Divisions and Precisions

A Woman with a Past

Why yes, this entry is riddled with Rent references. This may be a growing trend. I finally listened to a copy a friend of mine sent me last year... and I'm hooked. It's incredible.

I've noticed a growing trend in entries of late, spending a lot of time talking about my past, especially around the time I left Gary. I don't think I'm dwelling, exactly, but... 1994 was a big year for me, good and bad. I thought about doing a breakdown of the year as a whole, but I'm not certain what purpose that would serve. So... 1994, some highlights (?) if you will:

February: Gary and I got our first computer, a 286 affectionately known as Frankensystem. I still have it, but something's wrong with it. One of these days I'll get it fixed... there's a lot of writing on the hard drive that I'd like to see again. Curious about the whole BBS phenomenon, I managed to track down the school's dial-up number and I learned how to telnet. On February 13th (god help me, I remember the date), I discovered ISCABBS, and got hooked. ISCABBS is still around, I know, because I just recreated my old account there. If you go poking around, look for Rowan Mayfair. In any case... I got hooked, like I said.

March - July: Given the isolated nature of my life (which I talked about a lot about a month ago), it was extremely easy for me to get sucked into the net. Here were real people, friends that I made, in a place where I'd had no friends for over a year. I was innocent of the ways of the net, and so was startled when a young man I'd been talking to from England -- who went by the handle of Darkdreamer -- announced one day that he was completely in love with me and that his life was over because his true love was in America and married to someone else. It was confusing, and alluring, to talk to this person who was more attentive, in many ways, than my husband. Gary knew the situation, and was (or acted, at least) amused at this nineteen year old goth in England who said he was in love with his wife.

I met other people during this time, of course, including Hollingsworth, who still lived in Philadelphia at the time. Life went on. Gary and I fought about how much time I spent online. (Honestly? Around 18 hours a day, at least. When I wasn't asleep, I was online. How's that better than now? I have a job and an outside social life, so I'm not around that much ;-)) Andy (Darkdreamer's real name) sent me flowers for my birthday. We talked on the phone from time to time. He wrote hopelessly goth poetry and songs about me and had a lovely accent. He sent me tapes, introducing me to Tori Amos, Sisters of Mercy, Mission UK... and various other groups that I still love.

Then sometime in June or July, he started planning a trip to come to the United States for several weeks. I still look back at that time and wonder what the hell I was thinking. ISCA was a window to the world, beyond Martin, Tennessee, and to have this fascinating person write me poetry and send me flowers and go on and on about how wonderful I was... my head was turned, in spite of my better judgement. "I have to see you," he said, "just once." He wasn't just coming to see me, of course, over the course of a three week trip, he was planning to spend a week in Atlanta, with a mutual friend named Donna, a week in Ohio with more mutual friends whose names I can't recall, and a week in Colorado with one of his best friends from home, who was studying abroad for the year. Obviously, coming to Tennessee was out of the question. He freaked at the thought of meeting Gary and having to actually acknowledge his existence. So we finally agreed (the three of us, I didn't hide anything from Gary -- four if you count Donna) that I would go spend the week in Atlanta.

August: I think it was the 21st or so, that I left Martin and drove to Atlanta. Andy was due to arrive on the 22nd. Donna lived in the basement of a house, reconstructed into an apartment of sorts. She and I hit it off, right from the start. She knew the situation with me, that I was married, and smitten with someone else, but she didn't judge -- which really, is why I went to Atlanta and not Ohio. I can't express enough what an incredibly confusing time all of this was. My conscience poked at me, telling me that I was, perhaps, being unwise, if not being outright disloyal. But still... Gary knew what was going on, so how was it wrong. Of course, he didn't know the whole truth, that I was smitten as well.

I remember going to the airport, waiting at the gate for Andy's flight to arrive. I felt this incredible nervous anticipation, a feeling I've gotten quite familiar with since, of knowing you're about to meet someone face to face who already means something to you. Donna had a camcorder, and recorded the whole event. Passengers started coming off the plane. I was a wreck, "Oh my god, what if we don't recognize him?" We'd both seen pictures of course, but... and then, there he was. Not much taller than me, pale, slender, long black hair and sunglasses, wearing a leather jacket in Atlanta summer time. To this day, I don't know what he thought when he saw me. Neither one of us said much, but just hugged and trembled. It was very melodramatic. We held hands walking back to the car.

Again, I remember feeling that 'click', of the three of us getting along. If I occasionally felt like an outsider, I attributed it to the isolated way I'd spent the last several years. One of Donna's friends hung around with us, a foursome rather than a trio. Andy and I had chances to talk... among other things. The first night he was there, we spent probably an hour kissing while we said good night. I knew right then I was in trouble, but by that point, I didn't care.

Then came the evenings Donna had to work, leaving the two of us alone. We reacted about as predictably as any twenty-two year old and nineteen year old couple would, especially a couple with an overgrown sense of melodrama and angst. "This is our only chance to ever be together," we told ourselves. I didn't sleep with him. I'll state that right up front to try and salve my conscience, which is still stinging as I write this. Six years later, and I still feel guilty. In any case, things happened that probably shouldn't have. No, that definitely shouldn't have, given what I professed to believe at the time.

That was early in the week. Tuesday or so. By Thursday, an odd shift happened. I started to feel more like an outsider. Andy had been sleeping in a different room, while Donna and I had been sharing her bed. Sometime in the middle of the week, the three of us started sleeping first in the same room, then in the same bed. Innocently, really, it came from staying up late talking and just crashing where we were. Then I realized one night (was it Thursday?) that he was stroking her hair and murmuring to her, while I tried to fall asleep.

Trip to Stone Mountain. Donna had to leave early again to go to work. Andy and I talked about absolutely everything except what was going on. Before long, it was the two of them sneaking out of the room to steal a few moments alone together. Nobody said anything. One night, Friday or Saturday, we started to go for a walk together in the moonlight. I turned around and walked back to Donna's house, crying the entire way. That night, while they slept, I poured my heart onto a piece of paper. "I would have betrayed what I am for you, broke vows, only to watch you turn to someone else." I slept very little that night. I was due to stay several more days, until Andy left to go to Ohio, but I knew I couldn't.

I think we eventually talked, I can't remember. I know Andy had decided to stay in Atlanta another week, because he wanted to stay with Donna. Neither of them tried especially hard to convince me to stay when I said I was going home early. I can remember saying goodbye to the two of them, so excited in what they'd found together, so acutely aware of how hurt I was. Donna hugged me over and over again, telling me how sorry she was that things worked out the way they had. Andy at least had the good grace to look uncomfortable.

It seems now that I cried the entire ten hour drive back to Martin. Andy ended up staying with Donna for the entire three weeks. Less than a week after I left, he proposed to her. I went into a tailspin, into one of the blackest fits of depression I've ever had. And I couldn't explain why to Gary. How could I tell him that someone else had broken my heart? I couldn't be civil to either Andy or Donna, when they came back online. I remember having a huge fight with Andy, trying to figure out how he could say he was in love with me for the first part of a week, then with someone else a few days later. I felt used. As many times as I threatened suicide during my depressive periods, I think those few weeks were the one time I might have actually followed through, except that it didn't seem worth the effort.

This is so hard to write, to go back and analyze old motivations and old actions. It hurts a lot more than I thought it would. Wounds that I thought had healed have apparently festered a touch. Consider this the lancing. On the one hand, going with the Christian morality I subscribed to and the vows that I'd made, I was so wrong to do what I did. But on the other hand, that trip was the straw I needed to break the camel's back and to point out to myself -- and to Gary, really -- just how very very wrong our relationship was by that point. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing.

Within two weeks of coming home from Atlanta, I'd decided to go home. To Michigan. It took nearly a year for one of us to file for divorce -- he beat me to it, by about a month. I didn't find out until the papers were sent to me, although he and I talked every few weeks. I can remember how my stomach clenched when I saw that he'd filed under grounds of adultery. I didn't contest it. People tried to convince me to, because I told them that it wasn't true, but in my heart I felt it was... and so I didn't contest it.

I have never, ever told this whole story before. There's that much guilt. Not in three years of therapy, not to any friends, not to my mom. People have gotten bits and pieces, but never the whole thing. Now you know. I'm wondering if I'm going to have the guts to actually post this. I'm wondering, really, if it all would have hurt so much if Andy hadn't ditched me for Donna. I'm wondering if I would still feel guilty and horrible and awful if things had gone well.

I'm hoping now that I have one less skeleton in my closet to rattle bones at me at night. Posted by Lisa at April 3, 2000 06:22 PM