From the Graveside of My Marriage

"The story of a life begins at the graveside."
-Ursula K. LeGuin

Today I found out that my marriage of almost 16 years has been dissolved after five years of separation. I was going to write something here about all the ups & downs of marriage- but, that all changed, when a person I don't know, someone whom I will call my friend, asked me for some advice about how I came through a such a difficult situation - I will always be thankful to HG for helping me focus on this important day of my life.

Here Goes...

I got married in 1989- she was pregnant, I was ecstatic. We had 5 kids between 1990 and 1998. I worked a LOT - up to 80 hours a week to pay the bills and buy the thrills. She was a stay-at-home mom, with nothing to do but take care of kids, read, listen to NPR, and talk on the phone- I know now that we were both slaves to our own ignorance and the need to do everything "right", she had baby-doll syndrome, and I had the chauvenist attitude that I must be THE MAN and MAKE MONEY and pick up the slack - classic neurotic, me. I made money, worked harder and harder, and made more money. By 1998 I was a network admin at a major university hospital, and I had a web design and a computer systems consulting business on the side. She had 5 kids. We both had an insane load that we could not manage, but did anyway.

Well, that kind of thing takes it's toll after a while. I remember having dreams of juggling things, lots of them, balls and toys and then things would get bigger, lawnmowers, computers, cars, and I would wake up sweating when I dropped something. I quit being me, and started being a - fucking robot. Some of what's below I didn't realize until much later.

I created a persona to be THE MAN, and closed myself off from eveything because I didn't want to admit that I was unhappy, I din't want anyone to know I was unhappy. I didn't write for almost 10 years, nothing mroe than business documents, shallow e-mails, meeting notes, and budgets. I didn't writie poetry, loveletters, commentary, criticism, nothing that would expose me as someone other than who I felt I had to be to survive. I used prescription narcotics like some miserable people use alcohol or outside sex to create the illusion of a life less miserable.

Well, it got so miserable, that finally she started drinking really heavy, smoking pot, staying out late, told me she wanted a divorce because I was impossible, and started having an affair with this guy who, she finally admitted, was the biggest loser she could find to make me hate her and go away. It didn't work - I hung in there for another year and a half, through all kinds of hell, I withstood it and just took more pills to ease the pain- all the time ignorant of how I felt, what I was doing to myself, all I cared about was "saving" her by saving our marriage. I 100% flat-out refused to go to counselling, though.

Anyway, she finally left me with the kids in early 2000, I had to quit my high-paying university job, figured out a way to go on disability and consult from my home to pay the bills, and became Mr. mom. She came back in November of 2000 very pregnant and very sick from the months of using and moving from one guy to the next, one motel room to another- I think she was hooking, but have never been sure. She wanted to give the baby up for adoption to her psychotic sister because it wasn't min- I told her that the idea made me sick, we talked about a lot of things, and I told her I was glad to have her finally home.

Meanwhile, I managed to keep it all in and keep it together- and keep taking pills.
We split up for good on July 10, 2001. I know the date because it was the day after I quit using narcotics for good - it was either stop or just die. Simple. I went to AA meetings and did NA meetings online when I moved from the city to a rural area very shortly after that. After I started going to AA I realized that I knew a lot about the persona that I had worked so hard to keep intact, but I didn't really know who I wanted to be- I did it for "her", for "them", whoever they were- work, family, church (I was raised Mormon - my thoughts about the esoterica of Mormonism can be encapsulated in the statement Jewish guilt and Jesus, too.

I took the kids with me because she had no income or friends or family who would trust her to lend her money. She extracted a promise from me that, if she got it together to provide a place for them that she wanted me to allow her to take the kids so they could have a good life, because it was me who was the only problem. I told her I wanted what was best for the kids - I kept them for three months, set up a nice place for them to live, got them into school, and tried to help as they cried themselves to sleep every night because they missed their mother. Kaity was about 8 months old, and she slept with me every night, on my chest- otherwise, she would cry for hours. It was a very hard time.

About a week after 9/11, I got the phone call that made me face the reality of the promise I had made. I kept it. She came and took the kids on September 25, 2001. I made her promise me that she would care for them, not drink, not use crack, not use men to keep her company, focus on the kids. She promised and I believed her. I wanted the kids to be happy, no matter what, and so, I believed her.

After the kids were gone, I started breaking down badly - I am not an alcoholic, but there were times that I drank a LOT just to get sleep so I could work the next day at the computer store with my brother. He wanted a business, I needed some reason to stay alive. After the initial shock of losing my children, I was probably clinically insane for awhile- medicating myself with marijuana and alcohol (very carefully, I might add - yes, that makes NO sense), but I started to stabilize. My kids were 208 miles away, and I would see them every other weekend. Their mom did a good job of covering her burgeoning alcohol and crack addiction, and she had the kids scared to say anything because "CPS will take you, split you up, and you'll never see your family again." You get the idea, they went through hell.

From September 2001 until almost April 2004 I did not live with my kids. I decided that I had to do something about who I was. I managed to claim disability- I have very bad vision, and am under the wire for being legally blind - I don't drive, but I can do just about anything else. I'm going to learn how to blow glass this fall. A n y w a y. I had enough money to get by- barely.

Being insane, knowing that I was broken very badly inside I started looking EVERYWHERE for inspiration. the first thing I did was to destroy my persona - no more suits, no more pony-tail, no more pager, digital camera, PalmPilot, briefcase, imported cigarettes, fine wine, fine food, blah blah - I let it all go. I took my computer off-line, no phone, no cable TV - I never did start watching TV again. I bought a journal and I wrote. I wrote everything down- everything I thought, everything I felt, everything though I felt. I go back and read parts of them once in awhile - some of it is very painful. For the first time in years, since I got married, actually, I started writing pieces of poems, playing my guitar, losing myself in stream-of-consciousness writing. I also started reading to find not just entertainment or information, but to find inspiration.

Some of the first books I read were:
"Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda
"Your Erroneous Zones" by Wayne Dyer
"The Path to Love" by Deepak Chopra"The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibrahn (which I read in high school, but forgot - so sad I forgot)
"Illusions" by Richard Bach

So much I have known
and ignored
and forgotten
It's a wonder I can breathe
without a string tied
around my finger

I also rediscovered Sam Phillips - or was drawn to her music again, after forgetting.

I swear to you Sammy saved my life - I had about had it- I knew there was a lot "wrong" with me, HUGE mess, I could not fix it - I needed.......... what........

"Broken like a window
I see my blindness now
I need love
not some sentimental prison
I need God
Not a political church
I need fire
to warm this frozen sea inside me
I need love"

And something clicked, I remembered a quote from Kafka "A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul." Not just a book, but art, free expression. And I knew that to be able to freely express, I needed to know myself.

The last couplet of Keats' "Ode On a Grecian Urn" reads

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

It kicked me wide open - after seemingly years of self-imposed, loathing and ignorance, I was a weeping child - broken down to a handful of dust and blown away.

I found a little poetry group that met in a coffee shop in downtown Ann Arbor, I had completely quit drinking and smoking pot, I couldn't handle being inebriated in any way - I knew people who drank and got high, no problem, I just could not handle it anymore. I do not like bars to this day.

So, the coffee-shop poetry group were first my teachers, then my friends, and one (in late 2003) became my lover for awhile- we're still great friends, but our lives have moved in different directions.

By late 2002 I was learning how to be happy and sober all at the same time. I kept reading, writing, meditating, seeing my kids, seeing their living conditions deteriorating - I had grown to a point that I lived completely by my spritual connectedness to everything, [i]intuition[/i], if you get my meaning. There were several times when I got so upset at what was going on that I tried to call CPS- phones wouldn't work, voicemail boxes were full, and a voice, my voice inside my head was telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I must let go - WAIT.

Patience was a lesson I never learned well. I had to take a crash course in the art of patience that almost drove me mad again. But I knew that the pain I was feeling, the anger and distress, was there to teach me something.
Everything happens for a reasonI may never knowEverything changespatience connects allbeyond spacethroughout timeThe Void Which Bindsis empathy, compassion, loveand it's voiceis silence

My kids disappeared after Christmas of 2002. I later found out that the kids' mom had run afoul of some bad (drug-dealers) people around town, and was about to be raided by CPS, she packed up the kids, had her mother buy plane tickets, and flew them to Utah - a little later she flew her crackhead boyfriend out there, too. I got a note. It was a blow to me, but something told me this had to happen, I needed to continue to grow and learn, because the kids would need me, and I needed to be ready. I kept reading and writing and playing my guitar and meditating and listening to music for inspiration - I have some journal entries about Tom Waits and Norah Jones and Coldplay and Joni Mitchell and Miles Davis and Ravi Shankar and Cosy Sheridan and FUCK - the list is endless - I have collected more than 20,000 MP3s of music and audio books and lectures that I listen to and love. I dove into myself through others' experiences and ideas, through a search not so much for God, but for that part of me which IS God, I opened my eyes to the connections between everything and everyone and drank from the universe like a hummingbird sips. I think I read over a thousand books between 2000 and 2004. I don't remember most of them, but I feel them there, somewhere in me- I was changed by every page, just a little.

I started seeking out friends again, finding new friends, and reconnecting with my best friend (T), who I've known for most of my life. I got a job as the night residence manager at the YMCA; low-paying, thankless work that involved keeping the residents (many of whom were fresh out of prison, rehab, crackhouses, that kind of thing) from killing each other, bringing in drugs, selling drugs from within the facility. I faced death-threats, abuse, all kinds of mean and nasty things, but I loved that job- I started holding informal AA/NA-type meetings at the frond desk at 3 am, listening to the families of the residents, talking people out of suicide and trying to protect the ones who were trying to get better from the predators who weren't. I learned so much about myself by talking to, and helping those people I cannot express my thankfulness for the time I spent there.

I was asked to join a band, I did. We called ourselves "Sex With Your Mother", (hey, somebody had to do it), and became a short-lived, and (I think) fondly remembered awe-inspiring joke around town. I drank a lot of coffee, wrote, talked all night with my mates, and the lovely and anarchic crowd that hangs around Ann Arbor's Fleetwood diner - got high in the basement by the ice machine, helped out around the place when it was busy, bought homeless crackheads coffe (if they behaved), helped kick out homeless crackheads (if they did not behave), and found myself happy because I was being myself. I started really enjoying life just because I was alive. I started playing my guitar on street corners all over town, not to make money (although I did, sometimes), but because I wanted to be in the world- to speak my truth, to meditate in the marketplace, without being sucked into it. I pictured my children with me, learning from what I had learned, reciprocating and being my teachers. I created in my mind the life I wanted- it didn't matter where I was, I wanted to teach my children to be happy and free, to learn and to grow without fear, and I waited. I called my kids in Utah, talked to them, and knew there were things they weren't telling me. I told them I loved them very much, and I waited.

Sometimes I saw people who used to "know" me, a few asked me what happened - and I could only smile and tell them that I fianally woke up. For the most part, they thought I had lost my mind. And I had, I had lost the mind that my parents had given me, the lies and limitations and hopelessness- it was gone.
In September 2003, (my big bangs happen in September, I guess), I got a call from DCFS in Utah that the kids had disappeared again. Mom had been busted for crystal meth, had been set up with a plan including parenting classes, substance abuse counselling, the normal regimen of programs and services to help someone cope- she packed up the kids and went underground, meth-paranoia and stupid anti-government "friends" convincing her that she was some kind of "target." I prepared for something to happen, and waited.

I didn't hear from her, or my kids, until December of 2003 when my ex (wow, so nice to say that) was arrested and the kids were taken into protective custody. I quit my job, told Anita (sweet woman) that I had to go take care of my children, came to Utah, went to court over-and-over, found a most excellent attorney, and in March 2004 received permanent custody of my children.

I told their mother that, if she wanted a divorce, she would have to do the work- I was busy taking care of the kids. We have talked a lot, gone to a LOT of therapy, my youngest sun is on ritalin, and will be for a couple more years- I see improvement in all of them, but it's slow. They're highly intelligent, artistic, kind-hearted, human beings- my oldest is going into 10th grade will be inducted into the National Honors Society this year - she's geeked. The other kids are doing well, and I just keep doing what I do, I work with them, and I am patient- not like a saint, but patient like an overwhelmed parent - I have my good days, I have my bad days, and I get ugly once in awhile, but I LOVE my job.

Mom got back on meth, got kicked out of her court-ordered recovery programs, went to rehab, got out, has been clean, took care of her court requirements, and has reasonable visitation with the children. She brought me a bullshit set of divorce papers talking about "joint custody", I told her if she wanted it that way she would need a legal team. She brought me a "corrected" set of papers granting me sole custody, and I signed them.

So, that's how I got here.

Now that you've read all this, are you sure you want the advice of somebody like me? I barely made it past my own stupidity.

It took me 37+ years of my life, and much pain to understand what the Buddha meant when he said that "Ignorance is the only true sin, all evil grows from it." Ignorance is so purely personal, that self-knowledge becomes paramount in transcending it.

One thing I have learned is that all those cliches about love that I brushed off as metaphors are not metaphors- the truth of poetry can be clear as a struck bell on a winter morning- bright, painful, joyous like the open heart that cries out the knowledge of mortality and the grace that renders death irrelevant.

These cutesie little sayings:
-Do unto others as you would do unto yourself
-Love is a verb
-The more love you give, the more love there is to give
-Happiness is not a destination, but a road
-The earth is below our feet, heaven is within us
-The voice of God is silent
-Manifestation occurrs through unbending desire tempered by infinite patience
-Truths stand unaided, lies fail all-Choose Again

These among others, are NOT metaphors, they are literal keys to small timeless quanta of enlightenment.

This mass of writing, anything I've said here, all I've learned can be squashed into John Keats' couplet:

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Today, I write from the graveside of my marriage.