 The Way Out |
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Another month has ended and another month is beginning, and I have to say thank God. Just when I thought Thanksgiving could not get any fucking crazier, my sister confirmed to me that S. has indeed married the 21-year-old. And after my sister stood there and told me after stepping out of the shower, sopping wet in her towel, looking so sorry you'd think she'd been the mastermind of the whole catastrophe, all I could do was stand there and blink. The person who told my sister, an old friend of S.'s whom she ran into at a bar, said, "Not marrying him was the best thing that ever happened to Eliza." A friend told me that she thinks he kept the crazies at bay when we were together and was his very best self, and that self was very good, but eventually the crazies came back for him and they got him. I practically crawled into the wine cellar and sloshed back about eighty glasses, got very drunk with my friend's family, and ended up sprawled on the floor of my parents' bedroom sobbing while my mom tried to pray and my dad sat rocking in his chair with his eyes closed as if willing us all back in time. Mostly I just raged and wailed and howled like an animal, after which I sent a drunken message about it to the notify list. Nice. NICE. I guess it all just needed to come out. The rage, the grief, the betrayal, the shock. I don't even know what to think or feel. I truly don't. After spiraling into that vortex of alcoholism and despair, I still stand by everything I said in this entry, but now that I know that it's true, I'm trying to process it because I know as hard as I try, I can't ignore or forget it, and resistance is futile. It doesn't change anything, but it's just more to process. I sent this email out to my friends yesterday:
There's a scene from an early season of The West Wing (back when I really loved the show) when Josh is in some trouble and Leo is telling him a story about a guy who falls down a hole, and the walls are really steep and he can't get out, and people like doctors and priests pass by and he asks them for help, and they do things like throw prescriptions and prayers down there for him, which don't do him any good, I can't remember exactly how the story goes, but then a friend passes by and jumps down into the hole with him, and the guy is like, "What are you doing? Now we're both stuck down here!" and his friend says, "But I've been down here before, and I know the way out." And it's almost like I'm jumping back into that hole with myself and saying, "Look. We've been down here before. We know the way out. We're not staying. Come on, let's go." I've been in the hole, and I'm not going back. But I know if I do, I'll know the way out, and that makes this all infinitely more bearable. Of course, last night I had horrible dreams which alternately found us in bed, fighting over cat custody, and driving down the street while I confronted him for every detail of his marriage, a nasty scene during which he told me his mother initially disapproved but eventually came around and bought each of them an apple, he revealed that her child is nine years old because she had her when she was twelve, and that they were indeed living on the Bayou, a place he always said he would rather die than end up in, and he told me the myriad reasons why he was happier with her. I woke up with a bad taste in my mouth, but I was able to kind of shrug it off, thinking, "Par. Just par!" I've been in the hole, and I'm not going back. About this time in ...
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