for those of you readers who find yourselves still here, and who might be interested, allow me to sketch the big picture...perhaps it might make you decide to return to hear more of the story. perhaps not, that's okay too. my only objective here is to work out my shit...if He should happen to suffer some humiliation because of it, then so be it.
i'm a pretty average gal...i'm smart, i'm ambitious, i'm bold (and sometimes stupidly so). i like to believe that i am a good person who does good in this world, someone who is honest and who has integrity. i'm the eldest of three, having grown up in western new york, in what we like to call the Polish Ghetto. my parents are blue collar, hard working folk, who taught me likewise to work hard for what i want in this world. i was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth by any means, but i am also wise enough to know that despite my parent's occasional financial struggle, i was a fortunate kid. i went to catholic grammar schools, and then graduated top of my class from a private, catholic girls academy. i was a popular kid and teenager, who worked hard at studying, was active in a ton of extra curriculars, and taught dancing. i was a leader, a bright and talented girl.
my parents began telling me from a very early age that they chose my name because they thought it would look good emblazoned upon a door one day, with an M.D. after it. studying medicine to become a doctor was not something that came inherently from within me, it was instead an aspiration that had been implanted in my brain from birth. and, because good grades were a non negotiable expectation, it was natural for me to be pushed to excel in math and science. everyone around me wanted it, and expected it, and so it was. i didn't know that i had another choice, because in reality, i did not. what i wanted, was to become an architect. i spent countless hours holed up alone in my room sketching buildings and drawing out floor plans. i rearranged furniture and 'redecorated' constantly. my talents and my own personal joy have always come from design. no one around me wanted to acknowledge or hear that. i got a full scholarship to the college my parents expected me to attend, and because that institution didn't teach any drafting or design, medicine was to be my future. it was settled. no financial aid would be signed for me for any other institution, and since i still lived under my parents' thumb in their home, there was no discussing it further.
my ex husband is a pretty average boy too...smart, ambitious, gifted at athletics, gentle, and well liked by almost everyone who knows him. the eldest son of two children, he was born into a pretty comfortable and fortunate existence. for instance, i met his housekeeper before i ever met his mother. his father is a lawyer, his mother, a teacher by training who was able to stay home and raise her children from their birth until they were adults. he was a popular product of suburban public schooling until we met on our first day of classes at the private catholic college we both attended. when i met him, he was one month post kidney transplant. he had found out that both his kidneys were dead while still in high school, and he was lucky enough to be very well matched to his mother, so she became his donor. when i met him, he was barely out of the woods. he was bloated from steroids and anti-rejection meds, and he was still having to be admitted from time to time for infections. we were introduced by a mutual friend, a girl with whom i went to high school. we happened to be on the same track, with the same class schedule and syllabus. he was unlike anyone i had met at that point in my life. i remember observing him, and thinking that he was not at all my type. i like bad boys -- not douche bags -- but bad boys with good hearts. there was nothing about my ex husband that thrilled me, there were no nerves around him, no girly heart fluttering...at first. our friendship was inevitable, as i often collected school work for him from professors when he was too ill to be in class.
when i met my ex husband, i was in the process of losing my first love, a profoundly good and healthy relationship for a couple of kids who inevitably were not meant to be. falling for my husband was not expected, was not planned, and was more a surprise than anything. he was a good guy, to be sure, and on some level, his 'normalness' intrigued me. he had the kind of life that i would watch on family sitcoms as a kid and long for, because my home life was a constant pressure cooker of anger and misdirected emotion. his parents loved him and they let him know at every turn...people seemed to talk to him and about him with this hushed tone, as if just saying his name would make him pop like a bubble into thin air. now again, let me remind you: the only thing extraordinary about this kid was the fact that he was struggling to recover from an organ transplant. if i had walked past this guy on campus, or at the mall, or seen him in a bar, he would not have even registered on my radar. he was just there, in front of me, every day. and every day, i watched the people around him raise him up on this pedestal..."oh, how brave he is!"..."oh, how smart he is, and he isn't even able to make it to class." and that was really nothing compared to how his family treated him...golden child of the family, much to the pouty chagrin of his little sister.
fast forward eight years, we are engaged and graduating from the same medical school class. psychiatry and child psychiatry for me, pediatrics for him. that fast forward is brimming with moments that were red flags to me, screaming at me to stop the roller coaster and exit the ride, but i heartily ignored them. why wouldn't i? i had just become a doctor, i was about to marry a doctor, and we were going to live happily ever after. it wasn't only our own delusion, it was shared and fed by everyone around us. no one ever noticed the times he had emotionally beat me into a self loathing lump of fat, questioning what must have been going on in my personal life to warrant such an unhealthy disposition. no one ever spoke up when they watched him behaving overly affectionate and inappropriate with other women. his own mother watched him waltz a girl up to his room one summer night when i had to work late (something i unfortunately had to do so i could pay for books and lab fees for school) and couldn't come hang out with him. it was the first of his infidelities that i know about because he told me it happened. let me repeat that: he told me it happened.
at this point, if you're still reading, you might be chastising me by now, thinking me such a foolish girl for persisting in such an obviously disrespectful and ill fated relationship for another fifteen years, and you are totally fucking right to do so. i'll take that judgement, because it is one i've passed upon myself a hundred times already. i suppose that this is exactly why i'm conducting this exercise, spewing all of this crazy out onto the page. i need to understand, even at a cellular level, why i allowed this. this blog is not entirely dedicated to besmirching and condemning my ex husband, no. i mean, he absolutely deserves it, because he fucked me out of my second, and chosen, career of architecture (literally - he fucked one of my classmates repeatedly, knowing that it would cause me to want to leave the program, and he was right), and he fucked his way into another doctor's home, just around the corner from the beautiful home we shared and were restoring, picking his life back up as if nothing happened. humiliating? you bet it is. but it is okay...i think of all the misery he put me through, all the hurt he caused, all the nastiness and childish bullshit that i had to suffer unprovoked on a daily basis at his hand, and i KNOW that she too will get to enjoy the real Him, if she hasn't already.
and what do i get? well, i lost over 60 pounds...i became a devout yogi with a body i can make do things i never thought i would. i get to run my own business in peace, and finally pursue the career goals that are important to me without his jealous bullshit. i get to cuddle my adorable dog each night, the one we raised from a 6 week old puppy -- he gets to cuddle his homely new wife, who literally had to waddle through the hallways of the college we all attended together, and who still does. i get to smile every two weeks, knowing how much it killed him to have to transfer that alimony payment to my account. i get to be free of his narrow minded, oppressive parents and family. i get to go to sleep at night knowing that my life is finally my own now, and i can do with it what i wish, while he stagnates in his job, wiping noses and cleaning up puke and shit. i'm not going to be able to rest my head or heart until i feel like i got my side out, because for so damn long i was without a voice, and i'm tired of being the only villain.
keep reading folks, because it's going to get juicier, promise.
