Me

Me

Because so many people will try to say that the problems brought into the relationship were unaddressed and these problems were the reason for the result of divorce. I contend that past history and my understanding, awareness, and adjustments to these issues made me (in my wife’s words only a week before filing for the divorce.) “the greatest husband a woman could ask for”. You know for all my self resentment over my communications skills in the relationship, me and my wife talked a lot about our problems in ways that didn’t seem obvious. I also contend that my deeper then normal understanding of where my wife came from allowed this to be a unique fact. The only thing we ever did that would have broken this bond is seek mental health help from a community more interested in pushing pills then allowing us to release these demons. So in order to understand the events and my decisions I feel it necessary to introduce the characters in this story. So if you are able to accept that SSRI’s such as Prozac CAN be the sole reason for marital dissolvent, then the characters don’t matter and you can save yourself some reading. By that I mean that if the drug had never been introduced, all other problems would have been handled.

This post is about “me” in the shortest duration as possible. I was born to the house of what would be considered a “lower-middle class” family. My father was an ex-marine turned carpenter, turned factory assembly line worker. He owned his own business, worked hard, and was not home much in the summer time. He came from a large family with 5 half sisters. His own father had left when he was 2. My mother was a stay at home mom until I was about 10. Then she took a job at a department store where she worked until she got her realtors license. She was the oldest of three from a middle class family. My grandfather was a millwright, her mother was an accountant for a nuclear power producer. She was the problem child.

I am the middle child of 3 children. My brother is 4 years older then me, and there was a still born in between us. My sister is a little less then 2 years younger then me. When I came into this world, it was shortly after my mother and father had split for a few months after the stillborn death of “baby sister”. My mother took my brother to Florida and stayed until my father convinced her to come back. I can only assume that I was a makeup baby.

The house I grew up in a tumultuous environment. My father and mother rarely spent time at home together where they were not arguing. On a quite regular basis that would erupt into a shouting match. I really do not recall any physical altercations, but due to my adversity to violence, I might be blocking it out. At a very young age I would go and hide for hours in places where I couldn’t hear the arguing. As I got older and started considering relationships, I decided that I would never allow this kind of activity in my own relationship. The very first argument I had with my wife when we first met I said, “I don’t like your tone. I am going to hang up now and you can call me back when we can speak respectfully to each other.” She asked if that was “as mad as I get.”

Trying to write this it got too long, so here are the highlights. In first grade I was put on Ritalin, I hated it, and it made me feel trapped inside myself. In second grade my parents drug me to a therapist and then to black ink testing. They told my parents that I might be mildly retarded and recommended I be placed in LD (Leaning Disabled) classes. By fifth grade I was only doing that for a few classes.

In seventh grade I made my first life decision for the future. I decided I wanted to go fast in an air plane. I was told I needed to study math, my weakest subject. So I did vehemently. This supposed “retard” entered the ninth grade going straight to algebra. I had nailed math so well that a teacher pulled me aside and said, “It don’t care if you ace all of my tests, if you don’t turn in your homework, I will fail you.”

Then came the blowing news that my vision had failed. I found out as I was taking my test for my drivers license and failed the vision part. "Well you could still fly a helicopter they told me." Show me a helicopter that can do mach 2 and I’ll consider it. It was right about that time that I had a falling with my best friend. We had been close for about 5 years. He was hanging with so new friends that were on the road to trouble, and I wanted nothing to do with it. The friendship came to a screeching halt in the form of a legendary kung-fu match up in the school hallway. It was an incident that would take away one of the few distinctions that I felt I had. I had somehow made it from kindergarten to high school, 11.5 years at that time, without missing a day.

The fight quickly became incidental as the principal intended to suspend me for, "using karate in a fight in school". That day lead to me being committed. (Like I said this could be a very long story.) I spent a week there, 3 days tied down to a bed with leather restraints to keep me from leaving the hospital. They called me Houdini because I kept slipping the restraints and would usually be just getting to my leg restraints when they would catch me. They finally posted a hospital guard.

Coming out, my parents understood they made a great mistake putting me through the ordeal. They wanted to make it up to me. So I got my first guitar. That led to meeting the guy who would one day be the best man at my wedding. But for the time being, fighter pilot was out, and rock stardom was my destiny. Oh yeah, as it turns out, I can't play guitar. I had to learn to sing.

The summer after the school fight I was hit with more bad news. My mother had been diagnosed with Ovarian cancer and was given 6 months to live. She took 5 years, but every 6 months she would get so sick that we were certain she was gone this time. My father in al of his hate and paranoia would assure us that this was the real one.

In my final year, I had decide I wouldn't wait around to watch my mom die and do it while still fighting with my father as if nothing had changed. School is of no consequence to a rock superstar. So I loaded up the VW rabbit with two bags of Doritos, (cool ranch and I had always hated them, but that was what was available.) 2 bottles of red pop, and $32 and some change. I was headed to California. It was an ill-fated trip with me first getting stuck in a blizzard, then having a hard time finding a place to sell me diesel. Much later I would find out I had no alternator belt. Although now that would have been apparent to me since for some reason at the time I could only get the car started by push starting it. As a final straw, tired, very low gas, money and food, I pulled up to one of the big rig gas stations. As I pulled away I ripped a whole in the tire. I had no lug wrench, and everybody who came there had one way bigger then a VW rabbit needed. I finally got the spare on, and turned back home. I made it to Indiana ( I think I was in Okalahoma when I turned back, and I still have never made it to California.) and there family was close enough to come get me and run me back home. My father went to get the car later.

Shortly after my day of non-graduation, (I had to take government class of all things from a summer tutor) my father stepped into my room and said, "get out, you don't do anything around her." I wasn't even 18. So I went to the barn on some property we owned, and slept there for a few days. One day I was munching on some not very ripe fruit when my grandmother pulled up and said, "come live with me till you figure things out." So off I went to live with grandma, about 3 miles from my childhood home. It took me 5 years to "figure things out." She would also take me to get my first factory job. The first guy I met who was my boss said, “I don’t like you much. You won’t be her long.” It took him 2 years to get me laid off. Grandma’s house was a unique situation because my grandmother went to Florida for 5 months out of the year. She would leave and the band would move in. The week before she came home was always a "restoration period."

During that period I met my first long term G/F. She was a drummer. Looking back, that was pretty much her most desirable quality. Since to that point we couldn't keep a rhythm section to save out lives. We were friends, then became lovers in the course of a year. I took her to her prom, which was neat since I skipped my own. However, I hated her family, I really didn't find her all that bright, which is a trait that I had always found attractive in women. The big thing is that we worked on the band 3 nights a week even through death.

Yes my mom finally lost the fight. But first the guitarist's mom (also a good friend) had become sick with cancer and died. Donna died 9 days before my mom. We had a new bass player who had been to two practices and two funerals. He quit saying that his mom had a bad ticker. My mom died one night just after I had left her side to go watch a movie. She was bed ridden and living with me and grandma. There was no time to morn, we had to get back to writing and practice.

That pace and ability to subdue my mourning continued until after breaking up with my G/F of then 6 years. After I had broken up with her a half dozen times, she did it for real. I was floored. She not only did it, but was out of the band at my bidding. The loss of everything felt like I had lost my only set of car keys and was stuck in the woods. The last time I would see her with any hope or desire of reconciliation, I walked away from her trailer with a plethora of police there who wanted to take me into custody because she was afraid I would hurt myself. As I walked away, I realized that I never really wanted that anyway. I had stayed only because I didn't want the band to suffer another set back. I made a vow that I would not stay in a relationship again unless I actually like the other person family. If you don’t like where the person came from, how can you really enjoy them.

I walked in , told my counselor I was done, I had figured stuff out, and I would be fine. I left, and started drinking at levels that could only be considered inhuman. My buddy’s who had lost his mother at the same time was enthralled in a divorce from his high school sweetheart. So there we were again in the same boat. There was more then plenty of company on my loneliness.

I remember praying to god, who I still believed in at the time, "God I will give up this quest if you allow me to find somebody who loves me and I can make happy and try to have a real functional family."

You got to be careful what you ask god for. Sure enough I found it. One night I was invited to a party that I was intending to dismiss, and into my life came what would ultimate be the greatest gift and tragedy in my already tragic life. But that my friends will have to wait.

So yes, I have identified and recognize my faults.