Saturday, October 31, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
So...ten years + later...
So ten years and some months after I discovered my "wife's" infidelitys I am still haunted by the trauma. I'm pretty sure some people get over these things and move on. In many ways I have but deep down in my marrow I still feel the betrayal as though it were yesterday. Dawn doesn't understand it. She's never been through anything like my experience so she honestly can't get it. Unless I were to catalog every single loving thing, laugh enjoyed, promise made, secret shared, illness nursed, pets loved and buried, life experienced and cherished and expectations for our future together that I had with Betsy in our 14 (?) 12 (?) years together and then show the way the betrayals manifested and were discovered, assumed, conjectured, proved beyond question, or questionably proved, I don't think anyone could actually "get" it. (that sentence is long enough to be Russian) I've thought about doing just that many times and have always been overwhelmed at the effort it would require. I could put it down on paper and still never come close to emparting to someone else the sense of safety and integrity I felt with her as my partner.
I don't want to make it sound like our relationship was without it's problems, ups and downs, anger and resentment. We both had all of those wrapped up in the fabric of a lifetime shared. However I felt safe in certain assumptions and I believe she did too. So...where do I go from here? There's no doubt that I have PTSD in some form or another from the experience. I believe that a great deal of my physical pain is based in this. It goes almost without saying that the depth of my depression is increased by these memories. I am very aware that there are a lot of people suffering from much worse mental pain and emotional scars than mine. Hundreds of thousands on this benighted planet I'm sure are so acute in their anguish as to make mine seem very minor by comparison. And yet that doesn't relieve me. I don't feel better because others have it worse.
I live so well it's ridiculous. My home, my partner, my "job", my everything is wonderful. I'm never hungry, never cold, never lonely, never without health care or a vehicle or a bed to lie down on. I have a life that is the envy of 90% of the population of this planet. I am aware of that fact almost all the time. I live in concious gratitude for my blessings most always. So why am I still so angry? I don't know. I can't think my way out of it. I can't pray my way out of it. I can't act as if my way out of it. I've tried all of that. Really tried. Worked it. The pain hasn't lifted.
I don't want to make it sound like our relationship was without it's problems, ups and downs, anger and resentment. We both had all of those wrapped up in the fabric of a lifetime shared. However I felt safe in certain assumptions and I believe she did too. So...where do I go from here? There's no doubt that I have PTSD in some form or another from the experience. I believe that a great deal of my physical pain is based in this. It goes almost without saying that the depth of my depression is increased by these memories. I am very aware that there are a lot of people suffering from much worse mental pain and emotional scars than mine. Hundreds of thousands on this benighted planet I'm sure are so acute in their anguish as to make mine seem very minor by comparison. And yet that doesn't relieve me. I don't feel better because others have it worse.
I live so well it's ridiculous. My home, my partner, my "job", my everything is wonderful. I'm never hungry, never cold, never lonely, never without health care or a vehicle or a bed to lie down on. I have a life that is the envy of 90% of the population of this planet. I am aware of that fact almost all the time. I live in concious gratitude for my blessings most always. So why am I still so angry? I don't know. I can't think my way out of it. I can't pray my way out of it. I can't act as if my way out of it. I've tried all of that. Really tried. Worked it. The pain hasn't lifted.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
A row of trucks
On my way to the store today I passed the college ball fields and saw 3 Ryder trucks parked in a line. I guess they're there with stuff for setting up the 2009 graduation ceremonies. My heart started to race a little and an old excitement began running through my brain. I could hear loud live music and smell campfires and weed...I was ready to hit the road take some acid and get the job done. It took me a couple of seconds to recognize what this Pavlovian response was about.
When I was 15 I had the opportunity to work with a crew of people that subcontracted as a labor pool to the purveyors of Midwest summer music festivals. At the time I didn't know how it all worked I just knew that I'd get the call at my Mom's house that a bunch of hands were needed to work and I'd start calling my friends and family members. We'd all hook up at the little white house on "Gasoline Alley" and jump in the vans and cars and head on down to Madison where we'd pick up other folks.
At that point my "position" as fixer was passed on to someone older and presumably more experienced. I was there because I had the only stable phone number and I could find everybody else. I couldn't drive, I weighed about 95 lbs soaking wet and really I was just a kid. So I rolled the joints and the 18 and olders took the reins. I was along for the ride and the cool tee shirts. I did get to work on the crew and I always came home a week or so later with some money.
From Madison we'd go to Chicago to meet with the Guy. He also had a bunch of bodies and a line of Ryder trucks with the necessary implements in them. Leaving from there to points west we would eventually end up somewhere in a cornfield on an abandoned farm that had been leased for the occasion. There were always problems with mud, fencing, sanitation, food services, decking, sound towers, stages etc. that our crew could be turned loose on. Semi able hands in the right places at the time they were needed. There is much more to this memory and I may write it down some other time but this morning, when I saw the Ryder trucks lined up in a row I was 15 again for just a few seconds.
When I was 15 I had the opportunity to work with a crew of people that subcontracted as a labor pool to the purveyors of Midwest summer music festivals. At the time I didn't know how it all worked I just knew that I'd get the call at my Mom's house that a bunch of hands were needed to work and I'd start calling my friends and family members. We'd all hook up at the little white house on "Gasoline Alley" and jump in the vans and cars and head on down to Madison where we'd pick up other folks.
At that point my "position" as fixer was passed on to someone older and presumably more experienced. I was there because I had the only stable phone number and I could find everybody else. I couldn't drive, I weighed about 95 lbs soaking wet and really I was just a kid. So I rolled the joints and the 18 and olders took the reins. I was along for the ride and the cool tee shirts. I did get to work on the crew and I always came home a week or so later with some money.
From Madison we'd go to Chicago to meet with the Guy. He also had a bunch of bodies and a line of Ryder trucks with the necessary implements in them. Leaving from there to points west we would eventually end up somewhere in a cornfield on an abandoned farm that had been leased for the occasion. There were always problems with mud, fencing, sanitation, food services, decking, sound towers, stages etc. that our crew could be turned loose on. Semi able hands in the right places at the time they were needed. There is much more to this memory and I may write it down some other time but this morning, when I saw the Ryder trucks lined up in a row I was 15 again for just a few seconds.
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