1 am Thurs 10 Jan 80
My 29th birthday, enough to depress anyone. Awakened by call from – of all people, MY FIRT HUSBAND BRUCE. Says he’s married & happy. Good job with Charlotte Observer. Describes himself as “a nostalgia buff.” Does not want to lose touch, wonders what “our biographers” will make of our relationship. I feel as if it all happened to someone else. Friendly but keeping him at arm’s length – he always wants something.
Crazy card from Devon saying “I love you madly”! Guess we all want what we can’t have. Also, good letter from Maureen. Blackberry accepts poem My Grandmother’s Ghost! T. teases that the $9 I made is “putting him through law school” (it’s cost him $10 so far. Scholarship.)
I wish our families would JUST GO AWAY and leave us ALONE. Phone call from Avril – she’s definitely leaving D.C.so I put up our house for sale with the realtor who found it for us. Avril’s life still up in the air. Toss lecturing very unsympathetically about what she “should” do – I bit his head off. I don’t dismiss his mother’s problems with smug pronouncements! He apologized, asked if he should fly Avril out here – generous but we really can’t afford it. Mom and Dad are renting her a place in Augusta (Maine capital) which has LOTS of jobs.
We’ll get through this. I’m making applesauce from dying apples. T’s friend had a paper that needed typing – managed to get it done in time. Itchy vagina/anus from reckless wild sex acting up. Made a delicious dinner – pork chops with my applesauce, green salad & sweet potatoes. Lie flat with yogurt in vagina reading Queen Victoria & Her Daughters. Not bad.
Toss’s Granma called about family engagement party in March – now T has been on phone with his Mom the past 2 hours.
Heard Toss yelling and cursing at his mother – then he comes up to tell me we have to “head off” Granma’s engagement party because his Mom doesn’t want to go to any party Granma throws. And she expects T to show “solidarity” with her by being unpleasant, stupid and cruel like she is. I try to explain to him that if she doesn’t want to go she doesn’t have to! She can throw her own party!
Something is wrong with Rebecca West whose prognostications I can’t read – something distasteful. I just can’t put my finger on it.
5:30 PM Fri 11 Jan 80
Difficult, inconclusive day. Thank God for my mysticism – so necessary for an artist. I can just disappear into myself. Writing away to NJ Catholic colleges looking for a study of the mystics I can take this summer. My parents declare themselves appalled. “Mysticism doesn’t exist”. I’m making everything up, as usual.
8 pages on novel. It is scaring me to death. Why can’t I relax? Be playful? Is it because of my mother’s anger over the father’s death? She really can’t forgive me for “killing” him! I’m so panic stricken over the ending I’ve decided NOT to make an outline.
Toss got weird postcard from ex-girlfriend. Couldn’t even tell whether she’d received his card or what it meant. Standing outside of my own jealousy, I could see the game is to pretend not caring. Trying to accept his old relationships as a precursor to our love. He is filled with compassion for me over Devon’s weirdness.
We discussed our children and their allowances as we walked the dogs! Very sweet letter from Beales saying he remembered me more fondly than he remembered himself! Cheered up by a book called Womanpriest.
Sat 12 Jan 80 – 3:30 PM
Worked on poetry, (horrible metric problems) read the 12 pages I struggled through on Summer Before Spring – no good. Throws me into a deep depression. I need to expunge all “flowery” writing-class writing. Hemingway the perfect model. Beginning to feel this bombed out cavity of a house is cursed and no project can be completed here. And Toss badmouths my lovely, finished 5 bedroom 3 bath gas piped house in Safe Queens Chapel! But he refuses to move to D.C.
Bad scene with T when I told him I’d already spent the money he gave me. He doesn’t think $35 necessary for groceries! What’s OK is astronomical long distance phone bills with his family. But I cook and shop! We aspire to high food standards! He would do everything differently – why can’t I learn? I am afraid the real problem is males have their temper tantrums encouraged while little girls’ are relentlessly quashed.
Accused Toss of caring a lot more about my housework than my writing. He was surprised when I said he doesn’t respect my intellect! He said why not find mentor who DOES appreciate me. Hmm. Here?
Plowing into Tudor Women. Webb is critical of Harriet Martineau’s “gossip” – he seems to see it as exclusively female. But Pope, Rogers and Jonson said the most awful things about EVERYBODY.
Poor Dixie having trouble walking – now the dog needs x-rays!
11:50 PM – Wed 16 Jan 80
Just finished Bertrand Russell’s autobiography – a bizarre document! His description of dinner with the Stanleys (each member of the family adhering to a different religion) sizes up Victorianism perfectly.
Got a letter from Guilders College (Brooklyn, NY) saying they would consider me for teaching fellowship in creative writing program is they could see a sample of my writing. Better that than my academic record!
1:30 AM Sat Jan 19 – 80
On p 54 of novel!!! T read first 47 p – cried during G’s death!
5:30 Mon 21 Jan 80
Fight with T when he suggested I see gynecologist over “my” fungus – like I came up with it all by myself! I’m not the one who’s been using Jock Itch spray for FOREVER. I went upstairs and typed – he came up yelling angrily that “the silent treatment” was “cheap and unfair.” I’m not allowed to think privately, apparently. Toss doesn’t seem to know how he insults people. No wonder, I guess, with a mother like that. For example, he says if we move to NJ how does he know I won’t “take a whim” to live somewhere else? Cried myself to sleep. I thought I’d be happy just living with Toss and writing but I’m not. Worried sick about money and his passion for this disintegrating housewife.
24 Jan 80
Problems. T. burst out last night, “I don’t believe in joint checking accounts.” Uh oh, since I have no money. I have to ask him for everything and we go over the receipts. My definition of marriage is total partnership. He also acts like his taste is God ordained; i.e. “Pink doesn’t look good with black” instead of “I don’t like pink with black.” I made notes of things I wanted to argue about (here’s the list: made on a copy of Tom Montag’s Letters Home:
Our Relationship
1) my powerlessness – ugly flashbacks of childhood
2) timing of the wedding
3) ignoring my needs
4) my collusion with him – helping him ignore my needs
5) this endlessly protracted limbo
6) my humiliation at housecleaning (he bought “me” a vacuum cleaner!)
7) tears are “an illegal weapon” ie my pain not “allowed”
8) his anguish: “I’m doing my best!” my guilt
9) his criticism of me – criticizer becomes “parent”
10) bad comments on my “job” compared to his “job”
11) living in Princeton in April?
Try to make them comments about SITUATION not Toss himself but he refers to them as my “list of non-negotiable demands.” No. Negotiation necessary, I insist. His overstatements quite exhausting.
Are my points even worth making? I wonder.
Last night T said lovingly, “I think we’re over our problem.” He told me he was afraid he’d be too upset to study. Wish I could agree!
Finished Aimee Liu’s devastating Solitaire. (Bad ending though.) But you have to forgive her for throwing her parents a sop at the end. They’re still alive!
Reading about parent/child battles has lots of relevance to my ongoing struggle with Toss. Finish the poem collection tonight It’s Later Than You Think.
Maybe I should discuss my current theory of development of love relationships?
Being in love is “humiliating”, because “NO WAY OUT”. Reminiscent of parent/ child relationships, etc.
Alysse Aallyn 
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