My road-break ups

My methodology for changing and the strange facts that would make the change possible were immature. 

I saw life as a series of turnstyles where one could easily get off, but not get back on again.  The train of life led nowhere in particular, it was the exits you make that matter.

People are so afraid of the turnstyles that anyone who is willing to act has tremendous power over everyone else.  In my business endeavors I was daring to the point of wrecklessness.  Personally, I was timid.  I who had lived life so wrecklessly as a youth was moving through life as if I was walking on broken ankles.

“Save me,” I said to no one.

“From what,” my wife answerd.

I looked over at her.  My first instinct was to say, ‘from you.’  But there was no problem there.  Early on, my leaving had resulted in threats of physical violence, even suicide.  But over time, the fighting had worn her down also.  Now it seemed just as many times I had said that I have to leave you, and each time she had said, ‘then go.  Just don’t drag it out.’

Save me from myself then, I though as I watched her turn back to her book.  I didn’t say it out loud, but I knew what I wanted to say.  ‘Turn your back on me.  Make me leave.  And when I do leave, don’t come after me.  I am supposed to be on the streets and if I turn out to be a beggar, than I hope that I am a wise man.

I tried to look into this future.  I would move.  The children at first, now almost grown, would be upset, but they had spent their entire lives watching us argue.  I’m sure the oldest must have wondered why two people so poorly matched would continue to have children.  It was a question that I wanted to answer for her but I could not.

I could not move in with the girl.  Even if she believed she was telling the truth, she was not ready for me. 

Every time we talked about it she always said, “You need to start with your own place.  You need an apartment in town where you’re close to your work.”  It was good advice.  Not necessarily comforting after all the years we’d known each other, but still good advice.

Nor was I ready to move into that blazing sun that was her life.   I did want to share it, but I wanted to see what it would be like.  I knew that we shared some special bond, but I didn’t know how that bond would translate into the repetitive drudgery that represented much of life.  I also felt that the bottle rocket that was my early life before I was married was still there and that she was the punk that would ignite it.  When that happened, I wasn’t sure what the result would be, only that it would be explosive and potentially dangerous.

There had been a time when my wife and I had made a failed attempt at a sexual reconciliation.  It was an unfortunate and dismal affair.  She had no passion for me and could not, as a result of this and the after effects of having children, conjure up the physical requirements for it to be successful.  For my part, I was in love with someone else.   The idea of being with anyone else was unappealing.  I have, as I said, turned down several sexual options; foolishly faithful to someone who had no such compulsions, whose admitted goal was to replace me with someone else. 

Despite all the things that told me to move on, I was waiting for something to help me chose between the woman who had put the flame of excitement out and the one I hoped, without confidence, could reignite it.

My Road-Greek morals

“I committed to you, it isn’t unfair for you to think I could stay in a compromised position for years.  No matter how informal your life is, I live in a real society and I have real people with real morals that I have to answer to.”

“I’ve never seen anyone who could commit and uncommit so quickly.”

“Very funny.”

“You know those same moral dilemmas are the thing which is holding me back.  I am dealing with one crisis after another and you want me to pick up and double my cost of living when I can’t even afford what I’m paying now.”

“You can come live with me.  It won’t cost anything.”

“And when you change your mind again?”

“What makes you think I’ll change my mind?”

“Because the second I tell you that I’m moving in you’re going to tell me I need to start with my own place until things calm down.”  This was followed by silence on her part.  I reach out and take you hand.  “I love you, I don’t have this figured out.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I love you.”

We are sitting on a bench outside of a cemetery.  It is dark, but there are noises and people everywhere.

Arriving long before her, instead of the quiet dinner, the empty restaurants there was a car show.  Hundreds of antique cars parked and parading down the streets and even more people.  I called her laughing and telling her the night wouldn’t be exactly what we’d planned but that I wouldn’t spoil the surprise by telling her why.

And so we found ourselves sitting on a bench outside a cemetery with people walking by, mostly tipsy, all happy.  They saw us holding hands, recognized us for lovers, and no one passed without a kind word.

We found ourselves kissing, then down on the beach, the shadows from the storm wall protecting us with its shadow, the calm waters lapping gently against the sand that held us, the canopy of stars and the cool breeze over the water keeping our heat down and assuring our privacy.

Unstated, but aglow with the feelings we had for each other, we eventually left the beach and had dinner and a conversation that tasted of the wine before leaving, kissing her goodnight, the last memory of her, the taste of the wine on her tongue.  I was uncertain what had happened, I just wanted to explain to her that whatever else happened, I knew that I belonged there, at that time with her.  It was as if I could see the predestination of the universe, the entire plan and that she and I being together was what the rest of it, the entire thing, past, present and future, here and there, was about us and nothing else.

There are so many ways that I have been judged and found wanting.  And occasionally not.  I will leave it to you to figure out how I have been classified, reclassified, audited and found wanting, adequate or superior, in writing, employment, as an advisor, an adventurer, in business or in bed. And then there are my many creditors, past, present and future.

The statistics of credit classification compare poorly to the realities of a person’s values.  I assume there is an actuary or some such person, or perhaps someone with no training who characterizes us, hopefully on the basis of some actual reality.  But does that really have anything to do with the value of a person.  Isn't "creditworthiness" so irrelevant as to be an insult?

And does it have anything to do with the value of two people together?

Siddhartha gave up his fortune for vision.  Half of the signers of the declaration of independence were men of inadequate means.  Paine (Pain) essentially bankrupted, coming to the new world in near poverty.  Our ancestors domesticated dogs in part so that they could increase their properties by the weight the dog could bear.  And these people survived to allow some bean counter to compare me to others based on how much money I made, inherited or stole and how many credit cards I paid off every month, what property I held against the nature of communism.

At this time I was not judged poorly.  In fact, the future of wild success, terrific failure, redemption and virtue result from this starting point which I had achieved through no mean expenditure of time and effort, time wasted which could have been spent on the things I would not do till later.

I don't know exactly what I am.   But as the sun was setting on that day, and drove towards it as it set on the horizon, knowing in my heart that she would be there; I was something intangible, looking for someone intangible.  I knew even then how much we belonged together and what a tragedy it would be not to share what was left of my life with her.

I am at the coast, driving towards the warm sun which is gradually heating the waters of the gulf, driving to Mississippi looking for something intangible, that I am not quite sure of but which draws me inexorably forward.  And then later, I am driving home, she is headed in the opposite direction and I can feel my soul as if it were a tangible thing and I were a character in Greek mythology.  What horrible thing had to happen to me to teach what moral?

My Road-meeting half way

How had the girl been trapped into the relationship she did not want?  That is a little more complicated.  I said before she seduced me, but in truth I seduced her first.  Remember that we were very close, much closer than lovers, we were friends.  I did not set out to take advantage of the friendship, at least not consciously.  But in my state of virtue for the first time I was comfortable opening up with her.

I opened up about my relationship at home and my feelings towards her, but with an eye to its impossibility, it’s innocence.  But the power behind it I could not hide, the passion burned in the words I wrote, of innocent intent but written in fire.

Against this backdrop, the erosion of innocence was inevitable because the reasons to guard against it were unclear.  Gas lighting?  Yes, probably.  I can say it was unintentional, but it is also perhaps true that nothing that the high performing narcissist does is totally unintentional.  They are too clever by far for their own good.

Afterwards, we were both trapped in a way.  Both by love, of course.  Hers was a little bit more sane with more shallow roots.  Perhaps she stayed on too long because of her desire to see through what she had started, whether it be to save me or to satisfy her morbid curiosity of how I would self destruct next or perhaps the unconscious motive of how to move on without abandoning a friend.  For my part I was possessed of a strange romanticism that was a symptom of my condition perhaps.  I would always be in love.  To this day, I feel justified, not because of anything that I did, but because she was deserving of love.  I cannot be excused for the complicated way in which I approached it, but I accept that it exists.   I was now abandoned by this mercurial-minded woman who breezily moves through love affairs but was having some difficulty dealing with a friend who had been caught within the whirlwind that was her breeze.

And it was friendship that would bring us back together again.

I open a book and see these words: "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard (Katha-Upanishad)

How do we judge one another?  How do we forgive one another.  This is how she forgave me for a time.  We missed each other, it was a certainty that when we talked it was an intimate conversation which required no rules. 

And so one day, months after the breakup there was a call for me.  She asked if we had been apart long enough to see each other, to talk in the name of the long friendship we had and to make peace.

In order to avoid even the possibility of sex.  Perhaps we both knew that she was both controlled and forever in the grips of the passions that radiated from her like light waves from a sun.

We decided we would meet in a remote beach-like area, half way between us, but closer to where she was.

It was a quiet town where we could find a quiet restaurant and talk.

Of course, I would get there before her, even though she was closer.  It was, after all, the nature of our relationship that she kept me waiting.  In her defense, and I would defend her actions through everything that happened despite the obvious missteps she made, her job was all consuming and for her to make time for me in the midst of all she had to do and the continuing trail of lovers that I believed to exist after our break up whether they did or not.  I, on the other hand, after a period of several years of frenetic activity the metaphorical equivalent of swimming naked in a hurricane in the north sea for a like period of time reached a brief hiatus of the type experienced by those who are beset with legal problems, both claims against me and those against others. 

I did regularly get threatening correspondence telling me that my economic world would be brought to an end by this entity or that, but I had refocused my life, in large part.  At first love had been an enormous part of the focus, but after the whims of my lover had left me bereft of that life raft, I had turned myself to more intellectual concerns and, uncharacteristically for someone with my problems, to the problems of others and society as a whole.

 I had thoughts of sex whenever I thought of her, but in this case, they were so far-fetched as to be nothing more than background noise.  In fact, I suspected she wouldn’t show up and I prepared myself for that disappointment, uncertain why it seemed so tragic that it might happen.

My road living death

 There is a lot of editing going on.

So what does a dead person do with life?  I was not unlike those zombies in the movies.  Whoever I touched and whoever I was around shivered with me, feeling the death that I carried with me.  With her, my youth had come back to me.  I was very much young and alive.  My color was good, I swam 10,000 yards a week and lifted weights, preparing myself to reenter the world of tennis and kayaking, rock climbing and running.  Then she left and for a very short time I went through the motions, but any real, living person would have immediately seen that I was merely going through the motions.  The future activities were gone from the agenda, the distances swam dropped rapidly and then became sporadic.  In short, I had been dead before, for a short time i was more alive than i had ever been in my life and now I began to sink deeper than ever before into an animated lifelessness.  Is it better to have loved and lost?  Really Shakespeare, did you really know?

Let me explain something about how this happened. 

I had been living a strained and estranged relationship for years before we started dating.  I had also had a long series of very short affairs since there was no sex in our relationship.  I was not interested in leaving at the time, you see.  I was dead, just going through the motions of life, one of which was to go through the motions of sex.  Some of the sex was gratifying, but I made sure that there was emotional distance.  I had, after all, fallen in love with the right girl many, many years before and I was, as a result of being spurned, ready for what I had signed on for, a lifetime of death.

When the collapse came, I was certain that my economic situation was going to force me to separate.  What I mean by this is that I thought that my family would be better off if I went away until my creditors tired of me, probably forever, so they could go on without having me as some sort of economic drag on their lives.

It was in this state that I began to realize what was important in life and by coincidence or design it was the when I realized true love.

Then, as I ‘defeated’ one economic dragon after another, this economic final solution became less of a necessity and more of a choice although I was far from the choice standpoint at this time.

By this point in time, my wife wanted me to leave then as much as I wanted to.  Not because she didn’t want me around, but because she knew there was something wrong with me.  She knew and had known for some time that she could never be happy with me.  But for all her courage, she also was willing to reconcile herself to a life of mediocrity. 

As my economic situation recovered, I presented a confusing picture to her I’m sure.  On the one hand, it would be a lifetime of conflicting emotional types.  Our relationship had been, from the beginning a war.  Truces were declared for the sake of expediency, but the two sides never stopped arming themselves and never reconciled.  However, she was nothing if not committed.  During the worst of the economic woes, she basically turned her back on me emotionally, much as she had already done sexually.  Now, however, things had changed.  While I was sad, I was also at a creative fever pitch.  Economically, it appeared that I was poised to recover if not my wealth, than at least my ability to obtain wealth again.  Later it would become obvious that if I could keep my wits about me and continue to work despite my blindness that I might recover my wealth.

She had long sense been willing to accept a sexless marriage, in fact, it was something she accepted with relief, one less chore to get out of the way.  In the beginning she had used sex as a tool and was now content to leave it in its metaphorical toolshed gathering dust while my reproductive system went to ruin in its absence.

There was no cheating now, good conduct was forced on me.  I could have slept with any number of women.  They still made themselves available, often times for old times sake; but I no longer cared for them.  When I though of sleeping with them, I knew that in bed I would try to picture her and it was too painful and too ridiculous.

Things were not all a series of curative economic outcomes.  It was a situation, teasing me, as if it were possible to avoid the inevitable.  Matching these teasing economic successes would be matching or over matching withdrawls.  Nevertheless, there was hope now.

Remember what I said, a blind man who has given up is free, but a blind man who has hope seeks reassurance.  Instead of reassurance, every time I reached out for a deeper relationship, she had pulled back.  And each time she came back, I had taken another reckless step into the abyss that was love.

My lumbago acted up.  In days gone by, a bad back would be the subject of bedrest and drugs to numb the pain.  Modern medicine had determined that walking, and lots of it, were the best cures and I would walk for hours, talking to her on the phone.  But after she was gone, the walks were empty. Talking to her, the steps took no energy, I walked fast, upright, effortlessly.  Afterwards, I did not have the energy to walk, each step was an effort, I was bent with the pain of carrying the loss.  Even listening to music was painful, where before I had sang while I walked.

I did not need coffee with her, I greeted each day eager to hear her voice, see a text from her, read an e-mail that would tell me what she was thinking about, who she had spoken to, what she had seen, what she envisioned us doing together when we met next.  Now I couldn’t wake even with caffeine.  I drank to numb the pain. 

I had nothing that I looked forward to but the oblivion of sleep.

My road- profiling

***

“You talk about your problems, but you don’t think about mine.  You are very selfish.”

“Me?  You go home to a family every night.  I go home to my work.”

“I’ve lived alone too.  I go home to responsibilities I have and a shattered marriage.  You should try it some time.”

“I will.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“And when I do, you don’t care.”

“Don’t care?  You don’t think I check my phone and my email when we’re apart hoping to get some word from you.  I’m not saying that any of this is right.  A relationship should make you feel better about yourself, but with my condition, it is unlikely to happen.  But you want to fit me into some category.”  When I said this I was not thinking of character as a deviant necessary for the survival of the species, but instead was thinking of myself as a cheater.  They correctly point out that when it comes to relationships we deviants are doomed by our own insecurity to never have normal relationships.  I suppose it would be something like pathological insecurity.  But maybe no everyone else is ready for a normal relationship.  

Whether you have normal relationships or just relationships with yourself to varying degrees, as the psychologists would argue for me, your partner should make you something better.  While faults are important, it is also important to recognize accomplishments.  There is no need to dwell on the past and therefore  failures should be treated as lessons of the past and not sources of shame and denigration. 

“I know you have your problems, but you didn’t have to make them my problems.”

“I didn’t mean to make them your problems.  I’m not ready to give you up, however.  You can leave me, but how am I supposed to live the rest of my life being in love with one person and living with another?”

“That isn’t my problem.  You want to talk about what a relationship should be.  It should enhance the natural feeling we so often miss that every moment is about living and not the past, nor the future.  Both of those time periods may play into it, but the future is the only one of the two that truly matters except to the extent that you want to live with your memories.  Our relationship is just a nightmare.  I wish I’d never met you.”

That made me feel great.  I sat then, contemplating how we had arrived at this point.  Neither of us had the personality for the role we were playing.  Not in a million years would she have played the part of the mistress.  I had no interest in a long term relationship outside of a marriage.  The problem was I had no interest in the marriage I was in.  And if that was the case, why didn’t I walk away.

Fade in, back to the bar.  “It was a long time ago.  I didn’t know I suffered from the type of insecurity that accompanies, that is hidden by narcissism.  It is funny, that we come across so brash, but inside we are like children.    The sound of the slushy rain hitting the window marking the change in the clock. 

None of my relationships have ever calmed my fears.  I can see that now.  I wish I could have told her then, so she would have understood why I was what I had become and would have understood it had nothing to do with my valuing her against anything else.

Fear is the greatest harm in the world, the source of doubt.  Fear of change, fear to love given the dangers involved.  Fear of loneliness.  Fear is the opposite of companionship.  You can be with someone and scared of them and there is little value in it.  If the relationship doesn't calm your fears, it is the wire frame with the food, but without the reassurance.

Looking back on it, I would have thought this was the last conversation we would have ever had, at least the last one as a couple.  We didn’t have sex afterwards, she left me unable to tell her what was happening to me, unable to explain what had happened to her.

We would talk again, however.  For almost year she was gone and I dealt with my problems and solved my physics.  I took rough ideas and played them against observations.  I used logic to make connections and I used arguments and wisdom to buy time with my creditors, the fear giving me a superhuman strength which was supplemented by my increasing interest in doing the right thing.  I tried to hold things together at home, while I did not feel like I was at home.  Even more than I had been lost my whole life, I was especially lost now, because I thought I knew what I wanted, but didn’t know why I couldn’t reach out and get it.  I had planned my escape so carefully and with the door standing open, the car outside with the keys in it, I was unable to cross the threshhold, like a dog who couldn't go out the door without a leash on.

And every day I wrote something to her, a poem, a short story, whatever was in my physics.  She never answered and I never expected her to.  But it was important to me to let her know that she was the most important thing in the world to me, even though I didn’t know then why we were not together.

My road-RELATIONSHIP-MOTIVATION

Every one of my generation raised in the United States is haunted by the video of the baby monkey clinging to the fur covered wire framework, leaving only to eat.   Perhaps the psychologists who filmed this little bit of horror can be excused from hell for showing what mad and uncaring creatures we are, we wild apes whose teeth are not as ferocious because our brains are our teeth and are all the more horrible for being hidden from view.  

The listening and the freely given touch of softness perhaps is the most important thing in any real relationship, more important than providing food and shelter.  For a brief time I not only knew this but realized it.
Proper motivation is another thing that is important in a proper relationship.  In any relationship, whether business or personal, the relationship is something more than just the fur covered framework if each has the ability to inspire the other.  This is not essential to a relationship, but is essential to a good relationship.  What good is being with someone if they motivate you towards despair if they leave you without the desire to accomplish things?  

Could I but bottle the power that she had to inspire me.  It is difficult to explain, but whether she was there or whether she had left me on one of her totally explainable tiffs, the memory of her or the conversations that we had together left me more full of creativity and hope for the future than was logical under my circumstance.  I was not, of course, able to do the same for her.  It must have been like a cave man talking to a rocket scientist.  What can the former offer to the later, while for the later inspires the former to literally reach for the stars.

For a time, this translated into a positive life direction, mentally and physically, but it made the fall all the greater when I realized that the fur covered framework was merely a framework for me. 

So for a time, I was conflicted and pendulumed back and forth between a desire to end it all and one to accomplish great things, to stay in shape, and to find joy in life, to find joy in each other.   And, as if risk had not caused enough of my problems, the new found power of virtue and of love inspired me to take ever greater risks.

And this brings us back to consistency, because how can we ask someone to risk everything on a relationship if it is not consistent, to risk anything of consequence on it?
So perhaps I should talk about our night where we fought and agreed that we could not go on, but then threw up our hands and decided we could not go on, at least on that night, without each other.  How can such a thing be reconciled?

One moment we are fighting, I am afraid to even get close to her.  I want to hug her, but it is as if she is wearing barb wire.  Then she softens.  There is a bit of surrender in her.  It is a moment of life, after all, and not all of life in this moment.

She comes over to me and lifts her head up to mine.  Those intoxicating eyes that seem to hold entire galaxies of information in them, such hurt, wisdom, understanding, passion, knowledge, responsibility, two blue galaxies looking into my dull, nearly dead eyes.  And her mouth parts a little and she is in my arms.  Our lips touch gently, and our tongues find each other.  In an effort to find her soul, mine moves further into her throat, but there is only the soft taste of chamomile, I cannot find her soul.  Her clothes are too tight for my hands to get into them, so I satisfy myself with the feel of her body through them.  And then she does something and they peel away.  We are in the kitchen where we were fighting but now she is in her underwear.

“The relationship you have with yourself is a big part of the relationship you have with others.  If you are not honest with yourself, what can you offer to anyone else?”  She asked me as she stood, mostly naked and wrapped in my arms.

“I am doing what I can to make myself a better person.”  My heart it is pounding.  I want to think like a good person, but I am overcome with passion.  I feel as if I have an uncontrollable fever, I am shaking.

“Learning how to be honest with yourself is what self-help is about.  All those other things that you have been talking about, those stupid ideas that you have for your self help diary are worthless if you don’t do something to become open and honest with yourself.  You can leave me, you can walk out the door right this minute, leave me in my underwear and I won’t complain as long as you are honest.  And if you want to hold this,” she said pulling back and showing her body with her hands, “you have to be honest with yourself and tell me what you are thinking.  You can have me tonight either way, but I have to know what to expect tomorrow.”

It was an entirely reasonable request, but one that I was incapable of fielding.  A better person could have perhaps.  I let her go and walked to the other side of the table, panting as if I’d run a one minute quarter mile.  I looked at her.  “I cannot tell you anything now.  I look at you and my blood is boiling.  You ask to much of me to be logical.  I can turn away, I can leave, but I cannot want anything but to have you right now.

She reached behind her back.  I thought for a moment which was going to get something from the table to throw at me, but the top of her underwear came loose and she slowly caught the lace in her arms as it slid loose.  Then she lowered her arms so I could see her.  “Then take me.  Take me now, but be honest with yourself.”

And I did take her, but I was not honest.  I was not honest with myself, so I stole what she offered.

She did inspire me, you see, but it was up to me to become virtuous and so being to remain there.  If you don't inspire each other to grow, to exercise, to take chances your relationship is stagnant.  That was true of our relationship and it is true of the relationship that a person should have with themselves.  I do not know whether I inspired her, or merely gave her respite from the mundane.

I grew in her presence to a hundred times my stature without her.  Growing is as complicated as anything in definition.  It includes being daring, being inquisitive, being generous, being self-deprecating, modest and proud at the same time.  It includes working towards intellectual achievement, not just education.

I argued to myself that it involved not being limited by artificial criteria like your current ability or your age or infirmities or...you other relationships.  But it must be taken in the context of all things.  It involves being the person you would want to partner with whether it is with yourself or someone else.  

19 pages

I am rocketing toward completion.  There are only so many pages left to edit.  This has been an  exercise, to write an essentially finished book in 30 days, well essentially 30 days.  It has been too close to look at the actual start date and the fact that I can identify the remaining pages is gratifying.  I previously decided to focus both on the uncertain 30 days as well as a specific target, April 22, for personal reasons and then I can do what I wish with it, primarily I envision setting it aside till I'm ready to edit it into a true novel.  Given a minimal novel size of 40,000 words, it would be possible to eviscerate the remaining pages today and thereby force the goal, but it is better to set a deadline based on something more dramatic, even though the 22nd will not be all that dramatic.
For those of you who might read this one day, I will give a spoiler (spoiler alert): I am not going to post the ending.  (anti-spoiler alert) There are, you see, two endings to this book.  Both are written already and both will be parts of the finished work.  You don't elect the two, you merely read one ending and then you have a "bonus ending".    For those of you who need both endings to enjoy something, you might as well stop here.  Or then again, who knows what I'll do.