly putty that had been run across too many newspapers. Even her outfit seemed muted.

I heard from a group of girls that something had happened. The baby was born, but things had gone wrong. Bobby and Dee weren’t giving each other hickies anymore. They were fighting all the time. And the girls said there was something wrong with the baby, though none of us knew what it was. And then one day a low buzz started. The baby had died. Dee and Bobby were breaking up. And we all took this information into ourselves; let it sit for a second, then moved on. I didn’t see Dee at all after that, and then I moved away.

As I write this I feel like I am stealing her story, and maybe without purpose. To me it’s a memory, and I’m writing it because it’s on my mind. I’m willing to bet it’s on her mind a lot more often, though. By the age of 14 Dee had been a mother and lost a child. That’s a lot to have to go through for anyone. I know there are thousands of stories like this one. I wonder how much support there is for teen mothers who lose a child, either late in pregnancy, at birth, or after. It seems like that’s something people would overlook, thinking of a teen pregnancy as unplanned and unwanted.

While teen pregnancy isn’t the ideal, I do hope that we stick with our focus on prevention, but also add an element of resources to young parents. This is just one of the many issues a parent may have to deal with.

*Names changed.