I finally had The Discussion aka “WTF do you actually want?” with my estranged spouse. She’s been avoiding the topic like a greased weasel in a lubricant factory, so I was woefully unprepared when she actually agreed to talk to me.
Of course, when I fetched up against the expected wall of non-committal grunts and shrugged shoulders, I felt it was time to ask if she wanted me to give her the D. And by that, I mean “Divorce”. What followed were several hours of such unhinged behaviour, it was reminiscent of the great brass shortage that plunged the cabinet-making industry into chaos.
The following day, I was bombarded with a string of lengthy text tirades, which I wasn’t able to respond to because she blocked me from replying. When I finally managed to sneak one in before the virtual portcullis came down, I wanted to make it count, so I kept it to a simple suggestion that she seek professional help. Somehow this penetrated the thick layer of batshit enveloping her mind and hit home. It seems to have altered her trajectory from a headlong plunge towards self-destruction to one that approaches a lot closer to reconciliation.
Oddly enough, now that the beatings have stopped, morale has improved. Don’t tell my manager or his head might explode.
The most recent recrimination recitation went about as well as can be expected.
At the conclusion of the session, the marriage counsellor stood and said, “Ok, let’s continue this next time. I can fit you in a fortnight from now.” When I responded, “Oh, we’re not coming back here. There is no fucking point,” he gave me the Surprised Pikachu look and stammered, “B-but w-whyyyy?” I countered with, “Do you genuinely believe that you have helped in any way? Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical question”. His answer was, “There’s no need to be rude! Make sure you lock the gate when you leave” and he stalked out of the room, muttering darkly to himself. What a soft bitch! Obviously, that was money well spent.
It was also the first time in weeks that the future ex lost the steel grip that she’s kept on her emotions when she realised I have had enough of her shit. Or maybe it was because she’s sad the game is over. Doesn’t matter. I think I saw actual tears. We live in a time of miracles, people!
If I’m to be the bad guy, then I have no reason not to lean into it.
So it turns out I was wrong. Yes, yes, I know that could mean anything, but in this case I’m referring to the consultation my estranged wife and I had with a marriage counsellor yesterday. In recent weeks, the breakdown of our relationship has dominated my thoughts, but I’ve been painfully aware that I don’t have an objective perspective on it. This was to be the counsellor’s role: to provide that external insight to help us find our way back to one another.
Or not. My wife spent the session listing my myriad wrongdoings and complaining that literally everything I do irritates her. Whenever she paused for breath, counsellor would narrow his eyes and ask me if I could understand how frustrated she is and how my actions or inactions would make her resentful. Whenever I tried asking what I should do, she would ignore the question and add another sin to the growing pile. Then the counsellor would trot out a pointless platitude, like “when you deprive a fire of oxygen, it goes out”. According to him, I should have “stepped up”, but he wasn’t able to provide any clues as to what “stepping up” looks like. Also, it seems that my wife pushing me away was perfectly fine, but my subsequent withdrawal was nothing short of heinous. She had no responsibility whatsoever to communicate what she wanted in actual words. I should have been able to figure it out from her anger and loathing, because those emotions are so nuanced.
At the end of Joel Schumacher’s 1993 masterpiece “Falling Down“, Michael Douglas’s character, William Foster, is confronted on the pier by Sergeant Prendergast. Foster is told that he’s not the good guy in the story. The confusion on his face as he tries to process this information is heartbreaking. His entire world world shifts in that moment and he is utterly lost.
When our counselling session ended I knew exactly how Bill felt.
I’m the bad guy?
Yeah.
How’d that happen? Apparently, what you are seeing here is my villain origin story unfolding.
My engineering background has taught me that as long as your assumptions are sound, your conclusions will be reasonable. Obviously, you make adjustments as better data becomes available, but the point isn’t to hit the bullseye on the first try, it’s to get on the board so you can calibrate your aim. But how do you hit the target if the lights are off?
I’m the bad guy? I am as confounded by this revelation as Foster was and I feel the foundations of my reality crumbling. I have never been so completely wrong about something like this before. All I can say is thank god for my sister and my friend Schroedinger, who were both there for me when I really needed it and managed to talk me down from the edge. They don’t seem to mind that I’m a villain.
Four years ago, when I was discharged from hospital, I quizzed my doctors about my long-term survival prospects. Most of them hedged their bets and gave me non-committal answers like, “Oh, it’s impossible to say for sure; it depends on many factors blah blah blah”. Then they scurried off to see if they’d fallen foul of any of the liability clauses that haunt their nightmares. One of them – the surgeon – stood out from the others, because he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Five years, tops”. He was the only one with sufficient respect for his patients to be honest, so I shook his hand and thanked him, despite the loud ticking clock I could suddenly hear in my head. It’s always better to receive bad news and plan for it, than be ignorant and blindsided.
Case in point: most people know that I’m not on Facebook, so my insight into the lives of others is generally dependent on direct interaction. I’m strange that way. However, a day or two ago, an acquaintance told me that my wife had updated her profile status to “single” and deleted all reference to our life together from her timeline. I’m not even a ghost to her; it’s like I never existed. Is it just me, or has it suddenly got chilly in here?
I’ve often joked that I have no soul left to crush, but this insidious betrayal broke me. I find myself staring at the inscription above the gates as the circles beckon and I think, “What use do the condemned have for hope anyway?” At least now I know what to expect out of our marriage counselling session next week.
It looks like I’m going to be putting that call through to my lawyer after all.
I have believed for the longest time that irony is built into the fabric of the world, akin to a universal constant like Pi (mmm… Pie). Obviously this is garbage, because irony requires someone to perceive it as such and if Alanis Morissette has taught us anything, it’s that people often get it wrong, which is kind of ironic.
I am therefore acutely aware of the irony of my present situation. What I mean is that all of my previous relationships have derailed on suspiciously familiar tracks. The only common denominator is me, ergo ego sum causa. Consequently, even though I am sufficiently self-aware to understand where and when things go wrong, I still managed to remain oblivious of the warning signs signalling the demise of my marriage. It’s a bitter (and somewhat jagged) little pill to swallow.
In between bouts of self-loathing, I reached out to a wise friend who suggested that I write my wife a letter to better articulate and understand my feelings – even if I never delivered it. “A Schrödinger’s letter?” I thought, “Why not?” And so I did.
It began as whiny, self-flaggelating missive, but the more I wrote, the more I realised that there were other facets to this shattered gem that I hadn’t seen before. This new perspective allowed me to comprehend that she had spent so long making me feel weak and worthless, that I had begun to believe it myself. The letter rapidly degenerated into a vitriolic rant about how my mind-reading abilities were never going to measure up to her unreasonably high expectations, so it would have really helped if she’d occasionally thrown me a frikkin’ bone. It was abundantly clear in weighing up the prospect of us staying together that the scales were heavily skewed towards the “con” side of things.
The red mist was upon me and I was poised to put a call through to my attorney, when I noticed the post-it note I’d scrawled and stuck on my monitor two days ago – the one featured in the image above. For those who are unable to decipher my handwriting, it says, “Don’t make any decisions when you are emotional”. “Fuck you, Past Me!” I raged in my head, “You’re not the boss of me!” Fortunately, it gave me just enough pause to regain my sanity and I managed to follow my own advice. Ira furor brevis est and all that.
Honestly, it sometimes feels like the damaged part of my mind is off on its own magical adventure, leaving behind a lonely brain cell to deal with the incoming feral pack of Issues, like the short-straw retail worker tasked to open up on Black Friday.
However this turns out, I’m glad I listened to my friend. I’ll probably never send that letter, though. Monsters are capable of mercy.
the other side of the mountain 