My first marriage was to a musician, a jazz-classical guitarist sentenced to playing 80's rock and roll in a small Midwestern town. "Do I want to make music or do I want to make money?" was his lament in the short eight-and-a half years of our unlucky union. My twenties were a time of two steps forward and one step back or was it one step forward and two steps . . . I was overly medicated on really strong antidepressants and floating on the ceiling most of the time. "Just put a string around my ankle and pull me down when you get home from work," I instructed that first husband. He was unamused.
In one desperate attempt to escape a mind swimming with suicidal homicidal self-defeating really awful thoughts I left. I packed up a box of cleaning solvents and bought a new broom and dustpan. I didn't know where I was going but it would be clean. I found a foul apartment on a foul street and the first morning I awoke the kitchen was swarming with thick slick cockroaches. I screamed and went to my drug store cashier job. I had not worked in ten years, I took what I could get. My first paycheck went for $80 worth of chemicals that are probably illegal now but they worked on those slimy critters. I slept unfettered but the toxins lay heavy in those small rooms and I'll probably develop a scary cancer somewhere down the road. I spent the next year stoned on really good weed, thanks to sleazy friends I thought were my friends. I needed to go blank for awhile.
I woke up. I came gasping to the surface and realized, this is wrong. I collected my children, said good-by to that first husband as he sped off to what he thought would be a SUPER DUPER CAREER WITH J.C.PENNEY IN OMAHA and they screwed him royally, firing their mature managers - and Joe was a good one - to employ younger, greener wimps for less money, the usual pattern. Our youngest son spent the next few months firing baseballs at the siding on my house, splintering the shingles, angry young boy. Can't seem to get past all this, probably need therapy.
In one desperate attempt to escape a mind swimming with suicidal homicidal self-defeating really awful thoughts I left. I packed up a box of cleaning solvents and bought a new broom and dustpan. I didn't know where I was going but it would be clean. I found a foul apartment on a foul street and the first morning I awoke the kitchen was swarming with thick slick cockroaches. I screamed and went to my drug store cashier job. I had not worked in ten years, I took what I could get. My first paycheck went for $80 worth of chemicals that are probably illegal now but they worked on those slimy critters. I slept unfettered but the toxins lay heavy in those small rooms and I'll probably develop a scary cancer somewhere down the road. I spent the next year stoned on really good weed, thanks to sleazy friends I thought were my friends. I needed to go blank for awhile.
I woke up. I came gasping to the surface and realized, this is wrong. I collected my children, said good-by to that first husband as he sped off to what he thought would be a SUPER DUPER CAREER WITH J.C.PENNEY IN OMAHA and they screwed him royally, firing their mature managers - and Joe was a good one - to employ younger, greener wimps for less money, the usual pattern. Our youngest son spent the next few months firing baseballs at the siding on my house, splintering the shingles, angry young boy. Can't seem to get past all this, probably need therapy.
3 comments:
I'm sorry you went through all of that. I think you deserve peace of mind and freedom from those guilty feelings.
Thanks, daughter.
Therapy is a fine thing. I highly recommend it! (and I just want to kiss that daughter of yours....what a testament to you and what a fine young woman to understand that you did the best with what you had at your disposal at the the time....)
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