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My Story (Part 3)
Within minutes I was off the premises. I walked to the mall and
used a dressing room phone to call my wife.
It was over. I was unemployed.
I laid at home for a month, not waking until 11 or 12 noon. My
wife was driving an hour to work and an hour back.
I had tons of money saved, and we could easily survive off of her
paycheck. But I was in a deep funk, and sinking lower every day.
I was drinking just to get a break from myself, bypass my over
active mind. Before i was fired I went outside and smoked down a joint
with an ex-con that worked in the repair dept. I didn't find that out
until after we smoked. I guess he thought we were like blood brothers
now.
He confessed to me that he and a friend had been propositioned at
$5000 a piece to break into a house in florida, shoot a man sitting in a
chair, burn down the house, and run.
He and a friend agreed. He did 5 years. Moved to Iowa to escape
the gangs. He said he really wanted to go striaght, but he would move
back to florida and make crazy money rather than work for nothing here.
He wasn't getting the raise he asked for. He quit one week before i was
fired. Disappeared. Without a trace. I was the only one who knew what
happened, but there was no way i could tell anyone... I don't know
anymore details. I further checked his story and found it to be true when
I was told he had to have a red federal prison ID card. Had to be on him
at all times...he showed it to me. ex-con's have to work too I guess.
I was loosing my grip. I was crashing at home. I couldn't connect
with my wife, I couldn't stay at my job. Now my wife was having to do all
the work.
She broke an antique oven i had bought at a garage sale. It was
one of my prize posessions. It was too cold and our cooktop oven was too
hard to manuver in the snow, we went withourt a cooktop stove for two
months, no microwave either, but we had a hotplate.
She broke the antique, and I went pshyco on her, everyone
started lecturing me on how things weren't as important as people after
our fight. Which was supposed to be some kind of unknown revelation to me
or something. I was forcefed these misdiagnosed perscriptions. It wasn't
about the oven...
But my wife took it and ran. Hung my ass out to dry. Let everyone
believe I was an abusive monster. I couldn't believe it, she knew me
better than that?
My Christian parents, church elders, suggested she divorce me.
After slamming my hand down on the table in disbelief, we never had a
previous fight, they called the police and tried to get me put in jail.
We came from upper middle class familys, but you couldn't tell it from an
episode of cops that night, and my wife never stuck up for me. The only
one who could help me stck me with a knife, (figuratively). Nothing like
my folks striking a match next to gasoline! The cop left empty handed for
lack of a reason to take me in, but he sure tried his best to intimidate
me.
I spent nights at my grandparents to regain an even keel. To try
to understand how things had spiraled out of control. Our marrage had
been undermined. I had no respect. I had to solve some problems, alone
for awhile. She came over tried twice to give me the mail, but I wasn't
ready to open the door. Shw asn't apologizing for compounding our
problems. I hadn't yet gotten square with God and the world so I didn't
open the door, and she almost beat the door down, I thought she was going
to break the glass!...
That was the last time I saw her.
Been 8 months now. My best friends sister's roomate had been
talking with my wife in secret. My own best friend promised not to tell
me where she was. It was after much arguing that I finally convinced him
to cough up the information. He relented after I explained my marraige
was sacred and took presidence over some stupid promise he made to his
sister. He relented.
Turns out she was in Chicago with her sister and her husband. Her
sisters husband was a lawyer in training. I dialed a bunch of Chicago
area codes and found her number. She couldn't believe i had found her,
and i couldn't believe this was happening.
Her family never liked me, and always let me know it. I wasn't
going to make them or my wife rich.
I wondered if she was being coached on the phone. She said she no
longer loved me, "no more than a brother or sister in Christ". "Good luck
to me and take care."
When I asked her "What about the vows we made at the alter?, she
said,
"We had good intentions?"
To which i said, "I didn't come to the alter with intentions, I
made a promise."
She promptly said "Goodbye, take care of yourself."
I said, "No, you don't get to tell me to take care of myself.
You're supposed to be here taking care of me."
...*Click.*...
I got drunk one night and left some songs on her brother n laws
answering machine. I knew they would act like i was nuts or something,
but i didn't care. I was upset because i called her at 3 in the morning
and they wouldn't give her the phone. She was still my wife, we belonged
to each other, I didn't need his permission to talk to her?! Apparentely
he thought I did. Shortly after they pressed charges which prevented me
to enter Illinois without risk of arrest.
Just got the final divorce papers in the mail on Octbober 10th...
Her brother-n-law's signature is on the bottom... Must have passed the
bar exam...
I don'd think I'll forget the 10th.
She's got my heart out there in Chicago somewhere. Not one person tried
to talk sense into her, not one person tried to stand in her way. People
who have known me for years. I think God is on vacation. And I'm not
right. I'm worried I can be replaced.
I know what the paper says, but my heart is still married. The
Bible says in Christ's red letters "That anyone who divorces and then
remarries for any reason other than adultery, commits it themself." So it
looks like this is it for me. I had one shot.
I don't really know why i joined the list? Maybe in OTR is a code, a key
I needed that wasn't heeded. Linford and Karin seem to have a storybook
relationship. Maybe I'm just doing some kind of research?
The last pictures I have of her was when she was helping me and
my grandmother pick apples in their orchard. Laughing, happy, warm.
Together.
It reminded me of the Over The Rhine state of Mind. Plus reading
gives me something to do when i'm not thinking about suicide.
I still have dreams about her. I hear cars go by and I still look
to see if it's her pulling in. I still have all of her love letters, but
i can't read much of them without breaking up. I used to hold her in my
arms. I sed to kiss her mouth?
Everything she left behind remains untouched, her candles on the
back of the toilet, her alarm clock. I keep her white flannel nightgown
on the bed I don't sleep in behind a closed bedroom door. I can't even
sleep in the house. For a straight month after she left, it still smelled
like
her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now I've grown a taste for whiskey, I smoke grass and listen to "Like
Spinning Plates".
Try not to remember that spring was right around the corner, it
was about to get better. Then i try not to forget. As a Christian, I
never thought I would be here in this place.
If I get anthrax, I don't want any antibiotics, and i don't want
to die unknown.
-WS
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