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.
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.
I used to date a psychologist. Possibly. It’s also possible that she was just hanging around with me for research purposes and I’ll end up being referred to as “Subject K” when she finally publishes her Big Book o’ Weirdos (working title).
Most people believe psychology involves sitting in a chair saying, “Tell me about your mother” and performing the occasional Jedi Mind Trick. While that viewpoint isn’t entirely wrong (because The Force does indeed give one power over weak minds), it ignores some of the more harrowing realities of the job.
A specific thing your typical shrinker of heads has to deal with is the fact that they are never off-duty. Even when they pack up for the day and go home, they still have to process all the batshit they’ve been exposed to during their sessions. To add to this, there are the frantic after-hours phone calls from clients with boundary issues (which is often a telling clue as to why they are in therapy in the first place).
One such phone call that derailed a quiet Saturday afternoon was from a panicking parent who was worried that some or other imaginary crisis might befall her hapless child. When I asked Obi-Juanita why she didn’t tell the caller that she wasn’t available after hours, she patiently explained that the shock would be too great. Or as she put it: “You can’t say that to mothers. You may as well tell them, ‘Sorry, I can’t talk right now – I’m having anal sex with a dog’“.
I’m beginning to understand why Freud needed all that cocaine.
If you pick up any glossy magazine that caters to the thirty-something middle-class heterosexual female demographic, you’re almost guaranteed to find an opinion piece on relationships. In fact, if you ever manage to find an issue that doesn’t have a relationship-themed article, you should tell the dentist’s receptionist that someone has been tearing pages out of their magazines.
The vaguely confusing message that emerges from these publications is that men are worthless, filthy things that you should nevertheless manipulate into marrying you. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but this seems severely counter-intuitive. Why would anyone would want to do a thing like that? After all, if you’re dating an “unhygienic, adolescent-minded ne’er-do-well who exists only to gratify himself and make you miserable” [citation needed], surely you’d want to get away from him and not make the arrangement permanent in the eyes of the Law and Facebook?
It turns out that writers of relationship articles (and now that I think about it, my ex-wife) fervently believe that we unhygienic adolescent-minded ne’er-do-wells can be cured of our wayward ways. All it requires is for us to just grow up and stop being selfish. In other words, get married, have kids and buy a lawnmower. Of course, it rather begs the question – what’s in it for us?
Is it reasonable to expect us just do it and like it? Does the world really need more baybeez to secure the survival of the species? When you compare the fun factor of a lawnmower against that of a game console, how often does the lawnmower win? If you guessed “no”, “no” and “never”, give yourself a gold star.
Then again, this may offer some insight as to how the dowry custom came into being. If you’re going to do something you would normally avoid, it’s generally less painful if you get paid.
the other side of the mountain 