I remember the argument that started it quite well. I've told an abbreviated version of it several times over the years, using it as the main reason that I hate to cook. Yeah, me the 4-Her who made bread 6 loaves at a time, learned to cook, can, bake and a whole bunch of those necessary skills like sewing a woman needed in order to care for a husband and family. I won ribbons at the fair for that bread, one of my two 4-H trips to the State Fair. But that argument spoiled all that. These days I'm happy enough with popping a frozen dinner in the microwave most of the time, or getting take-out or even opening a can of soup.
I mostly didn't let myself remember the other consequence of that argument. There just wasn't a need to remember, and some need not to.
We'd been married for over a year at that point, living in a duplex in South St. Paul, me working for Ma Bell since I'd let Paul talk me out of continuing college after only completing two years, despite having earned a full tuition scholarship for four. There was a whole lot I didn't know about the world at that time, about myself, marriage, what made good or bad relationships, or alcoholism. Those things had never come up in family conversations. I was great at what was taught in school, clueless about much of life. Turns out, it mattered.
My role at the time was to both work and keep the house. Paul made more money, and that was always his mark of who was important in the family. Everything in the home had to center around his needs. It didn't matter whether I got enough sleep, so long as he did and was fresh to go to his job in the morning. This also meant he needed to have supper ready when he got home. Of course I had to be the one to make it. I didn't realize there was a problem until that argument. I didn't know I had options either. By then, I didn't even know I had much worth, because the school stuff I was good at wasn't part of my life any more, and I was being schooled regularly on how useless I was in everything else.
I'm one of those people who discovers some particular food I like, and that is an incentive to repeat making it somewhat often. I was always discovering new foods back then, having gotten away from my Mom's somewhat limited repertoire. Since starting college I'd been introduced to steaks that weren't fried grey and tough, mushrooms that didn't come in a soup can, lobster, shrimp, Cornish game hens, and more. If Paul liked something, it was even more incentive to prepare it frequently - or so I thought. That particular night I made a dish from a new recipe that we'd enjoyed the week before. It was some kind of chicken casserole with rice, tomato based and with Italian seasoning. More I can't tell you because I never made it again, even threw away the recipe. Paul started in on me about as soon as he looked in the pan to see what it was. I was supposed to know that he wanted something different, without any clue from him as to what that might be. Liking it once didn't mean he wanted it again.
He continued through dinner. It was too late to cook something different, after all. He kept going while I was doing dishes. So I excused myself to go use the bathroom. It was sanctuary, and more.
I had a history of migraines since puberty. I would later find out they pretty much vanished with my first pregnancy - the wonders of hormones! (I would also learn that my nearsightedness followed the same schedule.) But at this point I'd been seeing my doctor trying to find something better than aspirin for the headaches. I dimly remember something useless called fiorinal. Darvon also did nothing. The next offering, what was in that bathroom that evening, was valium. I don't recall it did much for the headaches either, but I knew it relaxed me. So I went in and took two, then returned to the kitchen. Paul wasn't going to quit listing all my faults, so after another few minutes, I excused myself and went and took a couple more. I figured if I couldn't get away from him, and he wasn't going to go away and/or shut up, I could at least care less. Somehow I needed to find a way to get it all to stop, and if he wouldn't leave, I would. Within about half an hour I had taken 7 of them, and the effects were starting to show.
He actually noticed! I think perhaps I stopped answering his demands that I agree with him about how awful I was. Next thing I remember was being in the hospital being barraged with questions about what I'd taken and how much, and feeling a tube going into my nose to pump my stomach. (I knew what that was because when I was five I discovered how yummy children's aspirin was with its orange flavoring, and the bottle was left on top of the dresser where I could reach it.)
For the next two days I did a lot of sleeping in the hospital. They sent a counselor in thinking I'd tried suicide. It wasn't a suicide attempt, though I didn't get the feeling anybody there could make the distinction. I only planned to remove myself temporarily from the situation. They sent a nun in to talk to me and I recall just rolling over and ignoring her, rude as that was. Her talking to me wasn't going to help the problem. One conversation I clearly recall was one of the nurses explaining to me that I had actually taken a dangerous dose of valium. I only wanted to sleep, and while I knew it was a muscle relaxer, she had to remind me that the heart was one of those muscles. Oops!
Somehow, somewhere, Paul got enough of the message that he quit haranguing me for a while. We had agreed that when I told him I needed him to head outside for a walk until he cooled down, that he would actually leave for a bit. I had to remind him of that, but he left and whatever the subject had been that time around, it was dropped when he returned.
We never told anybody what had happened, though I worried about what might be in those hospital records for years. We left the area, started a family, moved a couple more times, and eventually divorced. The hospital quit being a hospital a few years after my stay, and I quit wondering if it would ever catch up with me and just how. Eventually I stopped even wondering that, and now might not even think about it except every dozen years or so.
But I still recall how that argument started.
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