Wake Me Now

I’m not content where my post about the ex-hubby left off. “Tortured” is a bit melodramatic. “Bothered” would be more appropriate.

These depressive moments hit and it’s like history gets distorted…

Grandma and the other friends kinda get on to me when I go through these remorseful moods because they say I’m being too hard on myself. Plus, grandma knew him well and remembers his end on things, so while she thinks it’s not right to take out your frustrations on someone, she also seems to think he had some of it coming. She refers to him as “controlling,” which he did try to be. That’s part of the reason we clashed so much; I’m very stubborn and was in no mood to be controlled by a man at that juncture, especially one who I’d lost respect for. So we both struggled to control the other, which made for some really dumb fights.

But there were good times too, plenty of them. Particularly the first 1.5 years or so. We got a kick out of one another’s sense of humor.

Maybe they’re right and I am a bit too hard on myself now days. Grandma says it would be proper to apologize, but she doesn’t believe it’s warranted to make amends, assuming it’s even possible. He and his family were always a snobby bunch so it’s highly unlikely that any of them will even acknowledge my existence ever again. ‘Course, his family barely acknowledged my existence back then, being a “slut” and a “non-white” (?) apparently.

He does deserve an apology and if we ever communicate again, I’ll do so. But maybe I tie our marriage in too much with the bad memories of that sociopath I dated next. That guy did an amazing amount of harm in only a year. Even without going anywhere near as far as he did in terms of violence and psychological manipulation, maybe I’m terrified of ever being someone else’s bad guy to a similar extent. Oh sure, people can dislike me ’til the cows come home, it’s all good, but being the villain or “megabitch” in the mind of someone I once cared about isn’t at all how I’d like things to sit.

But then my family pipes up with all those details that drove me nuts back then, like how he drank entirely too much too frequently (his family had him in counseling for this, partly because it threatened to complicate his medical condition) and couldn’t keep a job. Yeah, I remember that last year clearly once he’d apparently had enough of playing house and decided to cash his paychecks at the casino, coming home with strippers’ phone numbers in his wallet (I’d tease him mercilessly on this one – “You really think these women will want you once they find out you’re broke?” *sneers*) before getting on to cocaine behind my back. We damn near lost what little we had as a result of these shenanigans. First a third of his pay would go missing, then half, until one day he came home with no income at all though he was working a full-time job at a warehouse.

I lost respect for him because he was such a follower. His boss, his brother, his friends…always chasing others, trying to win their approval doing things he knew were wrong. He was attracted to the “bad boy” types and had a hankering for the “exotic” lifestyles. Coming up in a small town without many entertainment options, he lost his mind once we hit the big city scene of Memphis. “Titty bars” galore, drugs in plentiful supply, bars open ’til 5am, casinos titillating the public with the lure of big wins – he just didn’t understand all that glitters isn’t gold.

Looking back, I can see where we met at an interesting crossroads where our lives just happened to converge for a couple years there. I was returning to the South after having had my share of the bigger city life, knowing how cold and cruel people can be toward innocents left unprotected on their streets, well aware that it’s a wild world for a young girl on her own at the mercy of the strangers she meets. Coming home, I swore off the Midwest for 4 solid years with no intention of ever returning. I had been chewed up and spit out, used and taken advantage of in that tit-for-tat game of getting what you need if you play into the hands of predatory adults. Acquiring life staples like food and shelter exacted a high price that no underage female should be subjected to at the hands of grown men keen to exploit your situation (and I was far luckier than some of the other girls/runaways were)…my spirit was so broken by the time we met and he said years later that he had wanted to be that “white knight” to save me from it all. But he just couldn’t.

His life was so different than mine in that he had always lived in that small town down South, raised up by a Fundamentalist Christian family. No, I don’t use that label lightly. His daddy was a preacherman of Primitive Baptist teachings, kicked out of many churches for his extremist, intolerant views. My ex-husband came up in a household where the wife was viewed as a servant to her husband and the children were their property. The youngest of 5 kids, he had been home-schooled until the 9th grade when his mother finally got the stones to leave their father after 20+ years of marriage. He himself hadn’t experienced much abuse himself but had witnessed it and was very sensitive to the violence. By the time I met him, he’d turned away from religion and become an agnostic or atheist (I’m not certain which label he preferred) and was hell-bent on leaving that little town for a chance to experience the rest of the world.

So, our paths crossed at that fateful point during his senior year in high school where he was planning to attend college a few hours north. My gay guyfriend was responsible for dragging me along, shaking me out of the depressing stupor of that period long enough to enroll me in the university, which accepted me (surprisingly since I had only a GED and one correspondence course under my belt). So off we all went, northbound to college, looking forward to the opportunities that education promised us. The education was something I took very seriously, seeing it as my only way out, though he was more interested in the party scene and meeting people.

The precarious financial situation eventually won out, forcing him to quit school to work. Within a year, I was forced to follow as well, which just pissed me off like no other. Those were some strained times and we weren’t any good with managing our finances, learning all of these lessons for ourselves as we went. We ran up credit card debt and at one point were reduced to stealing meats from his employer to feed ourselves. The financial turmoil kept me on edge, giving rise to plenty of bitching and crying, blaming him for not being a better provider for us. The wages in that town were pitiful, the landlord was an asshole, we didn’t own a car until after we were married and there was no public transportation, not even cabs in that town. Just tough times for a couple of young people trying to make their way, as plenty of others have experienced.

But then trouble struck in my family life right before we were to be married. I called my estranged mother to tell her of our wedding plans one afternoon but before having the chance to speak the words, she said something that rattled me down to the core and changed my life from there on out. I’ll never forget that day so long as I live. Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” was playing on the radio in the background and I was alone in the apartment that morning. On the other end of the line, right after saying “hello” I hear “my daughter is dead.” It broke my heart so completely, just turned my little world upside down. I was 18 at the time and had been living away from her for many years after she had sent me off to live with relatives at age 12. Back then I didn’t understand the problems with her mind (likely a result of a car accident earlier in life where she suffered a severe concussion) and internalized her treatment toward me as a sign that I was truly unlovable. Oh man, it hurt so damned much. Still hurts when I allow myself to think about it. That marked the beginning of the end in my relationship with my mother.

My ex-husband didn’t know how to deal with this sort of thing. What young man does? You’re financially-strapped and your fiancee is falling apart inside. Lots of pressure for any young couple, and like so many others, we began to bicker back and forth. The depression took hold of me and lasted for close to two years – the longest, most difficult spell I’ve yet to encounter. My foundation was thoroughly shaken and the frustrations within our young marriage were amplified as a result, giving rise to fights and contempt and blame. I cried so much back then, and he didn’t know how to fix it, so we began drifting apart. He’d be asleep and I’d get up and tinker around on the computer all hours of the night. When he’d leave in the morning, I’d sleep without him. One minute I’d be clinging to him for comfort, the next pushing him away, denouncing love and men and life.

Somewhere through it all he was able to secure a job up in Memphis, so after sending him up a few months prior while I finished out the semester, we packed and moved everything to a nice (too expensive) apartment he’d secured for us. By this time I remember my grandparents growing frustrated with him as his behavior had become more rebellious, almost as if he viewed me as some stifling mother figure. He had lots of issues with his own mother and didn’t take well to a woman telling him what to do. Tasting the big city life and all that came with it, especially prior to me joining him, he’d gotten in over his head. You could tell him this, but he just didn’t understand back then. Hopefully by now he’s come to see it for what it is. Strippers razzled and dazzled him and he began talking about swinging (an open sexual relationship with other couples). His brother hooked him up with contacts and months later I was to learn that the man I was married to was dealing and using cocaine. And that was the last straw for us.

Looking back, I see where I could have been more kind, more forgiving, less contemptuous. Sometimes I was downright cruel. To an extent I can understand why he rebelled as he did. But he was following people down a path that led to nowhere fast, and he just couldn’t see it. He also happened to be the first person outside of myself to defend prostitution that I’d met, saying those women had a right to make a living as they saw fit. Perhaps that’s where the seed was planted. He adored that glittery lifestyle, the decadence, the drugs and alcohol, the lure of casual sex and reduced responsibility.

After a few months there, he wound up tangling up with a slender 30-something-year-old woman from work, married with a 13 year old son, who provided him with pills and a bed to escape to. Her own husband was a piece of work, always out with other women, and she had that flower child persona going on. She and I met…I confronted this woman at her home at 7am on her day off, took her out for coffee and asked that she please leave my marriage alone so that we may work it out. Fairly nice of me, I thought. And she looked me straight in my eyes and lied to me. Before arriving back home, she’d already called him, and I received an earful that day. Her name is long forgotten now, and up to the end, he refused to speak poorly of her. She was known around work for giving her co-workers blowjobs in the parking lot. Lovely lady…

But that’s the lifestyle he wanted. That’s what he thought freedom represented. So, what can you do?

I could have been a bigger bitch. Like when he was arrested for domestic violence due to being caught in the act by a sheriff deputy while doing something really stupid (I didn’t call the law – we just happened to live in a complex where half the sheriff’s department lived) and I bailed him out. The cops strongly encouraged me to leave his ass in there. To this day I’m still ashamed, remembering how the male officers put their heads down and refused to make eye contact when I showed up at the hearing, refusing to testify against my husband. The charges were later dropped by the state. He didn’t hit me, but he did put me in harm’s way and those officers liked to have beaten the crap out of him. They were so mad at him. And I’m still embarrassed by the situation, wishing I could tell those officers that I did leave this man and that their efforts weren’t all for naught. The memory of one of them jerking him out of our pick-up and slamming him against the side of the vehicle remains fresh in my mind. I lost it right there, despite the smirk on my husband’s face as they handcuffed him. Once they placed him in the back of the cruiser, his smirk began to fade and shifted to panic and tears and my heart just broke. I begged the officers to let me speak to him, and they looked at me with this incredulous expression on their faces. It was a tremendously humiliating experience, to say the least.

But I bailed him out three days later…and as he walked across the parking lot, his first words to me were “fuck you.” Nice. Months later, once the state had dropped charges, is when he decided to come clean about cheating on me with that woman from work. Nice.

So anyway, we decided to separate in the summer of 2002 and in August I was preparing to move back to the Midwest, the only place I knew where there were jobs paying a decent wage. Last minute he asked to join me, not wanting to go stay with his brother, saying he’d find a job and live off separately from me. So we packed the uhaul and headed north. I stayed with a friend and he slept in our truck, and during the day we hunted for jobs. Immediately after arriving in town, we were taken advantage of by a con-artist renting out a room who turned out not to own the property, losing $400 right off. Broke and with nowhere to turn, we pawned our wedding bands for gas money.

In October, my ex-stepdad offered to let us stay with him, which was very kind. And this marked the first time for dad and I to see one another in years, staging a new beginning in getting to know one another. My husband was off trying to work at local bars, getting in with the local party scene as to be expected. Then one night he came in drunk and went rifling through my dad’s belongings, which obviously didn’t sit well with anyone. He doesn’t remember the incident, he claims.

A few weeks later, my husband came clean that he’d contemplated stealing our truck during the night and abandoning me there in the Midwest. I’m glad he was honest, but this meant I had to confiscate his keys and send him to live with his bar-buddies until he came up with the funds for a greyhound ticket. His newfound buddies quickly grew tired of him bumming off them and sleeping on their sofas, so he found himself outdoors. He called me up saying he had the ticket, and I let him come back to dad’s to stay the week. It was his birthday that week and it didn’t seem right to ship him off on that date, but once it had passed I drove him to the greyhound station and bid him farewell. That was the last time I ever saw him. We cried and said our goodbyes. I don’t remember if it was raining out or if those were just my tears because I couldn’t see the road driving back. For two days I cried, but then this sense of relief took hold and I was glad to be free of this man.

And that was the end of us. Two young lovers whose paths crossed momentarily, trying to carve out a living without the maturity and experience to do so. I don’t know where he went from there. Every once in a while he’d call and we’d bicker over who owed what. The truck was in both of our names and he’d made it clear that he had no intention of making payments on it, so I kept it and did wind up paying it off over time. That helped his credit since I left him on there as the primary. Then we began fussing over how to go about getting a divorce. He made it clear that he had no intention of paying for that either, so it took me over a year and a half to finally collect the funds and learn enough about it to contact a paralegal service. I paid for all of it, and he made an ass of himself, refusing to sign the paperwork and trying to drag the ordeal out in order to punish me with additional fees.  But it didn’t happen. The judge saw through this and his motion for continuation and granted my divorce in September of 2004 without my husband’s signature.

He was miffed about not receiving what he considered his fair share of our belongings, but we didn’t own much of anything. No major furniture aside from a mattress and a washing machine and dryer. His stepfather came up to the Midwest and I loaded his truck down with a few boxes of items, including my family’s cast iron skillets that I knew he liked. But he wanted the cutlery and said something about the coffeemaker. Dumb stuff, that’s all. We were nitpicking by this stage.

Early on in the divorce proceedings is the last time I heard from him, and we have not spoken again to this day, four years later.

In the five years since we’ve been separated, I’ve dated and been involved in relationships for maybe 1.5 years of that. Life is better single these days.

I remember that within a couple months of my husband boarding that greyhound bus, my weight dropped approximately 20 lbs. out of the blue, likely due to a reduction in stress. And I remember a few months later when I told him over the phone that escorting is the profession I planned to pursue, how he scoffed and said “that’s worse than smoking crack!” Nice. Well, was it worse than smoking crack when you were trying so hard to shack up with those women down in Memphis? It seems there are separate standards for a man’s wife and his “playthings.” But oh well, had to pay the bills. You’d think he’d understand this, being so liberal and open-minded, right?

So yeah, there’s no way I’d ever care to repeat any of that. I would like to say I’m sorry, but maybe my mind plays tricks on me, leading me to believe that this was all somehow my own fault. Some of it was, surely, but not all of it. Some of it was just circumstance and hard luck, and some of it was just part of growing up for two young kids from small town Southern USA. He was better off to walk alone, as was I. It was too convenient to blame one another for life’s tribulations when we were together. I was the bitch and he was the wannabe playboy. But in the end, it proved to be very educational.

He originally introduced me to Southern Libertarianism, which remains an important part of my own life philosophy, though it’s been tweaked throughout the years. And looking at my romantic life overall, I have to say this was probably the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in.  LOL (Gotta remember I’ve only had 2.5 of them as an adult.)  After writing all of this, it’s pretty funny to admit that.  So maybe I do romanticize it more than I realize, and maybe we are paid up as grandma suggested. But I’d still like to say I’m sorry for my part in it just because it wasn’t right to lay my hands on him in anger. No, I never punched him or anything like that, but I’d slap and tease him for acting “gay.” But he did act gay…even gay men thought so. He’s just an effeminate man, but I shouldn’t have given him a complex over that. It’s my own hang-up that has nothing to do with him as a person.

Maybe after dating that one sociopath SOB in 2004, my view of relationships is skewed. Well, I know this to be true, hence why I avoid dating, but maybe this is why the guilt is so strong at times. Like maybe he experienced the level of pain and a damaged spirit as I later experienced, and I don’t want to be responsible for having done something like that to another person, no matter how many problems we might have had. Being someone else’s “boogeyman”, per se, isn’t at all what I’d want and it isn’t what he deserves. But at the same time, is this a matter of desserts or is just part of the process of two young people growing up and figuring out about life? I don’t wish to let myself off the hook if amends ought to be made, but I also don’t wish to unjustly castigate myself over water under the bridge that flowed two directions. I don’t know. Again, this was the healthiest relationship I’ve yet to experience, and that’s kinda pathetic when you think about it. Without a decent basis for comparison, maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill and should just leave him be.

Yeah…maybe leaving him be is the best thing. If our paths ever cross, I’d like to buy him a coffee and see how he’s doing. I sincerely hope his life has improved and he’s found whatever it was he was looking for. My life has improved, which I’m grateful for, and these life lessons have proven to be very valuable. Hopefully he sees them for what they are too. Playing the blame game years later does little good, though I welcome an open conversation on the topic if the need were ever to arise on his end.

Maybe my reparations have already been paid by taking the escort job and paying the bills that he could not afford, including the loans he took from members of my family and then conveniently decided he was no longer responsible for repaying. Instead of focusing on how to right the wrong with him, perhaps the focus would be better suited on repaying our debts to others who tried to help us. Two bird with one stone…the debts rightfully must be repaid to family and, by default, his credit and reputation escape receiving crushing blows. So maybe that’s more than what many disgruntled ex-wives would do, especially if prostitution were the means of achieving that end. Hmmm…

What did he used to say? Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.