Okay, so that subject is an exaggeration. I hadn't really forgotten about me, I'd just found a new focus: Sarah, the amazing and wonderful woman I've fallen deeply in love with since my only previous entry here nearly a year ago.
To catch you up: Last time, I wrote about my two friends whose marriages were in various states of disrepair. In the case of the friend with the bipolar wife, things have turned for the better, as she's acknowledged her difficulties, made the necessary concessions and commitments, and they're slowly fixing what was wrong, and, hopefully, developing a plan that will ensure she stays on the stablest ground possible for a person with her condition. I also wrote about a second friend whose marriage was on the rocks for totally different reasons, and that one didn't have such a happy ending. About two weeks after I wrote about it, she decided she couldn't stick around, and she filed for divorce. That's where the story got really interesting for me.
Far be it from me to wish bad things upon my friends, but in this case, my buddy's bad fortune smiled upon me. Let me take you back to last New Year's Eve. It's about 6 pm, my son, Jackson, is at his friend's house for the night, and I'm about to leave and head to Oakland, where I'm having dinner with my brother, Greg, and his wife, Jenny, and two other couples. Not an ideal plan for a widowed guy, but hey, it beats sitting at home alone. Well, about 5 minutes before I leave, my buddy calls, and tells me his friend in San Francisco is having a party, and it will be a lot of fun, but he doesn't feel up to going alone, so he asks if I'd like to go with him. Well, I don't have to tell you that the prospect of a strange party with new women sounded a hell of a lot better than being a seventh wheel at dinner, even if it meant hanging with a depressed, feeling-sorry-for-himself friend. So I headed to Alameda to pick him up, and then on to the City.
After a great dinner at Luna Park, we headed to the party, with a stop at a nearby flowerbed for my buddy to puke up dinner. Ah, broken hearts--gotta love 'em.
We enter the party, which is in the Noe Valley neighborhood, and the feel is festive. I do a quick scan of the place as I enter, and, while looking through an archway into the dining room, a particular woman catches my eye--she looks tall, with dirty blonde hair, and she's wearing a sexy and unusual black dress, and a little New Year's crown. I turn to my buddy and declare, "she's cute."
Then we head into the dining room, which is where most of the action seems to be, and as I enter the room, her eyes meet mine, just for a moment. For the next hour or two, I don't think too much of it. I'm very conscious of her, but not TOO conscious, and I'm having a great time meeting people, partaking in various unmentionables, and doing my best to have conversation naturally flow toward her. At some point, I figure out that there are 4-5 women in the living room, starting to dance, her included, but no guys. Naturally, I head that direction and strike up another conversation. She tells me her name is Sarah, and she's a nurse. The nurse thing hits me, as my ex was a nurse, too. We sit down for a moment to get better acquainted, and we suddenly let it all pour out. She asks me who I am, and, against all advice I'd gotten since my ex died, I tell her the 30-second version of my situation. Married 10 rocky years, wife went nuts, killed herself, and now I live in San Jose raising our only child. She takes a deep breath, considers what she just hear, and then tells her father is an alcoholic and that she suffers from depression. I think, "Oh, shit," but there's something different about her, so I try to put the depression thing aside, and we go back to dancing.
Over the next few hours, we dance, then part and talk to others, then reconnect for a drink (or "other"), then part again, then dance for a song or two...it goes like this for the duration of the evening. About 2 am, my buddy and I decide to take off, and I figure it won't be a problem to track down Sarah. But as we're about to leave, she walks up and says, "You don't have to go, do you?" Naturally, my heart starts beating harder, and I plead with my buddy to stick it out for a bit, and he begrudgingly agrees. Sarah and I go back to our same pattern--dancing, talking with others, having drinks, flowing back and forth, with and without each other. Finally, about 4 am, I'm exhausted, with a long drive back to Alameda and San Jose, so I leave. But not without exchanging cell phone numbers. Then, as I'm at the front door, the hostess (my buddy's friend) gives me a hug, and I say to her, "please tell me she's not nuts." To which she says, "She's not, she's awesome--and if you hurt her, I'll come looking for you."
Two days later, we have a magical phone call; four days later we go on a perfect first date; two weeks later we make love for the first time; five months later she comes with Jackson and me to Disneyland; and now, 11 months later, we're deeply in love and living together in Berkeley, and we just got back from an amazing trip to Vietnam and Cambodia (see our travel blog for more details on that). I'm the luckiest man in the world, and I have the end of my good friend's marriage to thank for everything. Sometimes life can be such a trip.
And I guess that I wasn't exaggerating after all--I did forget about me, because I've been spending all my time thinking about us.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thursday, December 6, 2007
It's time for me to write about me, dammit!
Not that you'd have any reason to be aware of this, but for the past few months, I've been writing about the aftermath of my wife's suicide 20 months ago at my Widowed by Suicide blog, focusing mostly on what the hell my son and I are going to do once I sell my mausoleum--uh, I mean house. Well, tonight I was thinking about posting something there when it occurred to me that maybe it was time to emerge from the shadow of this life-defining experience and write about me.
Ah, me. It's been so long, I hardly know the place. Now I remember--before all this shit went down, I was a respected and overworked journalist, a pretty damned good (but terribly out of practice) saxophonist, and a very frustrated world traveler who didn't even have a valid passport. But what I was, more than anything, was naive about so many things. About the pain and anguish that life can dish out. About the importance of being true to oneself even if it means occasionally hurting other people. Or, about the relentless logic I applied to life, which makes sense considering that nothing that can be called traumatic had happened to me in the 40 years before my estranged wife took herself out of the picture.
No longer. Now, with all this grief under my belt, I think I'm becoming the man my wife always wanted me to be. Gee, honey, think you went a little far in making your point? At least the future women in my life will have something to thank you for.
So what message do I want to get across with my first entry here? Maybe something about the fragile tapestry of our lives that we all take for granted. Put my situation aside for the moment--in the past week, I've had two close friends tell me about potentially life-shattering developments that have them shell-shocked. Stop me if you're surprised--both situations have to do with marital struggles.
The first friend is married to a bipolar woman, and time has caught up with him. For years, he thought she was on top of things, getting the right mix of meds and therapy, and so he convinced himself that everything was alright. But steadily, his marriage was devolving into a morass of miscommunication, resentment and, at times, out-and-out hatred. Luckily, he's got the backing of everyone in their lives in terms of the house and custody of the kids, but that's hardly consolation for a man who feels like his life is imploding around him.
The second friend doesn't have kids or a mortgage or really any big responsibilities to make breaking up a bear, but he has this: When he married his wife two years ago, we all thought he was the luckiest man around. He found a woman who would allow him to be the lovable, irresponsible man of leisure to which he'd become accustomed. She was fine with supporting him, fine with him being a grown child, fine with his weekly poker nights with the boys. But like all good things, that fantasy came to pass, and when his wife's vision cleared, she saw the man-child she was with and declared that change was in the offing or she'd be leaving. That's where they are now--he's trying to figure out the degree to which he can change, and they're in counseling. But I know from experience that they've reached a crossroads that's very tough to navigate past successfully.
I guess that what I get out of all of this is that I hope I've graduated from the woe-is-me, how-can-this-be-happening-to-my-life tune that so many of us sing to ourselves when personal tragedy unfolds. The bitter truth is that very few of us escape this life unscathed by tragic events, and so no matter what we're asked to endure, we have to maintain faith that we are strong, and that we can thrive in the face of such unexpected twists and turns.
Well, that, plus I really want to see what happens in the next season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Ah, me. It's been so long, I hardly know the place. Now I remember--before all this shit went down, I was a respected and overworked journalist, a pretty damned good (but terribly out of practice) saxophonist, and a very frustrated world traveler who didn't even have a valid passport. But what I was, more than anything, was naive about so many things. About the pain and anguish that life can dish out. About the importance of being true to oneself even if it means occasionally hurting other people. Or, about the relentless logic I applied to life, which makes sense considering that nothing that can be called traumatic had happened to me in the 40 years before my estranged wife took herself out of the picture.
No longer. Now, with all this grief under my belt, I think I'm becoming the man my wife always wanted me to be. Gee, honey, think you went a little far in making your point? At least the future women in my life will have something to thank you for.
So what message do I want to get across with my first entry here? Maybe something about the fragile tapestry of our lives that we all take for granted. Put my situation aside for the moment--in the past week, I've had two close friends tell me about potentially life-shattering developments that have them shell-shocked. Stop me if you're surprised--both situations have to do with marital struggles.
The first friend is married to a bipolar woman, and time has caught up with him. For years, he thought she was on top of things, getting the right mix of meds and therapy, and so he convinced himself that everything was alright. But steadily, his marriage was devolving into a morass of miscommunication, resentment and, at times, out-and-out hatred. Luckily, he's got the backing of everyone in their lives in terms of the house and custody of the kids, but that's hardly consolation for a man who feels like his life is imploding around him.
The second friend doesn't have kids or a mortgage or really any big responsibilities to make breaking up a bear, but he has this: When he married his wife two years ago, we all thought he was the luckiest man around. He found a woman who would allow him to be the lovable, irresponsible man of leisure to which he'd become accustomed. She was fine with supporting him, fine with him being a grown child, fine with his weekly poker nights with the boys. But like all good things, that fantasy came to pass, and when his wife's vision cleared, she saw the man-child she was with and declared that change was in the offing or she'd be leaving. That's where they are now--he's trying to figure out the degree to which he can change, and they're in counseling. But I know from experience that they've reached a crossroads that's very tough to navigate past successfully.
I guess that what I get out of all of this is that I hope I've graduated from the woe-is-me, how-can-this-be-happening-to-my-life tune that so many of us sing to ourselves when personal tragedy unfolds. The bitter truth is that very few of us escape this life unscathed by tragic events, and so no matter what we're asked to endure, we have to maintain faith that we are strong, and that we can thrive in the face of such unexpected twists and turns.
Well, that, plus I really want to see what happens in the next season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
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