Friday, January 13, 2012

Year One: Perspective in Faith and Absolution

When I looked at the bedside clock, the digital semicolon blinked in and out the final seconds of 2011. I was in bed with Kina, my daughter was sleeping easy in the monitor and it was calmer outside than one might expect for an approaching New Year. Within those precious few seconds, the world, my world, came into focus for me. I've prayed, real hard, many of nights that the magic finger of God wag its mystical digit in favor of my direction. bless my heart, my wife's heart and seal our holy vows with a kiss to ring in the New Year, and remove any doubt the moment that clock turned over. 11:59.00 and counting and still doubts linger. I cannot blame myself, for I can only lie for so long until one lie, once covered up by a stack of more lies, finds its way back to the forefront. You are wasting your life away to someone who will never be anything more than the cold, distant, baggage handler who refuses an honest apology in order to nurture the poison that is her vicious and vengeful bite. 


Kina is watching some music videos, drinking her wine, working out in her head how she might convince herself of the same doubts roaming freely in my mind. All I wanted LORD was one woman to love for life, why is that so much to ask? Don't worry, tomorrow is a new day. be thankful it will come, for it could all end with a quick simple stroke, perhaps a random heart attack? You have been under a lot of stress lately. Good point. And the momentum that had been building, the confidence to take the next step in my life, call it a day with my wife and shake hands that we both came out of it all with our dignity intact, suddenly takes a step aside for commonality. Go with what I know, what I am used to, what is definite, regardless of how negative an impact it may have on me. So I reach for my glass and tip it back. We both drink in silent remorse, for she has apparently made the same decision I have. Stay. Give it just a little more time. The old is about to fade into oblivion and the new limitless year will be upon us. We eye one another and smirk. "More wine?" Yes please.

11:55.05.
Hope has packed its bags. Look, if you are going to continually ignore the signs because you are afraid of change, I am just going to head out and find someone who can use me to the fullest. Good luck, schmuck. I am now hopeless. Fitting, considering the theme running around my brain. Just say you have had enough and move on. But...I haven't. My God, there is still so much to give and experience with her. So much can come if we both just let go...hell, if just one of us let go. Shut up and drink your wine. A thought derives from the pain, just drink until numb there is no shame in that. No shame. It does help, the wine, the alcohol of any kind, to quieten the thoughts. A stupor has more use than just making a fool out of myself. Because what you now read before you, comes out from my head like fcnwsoeifwoihf ewofhwufhwrui fiuffhiu fhsdoisoiu sofdvhsigvh oshvoisduhvodsiuf gvhw0gvhwseovhseo9vhe9ouvbhfpd oiudouif do. No wonder I cannot concentrate.

11:59.00
wggferouhg gfeegveoiu...just...relax....it will all be over...soon...A clean slate, start anew, make the most of tomorrow and be the husband and father you respect. She will come around. It will take some time, perhaps more than I want and willing to give, but she will see the good in change. Save her, Scott. Save your wife and do what no one has ever done for you. Right. Here we go. More wine. A little more. Feeling better. Numb. Thoughts slow. Breathe. There you are. Drink up. Atta'boy.

12:00.00
Happy New Year....Schmuck.

6 comments:

  1. There's always a sense to these posts about your marriage that something's held back, some vital pieces of the puzzle...the story, but not the WHOLE story. I could guess at certain things, but I'd probably be wrong, and even so, it would still be hard to guess who the guilty and who the injured parties were in this. Of course, I can certainly appreciate the reservation, the struggle between what to share and what not to share, but as it is, it's hard to get a firm hold on this.

    Maybe there is no missing piece, and this is all just the result of feelings and tensions in the air, vibrations picked up by your frayed nerves churning your stomach. Regardless of what lies beneath all this, the resulting picture you paint of your marriage is pretty grim. It sounds like a corpse, rotting away from the inside, and no one involved, for whatever reason, is willing to bury it. It sits, propped up at the dinner table festering with maggots, and everyone pretends to talk to it just so that life will seem normal.

    That, my friend, is no kind of marriage. So the questions are raised: Is it really as bad as all that? Or are you just getting some kind of "angst" off your chest, like a pent up kid getting out into the open and yelling all the curse words he knows at the top of his lungs? Are you still within the bounds of a happy, healthy marriage? (I have a feeling your answer to that last question might be frustratingly vague, which leaves us back where we started.) At the very least, tell me if there really is a "missing piece", and who you honestly think the guilty party is. You don't have to say what the piece is, just if there's a piece.

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  2. I had a long detailed reply prepared. Then I clicked and realized Bryan had already sucked it out of my brain. Pretty much verbatim. So I'll just say "Yeah! What he said!"

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  3. Bryan- To keep with your analogy, it's not that there is a corpse at the dinner table, it's that there is a very sick presence that can be cured but wishes not to be, while commiting to getting better at the same time. It wants to be well, but it wants to do so on its terms, adding to this is that it isn't even sure what those terms are.

    We are both, to some extent, at fault. The problem for me is that I can move on and forget those things which posion my emotions, but my wife cannot. they stick with her. They fester and eat at her from the inside. Here is an example. This morning she wanted to wax, because I agreed to watch our Daughter whiel she goes out with some friends tonight. I told her I needed to step out for a minute and when I get back, she could do so while I watched the child. However, while I am gone, she waxes and does her thing and then carries a grudge that she had to do this, even though I told her to wait for a few minutes. She does this so I can write, because I have been trying desperately to get back to the novel. The problem though is that she did not do this for this reason, She did it to have something to carry around on her shoulders for the afternoon. It's as bad as I say, but there is absolutly NO REASON for it to be this way. It just is. And that is the part that makes me mental. How can something be without any cause or reason? My marriage is as simple as just ignoring what you think you now and allow the new to flood over those negative emotions. And my remaining here is entirely my fault. But there are several things at play here, none more important than this is the mother of my daughter and she loves her mother very much. She loves her family very much. She loves wholesome and whole heartedly, and that is something I do not want to break because I was not strong enough as a man and father. There is your nugget of truth. Also, if she supported me in any capacity, she would know of this blog and likely divorce me, for she is a very private person, which is the second reason my marriage can't get better. She is not willing to open up about it. Maybe she is afraid she would hear herself say she wants a divorce and realize how much she actually means it, so she is hoping I will do it for her. Who knows. One moment She is a seagull, which you would have to see her Facebook status to understand, and the next she is distant and hateful.

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  4. I see. It's that kind of passive-aggressive game of manufactured grudges. One nice thing about my wife is that she has no skill with that kind of subterranean vindictiveness that seems to characterize so many other women. She's much more simple and straight-forward. Either that, or she's such a mastermind that I haven't noticed it in fifteen years. Not that we don't have other sources of friction. A lot of it involves her smiling and saying no, she won't do that or yes, she will do this, and then she goes ahead and does or doesn't do whatever she feels like anyway.

    However, I do work with a woman who constantly pulls the kind of tricks you mention. With her I've found that it's best not to play along and validate her grudge. I just smile, turn on the charm, and joke my way through until her attempt to perpetuate the grudge is undone from it's own lack of momentum. It's like, if I refuse to acknowledge that she has any reason to be mad, then she has trouble sustaining her anger, which isn't really being fueled by anything I did, but rather by her own need to be angry about something. It doesn't make much sense, but it seems to work...most of the time. Granted, I only work with this woman; I'm not married to her. It might be an entirely different game if I was. God help me.

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  5. Maybe there is no missing piece, and this is all just the resultsatta Result
    of feelings and tensions in the air, vibrations picked up by your frayed nerves churning your stomach. Regardless of what lies beneath all this, the resulting picture you paint of your marriage is pretty grim. It sounds like a corpse, rotting away from the inside, and no one involved, for whatever reason, is willing to bury it. It sits, propped up at the dinner table festering with maggots, and everyone pretends to talk to it just so that life will seemsatta Matka
    normal.

    ReplyDelete