Back in
Florida life was glum, my routine oppressive and boring. Being a
single mother consumed me: Wake up at 6:00 a.m, shower and wear work uniform--long-sleeved
shirt with career college logo, black pants, and flats. There was never time for makeup. (After my return from Amsterdam, I quickly
resumed my teaching schedule of three days of morning and night classes and two
full days of teaching, from 8 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.).. Amsterdam
never happened. Mats never loved me...
I had been rescued, revived, and left
for dead once again. “Must forget it all quickly!”
This period in my life was
about being stuck in the same heat, blue sky, and story of something great now
gone, or gone wrong, like my older neighbor bemoaning a fading beauty that once
distracted men to crash their cars while driving; a divorced coworker who was
once married to a millionaire and was now on the brink of bankruptcy for her old
spending habits; a best friend with a 10-year divorce she wouldn’t let go. Me, sad
for true love lost forever. We were all knocked
down and kept down by the most tragic event in our lives, a suffering that
never let go... Endless sunny days
didn’t help either but made the tragedy loom larger alongside beautiful days
and tropical weather that never changed scenery. Maybe the changing seasons might
have been a welcomed distraction to forget our heartbreaks or move away from
them.
I had once lived up North
were the seasons brought such climatic high and lows, shocks, surprises,
changes, and challenges, they demanded internal renewal, new perspectives, different
preparations, or, at least, a change of clothing; the old, past, or outdated could
never live through a raging blizzard or a fall of glorious, dying leaves. In Florida, the weather equaled sameness of
mind, being, and feeling—all the time--so we all faked smile, faked wished each
other well, faked carried on as if we were not about to break apart and stay
broken in the middle of the sidewalk.
I kept the memories of my
weekend in Amsterdam at bay, its aftermath and looming heartbreak threatening
to crush me, so I screamed at the kids more often--and in higher pitches:
“we’re running late, always late, god damnit. Your clean uniforms are in the
dryer. Don’t forget your sandwiches on the table. Did you brush your teeth? Wash your face?
Don’t forget your homework. You have
practice today. Don’t be late for choir.”
Their father, my
ex-husband, paid for their private school, health insurance, and afterschool
activities; I paid for everything else, including the $8000 yearly taxes and
insurance on the house. I also ran them
around, cooked, washed, clothes, bought the groceries... They
were 16 and 13, content with their teenage lives as I determined from
monitoring their happiness and smiles on social media accounts with friends in karate
tournaments, summer camps, and choir performances. Their lives were grand; mine had fallen apart
a long time ago. The most honest line I
ever heard about divorce was in a British movie in which a character said that
no one ever talked about how a woman with children who went through a divorce
had an impossible time of moving on: Her new life of raising children on her
own became a consuming responsibility a divorced man could easily leave behind
and start again with a new family or new woman, like my ex-husband had done.
I tried not to think
about Mats’s disappearance, but it loomed large even in the midst of my overwhelming
day to day. To add insult to injury, he removed
himself and his pictures from our Instant Messenger account where we had chatted
away the nights--time differences and work schedules only allowed us to chat in
the late hours).
I googled and stalked him
mercilessly, and without remorse, reading in a Danish online paper about a reward
he earned for his conservation efforts; there was also a picture of his hunting
trip to Africa posted by a friend to his social media. Sometimes
Mats posted a picture of his new woman in his Facebook account and a loving
phrase in Danish, the same phrases he shared with me: -- , Hello my own, evidence
which made my stomach twist in knots and made me resent his recycling of affections
as if he was a nickel and dime prostitute vying for a windfall at love at the same
tired game.. Strange, seeing his life
unfold on the worldwide web and being shocked by how quickly he left behind a divorce,
suicidal girlfriend, and “soulmate” by adding more of the same (It had been three
months since our weekend in Amsterdam, which for him must have been lifetimes ago).
I no longer existed for
him. His profile on the dating site was erased. He was gone on to another dating site, woman,
weekend in Prague, Berlin, Budapest. Amsterdam? Oh god, not Amsterdam. with another
woman at the Amrath Hotel. Really,
I was continuation of the same experience as he believed that: I was just another
woman who wanted a “provider,” and he only provided or committed in lapses of emotional
storms or weaknesses, usually between breakups that clouded his judgment—at least
that was his overall philosophies about the opposite sex and his relationship
to them. His life was like a carnival
ride speeding to other carnivals in other countries with other men and women
who knew how to live on the same fairgrounds.
I started with the
negative self-talk: I wasn’t’ sharp
enough, quick enough. What did I know
about worldly men? My expectations of
love were codependent and festering, not light and soaring like Mat’s. Sharing intimacy, secrets, and realness were
necessary only to pull in a lover long enough for affair worthy of a lifetime—for
the grand total of six months, three days, and some hours in change. Love could be reduced to an essence of
essence and experienced in a meteoritic moment – if done right. Happily ever after was trite and
unimaginative.
I couldn’t get him out of
my mind or heart, even when exercising, even on the days I walked around the industrial
park in my neighborhood with big out-of-town businesses, cow pastures, and Mediterranean
style townhouses with the barrel tile roofs and Royal palms lining welcoming
centers that invited future homeowner to check out and buy “their new homes.” Like other walkers, I knew the one-mile area
could be completed in 20 minutes if done in a clip. I tried walking away my
thoughts of Mats while waving and smiling at others who came to exercise at the
same time in the early evening. Still, I
felt as if the pain of losing him was in my chest, an invisible black dot lodged
in the center hard blades of my breastplate; growing and palpitating its
ephemeral density, size, arrangement, pain, and flow with all the conviction of
its distant cousin cancer.
Too bad there were no pathology reports to
document, size, analyze, review, and discuss the ambitions of heartbreak as if
it was physiological and not psychological. Of course, there was therapy, but I
refused to talk to a professional who would eventually dissect and brand my
pain an extension of my neuroses.
No one could convince me
that I ran wild and reckless with delusional feelings of being loved or being
in love after some internet chats and a weekend in Amsterdam. The general consensus was that such a feeling had
to be tried, tested, and measured against the long arm of time, but I refused
that version and lived instead by Graham Greene’s love as a “bolt of lightning
on a clear blue day."
When I turned the
corner that overlooked another cow pasture with an ancient Indian cemetery,
overgrown with palms and oaks, that the government was trying to usurp for more
construction, I had a ground-breaking
epiphany I was certain would heal my heartbreak:: If I stayed with Mats he
would have eventually become a replica of my white European and abusive father
who never loved my non-white mother with the Native American roots;
instead, we would stay together and like my parents, play the same version
of their narcissistic, sado/masochistic
games of punishing each other for any impulse or gesture of genuine feeling,
each game proving that love, respect, and freedom could be undermined and degraded
by perverse manipulation. That was it... he had come into my life to liberate me from a past neuroses, the remnants of my parents' love story gone wrong. To make me choose a better story of equally exchanged lover and respect. Mystery solved, heartbreak over, I repeated to myself over and over again.
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