Pleasant melancholy and the Black Pit of Despair:

Pleasant melancholy and the Black Pit of Despair - Part II: The road has no signs

For Part I, go here.

Wine this evening instead of Scotch. As an alternative to the hints of peat and the sea my palate is reveling the tang of friuts. Yesterevening the last bottle of the Best Scotch in the World was opened at my favorite bar, and we celebrated by having at least three glasses each. Opening that last bottle brought to mind endings. Friendships, jobs, relationships, lives, everything has an ending, and as with endings, everything has a beginning. The wine this evening is from Washington state, reminding me of my good friend there who I visit and go wine touring with. Thoughts of her overlay my pleasant melancholy with a wisp of wistfulness like a weightlessly translucent silk scarf. "Slit Skirts" by Pete Townshend is playing and the minor key and pensive lyrics match the mood as I swirl the wine over my tongue.

Melancholy can arise not only from our choices but also from circumstances where there was no choice, just an outcome. It is said, "Timing is everything," and the random fate of when a new person is met can present chimerical possibilities that although never truly existing can tantalize just the same.

Timing is everything. I met Stacey on a group ski trip, shortly after my heart had been well and truly broken (not from my divorce in 1997, but years later in 2000). She was at a cusp in her life, where she was deciding whether to pursue a long-standing and deep but uneasy relationship with a man who lived 1500 miles away, or to explore a romance developing where she lived. Stacey and I connected immediately, our thoughts followed similar paths, and I was one of the few people she could discuss her work with who could immediately understand and make insightful suggestions. She is the most intelligent woman I have ever met. In her stress of making a critical life changing decision she recognized the extent of my heartbreak and saw a kindred spirit. Unfortunately, the timing wasn't right. She lived 1500 miles away from me as well as from her old flame, and her new romance was firmly established. I still visit her every year to stock up on fine Washington wine bought on our wine tours.

Timing is everything. When I met Ayla, the woman I married, it was back when we were both starting college, and only one person had ever told me they loved me. That person was not my parents, who both came from hard lives where sentiments were never expressed. I know (and knew then) my parents loved me, but it was never spoken aloud. There had been much drama surrounding the first person who ever told me she loved me, and part of the residue from that disaster was an abiding mistrust of the words “I love you” coupled with a need to hear those very words, a need the depth of which I had never plumbed and did not remotely fathom.

When Ayla first told me “I love you” I struggled with a wild mix of emotions. Joy and fear vied for primacy, with confusion, physical desire, doubt, and amour cheering them on, creating chaos and noise that precluded thought. I felt I didn't deserve love; I couldn't comprehend how someone could love me. Why did I feel this way? An unfortunate confluence of a bad roll of the genetic dice giving me a similar chemical imbalance to the one that causes my mother's bipolar disorder, along with the stoic background of my parents and the conservative culture of the South resulted in a repression of emotion with no acknowledgment of even the presence of love, much less the need for it.

After dating exclusively for five years, Ayla and I married when I graduated college and was about to leave for graduate school. I felt there was an inevitability about the marriage that had nothing to do with what I wanted for my life. As I stood at the altar, watching her walk up the aisle in her wedding dress, instead of feeling joy at marrying her, I felt that I was making a tremendous mistake. I did not love her in the way a man should love a woman he marries. Why did I go through with it? Even now I honestly cannot say if it was because I was too weak to stand up and say “No!” or if it was because I felt I would never find anyone else who would want to marry someone like me. That was the biggest mistake of my life, and I still cannot determine what motivated me.

It was after seven years of marriage that I finally perceived that her agenda was not our mutual growth and happiness but instead satisfying her own needs to the detriment of all those around her. I had discovered my independence, I had discovered that others would like me for who I was, not what I offered them or how I could advance them. We spent 18 months of struggle, strife, mutual misunderstanding, and talking at cross purposes before we decided upon a trial separation. I moved out of our house into an apartment, but it was my understanding that we would not see others, instead we would focus on discovering what underlay the breaches in our relationship so they could be healed.

A little over a month later she told me she was sleeping with someone, a married man. Again, conflicting emotions washed over me with the force of water from a fire hose. The stunned reaction to the betrayal was almost overcome by the outrage at how she was so callous about the feelings of the wife and children of the man she was sleeping with. After a short period of internal struggle, I told her that if she didn't want to hurt me, she would stop the affair. She said to me that she loved me, she had never wanted to hurt me, and that she wanted to stay together. I quietly stated that if she had another affair I could not promise that we would stay together.

A year before I had put my resume out and had been interviewed by several companies. I had been offered jobs at every place I interviewed, but none of the jobs offered a salary or a position comparable to the one I already had. A week after Ayla had casually informed me of her infidelity, a manager at one of those companies called me and asked if I was still interested in “exploring opportunities.” Needless to say I was, and another interview shortly followed. I was offered a job within 2 weeks. I accepted the job without discussing it with Ayla. My justification? She had not discussed her affair with me before she embarked upon it, why should I have to discuss something as simple as a new job with her?

I moved down to Austin from Portland. I had to go back to our house to get many of the books and other possessions that were still there. We had a tearful farewell, although it was my full intention for Ayla to move to Austin once I had established myself there and we had breached the chasm between us. Her prediction that this was the final act of our story together was more accurate, as I was to discover six months later.

I felt that that my belief I did not deserve to be loved had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and I felt an unredeemable guilt for marrying a woman whom I did not love.

I was well on the road to the Black Pit of Despair, but I did not recognize it because it had no signposts.

To be continued...

Posted by Jack at 21:45 on Wednesday 28 January 2004 | Trackbacks (2)
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