"What fresh hell is this?"
~ Dorothy Parker
The divorce was amicable. As we were during our separation. The end of our marriage was anything but... In fact, the whole marriage was pretty much a sham. But that was my fault as much as her own. I'd call it a starter marriage.
Your first marriage should be wedded bliss and end in the death of one or both partners through no fault of their own. To end up a grieving widow or widower is better than suffering the futility of a divorce. Love is a celebration of two minds brought together in holy matrimony, so to speak. But this is unnecessary in our lifetime as values change.
Today, we live in an age where swipe left finds love and this love lasts for as long as a tryst between two or more people who may or may not know each other well or even on a first name basis. My ex-wife and I met at the bookstore, or was it at Bible study, and then she came to the bookstore where I worked to study. My co-worker invited me to Bible study at her church. That's right, invite an atheist to your Bible study group to observe practice.
It may be best to say I was a novice Zen Buddhist practitioner than an outspoken atheist critic of religion. I was a renegade, black sheep, lapsed Roman Catholic searching for faith in a meaningless world.
Thirty years plus after I began to study philosophy and Zen Buddhist practice, I still follow the teachings and sutras of the Buddha and zen masters of China and Japan. I had a flash of satori in my late teens when I sat in zazen at home regularly, was out of work, and slowly going mad from lack of food, an imbalanced diet as a strict vegetarian, better known to most as vegan, but ignorant.
I practically starved my body and mind to see the light travel across a room. I was going to meetings for adult children of alcoholics and other dysfunctional families. I was fucked from the start, pardon my French, and was anything but marriage material. But my ex-wife and my parents thought it a good idea.
What a fucking nightmare! I was the last person in the world who should have been married and for five years. What a joke!
But my parents bought the rings since they liked S----. She was pretty and smart, and about to graduate from graduate school in Speech Pathology. I'd just finished my bachelor's degree, cum laude, in Philosophy and Foreign Languages, French and Russian.
I was ready for adventure, to learn about people, culture, places, and languages. I wanted to learn how to teach English as a Foreign Language, or a Second Language and travel like my friend and co-worker who made a life and a living teaching abroad. It seemed like fun to me back then at the turn of the century. After 9/11, the world shut down.
Racism in America against Asians started. I suffered discrimination as a kid growing up but no one was out to kill me in reprisal for the deaths on that fateful day. I had friends in high school and in college who thought I looked like a mujahedeen, with or without my beard. A beautiful thick and lustrous, black beard which now is salt-and-pepper white.
I was a son of immigrants from India who grew up in Kenya, East Africa. With their British passports, valid green cards, and thick accents, my parents stood out in America.
Not so much in New York City, where we arrived with my older brother, their first born son, their privileged and entitled eldest son.
I was nothing compared to him, chopped liver looked better on the plate than I did to my parents. I was sickly, whiny, took to crying, angry, quiet, and generally kept to myself.
Looking back, I felt like a character in a novel, perhaps a short story by J. D. Salinger.
I enjoyed reading very much, especially during college, my year at UCI, when I spent my free time listening to records and reading the works of Albert Camus. I was a poor student.
I was living at home with my parents and commuting by car to campus every day.
By my third trimester, I was in tears, not knowing why, a total mess. I visited a social worker on campus who handed me a book.
It Will Never Happen to Me by Claudia Black, Ph.D.
I started going to meetings and began my process to recover my lost childhood.
Amy was a wonderful listener and set me on the path of recovery so many of us long for.
I left UC Irvine on medical withdrawal. Like my brother, I left after my first year of college.
That summer, my girlfriend and I stayed with her sister in San Diego. I worked as a gopher for these secretaries for Sail America. I also worked in a pizza place for a bit before we left for her senior year of high school. She was two years younger than me, a year and eight months, technically, but no one seemed to care. Not her dad or step mom, not her younger brother, not her older brother, nor her sister. They all seemed to like me okay.
I tended to mind my manners and act normal with people I didn't know well. Even with my own family, I acted as if they weren't my own family. But that's a long story about Moses found in a reed basket, so my mom said of me. I felt like an outsider in my own family.
But that was thirty years ago, we hardly talk any longer, especially since my dad died.
Funny how, when you're the scapegoat, you stay clear of people and never feel safe with anyone who treated you badly as a child.
At some point, I just want to own a motorbike and ride solo wherever I feel like. I lost so much living with people who didn't care at all.
It's like longing to be discovered, it never happens unless I make it happen for myself.
My marriage felt like I was discovered, like I was a special someone until I wasn't anymore and I made a shambles of the whole thing.
But it takes two to tango, so they say. We both hurt each other and the consequences were without remedy. Love spoils at the altar.
This is not to say I'm against marriage...
...but separation and divorce are no walk in the park. For this, I go running. My parents lasted nearly fifty years before dad died.
No one can bring back the deceased for the living and no one knows what happens for certain after we die. Is there an Afterlife?
Today, I live with a woman who loves me warts and all. I learned about unconditional positive regard studying massage therapy.
Whether I ever get married again... "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"
My girlfriend said this phrase to me long ago and it stuck inside the proverbial hamster wheel spinning inside my head. Strange how I tend to go with the flow and not care until someone slaps me in the face to wake up.
I probably won't spill the beans on my starter marriage because it won't do anyone much good to hear or read about such practices.
I just know I tried much too late to make it work. I take responsibility for that. That was on me. It is part of my own karma. My own accountability in this lifetime. Peace out.
