Random Fate - old

Pleasant melancholy and the Black Pit of Despair Part III: The chain is forged

For Part I go here. For Part II go here.

Melancholy...

It serves a purpose. The only way to truly understand and learn is to dissect, to deconstruct. Melancholy allows us to review our missteps, to relive our mistakes in a way that is strangely pleasant. That reliving is necessary if we are ever to learn from our pain. Melancholy is agreeable in the same way that listening to the Blues can stir the heart in pleasurable sadness. There is a reason that the Blues are still a viable music form. There is a reason why the Blues are best listened to while drinking Scotch.

I have described the slow deterioration of my marriage to Ayla. She had slept with another man, a married man with children, when she and I were separated but supposedly working on our relationship. I decided to take a job in another city without discussing it with her, because she had chosen to NOT discuss with me her decision to sleep with a married man, a decision that affected our lives together at least as much as my taking a job in a different city.

I moved to Austin in June of 1996. I was working for a new company, and I threw myself into my work. Instead of research and development, I was now developing a manufacturing process for a state of the art integrated circuit that we were transferring to production. It was a new experience for me, and I threw myself into it completely to forget about my woes. I was working 60 hours a week on average, with some weeks going up to 80 hours.

In August, Ayla came down to visit me in Austin. The visit went reasonably well, and I thought we were on track to end our separation and get back together. Then, in December, the week of Christmas, I traveled back to Portland to visit Ayla in the house I was still paying for. She and I slept together, then, while we were still in bed together not having dressed she told me she was still sleeping with the same married man she had been sleeping with before I moved to Austin.

I couldn't catch my breath. I couldn't believe that she chose that moment to tell me and not before we had sex. Strangely enough, I felt guilty. I felt I had driven her to this because I had married her because I felt I could never find another who would marry me instead of marrying her because I loved her (quite a chain of "because" there, but I didn't realize it at the time). I have been told I have an “overly developed sense of responsibility”, and my feelings of having “driven her to sleep with someone” was an unmistakable product of that misguided sentiment.

Even after her confession, I was still trying to save the marriage, even though I had told her after her first revelation that if she continued to sleep with that married man that I couldn't guarantee that we would stay together. I felt responsible, even though it was her and not me who had chosen to break the marriage vows.

Ayla had a friend, Carol, who had a bad breakup and moved to Portland to forget her old relationship and move on to a new life. Carol had known about Ayla's infidelity, but had remained silent. Carol was lonely and afraid. Ayla thought that if she managed to get Carol and me to sleep together, she could absolve her infidelity and gain a hold over both Carol and me at the same time.

Ayla encouraged both Carol and me down the path that she had chose for us, talking to each of us separately, being remarkably subtle in her plan. Ironically enough, her plan succeeded all too well. I spent an evening with Carol in her apartment, and I discovered I could be attractive to a woman who wasn't Ayla. Carol and I didn't sleep together that first evening, but on the day after Christmas, Ayla, Carol, and I met to go out. Carol had been drinking, and she couldn't keep her hands off me. Eventually, we made it to Carol's apartment, Ayla left, and I slept with Carol. After this surreal experience, with my wife encouraging me to sleep with another woman, I realized there was nothing wrong with me, that I could indeed be attractive to other women, that I had married Ayla for the wrong reason.

It was a revelation in the deepest sense of the word to me. I had never before considered that I was a good person that women might desire. In my exhilaration, I decided that rather than continuing a marriage that was a sham, we should divorce. I thought that we would both be happier pursuing our own, separate paths.

What I didn't realize at the time was that Ayla had married me for the wrong reasons as well; I truly thought she had married me out of love, and in all fairness, she thought she had married me out of love as well. She was as wrong about her motives as I was, and that misunderstanding was the final link in the chain that dragged me into the Black Pit of Despair. Like the crash of an airplane, like the derailment of a train, like any catastrophe, there was a chain leading up to my fall into the Black Pit of Despair. If any link had been broken, I would not have fallen into the pit, just like as in any chain of events if one of many critical decisions or events had gone differently, the catastrophe would have been avoided. The chain was complete, though, and the doom was upon me. I was irretrievable on my way down into the Pit, although I thought I was on my way to freedom.

To be continued...

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...

Pleasant melancholy and the Black Pit of Despair - Part I: The seeds are sown

I am sitting here on the couch, drinking a fine single malt Scotch, trying to catch up on reading all my favorite weblogs that for some reason chose to update this evening after several days of relative inactivity. These new entries were all posted in the brief period between when I left work this afternoon and when I arrived home from the bar this evening, a period of less than four hours.

As I sit here on the couch, listening to Elvis Costello sing “Alison”, an agreeable melancholy steals its way over me in the same way that the warmth from the single malt washes over me after the first few sips. Melancholy can be pleasant in an odd way, when listening to songs that make you think of opportunities lost, avenues not taken, choices not made, fears heeded rather than ignored. Pleasant melancholy can arise when the chimera of “what could have been” overcomes the reality of “what would have been”. Choices are a part of life, and rejection and loss are an inherent part of choosing.

Melancholy can be pleasant, in the same way that the relaxation from alcohol can be pleasant, and it can be just as seductively addictive as well. It is easier than one might imagine to become enamored of melancholy, become lost in it and wallow in the sadness as a pig wallows in the mud until eventually the soul becomes lost in the black pit of despair.

I have taken that road to the black pit of despair, and I have scrabbled and crawled my way back out again. The road to the black pit of despair was surprisingly easy to take, and surprisingly difficult to turn away from, at least it was for me. One of my earliest memories is of me looking out my bedroom window, feeling a sadness that was far too immense for a 4 year old to comprehend.

My mother was diagnosed as depressive bipolar shortly after I got married and moved away from home to go to graduate school in Physics. She had been bipolar during my entire childhood, but during the 1960s and '70s mental illness was not quickly recognized, and when it was such a stigma was associated with the illness that it was discussed rarely if at all, and never with children.

As an adult, I can now recognize some of my earliest memories of my mother as her having episodes of extreme depression. I didn't understand at the time, and I'm not sure I am happy that I understand now.

I got married two days before I moved from Memphis to Phoenix to attend graduate school at Arizona State University. I married the woman I had dated for five years; we met when we were both entering undergraduate school at Christan Brothers College. Since both our last names started with “G”, we were in the same peer-counseling group that the college had set up to aid freshmen in adjusting from high school to college.

She was engaged to someone at the time we met, so I would not ask her to the various functions that were set up for the freshmen. Eventually, she broke off her engagement so that she could be with me. The man she was engaged to eventually got married to a woman who went to his church, and they had a child together. That child was killed when the man in a fit of his characteristic rage struck the child in the crib when it was crying. All the members of the man's church formed a united front supporting the man when the death was investigated.

I took five years to complete undergraduate school because I had to take a year off to work and earn enough money to pay for the rest of my education. I switched from the private school Christan Brothers College to the public school Memphis State University. In the process, I had to change majors from Engineering Physics to Physics, because the Engineering Physics degree was not offered at my new school, and switching to Electrical Engineering would have cost me an additional year of college.

I discovered much to my chagrin after changing majors that a BS in Physics rarely gained one a good job, unlike Electrical Engineering. A graduate degree was required. I stayed in Physics with a new plan to go to graduate school. I looked forward to going to graduate school in a new city. I had gone to college in Memphis because I had let my fears counsel me, and I chose not to take any of the many opportunities I had to attend college elsewhere.

I still remember when she said, “So when is the wedding date?” She assumed we would marry before I left for graduate school; she didn't want to take the chance that I would find someone else when I left on my own, or even worse, discover my independence. She defined herself by whomever she was in a relationship with, and I was the best candidate she had ever dated. She was not and is not evil, but she had the disadvantage of being raised in a family with a Turkish father and a repressed Southern mother. She was (and still is) the classic passive-aggressive.

Why did I marry her? At the time I thought I would never find someone else who wanted to marry me. It was a mistake. I didn't understand that she had her own agenda, and that agenda had more to do with her self image than with our happiness.

After earning my MS in Physics (and being told that I had written a thesis worthy of a Ph.D. by my committee, but that is another story), and my wife saying she was “tired of being poor,” I managed to find a job in the semiconductor industry that was in the Pacific Nothwest, an area that I wanted to move to after the oppressive heat and dryness of Phoenix.

I was sad the entire time I was in graduate school, I just didn't realize it.

When I started my new job, I met Lynn. She was very intelligent, very passionate, very opinionated, and very independent. I fell in love with her, despite the fact that I was married. I never did anything about it; I never even kissed her, despite many opportunities. She did show me that I deserved to be treated better than I was being treated by my wife, the woman who supposedly loved me. That was when the trouble started, because I had discovered my independence.

To be continued...