Authors: Christopher C. Payne
His thoughts were interrupted by two men in their 20’s that were making a small scene pointing in his direction. They were complaining that he was drinking. They did not accept not being served a drink themselves, no matter what time it was. Sudhir watched as his body slowly rose from the seat, taking an advantaged viewing point from what seemed the ceiling above.
He watched as his body walked over to the two gentlemen. His arm moved forward in a balled fist as he connected with the back of the head on the young man who was closest to him. He knew that this was wrong, but couldn’t stop his arms from flailing punch after punch in the direction of anyone that was moving near or within his vision. The two young men ran from the restaurant as Sudhir saw the waitress standing two feet away from him. Her mouth was wide open, having just dropped her tray of dishes that were en route to the dishwasher in the back.
Sudhir simply sat down on the floor as she continued to gape at him with her wide eyes. Once there, he curled up in the fetal position and started to cry. He didn’t make a habit of crying and couldn’t remember the last time that he had. He was not a man who never cried, but it didn’t occur that frequently. He watched as his body shook in convulsions. He was heaving with each inhale, no longer in control of his anything.
He didn’t care anymore about what people thought or what people saw. He was finished with pretending to be something he was not. He simply just wanted to cry. So that is exactly what he did.
I was finally 42. When you are young, you listen to the ranting of generations that are older than you. How they talk about time whisking by and your years seem to run into one another, leaving you standing one day doing nothing more than reflecting on where time went. You don’t really listen. You are young, invulnerable, and invincible; and there is nothing that can stop you. Then, one day you wake up and realize that you are no longer young and, yes, things are different.
Forty-two years is a long time, and reflecting on the good and the bad is an experience that can make you wonder how anyone ever makes it through life. The interesting part is for 16 years I was married to one person. I shared the good times and the bad, just like it stated in the vows. The vows I was not allowed to say verbatim because of my wife’s instance on warping them to her self-centered view. But still 16 years of the 42 that I have been alive, I spent with this woman who was now the mother of my three children.
I wish that I could remember the wonderful times that we had and how much we had loved each other. If I am truthful with myself, we had a rocky road from the very beginning. There was one instance before we were even married when we got into a heated debate. I was trying to remove myself from the situation until it blew over as I so often did. This was a typical exchange between my ex-wife and me. Anger would bubble up like lava, coursing to the surface until she erupted. We lived on the outskirts of Chicago--still close enough to have a Chicago address, but far enough away where no real native would readily accept the fact that this near-Western suburb was truly part of the city. We had rented the top-level, three-bedroom apartment from a Hispanic family which had approximately 15 people living in the downstairs apartment and were dumbfounded at why two people would rent such a large space by themselves. The dad was ecstatic at having such a small family unit or couple rent the place that he readily did anything he could to help us settle in.
It was an older home with a spiral staircase that circled up as you entered the front door. The entrance to our apartment opened into a hallway, and to the left was a large living room with a non-working fireplace on the north wall. As you entered to the right, there was the dining room that emptied into a kitchen. From there, the apartment had a sunroom that let you out to the back staircase.
We kept the larger bedroom for ourselves, made one bedroom into an office, and my ex-wife kept one bedroom as a walk in closet. I am close to anally neat – not a freak – but I do like things put away in their proper space. My ex-wife could not have been more of the opposite. She left her clothes wherever they happened to fall. The bedroom was littered with discarded garments all over the floor in piles in some discerning system that only she could figure out.
As the argument ensued, I remember trying to enter the bathroom and shut the door, locking myself in solitude until she found the ability to control herself once again. I continued to attempt to close the door, but she blocked it with her feet and hands, holding the door open while she hurled curses and vulgarities at me. I don’t want this to sound like I am innocent in our war of words, as I was anything but. It always takes two people to argue, but in my defense on most occasions, I was the one trying to keep peace or just stop the exchange. I was tired of the constant bickering.
My ex-wife at the time was holding a glass of red wine in one hand, the bathroom door in the other, and was throwing dart after poison dart in my direction with her slandering description of me--who she thought I was and what kind of a man she felt that I was not. I countered with my opinion of her, and, as usual, this was froth with hurtful descriptions of her body that seemed to cause the most pain. As the last words left my mouth, her hand holding the wine glass flew forward, and I felt the cold showering gush as the red liquid jumped from the container and landed squarely in my face. On that happy note, I had finally tired of this and forcefully pushed the door closed. With her in the way, she was knocked backwards in this physical stand-off which I had now brought to closure.
Unfortunately, my wife had long ago lost any athletic ability or grace. Once I shut the door, removing her brace, she lost her footing and stumbled. As one might expect, the wine glass went with her. In her fall to the floor, as luck would have it, the glass broke into several pieces, and a couple found their way into her hand, causing a rather large nasty cut.
As somebody that grew up in a household of harsh physical discipline, I have never and would never spank my kids, hit my wife, or physically abuse anyone. I have anger issues and have on occasion been known to kill a person here or there lately, but I have never physically abused anyone in my family. If I did have this in me, then I would have been beating my wife long before we were ever married. God knows if anyone did deserve this type of treatment (and they don’t), she would head the list.
With the spill to the floor and blood now flowing freely from her hand, her screams of anger quickly turned to screams of pain. I slowly opened the door to take in the newly created scene. As angry as I was, I still knew my civic duty and helped her to her feet taking her into the bathroom. We worked to stop the blood flow. The cut should have received stitches, most likely, but she chose to simply wrap it at home. She sucked it up while working the sympathy angle to ensure I felt as guilty as I possibly could.
This exchange seemed to closely define our marriage. Through our 16 years, there were many exchanges that could just as well be used as examples and would be as typical as this. We had a volatile union, and with her relentlessly tense disposition there was never a time to just sit back and relax and enjoy each other. Most people who met her for the first time commented on her intense approach to even saying hi. While she knew this, she preferred to reference herself as passionate.
She would constantly say how she did not argue – she passionately debated her feelings. I never knew how to respond to this. Passionately debating how I didn’t tell her thank you for making a dinner burned beyond recognition one evening? Leaving me wondering what it was that I was even digesting seemed odd to me. For the most part, I would listen to her as I continued to dig deeper into my hole of solitude and resentment.
I should have known from the beginning that our compatibility was an issue; but when you are young, your eyes get foggy—you can only focus on specific things. One time, when I jumped into bed, I heard a crunching noise. I lifted the covers and found remnants of popcorn, potato chips, and crackers littered throughout the sheets. I blew up. That was the point in our relationship when eating in bed was banned. She had the ability to place her hand in a bowl of popcorn and remove her hand with the popcorn. Once she made the arching movement to her mouth, though, she lost track of half the contents in her hand. Only later we would find it spread sporadically over her body and throughout her side of the bed.
Isn’t it sad that after so many years when I recall our time together, these are the types of memories that stand out? I remember the violent examples, the angry moments, my inability to let go of the hurt that was inflicted in my direction during the bulk of our verbal exchanges. It is all my mind can conjure up. Sitting here writing, I can’t remember any time when I genuinely felt close to her. I don’t know what happened to bury those feelings so deeply that they can’t resurface.
I guess in the end it doesn’t matter. My divorce was final and with it came the relief of closing out this chapter forever. Now being able to move forward with the renewed hope of finding that person who can fill whatever it is that seems to be lacking in my life. As I sit in bed in my little two-bedroom home, listening to the quietness that comes with no kids, I cry.
It is hard when they are not with me. I think of the life that neither they nor my wife and I will ever know. Having two parents is every child’s right, and to deny this is one of the hardest decisions that I have ever made. I will continue to try and work toward giving them this right to the best of my ability. Sadly, even now it is still so difficult, interacting with somebody who is so filled with hatred and remorse. I told her recently that I worry she is still in the midst of a depression. She denied this and instead explained how great her life is and how her happiness is propelling her forward.
She expressed all of this while telling me that she was recently fired from her job. The main reason was she lost her focus with the distraction of the divorce and the mental toll it has taken. Isn’t that a pretty big sign that somebody is in need of a little help? It is one thing to be laid off and given a nice package as part of a large group. If your boss shows you the door that you came through that morning because you’re fired – that’s a completely different story.
That is somebody telling you point blank that they need your services, but you are simply incapable of providing them. They will have to look elsewhere for an employee who is bright enough to give them what they are looking for. In my mind, the ultimate slap in the face is being fired from a job that you were originally qualified for; but for some apparent reason, you just can’t perform.
Who really knows? I sit and reflect, and it seems my finger is pointing out toward her as much as hers is pointing directly back at me. As always, in the end, it takes two people to argue. I have never seen a single person sitting in a room yelling—and, then, pausing to yell back at himself.
The focus needs to remain on the fact that my divorce is final. Getting that piece of paper stating that you are free is a welcome relief. Knowing that you are no longer tied to another individual, but you can now yell out to the world, “Yes, I am divorced.” The mistake I made had been cut out of my life. I can now move forward and hopefully find somebody to fill this hole that she helped dig.
Martin arrived, interrupting my self-reflection, and said he was taking me out for a pre-drink drink. Getting me drunk before I started the real party is an Irish tradition, I believe. Martin originally talked to me about staying with my wife. He feels that once you make the commitment and there are kids involved, you should do anything you possibly can to make the marriage work. Kids are the victims in every divorce. They have no choices; they make no decisions. They simply get dictated to that their lives are going to be torn apart, and they better get ready to adjust.
His thoughts were leaning toward helping me reconcile, until he had his first exposure to the person that my ex-wife had become behind closed doors. She had apparently been contacting him on several occasions via e-mail and over the phone. She contacted him at home and on his cell and even wrote him a letter at one point, stating the importance that the two of them meet. Martin did not mind meeting with her, but he was a close friend of mine. He did not want to cross any lines or be put into the middle of an awkward situation.
Finally, he relented and agreed to meet her at a restaurant so they could talk and work through whatever it was that she felt was so dire for him to be involved in. The conversation basically went with her telling him how wrong I was, how much trouble I was in, how unstable I had become, and that she was worried for my mental and even physical health. He repeatedly tried to tell her that I was doing okay and that even with the stress of starting my life completely over with nothing (my wife had kept everything), I was doing rather well.
This went back and forth for several hours until he finally had to end the discussion. He explained to her that he needed to leave for an appointment. Martin had promised my ex-wife that he would never mention this conversation, and she had given her word, as well. This would remain between the two of them, and they would agree to leave the topic here at the restaurant— nobody would know any different.
Unfortunately, Martin did not know my ex-wife that well. It was less than a week later in the midst of an argument with me when she stated that not only had she met with Martin, but she suggested to me that he was not really even a friend of mine. He knew me and we were acquaintances, but he would never consider me a friend. She, of course, was only telling me this because she was concerned for me. She didn’t want to see me get hurt, thinking that I had a friend when I apparently did not.
I spoke to Martin about the conversation. For the first time I saw the enlightened look in his eye as he finally became aware of how manipulative my ex-wife could actually be. He was furious at first, but then after he calmed down actually stated that he now agreed I most likely was better off without her. How could she blatantly lie to him? She had betrayed his trust and then manipulated his words to hurt me and push me into isolation purposely.
Having him acknowledge this was helpful for me. Knowing that somebody else saw the real person that I had been dealing with for so many years was a relief. At times you question yourself and your judgment. It felt good to have it substantiated to such a degree. My next step was to just let go of the hatred and disgust that I felt for her in order to move forward with my own life, leaving her behind.
Happiness cannot be found down the path of hatred. Being pissed off can only lead to discontent. I still had no idea how to release the bitterness completely that had taken years to grow. She had done such a good job fertilizing the seed and ensuring that the root structure was firmly in place.
Anyway, that seemed like enough reflection, tonight was not about the past but about toasting to the future. I had cried on Martin’s shoulder way too many times, and now I needed to relax, get drunk, and have a good time. My future was wide open, and I had closed a chapter to my past.