With or Without Him

I'm visiting him here in the Virgin Islands. We were apart for a month, so I came down for two weeks. It will be another month after I leave before I see him again. He gets to take a week off after 4 weeks on. He's here as part of the Disaster Relief efforts. I'm hoping we can avoid any disasters at home. 

How ironic that I would be engrossed in a collection called "Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own." I slowly consumed the essays. I didn’t realize the significance of this book to me until I looked around the rental property where my husband now lives. I hadn't truly seen it for what it was. His new place. And here I was, determining a space of my own. Both of us looking for a place to call home.

As a product of abandonment, I am always trying to belong. I have moved several times with my parents, moved more times as a college student, then embarked on a ruthless moving schedule after being married, some years more than once. Our daughter would tell people, at 11, she had just as many houses as years of life. Was it tough on us? Was it welcome? Was it him? for him? Or me? for me?

This latest trial in our marriage is due to him accepting a job in the Virgin Islands. As I thought it happened, he was solicited; but in reality, he solicited the move. He contacted a former colleague and before we knew it, he had accepted. More money, a new job, and a new life.

Of course, he consulted me. Laid out all of the positives for him, us, me. (in that order). I said yes! I needed some time on my own. I craved some space. Now that the kids were both off on their own, I could focus on my writing, on my finishing my memoir. “Yes. Go.” I said.

Until it started to sink in. He would be living in the Virgin Islands for a month at a time. He would have a week off, but no time off in between. He would be far away. Far from me. What was this exactly? Were we headed for a divorce?

As I stewed in the unsaid, ruminated on the possibilities, fantasized about the many indiscretions he could get himself into. I voiced my objections.

By phone, night after night we’d have long bitter brawls. Sometimes our connection would fail. Sometimes I hung up. Sometimes he did. Because the decision and putting it into action happened within a month of each other. The final date for his move was issued a week prior. There wasn’t really time to think.

Back in NY, the coldest temperatures hit with two snowfalls and the plow a no show.  He didn’t want to rub in that he was living in a $2Mil home with panoramic views of the ocean from every room. That he had a brand new truck he was driving that the company was paying for, while I struggled with our 10-year-old used contraptions. He only sparingly told me of the new restaurants he and his friend from Brooklyn, who also would be part of the hurricane recovery team, were frequenting and new bars he was discovering.

Even though I knew in my heart, this was what we needed to pay bills, to keep him from spiraling into depression after returning to his engineering office in Nyack, after years of autonomy in the office in Brooklyn, to help me focus on writing, I still was overcome and overwrought by my childhood fears. “This is for the good of our family.” He said. “We can pay for the kids’ education, allow them to have the things they need.” He assured me. “We can really save up and then live the life we want in Oregon or wherever we want. This is a good thing for our family.” He said one night while I cried hysterically on the other end. “That’s what my parents said, too.” I finally blurted out. And it was true.

My parents’ decision to move to the United States to take jobs and leave their young children behind was a decision that has defined me. From that moment on, I was abandoned. Of course, it would only be a year that we lived apart. They left us in the care of our remaining family members. But it was a tough year. Our unmarried aunt, the youngest of my mother's sisters, resented being our caregiver. My mom would tell me later that Tita Chet would not be able to study for her college exams because she was caring for us. Our mother's parents were strict and cold, unaffectionate. Our grandmother was a teacher yet did not know how to care for us, having maids do most of the unpleasantries. Our grandfather ruled with an iron fist. As it turned out, he was the reason we were separated from our parents for so long. Our mom and dad had only meant to leave for two weeks, get settled with housing upon which time our grandfather and aunt would bring us to the USA. But each week, our grandfather refused to board the plane. Finally, our mother threatened to return for us. That’s the only reason our grandfather relented. To him, raising children in the US was going to be a disaster. The children would grow up spoiled, disrespectful, forgetting their culture and leaving the Philippines behind forever. In many ways, he was right.

Nonetheless, while away from us, our parents presented a happy front. They sent pictures of them at parties with their new friends, laughing in front of landmarks, even holding other people’s children. I grew up thinking they had left us, did not care about us, moved on.

Many of the feelings were stirred up by Peter’s leaving. How could they not?

I felt like he was having a damned good time without me. His new acquaintances were fresh ears to tell his stories. Dominating the conversation, Peter would be able to speak ad nausea with no one to stop him. He’d be able to flirt and check out women with me nowhere in sight. Shit, we weren’t even on the same continent! He was free!

Sometimes, I truly believed he went there to get rid of me. Leave me to take care of all of the stuff that made up the life we put together and while he pretended to be doing it for us, he’d one day stop answering my calls and disappear from my life all together. On particularly dark days, that's what I believed.

After 34 years together, I knew Peter would “do the right thing” even if that wasn’t what he wanted to do. That is, he’d do it to a point, then, he’d convince himself that it’s OK to do this or that because…he’d fill in the blank. Entitlement, embodied in a middle-class white boy from America is pretty damn convenient. He let himself get away with murder over the years. But this time, I wasn’t going to let him.

Just admit it, I’d demand during some of my worst days, Just tell me already that you don’t want THIS life and this is your way of getting rid of it/me. He’d deny it. Tell me that you secretly think you can have your cake and eat it too? You can coerse me into believing that one day you’d like me to move here but in reality, you want the freedom to have affairs and flirt and check out other women until one day you find one that you want to settle down with. Tell me that you’ll push me so far that I’ll finally just walk away and then you can have this life and it won’t be your fault because it will be me who leaves.

But he swears this isn’t the case. He says things like  "You don’t understand. I am lost without you.” “If this goes on for longer than six months, I will just come home. I don’t want to be without you for that long.” “I’m doing this for us, if there isn’t going to be an us, then I’ll just stop doing it.”

But we have a history. Over thirty years of him pushing me away, or hurting me, finding what pushes my buttons and doing it. This is the ultimate way of hurting me. Different from the time he left for Turkey, then England because at that time, I didn’t want him. He was so down all of the time and nothing I did could break his depression. I felt I was to blame. That was the first time I looked into a divorce. Would this be the last and final time?

Which puzzles me, because we were getting along. We had resolved to having a future. Growing old together. And then this.

We’ve spoken at length about his issues with his mother, his family, his childhood. How lately, he as a 12-year-old boy has needed to take control, to speak out and defend adult Peter. Why?

Is the 12-year-old really the one that tells him it’s OK to flirt and check out women? Not being able to control himself, making excuses for doing something I don’t want him to do? According to Peter, he came to understand how much it hurt me, how it stirs up my feelings of abandonment, how I couldn’t hear him when he said he loved me. All I could see was how disrespectful he was and lately, I believed more and more that he did these things to keep me at bay, to make me insecure, feel like I can and would be abandoned.

He had been gone since January 2 and we were arguing about this situation on a daily basis. A few days before my 55th birthday, I repost "Birthdays from Hell". I knew all along that he wouldn't be home for my birthday, so, I made due. I made plans of my own. 

It was Sunday, the day before my birthday, when he texted me. He heard there would be island-wide cellphone and internet outages. We had experienced several instances of this already. He just wanted me to know in case I tried to reach him that the cell phone service might be out. I said, OK.

I went about my day. Monday, my actual birthday, I was going to spend the day at a spa. So, on Sunday, I went to bed early. I figured he had no cell phone coverage, so I wouldn't miss his call. Since he’d been on St. Croix, we hadn’t had a night where we didn’t talk well into the next day. Poor guy. He had early morning meetings with his boss. I would keep him up past his bedtime. And so, I too was up late. This was a break in our arguments and in our sleep patterns. I was happy to get into bed, turn out the lights and sleep before 11pm.

I heard my phone go off. I was trying to wake up and focus on it when I heard someone open my bedroom door. “Markham?” I started to say. But when I heard my bedroom door close, I knew it wasn’t him. Our son tended to storm in with whatever thing he wanted to tell me or show me but leave the door open so he could exit just as abruptly. I heard shoes, footsteps coming my way. My mind started to formulate the words "Oh, Oh!" when I saw that it was Peter. “What are you doing here?” I gasped before burying my face into this torso to give him a hug. “Peter!” I exclaimed unbelievingly. 

“I read your blog." he said. "I was sobbing. I had a few things to do for work and then I called my boss (his boss of 20 days) and said, I am all caught up and don’t have any meetings for the next two days. Can I go home in time for my wife’s birthday? And he said, yes. So, I got a plane ticket, rented a car and here I am.” It was just after midnight and as was his master plan, he was the first to wish me a happy birthday.

After that, how do I question him? 

Because he’s insecure. Because, so am I. Because he wants to live here in the Virgin Islands and I’m afraid he’ll flirt or check out other women or worse and then I can’t be with him any longer. Because we’ve had over 30 years, a lifetime, no, several lifetimes of hurt that just keeps coming. Because,  I’m tired. I’m done.

A medium once told me that I this would be my last time on this earth. Peter and I believe we’ve been together as hunter and gatherers. We’ve been together during the end of the Roman Empire, during the expansion West and other times in between. When I told Peter that this was my last incarnation, he knew it already. He hung his head and said, “I know, and I’m going to miss you.”

Does that mean that I accomplish my task and move “up”? Or that I fail and don’t get another shot? Does it mean I have free choice and move on? Or does it mean I get him to change and so we move on together? I don’t know. 

We don’t really know what the universe has planned for us. What we do know is that we can believe in fulfilling our destiny to the best of our ability and hopefully, fulfill it with more happiness than pain. 

If I truly believe I’m meant to be with him, then I should be with him. Trust him. Put my trust in him. 

After all, what’s the alternative? A life without him?