This is a kind of companion to the entries Lis makes as a part of her story. We want to help people healing in a relationship, like us. I won't REPLACE INTO this very often, but I will when I need to say something. Hopefully something in my rambles can help someone else.

July 6th, 2:30 AM

Tonight I sat in bed with Lis, and while holding her I tried to help her work through more of The Courage to Heal. She asked me earlier in the day if I would answer the questions with her, to help her feel less alone while she did it. It's one of the harder things I think she's ever had to do, so of course I said yes.

I suffer from a form of manic-depression, mostly a kind of impulsive and violent form of self-injury. I've been in-and-out of therapy for the last six months, and when Lis and I broke up two months ago, it was because of the problems I have.

Tonight, after I broke down and then became very withdrawn and scared, Lis told me that she thought it would be better if she did the book by herself. She was crying and terrified, because in her boyfriend was this violence that she simply couldn't handle, that was made even worse because she was trying so hard to make it through a book that brought to the surface so much fear of exactly that.

So I sat there, trying to calm myself at the same time that I tried to console her. Everything crashed down, and she lay mute for a long time, unable to talk to me at all. I left to get tea (which, like Lis says, is a wonderful thing to have when you need to overcome anxiety). When I came back, she recoiled at my touch, and all I could do was to cover her with the blanket and watch her fall asleep, tear- streaked and shaking. Now I'm alone downstairs, typing this.

Imagine what it feels like to hurt someone simply because of the kind of person you are. Because of something you can barely control, much less change. I've been in Cohasset with Lis for a month, and since the first few nights, I've helped her to trust me again and to trust me with her feelings about the rape again. I'm not writing about what happened tonight to lament my reality, but to show what it can be like for someone who loves a survivor; it can be hard, and maybe I can help someone reading this to understand why things are difficult with their boyfriend or girlfriend. Because with Lis and myself, it isn't just about learning to be physically comfortable again, or helping her to overcome her fear of this place. I have to do so much to help her find trust and support in me, because I know in my heart that I can hurt her simply by being myself.

And this is where this late-night ramble gets important. It would be easy to sit down here and let myself become more-and-more frustrated at how hard it is for us. I could blame myself, my condition. I could blame this town, the heat, maybe even our relationship itself. I could get angry and let go, hurt myself, lose control...

But I won't.

I start by telling myself that this isn't easy, what we're trying to do. It's going to get easier with time, but for now it's incredibly hard. I won't expect Lis to heal at anything but her own pace. I won't force her to talk, or to listen. But I will respect her enough to ask if she needs me, to ask if she wants to talk, and to ask if she will listen to me about what's going on inside of me. This is why this is so hard, sometimes; there are two of us at work here, not just one.

When you love someone - a friend, a family member, or a lover - and they entrust you with something as terrifying and personal as a rape, you want more than anything to make that hurt go away. And if the person who has trusted you wants your help in their healing, then you want to make it go away even more.

I feel this terrible longing inside for Lis' happiness. I want to give her peace and keep her from living with the rape every day and every night. And that's important, that kind of devotion and love. It just isn't everything. You have to be careful and you have to work together, or all of the good intentions in the world won't keep you from falling apart.

I know that I can help Lis more than anyone. Now I need to teach myself to help without forcing the issue. And more importantly, I have to learn to trust her with myself. This is what I mean by saying that it's hard for two people to do this. It's hard to work together to help one person, but it's even harder to work together and blend two people's healing, which is what a relationship like ours needs.

Tonight, I threw an incredible amount of anger and violence at her, and I expected to feel better right away. Why? I think I expected that because I had been able to help her so much for the past month, I would have the same results simply by choosing to talk to her when I finally felt so bad that I couldn't hold it back any longer. I've made a dangerous mistake, even though I know in my heart that things will be okay. I can learn from things like this, and as long as that happens, I have faith in the two of us.

What I wanted so badly to express with this is the idea that two people in a relationship like ours need to trust each other as much as possible and as often as possible. Lis is struggling to tell me when she feels threatened, scared, or any one of a hundred bad feelings that haunt her when she's in this place. She tries to talk on her own, and I do my best to help her to talk by gently offering to listen.

Now I know that I also need to talk to her about my own feelings and accept her help when she offers to listen herself. That doesn't mean that the two of us should speak every thought and ask every few minutes if the other one is okay. It just means that holding back can be dangerous, and I want to do everything I can to help both of us keep from doing that.

I think that when one person has been hurt as badly as Lis was when she was assaulted, a close relationship is more difficult than a lot of other people's relationships might be. It takes work, and it takes being very aware of what's happening in the relationship. But now I want to say something very important to me, something I believe completely: even though the difference between a relationship where the two people seem functional and normal and your own relationship, where words like rape and abuse seem to make things so hard and you spend 30 minutes drinking tea to keep yourself from self-injury, might make you think you're weird, or sick, or something else equally untrue, you need to keep something in mind.

"Normal" relationships don't exist. The prom king and queen (with apologies to anybody out there who was a prom king or queen) might be perfect on the outside, and they may never spend a night holding each other and crying, but without that two people have a hard time bonding and becoming honestly close. Everyone has barriers, and almost everyone has something or some things that stay hidden, that hurt, and that only come up with someone they can trust completely.