Tag Archives: Relationship

Dating Sucks.

Posted on by Standard 9

Recently, I went on a date. This isn’t all that newsworthy, except that I ventured a little out of my comfort zone, and went out with someone who has an upper-class career,

This is a little crass, but frankly, I totally felt this way. I'm now the slummee that Slummer's go slumming for!!!

This is a little crass, but frankly, I totally felt this way. I’m now the slummee that Slummer’s go slumming for!!!

and the pricey perks that go with it. We occasionally do business with each other from time to time, and we’ve always gotten along fine for the whopping 15 minutes we’ve been in each other’s company. Of course, when he asked me out, which I did not see coming, I suddenly lost my ability to look him in the eye, and my voice got about 709 octaves higher. I’m sure at one point, only dogs could hear me when I spoke. :-) There’s something about being right there engaged with someone who is dressed better, driving a better car, and probably didn’t even look at the prices on the menu, that made me feel poverty stricken. I suspected he didn’t want to drive the fancy car to my apartment because he didn’t want a car-jacking to spoil our evening, but the truth of the matter was, it was my idea to meet him somewhere. See what I mean? A poor guy driving a 1985 Ford Pick-Up truck that backfires every 3rd mile wouldn’t have had his motives scrutinized so carefully. I felt…. poor. And not just the regular, “no-money” poor either. Nope. Poor like “you-should-have-made-better-choices-like-me-and-everyone-I-know” kind of poor.

Note: He did NOT do this on purpose, for the record…this was all me.

I make a lot of jokes about living at The 61 ghetto of south Tulsa, but until that one dinner date, I never really felt like I could be described as “ghetto”. Compared to him, I felt like a gangsta. If I ever go on a date with someone from that side of the tracks again, I’m going to embrace my inner gansta and dress like I’m working the street corner of Peoria and 61st street. It couldn’t be worse than this was!!

Johnny, as we’ll call him here (Warbucks…lol) went out of his way to either pretend he couldn’t tell I was a nervous mess dressed in the best Target had to offer, or maybe all the dogs barking when I talked was distracting him. All I know is that when I’m nervous, I tend to make jokes and giggle nervously. Maybe that crap was cute when I was eight, but at 44.9999 years old, it’s just plain humiliating. I’m sure he was wondering how this girl he’s been seeing off and on through his office for a while now suddenly became a weirdo dog whisperer, randomly trying to hide little outbursts of nervous laughter, and hiding behind her hair like Cousin It…

What was I laughing about, you ask?

Yeah. Only poor people say stuff like this...LOL!

Yeah. Only poor people say stuff like this…LOL!

All night, I kept wondering if I was on a date with a guy who was technically “slumming it”!! I think by all measurable standards, he was!! I’m poor, living in the Slums of Tulsa, and he is not. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, only without the happy ending, if you know what I mean. Only all night, I felt like Julia would have if she’d had to wear those thigh-high boots, skanky white top, and horrible blonde wig the entire week.

I did not like my date. Poor Johnny! He was so nice, but he did NOT get my humor at all. I certainly did not tell him what I was laughing at, and there was just nothing going on that I could say was funny at all. Maybe he thought I was laughing at him!! He probably is still trying to figure out what the hell!!

It made me laugh the entire week, and not nervously either. I think I might be a little bit of a snob! I have no idea why it made me laugh that much and that long, but I’m pretty sure Johnny won’t be driving through my parking lot in a limo with flowers any time soon!

I freaking hate dating. I really do.

– Bird

Three Days in Never Never Land

Posted on by Standard 9

judgeOkay. I’d like to clarify something. Saturday, I received a call from Chef saying he had been released until Tuesday, at which time, he was to report to the VA to be entered in to rehab. For about 4 hours, I refused to answer his calls/texts. I had his wallet and telephone, so he basically had no identity and no one else’s phone numbers. :-) I found out from the hospital that he’d been released, but nothing more, and of course, I immediately assumed the worst. Finally, after hours and hours, I gave in, picked up Chef, and demanded he show me in black and white that he had not just signed himself out. When he did, I shot him a quick apology, and then lectured him on the consequences that come from lying through his teeth to me for over a year. And some of you thought Chef was lucky still have me…tsk, tsk. I’m not so sure my help is worth it to the poor guy. Everything he says or does is run through this mental “How will he hurt me this time” filter I’ve erected around me, and that is just making me feel awful.

Tonight, he and I attended a Celebrate Recovery meeting, and he gave his life to the Lord. I am happy he did this while sober, but again,wndy that B******t Filter kicked in, and I have a wait-and-see attitude. I just hate myself for that. I really do, but I’ve just seen too much when it comes to him. Still, I think God takes those prayers seriously even if the pray-er doesn’t, and I’m resting assured, God can handle His business with Chef.

What I’m learning this last few days, though, is rather humorous. First of all, the do-or-die junkie life is a whole culture unto itself. Don’t get me wrong. There are addicts on every rung of the financial ladder. I’m a firm believer that Bill Clinton did indeed inhale, probably more than once. Personally, I have mad respect for people who tell the embarrassing truth. I’d have been blown away by the guy if he’s have looked at the camera and said, “Hell, yes, I smoked a bowl!! You trying doing this job and then come back and tell me you couldn’t use a little dubage, smart-a**!!”  He, and others like him, would be what I would call high-functioning addicts. They keep jobs, are able to restrain themselves from spending the mortgage money on dope, and maintain a flimsy bit of control over the drug of their choice.

bed and breakfastI’m not talking about the high-function-ers. I’m talking about the people who move past being recreational users, sail by the drug abuse category, slip past the high-functioning crowd,  and crash-land into being completely lost in their addictions.

These lost people always make me think of a warped Peter Pan & the Lost Boys, with Bernice in the role of a deprived, evil little Tinkerbell. The little set that hail Chef as their Peter Pan are a rough little lot. None of them have jobs, yet they seem to always have a way to pay for a date with Bernice. They move about town on foot, sad little clumps of humanity, each bearing the invisible stamp that marks them as the truly addicted. Each day seems to start off with a tally of Bernice-worthy possessions to sell in order to secure a date with her. This usually entails stealing….. from each other. There really is no honor among thieves!! Invariably, a skirmish will break out between members of the Bernice Fan Club, tempers will run high, and there’s always a ton of smack talking going on. Once money has been had, next comes tracking down the dealers. This is all too easy, in my opinion. Finally, Bernice will make her appearance, and everybody becomes friends again. It’s crazy.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that each of the ones with a real address become host/hostess to a kind of whacked-out  Bed & Breakfast. Wherever the motley little group lsdrun out of steam, and Bernice, is where they crash for some long needed sleep. The first time this happened at Chef’s house, I all but came unglued. I could just see the cops raiding his house, and Chef trying to convince the law that this twitchy group of misfits were just having a sleepover at a 55-year-old man’s house. I just don’t believe any cop is going to buy that, and given the ages of some of the girls, I’m inclined to think Chef could have bigger problems than Bernice if the law stopped in for a visit. Best to avoid giving the appearance of evil, I’m thinking.

The thing that just makes me shake my head is that they will text/call/drop by for a little chat at literally any hour of the day or night. Chef’s phone had gone off all night long those first couple of nights he was in the hospital. When I finally couldn’t t stand to hear that stupid Sons of Anarchy ringtone reminder go off, I got up and checked the phone, figuring there had to be an emergency or something for someone to be so very persistent. But, no.  Without fail, they all were the dumbest reasons to be texting someone at 3am. “Are you awake?”, “You up?”, “I’m at your house. You in there?” and my personal favorite, “This is Tiff. Remember me? Are you still going to buy me a new tire?” The first three I texted back, “No.” but the last one I just ignored. The next morning, Tire Tiffany, started calling and calling Chef’s phone at the un-Godly hour of 6 am and every 10 minutes again after that. Finally, I answered, grumpy from being woke up by Chef’s Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black ringtone. There’s no need to go into a lot of detail. Let’s just say, Tire Tiffany understands now that she won’t be getting a new tire from Chef and there are polite times to call  people and times that frankly, are dangerous to a person’s health, and should be avoided unless it is a dire emergency like bleeding from your eyes. I voiced my curiosity that Chef had promised to buy a tire for some random chick whose phone number he didn’t even have programmed in his cell or may have reason to not even remember of her existence.  But, as a member of Chef’s Lost Boy’s, Tire Tiffany didn’t seem to think this was odd at all. She’d given him a ride once, and he’d promised to buy her a new tire. I cancelled the verbal contract, and sent old Tire Tiffany on her way. Still,  I find it kind of sad.

I know that I’m sounding snobby, but that isn’t what I feel for these people at all. I know they are of equal value to God as much as anyone else. But given that I feel I’m engaged in a battle for Chef’s life, these people are his enemies, and I have to treat them a bit harshly at times in order to make my point clear — Chef isn’t going to be your Peter Pan much longer. If Chef should emerge from rehab and pick up where he left off, then I’ll dust my feet and walk away. But he will have this one chance.

I just wanted everyone to know what the circumstances were that made him leave, and what I’m learning about this weird drug sub-culture. I appreciate all the support we are receiving from you guys, and hopefully we’ll have even better news pretty soon!!

– Bird

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All Talking Donkeys Aren’t Messengers From God

Posted on by Standard 10

Occasionally, I’ll look at the dashboard of this site, and one or more of the search terms will catch my eye. Mostly, even after the hellacious year I’ve had, the search terms that are the most likely to drive traffic here are “three boobs”, “motorcycle gangs”, and my personal favorite, “nipple shirts”.

Let’s face it.

Three Boobs and Nipple Shirts are subjects that aren’t really good foundations for a serious conversation about life. It’s just appalling to me that men wear shirts that showshrek and donkey their nipples. Ugh. I’d like that to stop immediately.

“Motorcycle Gangs” is more interesting, but again, I doubt I have much to contribute to that subject anymore.

Ahhh, but today, I found one in my little collection that made me stop and say “hmmm”. The term was this;

meth spiritual enhancement

So, to the person who typed in this awesome search term, this post is dedicated to you.

In my quest to understand what Chef was going through, I studied everything I could find about this creepy drug. What I found out could fill up volumes, but for this discussion, I’ll boil down some things I understand about the drug that I believe should be considered directly in connection with spiritual enhancement, or any kind of enhancement, for that matter….physical, academic, cultural, etc.

Bird Fact #1: Enhancements when you are high are only Huge Brain Farts when you sober up again.

To my understanding, the drug affects the pleasure center of your brain. This magnificent computer we carry around inside of our skulls works like a file cabinet, storing stop dudeand categorizing things constantly. If a memory makes you happy, it tends to store that memory close by for future quick reference. If some memory makes you sad, it gathers that clutter up, and safely keeps moving it back into the recesses of your brain, out of reach of accidently being hurt by it. It’s the same for things that give us pleasure. Those things that give us pleasure are  stored safely within reach in our pleasure centers of our brains.

That being said, I do wonder if people actually stop and really examine what we each have stored there. Meth is an excellent way to find out, except who really needs to know that badly? The bad side of this drug greatly outweighs the good, so no, I’m not saying you should try it even once so you know what really makes you happy. Figure it out..You’re smarter than that!!

Bird Fact #2: Don’t be an idiot and try this drug because you want to know what really makes you flush with happiness. You might not like the answer, and you can’t unlearn what you already know. Frankly, neither can anyone else who finds out either.

If singing show-tunes on top of your roof in your birthday suit for the entire world to see is something that you derive real pleasure from, chances are this drug will enhance that desire in you, and your filter which considers consequences of such an action will be bypassed. You’ll dance, sing and traumatize the neighbors to your heart’s content, and you’ll feel good about it…

“I finally get to be me!”  you’ll be assuring yourself.

wrong if it feels good

Wanna Bet?

And then,  your filter comes slowly back to life again as you sober up, and you find yourself  in jail for public nudity, dressed in a discarded moomoo that smells like someone died in it, holding an eviction notice in your hand. To make matters worse, your best friend not only recorded your spectacular plummet from respectability, but then uploaded your shameful experience onto YouTube, and the creepy perv down the street that no one makes eye-contact with, has baked you a cake with a shank in it. Suddenly, the problems you were trying to escape from in the first place don’t seem as bad as the ones you’ve just created during your “mental vacation”.

See how that works? If God, spirituality, religion, or some such thing is something you get pleasure from, you bet your booties, it’ll come up when you are high. I know, because when I used this drug, God was foremost in my thoughts and actions. And yet, even in my intoxicated state, while I felt like God appreciates all the publicity He can get, my conscience kicked in at the same time, imploring me to wait until I was sober before launching into whatever ridiculous thing I was poised to do for Him, like what I’d learned about Him while I was high. I’m pretty sure He’s grateful I didn’t try to “help” the cause during those moments.

It is my opinion that most people, especially men, tend to have sex in their pleasure centers, and women tend to have love in theirs. Meth is considered a sex enhancement drug, but it didn’t work that way for me at all. Because of my complicated relationship with sex, it didn’t actually take up residence in the pleasure center of my brain; but love did. As long as Chef made me feel like he loved me…high or not…I was on board with the sex thing. But if he didn’t, he was on his own. Meth is a very selfish drug. Right there, you can almost see why this crappy drug ruins marriages. One person wants to feel loved; the other wants pure, animal sex. And for most people, there is the ability to love someone without having sex with them, and to have sex with someone you don’t love.

Hence, breakdowns occur.

Bird Fact #3: I’d always be very careful about anything that you “learn” on meth, or any drug. Without that consequence filter, we are susceptible to accepting lies, and turning them into truths in our own minds, which invariably leads to being slapped on the side of the head with our “Oh-Crap!-What-Have-I-Done” brain-gag reflex instead.

Can you learn spiritual truths when you’re high? Sure. You can probably learn anything on dope if it’s important enough to you.

Once upon a time, God made a donkey talk but just because you see the Donkey from Shrek  jabbering at you while you’re high, it doesn’t mean you actually a) saw a donkey physically speaking to you or b) that you’re a character on the next Shrek, or that c) all donkeys secretly know how to talk and are laughing silently at us clueless humans, or even that d)  God had something special to tell you from this lively donkey. It just means you burned your brain a tad too much, and you’ve hallucinated a fake donkey singing a Tina Turner song  to you.

My advice: Render that little nugget of experience to the mental trash can it probably deserves to be in.

If it was so important that God get a message to you that He’d use a donkey  or even more unbelievable, a Tina Turner song, He’d have probably waited until you were sober and there could be no question it was a miracle of God instead a miracle of Dope.

We all look for reasons to excuse something we’re doing that we know we are wrong to do, by finding something positive enough to justify it to others, and mainly ourselves. I’ve found that the “I’m spiritually awakened” excuse is pretty common amongst those of us that tend to like to have a little chemical uplifting from time to time, and frankly, it’s a pathetic one.

Here’s life choices in a nutshell — you don’t owe anyone a reason or excuse for what you do or want to do; but by the same token, you’re the one stuck with the consequences, so don’t be surprised when you’re eating a bucket-full of guilt, shame, and general self-loathing. Own your crap, pay your dues, learn from it, and start a blog or something. Most importantly, forgive yourself and move on.  Don’t waste a whole lot of time on coming up with an acceptable reason or excuse that people will buy. Nobody really cares about that but you anyways.

I’ll leave you guys with one more observation that I’m pretty sure everyone can identify with.

learnBy a show of hands, how many of us know at least one old hippie-wanna-be who’s burned out his/her brain so much, we roll our eyes when they head down Enlightenment Lane?

Yeah. That’s what I thought… :-)

Don’t be that person. Find your enlightenment and spirituality with a full set of brain cells working. That way, you’ll be prepared to defend your opinions and views, and not have people rolling their eyes as you walk away, telling their little children to stay away from you because you think you’re Shrek or something. I’m just saying…

Hope all the mothers had a wonderful Mother’s Day! Especially you, Diane! I love you!

– Bird

PS: I want to wish DJ, my son, a Happy Birthday! You’re my favorite son, little man! I love you!

Goodbye, My Favorite Human.

Posted on by Standard 13

According to my journals, Chef’s official Midlife Crisis started on 10/16/2011. Well, actually, that is just when I became aware of it. From one minute to the next, I never images (1)knew what to expect from this person that I’d practically shared my entire adult life with. He’d be normal, and then quickly cold, withdrawn, reserved. I’d try to talk to him, and would be quickly silenced. I’d do things for him, and yet he’d hardly seem to notice, much less care. Where once we were inseparable, I’d find myself alone a lot, always sad or disappointed, or scared. When I found out why the personality had changed so quickly, I was foolishly not as concerned as I probably should have been. My entire family has grappled with addictions, me included, and while Chef & I had seemed to escape this lifestyle for decades, the naive part of me thought this would be temporary, and quickly addressed and fixed. Hmm. Seems I was wrong.

It’s been a whole year and a half since this ugly period of my life first raised its ugly head, and I’m sitting here in the tiny apartment that I love, marveling at how slowly time seemed to crawl by back then, and how quickly it had sped up to get me here.

As I mentioned before, T left Chef. Chef had been basically playing both ends towards the middle. He was constantly calling me/coming over, always full of promises of fixing things with me. He would go on long rants about how I was the mother of his children, his soul-mate, his best friend, and most importantly, his wife. On the other side, he was telling T that he’d been looking for love in all the wrong places, that he’d stayed with me for the children, that she was his best friend, his soul mate, and someday, would be his wife. I’m a girl. I can see how T would fall into this. Chef is convincing, especially if you don’t know him very well. But, as his problem with drugs increased, and his behavior became more and more erratic, she finally had to concede that I was indeed right — Chef wasn’t being truthful. Unlike me, T would dig for the truth quietly, unobtrusively, and frankly, she showed an amount of self-discipline that is kind of impressive to me. The first time I found a Love-Text from her on Chef’s phone at 5:30am one morning, a few months before I left, I woke Chef up by beating him in the head with his phone. :-) See? I didn’t decide to keep it to myself for awhile, to gather more evidence, and to confront him when there were no ways to wiggle out of it. I went for the jugular immediately.

imagesI dealt with a ton of emotions all along the way, and I’m still a bit unsteady some times. For the most part, I’m kind of over all of this. After T left him, and we confronted him together with our Notes of Comparison, I was able to accept that it was over. I watched this exhausted, stressed, frantic man try to baffle us both with b***s***, and a part of me felt relieved. Even completely healthy, this guy has been no picnic. I always felt, and still do, that back then, he was worth it. But, as I wrote about in Old Roy Dog Food, this disease had taken so much away from him, there just wasn’t enough bang for my buck, if you know what I mean. As each promise was broken, and each lie surfaced, a little bit of what I had always really loved about this human being would wither and die. And one day, the bad outweighed the good, and I was less likely to be broadsided with sadness at how all this had turned out. Instead, I had times I actually felt a little guilty. Because of his lack of addressing some health problems, he is sicker than he should be at this stage of the game. He already is needing some help physically, and I’m pretty sure, it is going to go downhill from here. I hope for the best, but I can’t say that I’m all that optimistic. What a stubborn man!! I can see God‘s hand in all of this, trying to get this man to look up, and even when he’s been told this by so many people in his life, he stubbornly refuses. And that is his right as a human being.

I wrote that we were supposed to start marriage counseling next week. Let me clarify, as I got some panicked comments. I have probably no faith whatsoever that our marriage has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever being resurrected from the dead. I am not simple or stupid. Nor am I a glutton for punishment, and I truly get nauseated at the thought of having to make myself somehow trust someone who pretty much callously tossed the trust it took me years to develop for him, aside like so much trash. I wanted to believe that our relationship had been real all these 20+ years, and in a way, I have that. Sober, he was a decent husband. Flawed, but then who isn’t? I can be a nightmare myself with my trust issues, hyper-vigilance, insomnia, and bouts of depression. He didn’t marry Mary Tyler Moore. But we worked hard, made a good life for ourselves and our children, and we all laughed a lot. The drug changed everything, as it will do, but it didn’t render my life before worthless. If anything, it put the past on a pedestal, and that is what almost crushed me. Remembering and longing for, and weeping over, the beautiful, beautiful past. Only the past had it’s own issues, and in the light of day, it didn’t have that angelic gleam. Our marriage had survived for so long because we were both willing to work really hard to keep it going. But when Chef bowed out, and I had finally quit trying to carry  it along on my own back, it died. And just because I wouldn’t let go, or he wouldn’t go away, it wasn’t any less dead. I think God knew that, and He was very patient with me as I came to understand that if He, Almighty Author of the Universe, Creator of Mankind,  won’t fiddle with man’s free will, I’m certainly not going to be able to either. It blows. But God isn’t a liar, and these are the rules. Love isn’t love if you don’t have a choice to not love. I didn’t want Chef to come back to me out of necessity. I wanted him to miss me, and to come back because he realized he loved me. That just never did happen.

Everything this last year and a half spun in the gravity of Chef’s choices, and while we are each dealing with our wounds — Chef, T, me, the kids, friends, etc. …. There really is no way to un-ring the bell. I won’t venture to say what Chef has learned about me through all of this. I’ve been one pissed off, angry, somewhat vengeful, hurt wife. But I know something about him now. I know what he is capable of saying about me, behind my back to people I consider my friends. I know what he is capable of doing to me when he is crossed. I know how cold those eyes can be when they watch me cry. I know how easily lies form in his heart, and how quickly they become truth to his mind.

 I know.

I just know too much, and while I sometimes like to see him when he’s sobered up, and he’s singing as he’s working on his wood projects, or see the occasional remembermischievousness that lights up his pretty brown eyes as he tells me a story he remembers from years ago, and hear him laugh at something I’ve said, there is a wall around my heart that doesn’t let him too near me. He had the keys to that heart, and he threw them away. They aren’t so easily given again, especially to the person who didn’t treasure them in the first place. He was my very favorite human on the earth. Now, he is too dangerous to my own self-image, my self-worth, and my self-esteem to be trusted. He’s been ousted, and no matter how much counseling I have with him, I don’t see myself trusting him again, ever. He hurt me. I don’t want to be hurt by him again.

I see Chef as very, very sick right now. On a spiritual level, he wouldn’t fall on the Rock and break, and so the Rock is crushing him. It’s horrible to watch, and painful to feel that bond between us severed. But the kind of person I’ve always been is not going to let this person die unloved, unwanted, and completely utterly alone. I can’t imagine how horrible and hopeless that must feel, nor do I ever want to. Until Chef’s dying breath, he’ll at least know he has one person who gives a rat’s butt whether he is alive or dead, and that person will be me. I most likely will not be his wife…but I will be his friend, even if he hasn’t been a very good friend back. And that’s okay.

The counseling sessions may or may not happen. Chef begged for an opportunity to have a mediator referee an honest, open dialogue between us. We don’t get very deep into anything constructive before one or both of us draws blood on the other. I’m hurt by him “falling in love” with someone else. He’s ….who knows? Angry. Pissed. Humiliated. Selfish. I’m really only guessing. My instincts believe that he takes out how he feels about himself on me, but I have no real proof of this. Either way, I have enough to address that I’m responsible for. I can’t shoulder his, too.  But I desire with all of my heart to communicate to him just how much this has cost me, how much I really loved our lives together before the drugs, and how thankful I am that I had so long with him before this all came crashing down. And I want to hear what was going through his mind that made me suddenly undesirable as his partner. I’m afraid to hear it, but I just need to know. And I think counseling would help us there. It would be some kind of closure for me.

So, that all being said, no, I’m not high on pot! I’m not flip-flopping around. I’m content that things are the way they are for a reason, and I hope God kicks satan right in the teeth with Chef, with me, and with T. In the meantime, I’ll just keep taking each day as it comes. Thank you for your concern, though. I really do appreciate it!

– Bird

As With Everything in Life, Things Begin to Wind Down

Posted on by Standard 22

The last few weeks have been confusing for me. Even though I really wanted to, I chose not to write about the events until I was sure I understood what it all meant to me. imagesToday, though some things are  still up in the air, I seem to have a firm grasp on what I think about this last dramatic year.

Chef’s girlfriend, T, left him a week ago. They had been in a relationship with each other not quite a year. The overlap with my marriage was about four months.

As women tend to do, the girlfriend and I did compare notes, and T was able to answer a lot of the questions that had burned themselves into my soul, and while they still caused some pain, the truth has laid them to rest for me. No more fevered-brain stories I’d spin for myself deep in sleepless nights, all because I just didn’t know for sure. Did he ever love me? Does he despise me? Did he cheat with her for years and I was too stupid to notice? I’m sure every person who’s ever experienced this has pondered sadly and fearfully some of the same ones.

But when I was able to ask T, and she was able to ask me about my perspective, a lot of those questions just evaporated. I knew I was hearing the truth, and that truth had set me free.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t secretly (and sometimes, not so secretly)  hope they weren’t very happy from the minute they moved in together. I was so freaked out in the beginning of this mess, I’d have thrown a party to celebrate every single tear they shed. I felt so miserable, and it seemed from my vantage point, that they were peacefully playing house and flippantly unconcerned about how me or the kids, or our friends, and even our pets felt about any of it.

Betrayed, I tortured myself with hope, despaired over every good and bad memory, and let my imagination envision them happily building their new life together, unencumbered by their pasts and confident in their future together. Dreams of them having babies, dancing slowly to music I loved, or just snuggling on the couch watching a movie would dance mercilessly through my mind, and a lot of my tears were shed over those vain imaginations as well. I won’t even go there about thoughts of them in the bedroom! The whole situation was just horrible… I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, even Chef.

My imagination can be my very worst enemy in situations like these, and I tended to work diligently to find out the truth about this affair, just to dispel the myths I knew I would come up with if I was left to my own conclusions. The problem was, I changed their dynamic with each other whenever I was around, so I knew that my presence was “tainting” the evidence. I’d try to feel out Chef whenever I could, but as usual, Chef pretty much only told me what he thought I would want him to say, and not the actual truth.

If he was mad at me, he’d sing T’s praises, and rub his happiness in my face, dropping out key words to barb me with like love, companionship, and comparing her to me.

If he was feeling sentimental about me, the opposite was true. He’d find ways to paint a picture of himself stuck, martyr-like and full of regret, in a hopeless situation he’d accidentally launched us all into. Here he was, longing for the beautiful wife of his youth, who had been torn away from him by the demon drug and a midlife crisis.

Yet, in an act of penance,  he’d live the rest of his life with this new girl, knowing he was caged in by his mistakes, but ultimately not able to extricate himself from the situation because T would be unable to care for herself. He’d be responsible for ruining her life as well, he’d lament, and after ruining mine, he couldn’t do that again to another human being.

Basically, I heard: “I want my cake, and I want to eat it too.”

Also, “Womp, womp womp. Poor me. Womp, womp, womp. Not my fault. Womp, womp.”

You can trust me when I say this: whatever, dude. I was born at night, but it wasn’t yesterday night!

I wasn’t fooled by these kinds of statements, though I have to admit that in his condition these days, Chef might have actually convinced himself this was indeed the case. His timeline is completely ludicrous, his memory very faulty, and his lies too many. Even he has admitted now that he just can’t remember how all of this came to happen. His lies had been told enough times, however, that they were beginning to become the truth as he knew it. And maybe if I hadn’t been writing about all of this both on-line, and in my journals, he might have lapsed happily in those revisions. I wouldn’t let him, though, dragging out journals, and pulling up posts feverishly at every turn, because his revisions always make me or to a limited degree, T the ones that caused this mess, and allow him to hide from his own conscience. I don’t want to be his fall guy..not for something this crappy. Everyone sucked all the way through this experience…Chef, T, and me. I’ve got my own sack of garbage to carry around. Don’t pile yours on me, as well.

Though it was easy to get lost in the fear and humiliation, I was smart enough, even from the beginning,  to know that every thing that goes around, comes around again. Still,  I worried they’d be the exception.

I’d always heard “men don’t leave their wives for their mistresses”. Mmmm, mine did.

I’d heard that the other woman is the rock that men throw away the wives that are diamonds for. Mmmm, T was pretty much a diamond herself. Yes, she cheated with a married man, and she took the occasional pot shot at me. But, I have to admit, she really hasn’t been all that easy to really, truly despise. I’ll go more into T in another post. I don’t want this one to be as long as Gone With The Wind.

From the very day I moved out of the house up until a week ago, Chef was reluctant to let me go. The main reason I struggled so hard letting him go was because he would say or do something that would melt my anger away, and when I’m not really pissed at him, all my defenses droop like dead flowers. Decades of living with each other had taught both of us how to effectively get what we wanted out of each other. Well, let’s say it did for awhile, that is. Even though we saw each other rather disconcertingly regularly for separated people with no minor kids, we were both changing subtly, and somewhere along the way, words or actions that were guaranteed to work in reaching the heart of the other person, just didn’t work at all anymore. Reactions, especially from me, could be different from minute to minute, and I can say on my part, even I had no clue what something said might trigger in me. For a guy who’d become a professional at NOT looking deeply inside of himself, that made this whole thing unstable and explosive, and probably easy to pin on the psycho wife.

I’ve pondered a lot of stuff, and there’s just too much to write about in one post.