Punch Drunk Love (Estella's Story, 4.0)

(Once again, dearest S, there is nothing here for us; I continue to work through my past to fully embrace my present; please pass by this post).

I have a little time on my hands the first week of the semester; S is working and Mikey is at school. The laundry just started and I want to lift (Mikey has a weight bench in his room now). I haven't had time to use my blog for much of anything the last few months. This is one of the stories I began earlier on the blog and want to finish.

Barber's Adagio for Strings is playing and will keep playing. The beauty of memory, all memory, the poem of consciousness...the power of human memory styles itself into healing narrative...

Part 3 of this story is here.

If my earlier posts on this relationship were dark, I'm afraid much greater darkness is coming.

***

I was hangin' by the phone, tired
Of sleepin' alone
Baby tell me where did I go wrong? When
Minutes seem like hours and
Days seem like weeks, how could
A year last so fucking long?
--Social Distortion--


After I read Estella's note, standing there in a tool belt full of tools I barely knew how to use, my fingertips cracked and sore from turning nuts with my fingers, my body and hair dirty as only someone who works around machinery all day can be, I knew my life had just changed. I underestimated the depth of the coming change, though.

I took the note off the mirror (in her oddly elegant, looping hand I would still recognize) and stumbled down the walkway to our neighbor friends Ken and Kari's apartment. They read it, and I what I most remember was their anger. Anger at E for leaving when both knew how I had stuck by her though difficult times. And looking back, that strikes me too. I was in an essentially sexless marriage. It was also significant for E that I felt too depressed to work in academia, in any kind of education or any job where I felt pressure after I finished my M.A., graduating first in English, a few months before. My latin prof. had found me a job teaching latin at a private school in the south bay, I think; looking back, what a wonderful thing he did, but even that felt like too much, the driving in traffic, building a curriculum. I had already bailed on any Ph.D. plans even though I was accepted at Claremont (I only applied locally so I could stay near my therapist, Robert). I was too seriously depressed for any serious responsibilty, for any real assessment. When E left me in November of 92 I was working for an industrial electrical company in bakeries; I was happy to be there at the time, but frankly, it was the worst job I've ever had. Of all of them. The worst. Rising at dawn to do work I wasn't good at and was too distressed to focus on in bakeries over 100 degrees with earplugs in because of the machine noise. It was from there I came home and found the note.

It's true, and fair to say, that I hadn't worked full time during the marriage except during the breaks; I was in graduate school. E worked at a bank and then went back to school and was substitute teaching at the time. I taught, made enough money to pay the rent (and nothing else) and put my energy into my academics. I believed I needed to do this to find a job as a professor at a university to some day support my family so my wife could stay home and raise our babies. Were we great with money, with our credit card balance? No. But once my depressions hit in 90 my compulsive need to shop greatly decreased. We did use some money she inherited to pay debts, but then again, we lived on more than 12 grand in student loans (I married with zero in loans) and I paid back every cent of that over the years.

But back to my narrative: I remember Ken and Kari crying with me as I sat there on the floor and sobbed, and before I left, Kari kissing me briefly but fully on the mouth with her own mouth wet from crying. It's odd that my sister in law did the same thing when she came to visit with her husband, E's brother, a few weeks later. When she left, she quickly kissed me on the mouth. Both those kisses, offered to me in my despair, were beautiful gifts given to a man who had not kissed or made love to his wife in months. Who in one sense had almost never made love to her. They were brief reminders that I was worth feminine love and damned appreciated at the time.

That night I went to a bible study (of singles, oddly) E and I had been attending. I was well on the outside of whatever faith I had already (I remember asking the leader, 'but do you really think Christianity is an intellectually defendable faith?'). Still, I looked up to Chris, the leader, and when I shared my note that night, still in my work clothes, and sobbed openly in front of twenty people I hardly knew, he commended me on my 'godly example,' letting my pain out in front of others. I was so upset I didn't feel I had a choice. A few days later when I heard from a friend who saw E or spoke with her, I don't remember which, that she was still committed to the relationship, I went on my knees in the kitchen, thinking of the scene from Swiss Family Robinson when the family kneels to thank God for its deliverance from the sea at the mother's insistence. I did that. I knelt and thanked God. Did I know God? Not the way I do now, but I prayed in thanksgiving none the less.

I saw E on the front steps of our church maybe three weeks later. I was trying to get a pastor or someone we both k new to talk with her, maybe talk with both of us, as she refused to have any contact with me. I believe that time on the steps was the last time I held her. I had bought a blue rain coat at REI and when we ran into each other by accident we both teared up; I cannot describe the reality of that emotion. She said she was glad to see that I was taking care of myself (I guess the new jacket); we hugged briefly and I remember looking into her friend L's face who was with her and seeing genuine tears.

("What God has joined together, let no man, let no man, let no man...")

I wanted her to come back unequivocally; I never felt good about the separation; I never fucking wanted it. When we did finally talk on the phone I was willing endure the separation if she needed it, but I said I also needed "a thread of kindness, some connection," meaning that if we just talked on the phone from time to time, maintained some line of frienship while we were apart, it would be much different for me than no conversation or contact at all. As time went on I found out that what she wanted was the latter.

In our first conversation on the phone after she left I do remember saying, "If you don't come back, I'll..." I didn't know what I'd do and had nothing in mind, but she responded cold as blood, "Don't threaten me," and I knew she enjoyed saying it. That moment fulfilled what she believed about me and what she was telling others about me. I didn't threaten her before, and at the time I just said, "okay," and meant it. She told me much later all she heard was my anger, but what I remember in those early phone calls was sobbing, begging her to come back, so hard my whole apartment building could hear me. This happened in Scooter's apt., actually, on his phone. From the day she left I couldn't sleep alone in our bed or even go into my house except when I had to. Scott opened his apt. to me and I slept on his floor in my sleeping bag for months before I moved across the way and got a roomate. A true brother, Scott. The love he is showing his adopted kids now? A love he once showed me. He and his roomate Don were completely supportive, and without them, I don't know; would I be alive? I don't know. I never quit.

I was still struggling with feelings of hurting myself most of the time, obsessions, but not random obesssions, lots of depression.

When I got laid off from my shitty electrical job about three months after she left (the large project for which I had been hired was finished; the boss was an asshole in my opinion) and asked through a friend if she could help me with what I still considered our rent I got a message back: E wants to have complete financial separation from you and you need to take care of the rent on your own. I didn't know at the time that this is illegal; in California estranged spouses must still help support the other spouse if support is necessary. E left me, incidentally, right after she got a long-term sub job and was able to support herself better. She was making more money now than either of us ever had. She bought a new Saturn. Her refusal to help pay the rent was a true emotional blow. I started temping in warehouses and in offices, stugggling amidst my very strong depression to get any work I could so I could freaking eat.

She showed up one day in those early weeks with a list of everything we had in our apartment. Each thing was marked with a little 'E' or a 'T.' Estella had decided which person would get which thing. She came in with more, she took more. She took the bed. I was fine with that. I hadn't been in it in weeks. When I think of who else that bed might have held later I am sick to my stomach. She left the fridge, the one other large purchase we had made together as a married couple. After she left I was unable to keep house at all. I hardly went in there except to shower, cry, and eat and dress, then back to Scott's. I was very upset during this little division ceremony (which was held in Scott's living room). Steve F. was there and may remember it better than me. What I do know is that a few weeks later I was coming home and saw two big guys I had never seen before taking the fridge out of our very messy apartment. I didn't say anything, being a nice guy; I imagine if I had they were ready to kick my ass. The next day I got a message from E saying that the fridge she had in her place 'didn't work out' so she took ours. That was very painful. What did she expect me to keep food in? What was I supposed to do? Why didn't she buy another one?

My anger was a big, big deal to E. Before she left I had put a punching bag up in our little parking garage (and underneath Rob and Katherine's place; they were very cool to let me pound on it). Pound on it I did. Twice a day to keep my self-destructive feelings at bay. I never went down there because I was feeling rage, I went down there because I was feeling like killing myself and this was one of only two things that helped then (the other being sobbing tears). Somehow, at some time and place, she went from loving me, or letting herself love me, to hating who I was, believing I was abusive, a sexual perpetrator even (and at this, even I have to smile; I've made love to three women in my life counting E and never been rough or forceful with any woman). Still, anger was a critical fear for her, and angry I surely was under all the depression. Some of it at her, I'm sure, for not being my lover. Robert had shown me how to let that destructive self-hate pain out by hitting inanimite things when I felt the need; it was better than imagining myself hanging in our closet with the tie she got me for Christmas. There were weeks and months when I was afraid to even go near our closet. But as I said before, I never touched her aggressively in my life, and while I can understand her terror better now, I wonder why our therapist didn't mediate this contrast better. Or perhaps E simply knew no other way to react.

For surely she was angry, angry in a way I did not understand at the time as I tried to peer at reality through the gray haze of self-blame. I know I said hurtful things to her during the marriage. When I told my mother on the phone a few days after Estella left that she was gone I was howling, "and she left me because of the poison you put in me." In part, true. But I was strangely unaware of the poison in E, and of what I now know to be the machinations of a third party I had trusted, truly, with my very life.

One thing I do believe, you can't leave a person and refuse to talk to him for months and still be 'working on the marriage.' You can't. I was right about the need for 'a thread of kindness.' Some conversation, mediated or not, is required. Our downstairs neighbor Angel, bless her, wrote E and told her the same thing. I don't know that anyone else did; Ken said as much I think and E quickly left. It's tough when you're trying to support both sides of a break up like this. Not that any of it would have changed E, though. The person she needed to tell her some contact with me was required if she wanted to have a marriage probably wasn't telling her that. He sure told me what to do though.

Months passed. E told me in a letter once that she wanted six months of separation and no contact. Okay. I counted out the days, friends. One the six month anniversary two of her friends called me and said they had to drop something by. They came to Scott's and handed me a manila envelope, then both ran down the stairs, which I thought very odd. That night one of them called me, and in a singsong child mind-fuck voice, told me they ran because, "we're afraid of you." Oh fuck me. Even then I thought that was ridiculous (one of the two I recently had contact with and she sincerely apologized; the apology was accepted).

Inside the envelope was paperwork; Estella had filed for a legal separation. Not a divorce, just a legal separation; I remember looking closely to see which box was checked. I think she said she had to protect herself from me financially. Balls. That paper carried a lot of weight for me. After that my HMO psychiatrist I saw once a month in a group we called Club Med said he wondered why I didn't get a girlfriend and begin having sex since I was legally separated (I found out much later E never filed the papers; just served them to me). I was very defensive to the idea of dating anyone else, of course.

More months rolled by and by now I had only a P.O. box I could write to (if that, I'm not sure when she got that). No phone. No address and no contact. I did write in the beginning, sent her a candle for her birthday in March (all I could afford) and an apology for everything I had ever done wrong. What she wanted, thought, or believed during that year away is still a mystery. I had one guy friend who said she was "just like a little kid, she acts just like a little kid right now." Could that be the result of poor therapy? Hmmm. A very disturbed young woman? Perhaps both. Whatever, she never once tried to contact me and even told me early on to stop calling and leaving messages on her friend's machine when I still knew where she was. The content of the messages? "I miss my wife." That's what I remember.

And so it went. She was still seeing Robert as far as I knew; I was certainly seeing him. After she left me I called him and left a very angry message saying if she didn't come back I wouldn't pay him a dime of the several thousand dollars I then owed him. That was inappropriate based on what I knew, though oddly prescient, but after that he told me, depressed and desperate as I was, that I had to pay him up front or I couldn't see him no matter what. I was temping week to week at the time and struggling with serious depression still. I remember him saying, "so I can still feel good about you as a person."

That next summer, after she had been gone about 10 months and I still was hearing nothing from her and had no way to get in touch with her I began working at Fuji as a temp doing data entry. There was a girl, crazy as green hay in summer, who had a boyfriend but also wanted my attention. She began flirting. It took a few days for me to even know what she was doing. She was young, beautiful in an animal way. Robert thought I should go out with her. He even said "before you rape a few women." Joking, but only partly; his point was that I had such a huge superego I needed to cut myself some slack. Her name was Penny. I told her at break one day, seperated from my wife, still working on that, had a little crush on her, my apologies. She was so impressed I could talk she asked me to go with her to Taco Bell the next day. We went. She told me then she had a boyfriend and how, basically, everyone in the warehouse thought she was a slut. We never had a real conversation again, and we certainly never did anything. Frankly, I wasn't ready and doubt I would have if she asked.

After about ten months, Robert still suggesting I date, I met a girl at church retreat whose real name I will not use. I'll call her Moll. She was truly disturbed and was the element, the phenomenon, which brought the beginning of the true end for E and I. But that story is for next time. This is enough for one sitting.