Lessons in love…
There is a certain beauty to a woman who has wet trails of mascara running down her face, the glistening rivulets of fading black tracing the features of her visage. A woman in that state has her soul laid bare. She has nothing hidden. Fear, sadness, anger, whatever emotion might be causing her to sob, you know she is feeling it with all of her soul. Bearing witness to this leaves an indelible mark on you. This mark can take many forms. If you are there to comfort her and guide her through the pain, it can leave an impression of her fragility upon you that is endearing. If you are the cause of those tears, if you are the cause of the sadness that caused her to lose control, you may find yourself forlorn. You might feel hollow. You might feel as if you were emotional detritus. Then again, you might just feel righteous.
Love is a double edged sword at times. The capability to open your heart and allow someone free reign of it is admirable. It requires a trust of a soul not quite known to you. It requires a willingness to face the oblique abyss of heartbreak knowingly, to stare it defiantly in the eyes and say, “Just try me.” Some people do this believing they will eventually find a soul mate, someone who will be kind and gentle to them always, who will never harm them, who will be by their side until that great end we fear so much. Some people just don’t know any better. Well, I knew better, and yet I opened up my heart to a soul not quite known to me. She did the same in turn, allowing me access to the little room where she hid her true self. She let me into the secret compartment where she hid away her fears as well as her hopes and dreams. I can’t blame her, not really. She didn’t yet know what the punishment for loving me was, and I, in turn, did not know what the punishment for loving her was. We bounded forward into that journey of mutual destruction with smiles on our faces.
And then came Phoenix.
Transitions
I was still married when I met her. There was a divorce pending at the time, just a month or two away, I can never remember. My soon to be ex-wife was still coming by on occasion. She believed that if she let me fuck her as much as I wanted, then things would turn around. I didn’t tell her any different. Until I met Lydia, that is. The day after I met Lydia, I called my wife and told her to quit coming around. She guessed why I was calling it off and threw one of her tantrums. I hung up the phone.
Lydia walked onto the scene like an atomic bomb, throwing everything that came into her path into disarray. I was smitten. She was angelic to me. We hit it off right away, lubricated by whiskey and sex. She liked the same things I liked. She hated the same things I hated. We were able to be opinionated and conceited together. We were able to get drunk together and smoke cigarettes together and yell at each other and ditch each other at bars.
It was bliss. It was hell.
I remember one night, we were going to a local Oktoberfest a ways south of Chicago. The night started like any other. She put on her too much makeup and dressed just sexy enough for in case she was going to cheat on me. She had her hair done in that small front poof she loved so much. That long blond hair, shining in the sterile bathroom lights. Her blue mascara framed by those collegiate glasses she wore half way down the nose.
We headed off into the night, walking from her parents. She still lived with them and I still lived with mine. The modern age was an expensive time in the American Midwest, and she was paying off eight years of bouncing between state colleges. It’s hard to pay them off when you’re a druggie dropout. I just spent too much money on booze. We held hands like fresh lovers, swinging them and pushing up against each other, stealing sideways glances, the occasional kiss. Anyone looking wouldn’t be able to tell that in just a few hours she was going to ditch me to go do coke with a bunch of strangers.
We got to the street filled with drunk Illinoisans, a few blocks of tents and food and depravity, just beats to the music of the shitty live band. We got in line for our over-priced, watered down MGDs, wristbands adorning our intertwined arms. It may have been Oktoberfest but this wasn’t Chicago, there was no good beer and no good food and you had to pay a lot to get what they had. But who’s never paid for pain before?
When we finally had our beers in hand we wandered toward the live band over which you couldn’t hear the people next to you shouting at each other, but muffled by those same shouts enough to keep the music from really grating on your soul. She led the way since she had a thing for music that would end a hostage situation quickly. As we walked to the front I saw her reach out and caress the neck of some guy in passing and give him the fuck me eyes.
I was a pretty jealous type of boyfriend, and she was an insanely jealous girlfriend. I saw her caress another man and I asked who the fuck was that, and then let it boil inside. I was not yet aware she was screwing other guys behind my back. I feel I was justified. She, however, took jealous girlfriend to a whole different level. She was the type of jealous where I’d get a phone call with her screaming because a female wrote on my Facebook wall. This is not to say it was all her fault, I’ve got plenty of blame in the disaster that was our love.
We had several beers and got tired of the crowd (I got tired of pretending I liked being around her shitty friends). We went to a bar along the edge of Oktoberfest. It had a patio out back and was still serving pizza even though the sun disappeared hours ago. Lucky us, they had one table still unoccupied on that patio. It’s always good to have an audience when you get in a fight. I said something selfish and overbearing. She got defensive. We started yelling at each other but stayed to finish our beer. Sorry other bar patrons, you have to deal with us yelling for a few more minutes.
Lydia took off and I eventually decided to run off after her. I found her crossing between stopped trains on the way to another crappy small town Illinois bar. I asked her to wait and talk to me. I sounded needy. We walked to the bar together. Inside we perched up, got some booze, and rested our hands on each other’s legs. We loved to be close to each other. We loved whiskey.
We fought some more and drank some more and then she went to the bathroom. On her way back she stopped and sat with a couple of guys at the other end of the bar. After a while she came back and said she was gonna go with them and get some coke. I thought that was a bad idea. I told her I was leaving her, that I’d been planning on it. That I was never going to see her again. She gave me a long, deep kiss and turned away without another word. I left.
I screamed at the moon. I punched a stop sign. I kicked anything that came near the sidewalk as I stumbled back to her parents’ house. I met a drunk man who must have been in his late forties. He was wearing the type of clothes you’d expect to see on a homeless man. We were headed to a nice neighborhood, too drunk to be in public, and we had never met before. We were inseparable.
We talked of our ills, two men lost in time, it didn’t matter who the other person was or where he came from. It didn’t matter where we were going. We needed each other. It was a surreal moment, half-delirious, clouded with cigarette smoke and a boozy haze that clung to me like shame on hotel drapes. It was a moment I’ll remember forever, but I can’t even remember what we said.
I got to her parents’ house. I banged on her parents’ front door at two am until her mother woke up and answered. Her mother wanted to know where she was. I said that she’s off doing coke with some guys and that I just had to get my stuff because I was never coming back. Her mom cried. I packed.
I got in my car. It was going to be a forty five minute ride home through back roads and I was drunk, but I’d done worse. The engine cranked over in my piece of crap car that I had taken from my ex-wife in the divorce. That piece of crap lasted me years and hardly had a problem. The last nice car I had lasted me maybe five months. I got drunk and totaled that one, but the point is the car I was in was amazing and a piece of crap. I hated it but I couldn’t let it go. Just like Lydia.
She called me right before I put it in gear. It had been a couple hours since we’ve seen each other and I think I passed out in the car for a while. She said she had been robbed. She was curled up next to a defunct ice machine at a broken down gas station in a ghetto an hour away from me. Less than a year later, we would live together in that ghetto. Anyway, she needed me to rescue her but didn’t know where she was. I found her. I drove her home. The whole way she tried to thank me and hated me. I rejected her thanks. I told her I did it as my last deed in the relationship. She asked me to stay with her for the night. I did. In the morning I kissed her sleeping forehead goodbye and intended never to see her again.
We went on vacation together a few weeks later.
Lydia got pregnant. It happened when we were on vacation. We went to a small town with small shops and small locals. The motel was standard, the bedsheets just yellow enough to hide a few stains, the pillows neither firm nor flat, a mattress that’s seen its fair share of use, and a tube tv on the dresser. The bathroom had an ample supply of the crappy little soaps and shampoos you steal for your travel bag and lighting like a bad porno.
On our first night there we went to a nice local pub/restaurant dressed as nice as horrible people dress. She was wearing a special shirt she brought. She said she usually wore it for first dates. I had never seen it before, but one of the other guys she was fucking behind my back had. We had beer with our steaks and finished it off with a chocolate crème brûlée. I’d never had it before and I was drunk enough to feel like I was eating heaven, eating heaven surrounded by faux wood cabin walls and small-town folk who knew they thrived on passerby’s money.
In the morning she let me fuck her for ten minutes and then we got ready to go out on the town. Lydia was a sight to behold in her pink Columbia jacket and tight blue jeans, hair in a ponytail and make up smothering her pores. She was curvy enough to make her rear-end look good in the tight jeans she picked out.
We found a trinket shop and she bought an orange rock for her dad. We found a fudge shop and bought enough chocolate for weeks. We found a leather shop where she asked my opinion on some bracelets. I didn’t give a shit. I was getting irritated by being around her. I felt like she didn’t care about me as much as I cared about her.
I said so.
It was a long four hour drive home after that, irritated and upset with each other. I was driving her car, because mine we weren’t sure would make the trip. I was driving because I was used to spending a lot of time behind the wheel after years working on an ambulance. She was trying to read. She kept getting irritated with the music I was listening to. It didn’t matter if it was rave rap or violindustrial, nothing I listened to was okay to her. She told me that all the time. She was always complaining about my music, saying it gave her a headache. I turned the radio off and we drove in a strained silence for the rest of the way.
A month later she told me she was pregnant.
After we moved in together, when the pregnancy was a couple of months along, we had to start seeing a therapist. It was her idea. As Lydia put it, she was, “hoping the therapist could keep me from leaving her.” She didn’t want me to hate her anymore. I had found out she had been cheating on me. After we moved in together my jealous suspicions that had always been boiling under the surface came to a head and I had secretly read her Facebook messages.
What I found in them devastated me. She had been screwing around with other guys almost the whole time we were together. Here we were, months into a pregnancy, living together, talking about getting married, and she was still making plans to meet guys at motels and screw them behind my back, and I found out only because I was a snoop and looked at her messages behind her back.
I called her at work planning on confronting her immediately. One of her coworkers answered and put me through to her. I couldn’t do it yet, I was still processing the information. I acted like I was just calling to make sure she was having a good day at work, that she was okay, and told her that I missed her and couldn’t wait for her to get home to the house we rented. The house we rented was in the fucking ghetto, surrounded by gang bangers on both sides, but the rent was cheap and we were trying to save for a baby so screw it. I really just wanted to hear her voice and hear if she was cheating on me while she was at work. Find out if she even gave a shit about me.
I didn’t tell Lydia I knew yet. She spent hours that Friday night getting her hair cut. I texted her and asked her how long it was going to be. She said it was taking forever because she was getting colored streaks. I didn’t believe her, I thought she probably had a dick in her right then while she was talking to me. When she finally came home she had cut most of her hair off into a descending bob type cut. It went really high in the back and came down to just above chin length. I asked her what in the hell she did to her hair. She looked confused, worried. I told her it looked stupid. I told her she messed up. She ran off crying.
I finally asked Lydia how long she’d been screwing other guys. She denied it and got offended. She fought against the notion. I pressed on, asking her pointed questions and referencing the slutty things she had said to her fuck buddies. She got mad at me, at the accusation. We fought. She yelled at me. I yelled back. It took almost two hours. She finally got quiet and looked at me and sobbed as she said she was sorry, so sorry that she cheated on me, as she told me that she didn’t want to lose me. I couldn’t stand the sight of her.
I started drinking more after that. I’d grab a bottle of whiskey on the way home every day after work, and be in it well before Lydia got home. One day she came in and I was making us dinner, and I had Adele crooning mournfully. I swayed back and forth to the tune of the booze. I gave her a hug and a kiss. I told her how pretty she looked. She started crying and ran upstairs.
After that we had a weekly trip to a therapist an hour away. The therapist was insightful and unbiased. She had mends for every rend, plans of action for every problem, game plans for every move we should make. She studied us. She sought our pains and our grievances. She inquired into our pasts, into our thoughts, and into our souls. She told me I had a laundry list of psychological issues. She had her work cut out for her.
One day I made Lydia cry over dinner. I prepared dinner easily. I threw a corner grocery store pizza in the oven. She sat at the table and asked me if I could get the silverware myself as I set out our plates. I don’t know why this enraged me, she was six months pregnant and on bedrest due to complications. I should have been taking care of her. Instead, I blew up. I flew off the handle. I screamed at her. She started crying and I got even madder. I yelled at her to stop crying. I was seeing red and everything she did made me worse. I couldn’t stop yelling. She couldn’t stop sobbing.
A few weeks later, Lydia got mad at me because I didn’t want to help her clean the back seat of her car out and I was refusing to tell her why. She prodded until she got it out of me. I told her that the last time I helped her clean out the back of her car she screwed another guy in it. She got mad at me and didn’t talk to me the whole ride to therapy. Our therapist told her that I was not wrong to express my feelings about the situation and that she needed to be apologetic and understanding when those times arose. This did not make me feel better. Needing a therapist to tell my unfaithful girlfriend that she shouldn’t get upset with me for telling her the truth of how I feel about her cheating is not how my teenage self had envisioned his future.
Lydia liked to try and be smarter than who she was around. Sometimes she looked at me like I was the stupidest person she ever met. She liked to tell me I was using words wrong in front of my friends. I always let it go, I always let her think she was smarter than me. I usually didn’t care, honestly. One night while we were having a Walmart dinner at the house, she told me I was using a word that didn’t exist. It pissed me off, but I let it slide for the time being. After dinner was over and the dishes put in the dishwasher, I looked up every word she had ever told me I was using wrong. I went outside to where she was having a cigarette, to where she was smoking with a baby in her belly, because the doctor told her coming off the pills and the smokes at the same time could cause a miscarriage. She was acting very superior that night. I showed her the dictionary and went through every word she had ever accused me of using wrong. I could see the feeling of foolishness and embarrassment creep onto her face. I didn’t wait for her response when I finished, I just walked back inside.
We eventually made headway with the therapist. I didn’t hate Lydia as much. Lydia wasn’t as afraid of me leaving. I started holding her hand again. She started leaning on me when we sat on the couch again. The barrier of adversarial love we had was falling, and we really started to care about each other. The future started to seem bright. My nuclear family was finally coming true. A bun in the oven, a woman at my side, hard work during the day and a home at night. I finally fit into something. I finally belonged. I felt like I had found what I’d been searching for. I felt like I succeeded where I’ve always failed before.
Out of the ashes
A child born out of wedlock can have certain society based stigmas placed upon him before he even realizes why. This is something I experienced when I was a child after I discovered I was adopted. It was not my intent to bestow that same life upon my unborn child, but given the circumstances I was not married to his mother. I was not averse to marrying Lydia, not in the slightest. At least, after our son was born. Up until then we worked on our relationship. There were hand written cards, expressing the love that was felt, making promises to stick by each other’s side until the end of time, no matter what happened. We cooked for each other and helped one another with our tasks around the house. For the first time in our relationship, we were actually happy. The fights stopped. The drinking stopped. We were no longer adversaries, but friends headed down the same path.
I would like to take a moment here and take a freeze frame of the image at hand. Life for me here is idyllic. I was genuinely happy. The only thing in the entire world that made me happier than what I was here was the birth of my son. The question that had been burning in the back of my mind since the moment I had found out Lydia was cheating on me was put to the side and ignored.
One night during this solidarity between Lydia and I stands out in my mind. I was waiting for her to come home. When she came into the kitchen through the back door, I put on a song through the Bluetooth speaker I had gotten her for her birthday, I pulled her close to me, and I started dancing with her. The tune was slow, but not mournful, and we danced slowly across the linoleum. The singer sang of a relationship in turmoil and bridged into a strong, tested partnership, telling of all the fuckups between love and happiness. As we danced Lydia slid her arms up over my shoulders and gazed up at me. Tears glistened at the corner of her eyes. Her hair was down, swaying back and forth across her cheeks as we danced. She was my angel. My discordant Persephone.
During this reprieve, things came together smoothly in preparation for the arrival of our baby. We had two baby showers that went off without a hitch and it looked as if my son would be set for the first few years of his life. Our families and friends came through for us in our time of need and made sure our son would not go wanting.
The moment finally arrived on a Friday evening. We were at Target, shopping for baby supplies with some of the gift cards we had been given. Our counselor had been pleased with our progress two nights before, and was sure we would not need her services much longer. We were rocketing through on wings of love, and nothing could stand in our way, so when her water broke that night at Target I knew we were going to be okay. I got her in the car and drove her to the hospital where she had been planning on delivering. I spent the next twenty four hours at her side while the baby held off from emerging as long as he could. We didn’t care, we were inseparable and in love. When the time came, I stood at her side. I spoke to her calmingly and reassuringly, helped guide her through the two hours of labor, and watched my son emerging into the world for the first time.
The sight of him, with his elongated skull from passing through a human pelvis, with the streaks of blood covering his face as his mouth gasped at the air around him and his little hands snatching at nothing, this sight moved me. It moved me in ways I didn’t know a person could be moved. I felt a blossoming in my chest of emotions I had never truly experienced before. I was at once proud, worried, protective, nurturing. I wanted to be everything I could possibly be as a man. I vowed then and there that I would always be there for this child, my mini-me. I vowed that I would do whatever it took to take care of him.
As the nurses were cleaning him off, I put my finger against his hand. He grabbed onto it instinctively and even though I knew he had no idea what or who it was he was grasping on to, it filled my heart with happiness. When I finally was able to pick up my son and hold him, it was difficult for the nurses to get him away from me, even to let his mother see him. I had finally found what I was meant to do with my life. I was meant to be a father.
My reverie was broken before we even got to leave the hospital. There can be certain complications that arise when you plant your seed in a druggie. My son was small and he was yellow. The doctor told us that he needed to undergo UV light treatments and that he was going to be at the hospital for a couple of days at the least. We were welcome to stay of course.
For the next two days, we spent hours watching our son in the little UV box they had set up for him. When he wasn’t getting his treatment, I held him. I laid down and let him sleep on my chest. He wasn’t responding to his mother’s breastfeeding attempts so we had to feed him formula. Lydia was still weak from the long birthing process, so I handled all of the parental duties. I changed his diapers, fed him, and swaddled him. I never let a moment go by where he could wonder where his parents were. When I could help it, at least. For hours and hours out of each day for the next few days, we sat and watched him getting his treatments. Lydia’s mother would bring us food when the hospital forget we were still there. Every day we had to stay my heart sunk a little lower, wondering if my son was going to be alright. I tried not to despair. I tried to be strong for the woman who was soon to be my wife, and for my son who had just entered the world and had no idea how cruel it could be. Finally, after about three days, they released him and we were able to go home. Things were going to be alright.
My work had given me a week of leave for preparing the house and getting settled in with my son. I was on the way to management, already training people even though I’d been there less than two months. They had high ambitions for me at the job I held, and I had high ambitions for myself. Having a family will do that to a man. I worked harder than I ever had before and finally made something of myself that was worth respecting. I finally, after twenty seven years, felt pride. I used the time off to get the house in order and take care of my son while Lydia recovered from the birth process, which she had had to undergo without any medicinal assistance for fear of complications.
Over the next couple of weeks, we split up the responsibilities of parenthood the best that we could. We took turns feeding and changing him throughout the night when he would wake up. Every moment that I was not at work, I spent with my family, taking care of them. Soon, my son developed a bond with me and all I had to do to soothe him when he was upset was talk to him. The feelings of fatherhood that began to develop the moment he had entered the world kept growing. As a family, we bonded. The child endeared Lydia to my heart. We were on the path that we needed to be.
The Majestic
Some people believe that there is beauty to be found in all things in life. Some people think that majesty interweaves everything that happens to us. Some people find a meaning incorporated into their very existence, infusing it into whatever happens to them. Some people, on the other hand, view life as meaningless. Magnitudinous events to some are flaccid to others. Some people encounter events that are so profound that their lives are changed forever. Some people go their entire lives without feeling a thing.
I felt something when the letter arrived. A tension. Nervousness. Fear. Despite all of the progress made by Lydia and I, and the arrival of our son, there was a question that had been gnawing at the back of my mind since the day I found out that she had been cheating on me. I’d tried to ignore it, and sometimes I had succeeded in suppressing it, but I had wondered since that day if I was really the father. The day I was able to take my son home, I had a paternity test done. We just stopped through on the way out of the hospital. I had tried to shut it out of my mind after that, trying to convince myself that it was only going to show proof of my parentage. For the next three weeks, I had treated my son as if he were my own, had made the assumption of the answer to the test. Then, the letter arrived, and it was time to find out.
I found myself needing a cigarette badly. I had quit a few months ago when Lydia did, to help her quit. She sat next to me on the couch, our son in the pack n play on the floor at our feet. I told her to open it. She did. Before she was even able to tell me what it said, she started crying. She put her arms around me and told me that she was sorry. She told me that she was sorry that she ruined my life. I grabbed the paper out of her hands and read it for myself. There was zero percent chance that I was the father. Lydia was still holding me. I pushed her off of me and told her I needed some fresh air. I walked outside without waiting for her response.
I deliberated for about an hour and a half. I smoked a lot of cigarettes. I wanted a drink. When I finally came to my decision, I went back inside.
Lydia was on the couch still, cradling her son to her chest. She was crying silently while staring at him. She wouldn’t look up at me. She already knew what I was going to say. She didn’t want to hear the words and I didn’t want to say them, but I had no choice. It wouldn’t have been fair of me to stay. I would look at the child and see his mother’s infidelity. I would look at him and see the pain she caused me. I would look at him and see that he deserved better. No matter how much I loved him, no matter how good of a father I wanted to be, every interaction would be tinged with the feeling that I shouldn’t be raising the spawn of infidelity. It would not be fair to the boy. I would not be fair to the boy. He deserved better; it was not his fault. The sins of the mother are not reflected in him, but in my eyes it shrouded him like a fog. I watched Lydia as she rocked slowly back and forth with her son, her beauty distorted and enhanced by the trails of mascara running down her face as her heart was ripped out, as her family was torn apart. My discordant Persephone. I looked at the boy.
I kissed him on the forehead, Phoenix was his name, and I left. I never saw him again.
Morality is difficult to properly describe in today’s culture. Everyone has different viewpoints on it. Some would find my actions morally reprehensible, while others would find them morally sound. I find that I don’t really see it one way or the other. I don’t really care. I walked away from that moment with a heavy heart, but I took a lot of things with me.
One of the things that I took was the beauty of the moment, the majesty of the despair. It is hard to find a situation with such unbridled honesty. Most people don’t wear their heart on their sleeve. Ironic, maybe, that I see the truest beauty coming only from the places that cause the most pain. I think that it opens your eyes and allows you to see the world in new ways you never would have before. It helps you develop an understanding of yourself and the world around you. It did for me, at least.
I’ll tell you what else I took away from it. I learned the meaning of life, and the best way I can think to show you is a quote from a song called The Majestic by Wax Fang, “If you’re searching the lines for a point well, you’ve probably missed it. There was never anything there in the first place.”
Illustrations credit: Maya Willis 2016