Recovering From Mistakes
This is not what I intended to write.
Really, it’s not, though I’d imagine my ex-wife will think I planned it just for her. I didn’t, but, then, she always was a paranoid narcissist. And, I know I’ve been writing about her a lot lately, all I can say is that I hope it’s because I feel detached enough from her that I can let that part of my past go and out. Anyway, a recent post on another blog sort of hit me where I live, though not for the reasons one might think. You see, my ex-wife left me twice. The last time, thankfully, for good, but the first time was years ago, before she was my wife.
I was living in Chicago at the time, in a suburb named Mount Prospect. She and I had been involved, in the Bibilcal sense, for a little over a year. She’d left her second husband, though not divorced him, and was lonely. I had obligations to my Masonic Lodge that predated her by several years. In fact, I was in position for a fairly rare opportunity to lead the Lodge, as Master, for a year at a very young age. She, however, wanted me to drop everything and move down to Texas for her. Obviously, being who I am, I told her I couldn’t do that and, if what we had meant anything, she could wait another year. After all, I figured it would be for a lifetime once I got there. What happened next should have been a red flag to me.
She started getting extra friendly with a guy from work. She and her daughter went to the beach with him and his daughter. They ate lunch together and more. It didn’t take long for the bells and whistles to go off for me. I asked her to stop seeing him and she gave me the old line about needing to get out and have friends. Friends, sure, but this guy was after a whole lot more than that and I told her so. She told me that I was just being controlling and jealous. That escalated until, finally, I was given the boot because I just was holding on “too tightly” and being “too controlling and jealous”. Before we were done, I told her exactly what he was after and how he’d get it. I knew because, in college, I’d seen or tried to do the same thing.
Fast forward about six weeks. I’ve become the Master of my Lodge and I’m already swamped with work. Pile on all the changes that were going on at my job, which made me the head network and support “go to” guy and I hardly had time to eat, much less check phone messages or e-mail. One Saturday night, I go over to my parents to eat and do laundry, as I often did. Since I was single and had nothing better to do, I stayed later than I intended and was too tired to check e-mail when I got home. So, I let it go until the morning. I don’t know how many e-mails I had from my ex-wife, but, let’s just say, more than one. And, since this was back in the days when everyone still used modems, when I got done checking e-mail, I had phone messages waiting for me. Again, more than one. More than one tear-soaked, blubbering, snot-bubble-blowing, barely coherent phone message, begging me to take her back. Oh, the litany of how I’d been right and how she’d been wrong was long and flowery and moving. And, like the fool I was, I took her back.
Later, I found out she’d left this “prize” because he’d been with prostitutes, was a self-confessed pedophile and had allegedly forced himself on her sexually. I often wonder if she’d have come back to me if he’d been less messed up. Would it have been such a mistake on her part? Or, would I have been, as I am to her now, Satan incarnate. See, the irony is, not long after she was promising to love me forever and do anything to make the relationship work, she was also telling me that she wasn’t comfortable with seeing me right away, either. She was wrong, she claimed, but she had to put limits and restrictions on our relationship so that it was “safe” for her. Yeah, that was red flag number two.
But, no, I still turned a blind eye to that and we met in San Francisco during the Folsom Street Fair to “make up”. And, so we did. Now, flash forward to this time last year, when that all played out again, the only way it could have. Only this time, if she comes back, I’m calling the police to have her removed from my property.
I try not to think too much about what my life would be like if I’d only held firm back in the Summer of ’97 . But, I do still wonder sometimes. Would I be happier than I am? Would I be better off? Well, maybe I would and maybe not. I’d like to say that I’m older and wiser now, but, mainly, I’m just older and not wise at all. I get like that at this time of year. The new year is approaching and so is my birthday. I find myself looking at where I am and how I got here. It’s never where I thought I’d be and the path is never the one I would have chosen, but I keep plodding on.
What else is there to do?
