Thanks for the Memories

Lucky Bastard called this morning and we had a short chat. He's been traveling with potential employers (or so he says) and has been busy. I told him about things that are going on with me, but not necessarily about the jumble of emotions I feel about him. I told him how things changed in my life, and he wanted to know if he'd been part of that change. I told him, yes, he was....but not to get too big a head over it. The changes were coming on for a year or so before I met him--he was just a catalyst.

What I didn't tell him was that he has been the one to break The Spell that's been over me most of my life--The Spell that has kept sex and love in two separate spheres.

I don't want him to know this...he'll think I love him. I don't have a real sense of love for him because I do not know him. Sex is only one way to know a person. And even though you can feel something like love in sex, and see the warmth and tenderness in a person's eyes during sex, there is more to love than that one act. So, while I can say that I have tender feelings for him, and enjoy his company when he spends the time, I cannot say that the combination of those elements plus sex adds up to any sort of real, enduring love.

But what I felt in the times we spent together has pushed me to confront some of my biggest fears...namely those fears of settling down, of having a family, of becoming mentally ill like my parents, of never knowing love, of dying afraid.

And within confronting those fears (more of which I will write in another essay) I found a way to forgive my ex-husband for hurting me.

Now, most women, myself included, tend to dwell in victim mentality. We hang on to our hurts and our bad memories like Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars. When we are with one another, we show our battle scars and prove our wounded states.

But now, when I look at the whole messy, nasty, Melrose Place-inspired break-up and divorce, I see where my ex-husband actually did me a big favor. I didn't receive a Purple Heart inasmuch as the doors of the Auschwitz were flung open and I was free to make a new life for myself.

It may seem like a bit of melodramatic hyperbole to equate my marriage with Auschwitz, but, frankly, when you are married to someone with a personality disorder, it might as well be. A person with that particular mental condition is never able to take criticism, never able to admit to causing another person harm, and will oftentimes set up situations to make the partner look unwell, abusive, or mentally ill. Whatever is done for him/her is never enough, as if there is some voracious animal inside him/her that cannot achieve capacity. Life is contradictions, accusations, hidden acts of personal destruction, public acts of humiliation.

So it was with my ex-husband.

And I realized that I did not recognize his mental problems for so long because I had grown up in a home full of mental problems. My sister would often call me gullible, but when the cruelty of the world outside seems no different from the feigned lovingkindess of home, one does not learn to distinguish between true love and abject cruelty.

The insanity that swirled around my ex-husband seemed familiar to the various levels of insanity that I grew up with. I truthfully could not tell the difference, and, being a loving pollyanna who desired to give in order to receive, figured if something was wrong, it must have to do with me. I was the one sent to a psychologist as a child, so, as an adult, I assumed all the problems were me, and if I could straighten myself out, everything would be fine.

The problem, though, wasn't me. It was him. And since I wouldn't break the bond, somebody had to have the courage to do it. When I caught him en flagrante with his girlfriend, and told him that I would get the divorce, I believe the both of us participated in the one honest and courageous act of our whole marriage.

He was the catalyst and I took the action. He turned the lock and I walked out the door.

Being four hours away from him and from my parents for five years now, I see that I am not the mentally ill one. I was the glue, the strong one, the one who kept the family from falling apart and the one who kept a damaged marriage on the tracks for as long as it was necessary for him to achieve something in his life.

I gave a great deal of myself, and the left-handed gift I received was my freedom to leave it all behind and go on a quest to become whole.

I've received alot of strange gifts since my freedom. I did very well at college, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class, with degree in religion (or all things) and with highest honors. (yes, I'm really as smart as I thought I was) I've pushed the boundaries of sex and learned all I could (and alot more than most people ever will). I found two men, who out of their own needs have made odd little contributions to my growing strength of self. And I found wonderful women friends who I never say enough about. With them I have shared my sufferings, joys, strange adventures, aggravations, and minor achievements. They, too, have shared similar things with me and from this sharing I have learned to be a bit less gullible but no less loving.

So, today, I can thank Lucky Bastard for being an overly-horny Type-A personality charmer who gives himself more credit than any man should, but had a certain something that could break The Spell....and I can honestly thank my ex-husband who, in a moment of grand selfishness and cruelty, gave me the Freedom I was unwilling to take for myself.

I think my martyr complex is finally over.