In A Past Life

I was once a very bad person, so she says. A person who thought only of themselves and never, not once, about anybody else. A young foolish boy, pretending to be something I wasn't and likely never would be. I was a young man with a young wife, from another part of the world, with big dreams of which I never seemed to wake from. She was alone, lost in her citizenship, afraid of every little change made, be it with currency or the extreme humidity. It was my one and only chance to shine, and I failed to catch flame. To her, I was the beginning and the end to a life, filled with so much potential and promise, she had willingly left behind for me and my selfish love. That's amore. Like a beaten dog, she kept coming back to me, one insult after another, one moral slap away from crumbling into oblivion in a country she knew nothing of and a man she hardly knew. But she had risked it all, because her heart had overruled her head. She risked it all, because she too dreamed. Because she allowed her goddamn dreams to get in the way of what her eyes could plainly see! I was young, uneducated, uninspired, uninformed, unjustly placed in a situation I was only involved with, because I was too afraid to admit to myself that there was a problem, with me, I was not willingly going to admit.


Because I had said "I do." not daring risk the suggestion of people who only spoke to make a point they and they alone believed, even though it might hold some truth. In fact, had I been blessed with a proper family, I might have never allowed it to get to the altar in the first place. Decisions would have been made on logic and probability, instead of a tired old family tradition of I'll-Show-You mentality that never worked out for anybody shouting this cliched game changer. It was destined to fail, you see, with this kind of support poisoning the family tree from beneath the soil. The odds were stacked against us, but our youthful rebellion stood firm. It all sounds good on paper. The I Can Do mindset has always been the inspiration behind many successful stories, but these usually have Hollywood budgets with Hollywood endings backing them. I had a minimum wage job, a Dodge Neon with a flooding problem and mounting debt to justify my love. That's amore.


And it wasn't as though I knew any better. My own mother was currently on her eighth husband, whose own warped reality had landed her and her children in many different homes, most of which lasted six months at max, so there was a bullheaded belief built inside of me that if things did not work out, fuck it, I would just get another bitch who complained less and was more willing to look past my own imperfections. Sure, I fought it, eventually, when maturity settled in and common sense began to gloss over the ignorance of my youth. By that time, however, things were already beyond the breaking point. But what could I do? I was married to someone from another country who held a massive grudge against me, for the things I did in the past. The only thing I could do is stick it out and try not to become another statistic on some college grads survey. So I did. I stayed in it, I got the return expected of a disgruntled wife, the cut off in physical touch and the meaningless I Love You as I hung up the phone. I took the brunt of her vengeance and manned up in return, attempting to reconcile for my past indiscretions and never, ever, thought about another woman in any way. That was a decade ago.


Broken. Which is worse, compacting a decade's worth of trial and error into a single word, or choosing such a hopeless sounding word to begin with? I could leave, I suppose, but is my leaving now worth the mental duress my young daughter will undoubtedly go through? What's another decade of complacent holding patterns that impact just my libido at this point, compared to her incredible smile each time she hugs and kisses mommy and daddy and not to say goodbye to one or the other? After all, I am in my early thirties and it is not like there is much left in me to offer someone new. Who plays with broken toys, except those who are equally torn down and broken in their own way? Exactly.

Nonetheless, fate called and nature answered sooner than I would have liked. My wife was overweight, her uterus set higher than normal and her lifestyle not exactly primed for children. The way I figured it, time was on my side to either be proven wrong, with my near perfect record in knowing how she thinks before she has the chance to do so herself, or be utterly shocked by her sudden transformation. We had a deal, and a deal is a deal. I would change and repent for my past actions for four years (equal time according to her own twisted time line), and she would do the same; because, believe me, I am not the only motherfucker here. By the time babies were actually a real possibility, I hated much of the woman I called my wife. I hated her for many reasons, some of her own creation and others of my own silly expectations. I hated her, because I loved her so much. In my own healing processes, I found the spark that set us along the adventure that has been our entire relationship. I knew it existed, I just could not find it. And when I finally found that spark, I treated it as it were fire and I the first neanderthal to discover it. I cherished it. I obsessed in its creation and being, determined to discover its secrets, destined to control it in such a way that I could literally change my world. And, for the most part, I did. But the truth to fire is that, no matter how well you know how to use it, you still often get burned and my spirit continues to smolder in the embers of matrimony. That's amore.


I AM PREGNANT. She told me, one morning. We had only been trying for a little more than a month. A goddamn month! The OBGYN had given her "the talk" about trying to conceive and how difficult it was likely to be, and here we were a month in and staring at a fucking plus sign on a stick that reeked with the urine of success. My reaction was not a happy one. In retrospect, I could have covered up my initial reaction with one that came with some kind of smile, but she did not deserve it. She did not deserve a single shred of happiness.  But, maybe this was a blessing in disguise. I had admittedly lost some of my faith over time, with the begging of my marriage to improve and the fact that it progressively got worse, I could not work out if God was with or against me. What good would an unwanted child be to my marriage? My masochistic nature had now brought in an innocent life to fucking destroy. I felt horrible. I felt sick to my stomach. Finally, we both had something in common.


But, then my daughter was born. It took a couple of weeks, but I could not resist that little natural smile. Both her mother and me adapted wonderfully to being new parents. My wife read a few books and I watched her read them, constantly fearful that, at any moment, I would get up and walk out on them; because, my DNA was not known for its commitments. I think maybe my own experience with my father took a turn for the better without my knowing, because, once I dropped into the co-pilot seat of parenthood, I loved the little person looking up with me, eyes sparkling like a diamond mine, making those little noises you can not help but giggle over. The days turned into weeks and months and all the while, not one frown or complaint from my little girl. Unlike most babies I have seen, my girl complained very little. Always smiling and giggling and happy to be alive. Happy to be exactly where she was and happy to have two parents who loved her as much as she loved them...I learned in those first eight months more than 30 plus years of life. My daughter taught me to love unconditionally, without saying a word. Finally, I was happy, but there was one lingering, if not fleeting, thought- my marriage.

And now I have anti-supportive-depressive-counter-thoughts working in my mind. What are those? I am not sure myself, at this point. I know there are two kinds of thoughts, good thoughts and bad thoughts. These anti-supportive-depressive-counter-thoughts take the best of both worlds, blends them with hope and probability outcomes and spits them out in tiny moments of clarity that boost my bleeding heart back to the point of coping with the bullshit. I have come to the point now that I wonder if I am staying in this marriage because I love the woman for better or worse, or if I have fallen victim to a psychological conundrum, warped beyond logical understanding to the point I have somehow convinced myself that this norm I have created for myself is actually the "norm".

I truly love my wife, even if that love is but a modicum of the real thing, which I could grow and nurture if Love could only thrive in tears.