The World's Shortest Marriage

I was married for about five minutes to a guy disguised as the Man of my Dreams. However, Dear Husband had a Secret Life. Watch in horror as I deal with the fallout of the World's Shortest Marriage.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Love is Not Enough



Apparently I'll do anything for money.

Well, almost anything. I arranged to meet Dear Husband this afternoon to collect the rest of the money he owes me. We agreed to meet at Amoeba Records at 5 pm.

I was late. I saw him sitting on the sidewalk outside the record store as I barrelled down the sidewalk on my bicycle. He didn't see me. I started pumping the pedals even harder, and could actually hear the Wicked Witch of the West's theme song playing in my head as I zeroed in on my target.

He looked up just as I skidded up and stopped the bike an inch from his thigh. He rose to his feet and wrote me a check while I was still astride the bike. He surprised me by bringing up the fact that he's in therapy.

'The therapist says I have a lot of repressed anger,' DH said.

'Duh,' I offered helpfully.

Then I surprised me too by chatting with him a little bit. He said he's been writing about his feelings, but it makes him angry, which makes him want to drink whiskey and watch tv. I mentioned that pretty much everything makes him want to watch tv. He started to cry.

I got off the bike and put my arms around him. We stood that way for a long time, crying in each other's arms on Sunset Boulevard while the pedestrian traffic streamed past. On the other side of Amoeba's window, a long line of pierced and tattooed hipsters waiting to sell their CDs for pennies on the dollar turned to gawk.

'I miss you,' I whispered in his ear, surprising myself yet again.

'I miss you too,' DH said. 'I've always loved you. I'm sorry.'

I wish that was enough to make a relationship work. Love and longing and regrets and therapy. Crying into a shoulder that feels like it was custom-made to fit your face. But the three things I always told him I needed - trust, honesty, and loyalty - are still missing. I don't know how much therapy or jack daniels or televsion DH needs to get those things. And I can't wait around to find out.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Counting My Blessings

Of all the wonderful wedding gifts Dear Husband and I received, the blessing basket given to us by my aunt and uncle was one of the loveliest.

A card attached to the Bangladeshi basket said it was the perfect place to hold our blessings. I loved the basket for its symbolism as well as for what it meant to others. The third-world weavers who create these baskets are paid 'prosperity wages' for their work that gives them the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty.

Shortly after our wedding, DH and I placed a copy of our marriage license in the basket as our first blessing. But before long, the blessing basket became a storage place for the many attachments for DH's precious kitchen aide mixer.

I came across the blessing basket today. It looked dusty and forlorn. The marriage license was crumpled in the bottom. I took the license out without looking at it and carefully removed the cobwebs from the basket. I placed it on the dining room table and wondered what to put into it. My life feels particularly bereft of blessings right now.

Later, I took a look at the website of the organization that distributes the baskets. Its founder began the project after a particularly bleak time in her own life, when she gathered cards and letters from friends into a basket to remind her of the wonderful people in her life.

My black mood abruptly lifted. I suddenly realized that I have everything I need and more. I moved around my apartment collecting reminders of those blessings. A framed picture of a friend represented all of the wonderful individuals who have offered their support and friendship. A spare leash represented the dogs, past and present, who have shown me love, made me laugh, and kept me company.

A recovery coin spoke to the fact that I haven't had to take the edge off in almost 12 years. A set of keys represented my safe, affordable apartment. A dollar bill reminded me that I have a relatively easy and lucrative way to make a living. The objects kept piling in. When I was done, I felt truly blessed.

I haven't always been as ungrateful as I felt earlier today. When I was an old-lady college student at 30, a friend gave me a gratitude journal that served much the same purpose as the blessing basket. Although I was dirt-poor then, I made a point of filling the lines each day with things for which I was grateful. I still have that journal, and occasionally leaf through it and laugh at the items I listed. Clean sheets. Macaroni and cheese. And always, the same things I wrote about above - love, friendship, sobriety, dogs, and a roof over my head.

Filling that basket tonight reminded me of what's important in life. Hearts are broken. Loss is painful. But happiness, true happiness, comes from recognizing the blessings that already exist in our lives.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Double Unhappiness

Something's been bothering me for more than a week.

I met Dear Husband last week at the restaurant where he now works to collect some of the money he owes me. I came to the trendy new restaurant's kitchen door near the end of his shift and he came outside to talk to me. Feeling uncommonly charitable, I gave him a hug and asked him how he was doing.

He replied that things were going great - he loves his new job. He looked very happy. When he asked me how I was doing, I started to cry. I could tell it was the beginning of a marathon weeping session, so I ran to my car before I embarrassed myself any further.

The next day, I received an email from DH assuring me that he is, in fact, very unhappy. He said in the email that while his career is thriving, his personal life is miserable. But he looked overjoyed that day behind the restaurant.

I'm not sure what prompted his rare email. Does he think that I'm unhappy that he's happy? Am I unhappy that he's happy?

My heart says no. My bleeding broken heart still cares about him in a way that I'm mostly unwilling to examine or even acknowledge.

But my mind, that evil organ that someone once described as my 'beady little brain,' wants him to be miserable. My head wants him to suffer half as much as I have suffered. My heart sometimes tells my head to shut up, but my head rarely listens.

I want my head to listen up, though. Although anger has been very useful throughout this ordeal for staving off despair, I want to let go of it. I want to learn how to forgive him. I want to learn how to be kind to him. I want to learn how to be kind to myself.

Should I hope my heart will overpower my head in some kind of cosmic world wrestling federation smackdown? Or just wait until my brain gets tired of churning out caustic chemicals and moves on to something else?

Maybe the answer is the one I hate the most - maybe I just have to wait. Nothing is more nauseating to me than the prospect of sitting in my feelings. But that's what has to happen.

When I think back on past heartbreak, things that seemed like they had the power to destroy my life have no emotional hold over me now. Someday that will happen with DH. But that's a future that's hard to imagine right now.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Putting on My Metaphorical Boogie Shoes


The memories of the horrible dream I had about Dear Husband the other night have finally started to fade.

Although the dream left me sad and shaken, the details were pretty mundane. My wise and insightful friend A asked me about the dream a few nights ago, and as I told her about it, I realized it was, well, stupid.

In the dream, I was bugging DH to take me to his new house to retrieve my shoes. He kept refusing. I finally realized that he was balking at taking me to his house because his girlfriend was there. I asked him if that was true, and he denied it.

See, I told you. Pretty damned dumb. But the sorrow I felt in the dream lingered with me all the next day, and traces of it remained for days afterward.

Instead of scoffing at my pedestrian nocturnal visions, A probed me gently about the details. What kind of shoes had I left at his house, she asked?

I realized that although I never saw them in the dream, I knew the answer. My scrotty blue-and-black running shoes, the ones that I've been meaning to replace for at least the past three months. The ones whose soles keep coming loose, only to be superglued back by my cheapass self.

Anyone who believes dreams contain meaningful symbolism can probably come up with an easy answer about what those dream shoes represented, unattainably squirreled away in DH's dream house with his dream girlfriend.

A suggested that visiting a shoe store in my waking life and getting some new sneaks might be the best thing I could do for myself right now.

I decided to take her advice. Interestingly, I had a symbolic $100 bill in my pocket with which to buy these symbolic new shoes. DH had reluctantly handed me a c-note that day as payment on the money he owes me.

I decided to get some new sneakers and consciously think during my nighttime jaunts about walking away from my loss and toward a less heartbreaking future.

At the shoe store, I miraculously found two different pairs of shoes that worked with my Fred Flintstone feet and weren't so ugly that they made me go blind. I never have choices about shoes - it's hard enough to find one pair that works. Which ones to buy?

I ended up buying both pairs. After all, you never know when you're going to need an extra pair of shoes.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Antisocial Butterfly

I went to a party the other night.

I almost didn't go. Athough I was excited in the days leading up to the party, I felt funky and blue on the night of the event. It didn't help that I decided to take a nap at 3 pm and woke at six, groggy and disoriented. It didn't help that I'd had a splitting headache all day long. It didn't help that it was raining that night, an occurence that prevents people in Los Angeles from doing all sorts of things, from going to work to casting their ballots.

But I decided to go. How many party invitations are extended to chronically depressed home-office workers anyway? How often do I get invited to a ping-pong party at a glass artist's studio? The potential for destruction alone made the whole thing worth it.

The Friday-night rush-hour traffic was grueling, and it took 75 minutes to travel less than 10 miles. I arrived very late and the other party guests had already created fully formed conversational knots. Playing ping pong seemed like way too much effort.

After less than two hours, I'd had enough. My headache had intensified until it felt like I was going to burst a blood vessel. I said goodnight to the other guests and headed home.

But oddly enough, once I was home again and snuggled in bed with the dogs, it felt like a success. I had managed to get dressed, travel across town in the rain, and make pleasant conversation at a time in my life when everything except the bare necessities, and often even those, requires herculean effort. Sometimes going through the motions is the best we can do, and somehow, that's enough.

Monday, October 09, 2006

PB&J

I like to eat late at night. My cravings are fairly specific. Ice cream is pretty popular, as is dark chocolate. But last night I developed an unusual hankering for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I haven't really kept bread in my house for the past decade or so. I found a long time ago that I either eat it all at once or let it go bad. But Dear Husband loved a good PB&J, and always kept a couple of loaves of bread in the freezer. Because I've pretty much left the kitchen intact like a demented shrine to my departed chef, I knew it was still there.

But I was unprepared for the amount of bread I would find. Six loaves, four of them opened and with little beards of ice sprouting from each slice, were hidden under my spinach ravioli and precious stash of ice cream.

I tossed the frozen relics and microwaved a couple of slices from one of the unopened loaves. When he left, DH apparently stuffed his three jars of peanut butter into his duffel bag like a little kid running away from home, so I made a sunflower-butter-and-jelly sandwich instead.

I was surprised at how nostalgic for DH that sandwich made me. He always made himself two sandwiches, and after insisting I didn't want one, I always begged half. He shared his sandwiches willingingly, cheerfully, never reminding me that I had said five minutes earlier that I didn't want one.

It was the first time since we separated that I had tender thoughts about DH without automatically thinking, or forcing myself to think, about his betrayal. These thoughts came with a hefty pricetag - I had the saddest, most mournful dream about him last night that I've ever had about anyone. Thinking about it even now makes me cry.

In case anyone is wondering, this isn't a prelude to reconciliation. I don't think it's even possible for either of us, and in any case it's not what I want. I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record - I miss DH, but I won't take him back, but I miss him, but I won't take him back. Ack. But that seems to be the particular cycle of grief I'm stuck in right now.

Grief is a funny thing. Things that probably should make me cry leave me stony and dry-eyed. Things that shouldn't - like a particularly bad episode of Desperate Housewives - make me choke with sorrow. And something as simple as a PB&J can take me back to a time when spending a quiet evening at home with my new husband made me happier than anything else ever has.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Fractured Faith

My recent email exchange with Dear Husband contained quite a few bombshells.

One of the most shocking items was DH's revelation that he recently left the Catholic church.

"The Church has given me no solace. I see no point in going anymore. My faith is lost and I am searching for something different," DH wrote in his email.

I'm not sure about many things, but I was pretty certain DH would be a faithful Catholic his entire life. It isn't just that until recently, he never missed a weekly mass except when he was at sea with the navy. It's that in his family, the pressure to be devout could fracture rock.

Take, for example, our wedding. DH applied for an annulment from his marriage to First Wife three years before our wedding, but the church didn't get around to processing the paperwork in that time.

So we had an outdoor heathen wedding. His parents and four of his six siblings did not attend. Two responded negatively to the invitation and one sent a nauseatingly self-righteous letter, but the others didn't even bother to return the rsvp cards. Clearly, DH's family's devotion to the church eclipses blood ties, compassion, and even good manners.

My own feelings about the church are multifaceted and overwhelmingly negative. The picture above hints at one of my problems with the church. It still blows me away that a group of people who claim to love God and one another could sacrifice generations of children merely to maintain the status quo.

I also have issues with the church's archaic position on reproductive healthcare. I realize its stance dates back to the time when you needed to have 12 kids to have two reach adulthood and take over the farm, but times have changed. Since the church just got around about 15 years ago to forgiving Galileo for daring to say the earth was round, I figure they may need a few more years to work out the birth control issue. Let's hope they get cracking before too long.

My personal grudge against the church dates back about about 75 years (I know, I know, my mother says I need to learn to let things go). My grandmother converted to Catholicism to marry my grandfather in the early 1930s. She put up with about 12 years of drunken beatings before filing for divorce. A few years later she married another devout Catholic, chosen no doubt for the fact that he was unlikely to hit her.

Because she didn't get her first marriage annulled, my grandmother was unable to take communion after she remarried. Yet she went to mass faithfully every week for the next 50 years or so and was denied the most sacred ritual of her faith merely because she had the nerve to divorce an alcoholic wifebeater.

So clearly I'm not crazy about the Catholic church. I argued with DH sporadically about his religion, I questioned his intelligence and sometimes his sanity for continuing to attend through revelations about the church's shameful handling of its pedophile priests, but I never tried to interfere with his attendance at mass.

Now he's spiritually adrift. I have to wonder how firmly he was anchored to his faith in the first place - I'm not sure that lying and cheating are at the top of the list of Christian virtues - but the church leaders haven't displayed the highest integrity themselves, so maybe his role models weren't the greatest.

I probably should have known better than to marry someone who gets to confess away his sins and be forgiven every week. As a heathen, I have no choice but to live with the aftermath of my actions.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Little Surprises

I keep hoping I've experienced all the big surprises in my short-lived marriage to Dear Husband.

You know, like his Secret Life. And the one where he used a check I gave him months ago to pay his child support six weeks after we separated. (Oh my yes, that was a biiig surprise!)

If I'm lucky, all that's left are the little surprises. Like learning that all that hair clogging the shower drain was his, not mine (that's right, you're going bald, mothafucka!). Like realizing that I haven't bought a cigarette lighter since we met more than five years ago. Like occasionally being surprised, even now, that I'm not wearing my wedding ring. Like realizing yet again that sleeping with a couple of dogs can be just as comforting as spooning in bed with the one you love.

There have been other surprises as well - I've already mentioned my rediscovered enjoyment of being alone. And then there are the comments from several friends who say I seem more like myself than I have in years. Along with that came the unpleasant surprise that I apparently submerged part of my personality in a relationship, something that I don't much care for when I notice it in others.

Most surprising of all has been my power to heal, to bounce back from terrible disappointment, to tentatively move forward even though I have no idea what I'm moving toward.

What hasn't surprised me at all has been the outpouring of love and unswerving support I've received from friends - some that I've known for years or even decades, some who have come into my life recently like unexpected blessings. You guys are the best - I couldn't have made it without you. Thank you for everything.