As I close the doors on my 20+ year marriage, there are still some bothersome and esoteric questions that linger. The steps to “uncoupling” (my preferred word to divorce) have been accomplished. They are mostly of an emotional process more than a legal one but those are in process also. I’d like to say that I’m further along than I am. Sometimes my inclination is to snap my fingers, sell everything, cut ties with mutual friends, go no-contact in every way and metaphorically burn every thought and memory I have of our life together. It would be quick, like an amputation and the diseased body part could be tossed aside and incinerated, returning it to its original form.
I had tried that vigorously for months until the universe decided I was screwing this up and threw me to the ground (non-metaphorically). It took five complete blackouts, two concussions, one highly suspected stroke, mood instability, extreme lapses in memory and cognition, a four-day amnesic event when I was supposed to be in divorce court, an amnesic episode while driving where I hit a curb and blew a tire, having my civil rights being so blatantly violated as I was handcuffed, physically removed from my home and taken to a psych hospital for 6 days. Months later, another blackout resulted in my waking up in the emergency room, handcuffed to a gurney where my daughter and friend Will were looking at me with great concern and horror. I was told that I was found in my car, in the garage, overmedicated with the engine running. Apparently, I’d taken great care in running the garden hose taped to the exhaust pipe. It was lethally inserted in the back window. I remember none of that.
The last thing I do remember were the headlights from my husband’s car coming down the driveway. He’d served me that day with some sort of order to vacate our home and he periodically creeped down the driveway that evening to see if I had complied. The two blazing headlights taunting me locked in my memory and the rest got shoved somewhere else.
After serving my obligatory time at the psych hospital, I was released and began the process of living with my daughter. It wasn’t her choice or mine, it just seemed to happen after she signed my release. The next trauma was watching my family home getting bulldozed to the ground by dudes that didn’t give a fuck as long as they got to run their heavy equipment and get their testosterone fix. Somehow we made it through the holidays, the dark winter and the promise of spring came. We planned on going nuts with plants this year, we felt we needed the hope. The exact Saturday afternoon that we had planned to go to the nursery, our house caught fire and burned. My daughter escaped the bottom floor with her two dogs then went hysterical in the yard below as she realized I was trapped upstairs with my access steps blazing. Again, a partial blackout, slow motion, going on auto pilot with God and the angels taking over. Shattered pieces of memory; kicking out a window, shutting myself and dogs in room farthest from the blaze, finding I had the physical strength to scoop up the 80-pound, very old, very crippled dog and get her outside to the roof. The little dog must have been easier because I remember none of that. Screams for me to get out, banging on the house from every side as neighbors panicked, inching my dog off the roof in a blind faith gesture that the circle of people below would catch her. The explosion that blew the door open, can’t breathe, crawling to the edge of the roof. Then…nothing.
How ironic that I often prided myself in being open and receptive to the universe, a truth seeker to the core but it was painfully obvious that these major stress events were winning and I was no match for them. It took literally and repeatedly knocking me to the ground unconscious before I would listen. And listen I did.
For months, I lived somewhere outside my body. I was completely unable to accomplish anything on a physical level except the most basic of care of my dogs and sometimes garnering the energy to occasionally feed myself. Living in a vacuum of lost time and pain, dark and light, with only the comfort of my two dogs. So finally, I stopped the raging protest of a lifetime and surrendered, acquiesced and began to develop the ears to listen to the screaming barrage of emotions from the adult person-inner child that had taken root deep in my soul. I no longer could fight and it was then that I began AGAIN my intense conversations with God.
The content of these conversations will mostly remain private and sacred only to me with the subjects varied. But occasionally, during these intense periods of reflection, out of old instinct, I’d catch myself wondering where my husband was. In the depths of my dreamtime, I continued to reach for him. My head knew one set of things to be true; my heart knew another. His physical body left years ago when he moved out and resurfaced alongside his attorney. I knew that we were no longer legally married. I ask God about his spiritual self, his soul, where did it go? I ask if he’s seen him. I ask God if he knows what the hell happened.
My husband was sweet. I got to see the soft underbelly of his soul in our most private moments. These characteristics were the ones I connected and bonded with; his sweetness toward me, how he instinctively took my hand when I held mine out, how he’d make me laugh with funny faces or songs in my particularly bad moments, how safe my name felt when he spoke it.
It obviously wasn’t like that in the end. Something dramatically changed in him, probably me too. I’d seen his soul transitioning somewhere during the last 5-6 years of our marriage. He was vacant and preoccupied. He was fighting some demons that I couldn’t completely understand. He was still glued to his family cult. He was slowly succumbing to the spiritual abuse and narcissism of his father. All these factors were taking over and I was being phased out.
My friends like to hate him and demonize the person he’s become. It makes me incredibly sad when they do this but I know they are angry. They are wanting me to stay edgy and angry because somehow that’s how we are taught to divide from someone, to take love and turn it into hate. Somehow that is supposed to propel me into my new life if we recant over and over that I didn’t deserve this.
I didn’t choose this type of ending. It feels very, very wrong. I ask God daily if he would take some love to him and give him peace. I pray for God to never let him go.
My Labrador continually looks at me with gratitude and admiration for saving her from the fire. I tell her often that I’d do it a million times over. She rarely lets me out of her sight now and often extends her paw for me to hold so I can recall the feeling of holding hands with my husband. I’m beginning to feel content and it’s a beautiful thing.
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