The Sound of Settling

Then. 3 weeks before I left.

I have never on this blog acknowledged why it was I got divorced. To most people, they take some of the information I give them and they just accept that we were two people who weren’t meant for each other. They offer their condolences for my failed marriage, and we pass over it. Only my best friends know the story, little by little I’ve let it out. I have never publicly discussed why I got divorced, and even he, to this day, doesn’t really know everything. When it came time to leave, it was long overdue.

What I must write, is what I have spent the last two years trying to move past, these are the reasons why I’ve had to focus on learning the lesson of letting go. This is why it is so important for me to move forward. This is why there is still a sad undertone in my voice, this is why it took me a year to cry, this is why I hold on tighter than I should, this is why I am only drawn to inaccessible/emotionally unavailable men, and this is why I am still paralyzed to really move forward. I decided that I had to write about this because over the last couple of weeks I have been told by countless people, friends and strangers alike, at how happy I seem, what is more, how happy I look. It’s an interesting observation, and one I’ve noticed too, it’s what makes me know that my smile is coming back to life.

So because of that, it’s time to acknowledge the truth, it’s time to let it go, and it’s time to relinquish control of it’s (his) power over me. Settle in, it’s going to be a long one.

It begins something like this…

I met him when I was a senior in college. There at a bar, celebrating another friend’s engagement. I was drunk. He was probably high. I gave him my number, and he called me that night. We talked for three hours. It was probably the longest conversation to be had in our seven year relationship.

I went out with him the next day, and the day after that, and every day following. Ours was the type of relationship where we just all of a sudden were together. It seemed I was always with him from almost the first meeting. I knew in the first week of meeting him that I would marry him. In the early years, he reminded me of my father in a lot of ways. I felt like the true content of his character was that he was a loving and caring person with a soul that went much deeper than it appeared on the outside. I wanted to take care of him, to nurture him, to make him feel love the way I believed in it. I thought my ability to love would be enough for the both of us, enough to heal the wounds in his own heart. We spent the next three years as boyfriend and girlfriend, and had what I can only describe as a passionate relationship – when we were good, we were great. When we were bad, we were toxic.

I remember a horrible fight on Valentine’s day, two months before we were to be engaged. I remember now that at that moment I knew I should not continue with the relationship, but I did anyway. I look back these years later and I know that I confused security for love. I know now that being together day in and day out never meant that we were really friends. At the time, I guess it just seemed like we needed to move forward, like it was the right thing to do, and like we needed that commitment to prove this was a viable relationship.

He proposed to me on April 30, 2000. We had finished watching a movie with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon – I believe it was “The Odd Couple.” How appropriate that was in hindsight. For weeks I knew it would be happening. I dreamt of a proposal in front of my friends, or my family, or something that was the least bit romantic. Instead, he told me the ring was in his bedroom and that I could have it if I wanted. He returned with the box, and got down on his knee while I was on the couch and he asked me to marry him. He proposed to me on a couch, in an apartment we could never go back to. He gave me a ring that he wanted, not something I saw myself with. Trivial, maybe. But to me it meant that he didn’t really listen to me, or know me, or care.

I think back now, and I remember things I tucked out of my mind for many years. Before he proposed, I dreamt of a romantic proposal, and yet I knew that he was not capable of it – I knew that it would feel awkward if it was anything more than how he actually did it. I recall this now and I can identify the sound at the moment I knew the proposal would be anything less than I truly wanted.

It was the sound of settling.

So I said yes! And I went into a year long planning process that allowed my inner diva to shine. I convinced myself for one year that I was doing the right thing and that everything would be great once we were married. I still can’t figure out why I went through with it. I’m not sure it was ever a question in my mind. It’s as if I convinced myself that it was a solid relationship. That we were really friends. That common ground was just a little further out of reach.

The wedding was pretty close to perfect. The reception was a blast. It felt real when the rings were exchanged, and the vows were sealed with a kiss. I believe that we both meant it when we said “for better or worse.” I truly believe we both got married intending it to be forever.

We fought 3-days of our 7-day honeymoon. While in London he called his ex-girlfriend, who was from the U.K., to try to arrange a time for the three of us to meet. As Princess Diana so prophetically said, “You know there were three of us in this marriage.” Yes, indeed, there always were. The first year was pretty good – the first three months being a bit trying because I was laid off of work. I would shop, or go to the pool, or lounge around for most of the day – and he would come home and silently resent my hiatus. But even still, I loved being married. I loved being a wife. I loved taking care of him, because for the most part, at that time, he took care of me. We felt more solid than ever that first year. That year, and the closeness we had is what allows me to not resent him or regret getting married.

It was right around the time my sister found out she would have to have a surrogate in order to have any children, that I fell out of love for him. She was about to, at age 17, have her eggs harvested in order to have any future hope of having biological children. She had to make a choice, in a matter of weeks, to do this because of a medication she would soon be on for the rest of her life that causes severe birth defects. I said to him that I wanted to be her surrogate when the time came, that I knew I would have to have my own children first in order to follow through, but that this was the most important thing I could ever do for her, and that it was the one gift I always saw myself giving her. He said to me “under no circumstances will my wife ever do that, I don’t care what it means to you.” And at the precise moment he said those words, my heart broke and the love I felt for him, died. I knew at that moment I would never have married him had I known that he felt that way. How he could profess to understand my love for my sister, how he could know her circumstances, and how he could never understand me wanting to do the one thing I always knew that I was destined to do. I didn’t understand how he could be so cruel. I knew at that moment that he didn’t know me and he never would.

I put on a happy face, shut down emotionally, and then we spent the next two years fighting a losing battle.

The second year was a crowded one, where friends became the scapegoats for the two of us forming any sort of friendship together. He started choosing sides in fights with everyone but his wife in fights between mutual friends. His nights out never included me, and they were followed by reciprocal nights that never included him. It was a constant “one-uping” that went on between us. I went to bed earlier and earlier, he stayed out later and later. Then there were the occasional strange phone calls that when questioned about, I was told I was a stupid bitch and that I was crazy. There was the night where he came home with cocaine on the end of his nose. And the fight that followed where I told him I would never have his children. There was the everyday that included him getting high, and conversations, countless conversations, where he told me he’d never give up pot, even if it meant losing me.

It came to a head and I left for three months. I don’t even remember the conversation it took in order for me to leave. I begged him to go to counseling, to work on this marriage and he told me I was the one who needed counseling, not him. So I went to counseling, and I tried working on myself. Alone. I re-committed to trying to do everything I could to save our marriage. We hardly spent any time together during that three months, but as always, I was drawn back to him, drawn back to his open arms and lure of familiarity. We signed a contract, we made another promise to try. That was August. By October, I knew it was over, that I wanted to leave him for good.

His mother was diagnosed with lung cancer the same week. I stayed.

We planned a second honeymoon to Hawaii in December, and for the first few weeks we were back it was great. It was as if the ocean water, and warmth of the sun had renewed not only our spirits, but the love in our hearts as well. But just as I went back into his arms, I also went back into the world of text messages from women named Jen, followed by an overnight visit to see his father that ended up being a lot more suspicious than just that. Next, text messages from his ex-girlfriend – the one who would never go away – and what she wanted to do to him. That was followed by text messages about that night he had to get home “to work” after Thanksgiving, the one where whoever she was had a great time and couldn’t wait to see him again – I remember it well, because it’s the one that cost me a friendship. Finally, to condoms in the console of his truck “for his friend Todd.” That was the day he wouldn’t talk to me at all, because I was a crazy bitch, the night where Todd came over and they shut the door to the bedroom and barely spoke above a whisper. It was the day in which all the words he ever uttered to me still resonate the loudest. It was the one thing he said to me which I am still unable to, but everyday trying to let go of: “You are nothing and nobody will ever love you.”

It was the loudest sound of settling I have ever heard.

I left him twenty days later.

I married a man whose family I adored. Who I believed could change. Who inherently was a good person, just not to me. I married him because it was the thing I thought I should do, not because I couldn’t imagine my life without him. For seven years, I never wrote a word, let alone a sentence. I never scribbled a poem. I never heard a song where the words reminded me of him. I never smiled the way I have smiled in the past three weeks, six months, or even the past two years since our parting. I married a man who let me slip away, who resented everything I ever loved about myself, everything I held most dear, and who wouldn’t fight for me. I married a man who never knew me. Who never really laughed with me. Who never kissed me the way I needed to be kissed. Who never looked into my eyes and understood who I was, ever. Someone who never wanted to be my friend. Who never wanted me to question him, or challenge him, or make him aspire to become anything better, even though I knew he could be. I married a man who I don’t believe ever gave me butterflies, or who could make me cry because the thought of being without him, hurt.

But it isn’t fair to blame the ending of the marriage, of the relationship, solely on him. Some people no matter how hard you try, never quite seem to fit. The puzzle never really comes together, and you find yourself looking to everyone and everything else to fill that empty space…to feel that love you are supposed to have. When you have to look to everything else to fill the void, you probably need to evaluate the reason why.

I will admit, I wasn’t perfect in my marriage. I made mistakes, too. I messed up, I crossed lines I shouldn’t have crossed, and I failed at living up to my end of the bargain. But I tried. I tried with every sad ounce of my former being. I know, and have peace, that I did do that much.

I married a man whose toxicity was like a lethal dose of my own medicine. I longed for everything more, in a world I no longer knew, and feelings I forgot I had. I became someone who wasn’t really myself, and I’ve spent almost two years trying to reclaim that person I lost. It’s taken a hell of a long time to get back to finding any resemblance of the person I was, and there have been a lot of demons I’ve had to face along the way. I’m not there yet. But I’m getting closer. Acknowledging this part of my life and what happened is something I have to do, now, in order to continue to move forward. In order to let go.

I’m trying every day to be a better person, and I’m forgiving myself for the mistakes I’ve made. I have forgiven him, too. There is still a little part of me that is saddened by the breakup between us. Inherently, I will always hold a piece of him in my heart, and I will always try to be on his side. After all, it was because of him that I am able to be where I am today. When I left, I didn’t let it get ugly. That’s not what it was about to me. My leaving was about me and me alone. My leaving was about who I was at my core, and how I knew I needed to get back. A long journey, where the road hasn’t been easy, where the lessons about letting go have been stern, but a journey where the road has meant something more to me than I would ever have known had I not taken it. And yet, it’s been almost two years, and I still don’t know how I can, how I will, or how to receive…

Love.


The irony is that it is the one thing that I believe in the most. And yet, it is the only thing that eludes me, still.

I hear that sound every once in awhile, that sound of settling. It scares the hell out of me now. I am paralyzed to this day by the words he said. That they will somehow ring true. That happiness will continue to elude me. That true love, the kind that fills your soul, where the friendship brings tears to your eyes, the kind I dream about, will somehow pass me by.

But then I look at this life I have and I am beginning to trust that his spell is broken, and that whoever it is that inevitably steals my heart, is lucky to have found me, and will be lucky to love me. The sound of settling screams at me now instead of coming to me like a whisper. I listen to its warning and I am able to believe that there is a life ahead that is filled with love beyond my wildest dreams, beyond any life I have already known. However long it may be before it finds me, I will have no regrets, and I will trust what I already know…

It will find me.

Now. 3 weeks ago.