My primary care doctor looked at me, eyebrows raised.
"So Rachel," she said, "Is your marriage stabilized now? If we get you better will there be more somersaults, or is life finally settled?"
Meanwhile, a few weeks earlier, my nurse practitioner--who supports women confronted with oddly fluctuating hormones--had said warmly as I left her office loaded with hormones and vitamins to foster sleep, "First we're going to put out your fires, then we'll get you better."
For the previous six months, I'd faced severe sleeplessness the ten days before menses. I'd lain awake each night feeling like I was playing the sleep lottery and losing. In those dark times, I came to see a three or four hour night as a gift.
And for nearly two years prior, each month my body notified me of impending moon time--like Paul Revere on his midnight ride--by resisting sleep more than a colicky baby. On those dreaded nights I'd lay awake all night long. Over time I came to learn that my body was calling out, "Your period is coming tomorrow, Your period is coming tomorrow!" I'd groan, Thanks, got it. Now let me sleep.
Meanwhile other stuff was happening. Other symptoms I failed to see as warning signs, and other occurrences in my life that connected dots in a constellation that was, as yet, invisible to me. When I came across a book about perimenopause I seized it up and thought, Aha! That's what this is all about. I figured I was a decade or so away from menopause (I was 38 at the time), and like many women, my hormones were starting to dance erratically like marbles in a pinball machine. The perimenopause hypothesis is what finally got me into the nurse practitioner.
That's when the floor buckled. She gave me a twelve page questionnaire that took two hours to fill out. I had to be explicit about my body and all its little quirks; about my mind and the way it sometimes solicited depression, and about the rather sordid details of my life.
That's when I started to connect the dots. Oh, I thought, maybe this isn't about perimenopause. Oh...Oh.
The questionnaire forced me to confront the weight of I've what I'd been through; stuff I'd shrugged off, believing it was all just a part of everyday life. I'd endured marital separation and divorce three years earlier. I'd moved four times in three years. I'd had a change in my line of work as well as work responsibility (I'd become my own sole bread winner). I'd become isolated from my in-laws (once precious family to me), had a revision in personal habits, and a change in sleeping habits. And miracle of miracles, my ex-husband and I reconciled and remarried a year and a half after our divorce.
In filling out that questionnaire, I'd had to check off a glut of items on the list of "significant stressors." I discovered that "divorce" was second only to "death of a spouse" on the ranking of the most stressful events in life. Many of the checked items had happened in the last few years. All of them were correlated with my divorce.
Blood work and a saliva test to check my cortisol levels showed that my body was heading into adrenal exhaustion. My cortisol levels had dropped below normal...my body couldn't make enough of it to deal with all the stress. Most of my symptoms traced to deficient cortisol--sleeplessness, depression, poor memory, heart palpitations, apathy, excess fatigue, inability to concentrate, cravings for alcohol, headaches, irritability, dramatic mood swings, stress-induced nausea...forgetting to breathe.
Little things.
Once I started to heal (and sleep) the questions began. As a science writer I wanted to understand why. How does this work? And why does divorce dog the heels of "death of a spouse" at the very top of the list of life's stressors? Turns out a growing list of studies show that divorce is not all that good for us (cases involving escape from abuse are the exception). It appears that, statistically speaking, adults and children of divorce--in general--have a higher risk for factors that challenge health and well-being. These include psychological and physical health, longevity, risk of sexual molestation, alcoholism, depression, financial security, sexual satisfaction, risk of suicide, and others.
But again...Why? From a biological perspective why would divorce impair humans? Perhaps there is one dot left to connect...a dot that could be the crux of this entire constellation. We humans are profoundly social beings...possibly the most social mammal of all. Our attachment bonds with specific others are of utmost significance to us, and are underscored by a suite of hormones and neurochemicals that promote joy, peace, contentment, and health. We are hard-wired for high capacity love. It is no wonder that some attachment theorists--after witnessing chimpanzees and orphans reliably die when deprived of love bonds--claim that such bonds may be more imperative to us than food, sex, shelter, or water. So-called "attachment theory" has transformed the way we parent (think attachment parenting), and is beginning to revolutionize couples support.
*** I look at my primary care doctor, her eyebrows still peaked.
"Yes," I say, "Yes my marriage is solid," as I remind myself to breathe while feeling the hint of adrenalin shoot into my veins, even now...even in response to her caring question. But under my breath, I mutter silently to myself. Isn't it time we figure out how and why divorce plays into human health?
A studied look at how divorce affects the human attachment bond would help make divorce, if chosen, easier to bear. Without that, I predict it continues to take a tragic, and in too many cases, undefined toll.
I'll be reviewing more about the studies we have on how divorce impacts human health and well-being in future posts.
