Denial Isn’t Gaslighting
Denial: “An unconscious thought process whereby one allays anxiety by refusing to acknowledge certain unpleasant facts, feelings, etc.”
Uh huh. I got that. I was finishing the triathlon, the Olympic length, which I had not trained for, an activity my ex-husband had suggested as a means to bring us closer, never mind he was scarfing a free pirogi as I crossed the finish line. I denied what my body was telling me which was, “This is impossible.” Same message I received after seventy-two hours of back labor, after submitting a novel, after getting sober, after surviving the death of my sister. What did I do? I denied. I kept going.
Denial isn’t gaslighting. You aren’t pretending one thing is true in place of another. You are simply postponing, rejecting, refusing so you can survive. My mother did it around my father’s drinking. It worked for her, not so much for her three daughters who did not have the luxury of deciding anything, who witnessed all the pain and humiliation, and when they asked, “Why is the dining room table smashed to bits?” were told it wasn’t. When I grew into my own private hell, I marked my bottles and then erased the line, marked my bottles even though I lived alone, marked my bottles so it seemed like I was in control.
“Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I love this quote but I’m not sure there is so much grace as the possibility of a future when you deny the truth. There are damning statistics for publishing novels, for staying sober, for surviving a terrible loss. Back in the 1980’s a magazine article claimed women over forty were more likely to die in a terrorist attack than to get married. I divorced my son’s father at forty, remarried at forty-eight. So, there you are. On the other hand, I used to pick up the broken glass left after one of my father’s debacles because I told myself if it was thrown away, it never happened. I was eight. When my first marriage was violent, I wore black sunglasses and didn’t look in the mirror.
Denial has caused grievous harm and provided a cushion for the hard blows of life. Denial allows me to keep writing, to keep hoping, to accept imperfection and loss.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach