I had gotten tired of her constant complaining about him. I had tried my best to be sympathetic (or at least act that way) for about a month. I'd been through the ringer myself, and she was helping me to recover and dig myself out of my hole. But as I got better, I watched her get worse. If I can recover, why can't she? It had been almost two months since Crawford had broken up with her. But they were still under the same roof, so she couldn't really move on. She had a hard time with acceptance. She wanted him to just stop what (she thought) he was doing (indulging in his sex addiction with not-her). "He's in the disease," she said. "If only I can just make him see it!" It was painful for her to be so in love him and be around him but be rejected at every turn and told that it was her, not him (and refusing to believe that). "How can he do this to me? He was so in love with me! I know he loves me. And then he tells me that, as far back as 6 months ago, he didn't even like me and stopped wanting to be around me? But he was telling me he loved me all that time...so which is it? What am I supposed to believe? I just need to make him see it -- he's in the disease."
He left to go camping one week and she had me over almost every night before he got back. We smoked cigarettes in the backyard (I don't even smoke) and ate Mexican food over candelight and incense and talked about our respective problems with (her = man, me = men).
As for me, I was done with them. The last guy I had been with had told me, four days after we'd had sex, (paraphrased) "Oh, yeah, I've had genital herpes for 22 years, got it when I was 18, and, sorry for not telling you, but I didn't know we were gonna have sex." Wtf? ¡Híjole! One huge difference between Margaret and me: I do see my part in it. Sterling was the 27th guy I'd "been with" in some form or another in the two years after my marriage, so it was bound to happen at some point, the way I go about things. Funny me...I trust them all so openly, always thinking this one will be different...maybe this one's The One. Fuck, it's an understatement to say that I'm lucky it wasn't AIDS. Then I'd have to go around and talk to kids in high schools about abstinence for the rest of my shortened life. Jesus, thank you God.
Actually, I met a woman with AIDS the other night, at a meeting, as fate (or God, as I like to believe) would have it. Before I got to know her, or that she had AIDS, I had been called to the podium to be the first of the meeting's 3-minute general sharers. I let everyone know about Margaret and discussed how important it is that we all "stick together and hang together, or else most of us will finally die alone" (guilt). Mary, who was to be the main speaker after intermission, was sitting in the front row and listening while I shared. Later she stopped me and spoke to me at the break. She held my hands in hers and pulled me close and looked deep into my eyes with all the earnestness at her command. She described her "white light experience" and told me what she felt on the other side of the tunnel during her brief visit. She said she felt the greatest love, warmth and comfort that one can't even imagine. After that experience, she knew (to believe: to have confidence or faith in the truth in) that if someone is suffering, as Margaret was, God allows that person to come home to Him to experience that Infinite Happiness and Abundant Love. Later, when she spoke to the group, she informed us all that she had contracted AIDS 23 years ago from an artificial insemination. But she was alive, she felt, because her work here wasn't done. She was probably the most spiritual person I've met yet, and, meeting her the day I after I found out about Margaret's suicide is what I like to call a "God shot".
I didn't believe in heaven until Margaret's suicide, but now I see why people invented it. (Ha -- okay, so, former-long-time-atheist-turned-spiritual-gone-Christian still holds on to some of her old ideas...and strives for spiritual progress, not perfection.) Believing in God and heaven doesn't remove the pain from my chest, but it does give me peace and acceptance. And the pain goes away a little more each day. And sometimes the guilt does come back, but then I have to remember, again, that I've chosen to concede that I'm powerless and to believe that it was God's will to both bring Margaret into my life as well as to take her out of it. So even if I had been there for her more during that last week-and-a-half, it might have done nothing, or delayed the inevitable, or kept her alive and suffering longer, or saved her life, shit...but see, none of those scenarios are what was, or is. What is, is, and is God's will (I do believe...I just have to remind myself of that, oh, throughout the day, every day).
Margaret's suicide doesn't, spiritually and mentally, bother me as much any more. I wish I could say the same for the people who are left (lol). When people found out that I'd been with her for awhile towards the end, they'd ask me why and how and where she did it. The "how" hasn't been released, although I suspect pills might have been the instrument. As for the "where" -- she was found in her backyard (as, similarly, her fiancé from two years prior had been found). The "why" of her suicide is, contrastingly, ultimately unknowable, since Margaret was Margaret and no one else was in her body (unless you believe in the Devil, perhaps). There're the childhood molests, the estranged family, the divorce, the not ever having kids, the deceased fiancé, this break-up, the abandonment by friends, the lack of faith or hope and presence of despair and pain, etc. I do know that she was suffering, and from the looks of things, was just "done" with the whole life thing. But...there is something that sticks with me as one of the more...moldy...layers of the onion.
Disclaimer: I haven't shared the following with any one. I'm glad I change peoples names and use a "pen" name for myself on this blog. (Oh, and about the pen name, here's the quick aside on that: #1 once asked me, when we were about to watch some porn, "So, what's your porn name?" I was like, "What?!" and before I could inform him that I wasn't in porn, he informed me, "Yeah, you know; you take the name of your first pet as your first name, and the name of the street you grew up on as your last name. Wha-la, porn name." Uh-hyuck).
Margaret told me on more than one occasion that she'd wanted to make Crawford suffer, to feel the pain that she was feeling, to make him see. She told me she wanted to throw his belongings into the driveway and burn them, and I talked her out of it. She said she wanted to snoop through his truck for "evidence", and I talked her out of it. She texted the suspected woman over and over, trying to "sabotage" him, until I told her she oughta stop. I was actually with her while she searched frantically through his camping gear in the garage after he'd gotten back from the camping trip to see if there was an extra sleeping bag or panties or any other evidence of another woman. I remember thinking, "Fuck, poor thing. She's goin' nuts." And I couldn't do a goddamn thing for her.
But she sure helped me. Margaret may have taken her life, but I will always maintain that, in a way, she saved mine. I wouldn't be where I'm at today - on this 1+ month of "no men" - if it weren't for her. We sat on her couch and she gave me little assignments to do, like, she had me write about my "sexploits" and read them to her so we could find a pattern. A week later, I had written about the first seven. But...when I went over them with her on her couch, she stopped me before I got to #3.
"Why are you laughing?" she asked.
I stammered, taken off guard, still chuckling a little, "Oh...uh...I dunno...".
"Stop. Don't you see? It's not funny."
"Oh, well, I know, but...".
"Adora, are you proud of what you've done? Do you think this is a game?" Her eyes were huge and serious. She didn't blink, once.
I looked down. I just wanted her to like me. "Well no, I just..."
"Then why are you laughing? You should be crying. I want to see you cry." Fuck, I felt like crying, then. She could see it in my face. "See? Okay, I want you to do this whole thing over. Next time, I want to see tears." This coming from a woman who had said before that she couldn't cry, didn't know why, and might go off her anti-depressants so that maybe she could.
"Okay. Sorry. I will."
For me, I guess it's just easier to look at it all with a sense of humor. Really, when I look back, I do laugh.
Here, for example, is #2:
I had heard about a $300 karaoke contest being held at one of my favorite restaurants, the Acapulco. So impulsively, I drove 30 miles to go enter and give it a shot. I had been pretty depressed, having had a restraining order set against me by my husband, whom I'd left a month-and-a-half prior for #1, and I wasn't able to see my little boy (more on that in a future post). I was in a lot of pain. Karaoke would help get my mind off it for awhile. Better than screaming and crying on the floor for another night.
But I got there too early. Nothing had started yet. So, I went to the brewery across the parking lot to have a honey ale to "loosen up". I took my time with it to savor the taste, and it seemed to do the trick. When I got back to the Acapulco, the karaoke still hadn't started, so...well, I'd all ready gotten the ball rolling. Here's how it rolled:
I sit down at the bar. I feel guilty for sitting at the bar and not buying a drink. I get myself a margarita, double, with Patron Añejo. A table of Mexican guys start talking to me. Angel (okay, that's another name I just can't bring myself to change) comes and sits down next to me and asks to buy me a drink. I accept with only slight hesitation. We show each other pictures of our kids on our phones and complain about our custody battles. We get drunk. I bomb my Adele song. I go to the bathroom and hide for 30 minutes and contemplate jumping out through the window to escape. I go back out and he's still waiting for me outside the door. The DJ starts DJ-ing. We salsa til my legs feel like they're gonna fall off. I say I need to go "charge my cell phone" and "will be right back". He follows me to my car. He says he needs to charge his phone and asks me to come to his car. I do. We get in. After some conversation, he kisses me. He tells me how beautiful I am. He says he wants to "make love" to me. I let him, but I can't wait til it's over. When it's over, I tell him I have a boyfriend. He (shocked but forgiving) asks me for my number. I give it to him. He lets me go. I go, drunk (shocked and devastated and full of self pity) through the In-N-Out drive-thru for a burger. I sob in my car in the parking lot in between sober-me-up bites.
Um...see? Fuckin' hilarious.
Damn.
But, "Resentment is the number one offender. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease. It kills more [people] than anything else." I've heard that plenty of times in recovery, and I understand why I need to not resent people, situations, things that happen, myself - anything. I know I need to turn my resentments into compassion -- especially my resentments against myself.
Here are some more:
"Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today."
"All of my problems are of my own making." (I guess that wouldn't apply to something like, I dunno, cancer, but for the most part, it's true.)
"If I have a problem with any one else, the problem is really with me."
"God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
Some people who "knew" Margaret say that she used a "permanent solution to a temporary problem". Well, shit -- if it gets that bad, where life is the problem, then hell, I just don't even know. I like to think nothing's that bad, but maybe that's because I tend to be unaware, by choice. Until now, anyway. Now that I'm writing about all this shit, and yeah, realizing that no, it's not really that funny...I can see how people could just get so bent out of shape over it all and just wanna be done with the whole damn thing. So I'm glad I have my son to live for (I do have him on weekends now) and I have 12-step meetings for four different recovery programs, lol. And I have God. My belief in a power greater than myself means I don't have to understand everything, but it does mean I have to realize my powerlessness over many things, and accept those things as they are and be at peace with them. God is either everything, or else He is nothing. And all the things I've done, I don't even need to blame myself for, because it's all part of God's plan for me.
"Religion is for those of us who are afraid of Hell. Spirituality is for those of us who have been there."
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