I have spent enough of my life and energy processing this, it is time to be done and move on.
A part of me would like to be able to say that I went from sad and pathetic to Desert Storm Demon, righteous assault on the bastard and bastardess that screwed with my life and my family. I am after all a Scorpio, son of a Scorpio, vengeance is in my stars and blood. Her "boyfriend" and savior ( you should have read the emails) was a chicken shit, as soon as his wife confronted him with proof he dumped Marilyn like a hot potato. Not that it did him any good. When my part in their story ended, he had been arrested for trying to run his wife over with a car. I hope she found someone solid to cherish her the way she deserved and a life that makes sense.
My attorney was ever the voice of reason, knowing that a battle was fraught with peril. Her attorney was not smart, but she could see a child endangerment case building, and that scared Marilyn into leaving the guy alone. I also think that as the details came out she lost some credibility with her family. They were still behind her, but I think realized that, recovery or not, truth was still a rare visitor in her life. They also were starting to look a bit stupid. We sparred for a while, got a bit nasty, but the assault never developed, more another pointless third world border skirmish.
In the end, while I remained furious with her and was tempted to do harm, it became obvious that in harming her I would only be harming my daughter and ultimately myself. Nothing was to be gained, no amount of scorched earth was ever going to make the pain go away. I took the years we had together, all of them, put them in a bottle and put them on the shelf. Until now, I never took them down. I set a clear role. I was supportive where it supported my daughter. I strove to be kind and cooperative. And I erected an emotional wall between us, an uncrossible boundary between me and any other part of her life. I did not want to know, did not need to know. We did not need to talk about anything that was not about finishing out the divorce or my daughter.
We hammered out an agreement. I bought her off so that I would not have alimony, we worked out child support so it was equitable. It cost me more than it cost her, but it left me free of her, as free as I can be. Mostly it ensured that I would never be responsible for her again.
I could have done considerable damage. Her lawyer, in a mis guided attempt to put pressure on me handed me a death star weapon that could have screwed dearly with her house plans. My lawyer was all about using it as a weapon. Marilyn called me. I called him off. Her lawyer did a lot of that kind of stuff, ran up a huge bill, much bigger than mine. Sad to say, a lot of the money I gave her went to the lawyer. A lot of what had been saved and built over eight years went down a rat hole.
I hid out for a year, going to work, going to church. Dated a nice lady that filled the space and taught me a lot. The house was sold in the early spring, the last insult, and my son, my dog and I moved into a townhouse down the road.
I gained a ton of weight. I spent a lot of time with spiritual people, processing, learning, healing.
I started going to India for work.
I knew Thanksgiving that year was going to be hard. I didn't have any of the kids, I would be alone. I wound up spending it in the home of one of the most famous Hollywood actors of our day, a story for another time. Suffice it to say, it was distracting.
I spent Christmas with my kids, did the whole thing soup to nuts by myself. Christmas morning that year felt normal and fun, with my son filling in as the second adult for the girls. Christmas Eve was, however, a bit sad. It was the first time I ever sat there after playing Santa alone.
December 31st, New Years Eve, the divorce was final.
January 1, 2002. I was bending over to tie my shoes and I could barely breath. I looked into the mirror, and I was plumpy. Yuck. I was a drifty, balding, plumpy old man. Fuck that.
I mean, once a week I was fencing with a group I had formed, but it was clearly huffing and puffing with plumpy.
That was the turning point. I started hitting the gym, dropped 25 pounds and then some. Dialed up and old friend, spun up a posse in the city. Lost fat, gained 20 lbs of new muscle, did the Black and White, did San Francisco every way from Wednesday. Sailed, hiked the slot in Zion, trekked the Sierra, tried internet dating, the list goes on. I engaged life at full speed again.
There were ups and downs. The dating scene was, as I described in a previous blog, looney. I had fun, but it was not the same. There were plenty of ladies to date, and a few hot times, but it seemed, well, off. I learned to smoke cigars, and I relearned to love a good whisky. I have to say, there were times when given the choice of a date or a cigar, I took an evening on the deck with a cigar.
One thing I learned, if you are horny and tired of your hand, hookers provide a great service. Not the street gals, but the escorts. Hey, you can get by.
That October I went to India for a month, partially to get a project done, but more to clear my head. I took a guy friend along and hooked up with another old buddy. Swam in the Straits of Malacca, trekked the jungles of Malaysia, hiked the Ghats in Western India, partied with Bali girls in Goa. One night, on the back of a motorcycle, weaving for dear life thru the chaos that is a Pune street, it happened.
I found myself again. I figured out who I was, and what I was about.
I came home, started planning for a life alone. Then, at a party before Christmas, I met my Fiancee. She spend Christmas with me. By New Years we were an item, and we are off to our new life, never once looking back.
Until now.
It is three years later, and for the first time I can take that jar off the shelf and open it up. It needed to be opened. In doing so whatever was in there that frightened me so has been set free, released into the winds of time that will blow us all away one day, like smoke from the remains of an old campfire.
Marilyn has been in recovery these past three years. She lives in a house her family bought her, next to her sister that "saved" her and now cannot stand her. Last Christmas she took a bunch of money from a house refinance and had plastic surgery done, new face, new tits. I could care less, but her family was pissed and judgmental. This is not suprising, it fits a pattern that has been going on long before I arrived and will continue long after today. The sister she lives next to, her most consistant rescuer, is once again the bad guy, and they rarely speak. I know, because Marilyn called me up to complain about her, just as I am sure she complained about me to her sister on those nights in December years ago.
She has steadily tried to re-create our relationship into a "friendship", wants hugs at Christmas, wants to lean on my shoulder when her family is being harsh. She wants to talk and joke and act like we are old friends. For my part, it is a bit crazy, coming from a woman who told me she did not want to be around me, just wanted us to be over.
I think that deep down, she wants desperately not to be the bad person, she does not want responsibility. She never wanted responsibility. She has rewriten the entire story in her mind somehow, I am sure that if you asked her now she would tell people that she cared for me deeply and that it just did not work out. Her capacity for slective forgetfullness is astounding.
She is still beautiful, but when I drop off my daughter in the morning, when she is without makeup, she looks old. She paints and works out constantly, the two things that seem to keep her on an even keel. Paint and be sexy, Marilyn to a tee.
She has a boyfriend, he is moving in this month. He is very well off and artistic. I have no idea what kind of couple they are, nor is it my business.
We are all moving on.
So what happened?
I have thought of that often in the last three years. Was I blind? Was is something I did?
You can drive yourself nuts on the might have beens.
I once told her that it was clear that she never loved me, and that she was only using me all those years to get what she wanted. She was pissed at me for that. She is very invested in the fiction that her last decent into drinking and drug use was due to me, regardless of the facts.
What I believe now is probably closer to the truth. She had been an alcoholic since she was a teenager, dealing with emotional abandonment from her mother and a father who was physically there but off in his own little world. Her emotional development was arrested at a young age, and even though she was 34 when we met, she was in many ways, still 13 or 14 years old, impulsive, irresponsible, living in a magical world. The pattern of behavior is all too transparent to me now: addicted to spending, addicted to drugs, addicted at times to sex. Impulsively charging off after the idea of the minute, reacting like a petulant child whenever she perceived that her actions were being challenged by "parents" (read anyone who didn't let her do what she wanted). Running to mommy(daddy, big sister) when things finally collapsed, begging them to clean up the mess.
I think that she loved me when we met, the way a teenager has a crush, falls in love. I think so long as it was about fun, it was great. I think that so long as we were either heading towards or planning the fairytale wedding/ happy ending, she was enthralled.
I think, though, that once we settled down, the patterns took hold, and I entered into the extended version of her family drama. I think I was doomed from the beginning to eventually be the "evil parent". Caught in and reliving her family drama again and again, she did what she always did.
She blew it up.
I could blame the other guy, but he was just another stock character in her drama. I could blame her family, but they were just doing what they always do, acting out their roles in their central family drama, The Perils of Marilyn. I could blame her psychologist at the rehab, a bitter, nasty piece of work, playing her own issues and dramas out on the live's of her paitents. I have studied a lot about recovery, talked to a lot of recovering addicts and alcoholics. When I relate that part of the story, they just shake their head in disbelief.
I could blame myself, and I have.
But this has happened so many times before, and it is still going on today, although at least with less kilotonnage.
She has done this time and again. There is nothing new here.
It is just that this time, she took me with her.
And I think that I was too steeped in the "Knight in Shining Armor" archtype and the "fix the alcoholic" pattern to ever have any kind of real perspective.
Every close relationship pushes buttons in us. We survive or fall based not on avoiding the buttons, but on understanding them and ourselves, and on how much control we have over our reactions.
But we are only half of the equasion, and we have no control over any other person. All any of us can do is be honest with ourselves and live our truth.
Finis. Now our story is done.
Postscript, dramatic license and all:
The man writing this is not the man who lived it. That man died somewhere back in December of 2001, killed by an experience that was too much, a level of consistent failure and stress that he had been conditioned to fear beyond all fears by a father and mother who know only fear. His ghost traveled some of these pages, a shade of what he was, confused and murmuring, like the pale shades of Pluto's realm before their Lethean draught.
What you have here is his reincarnation, started with a hard breath and full formed on the smoking back of a South Asian two wheeler. He is wiser, happier, less committed to being in control and more committed to living his life each and every day.
The man who lived this was frantic, running to and fro, spinning balls in the air to prevent the disaster he knew in his soul was coming. He thought he could,
should manage all problems to ultimate success, lest the world see him for the failure he knew he was. Do anything to escape the demon whirlwind, and in the process, never know the joy and peace available on the way.
The new one has the benefit of memories and learning. Drinking this Lethe on the way back to the living brought not forgetfulness, but understanding.
Now, I do not concern myself with the whirlwind, I cannot stop it, it will come when it wills, calling my name in challenge and warning, bringing death or despair.
Or both.
Till then I will live, and love, breath deep and look long and laugh hard.
We have no control over the people and events that make up our lives. We can only control our own actions and reactions and attitudes. We do have influence, we can suggest and create, but we must never forget that in an instant, everything, everyone can be, will be all taken away from us. What we have, the only thing we can count on, is having ourselves. And in that there is great comfort.
For in the moment that we truly know who we are, and know that we have ourself, we can stop running. We create a lot of pain, for others and ourselves, this running from who we are, what we feel, what we fear. I caused it for me, my ex casued it for her, and me, and practically everyone else around her. The only way out is to stop, turn around, and face that whirlwind.
We cannot find joy from things or others. They may give us joy, pleasure, happy moments.
But joy truly comes from the attitudes you form, the choices you make, the courage and integerity with which you face life.
You can read this same advise in novels and fiction and self help books and movies till it seems to be the cliche-ist of cliches. Thats how I used to feel, rolling my eyes at one more psudo-guru spouting "know thy self" etc, etc, oh my god, etc.
I suppose I know better now.
We all have our central metaphors, the vision we have of ourselves. I am, among other things, a swordsman, not a great one, but handy enought with rapier and main gauche. My buddy Dick and I spend Wednesdays, swathed in protective gear working up a sweat and living out our D'Artangian fantasies. I have come, at times, to see myself that way.
I am in a great place today. It may last. Tomorrow it may end, and the whirlwind will come again, with me in its path.
I think that this time I will stop, turn and smile....
And in a moment, draw, shout and leap into its maw.
If you think about it, there really is no other way.