Though the issue of
what others thought remained unresolved, Mike and I could not be separated very
long. We got back together and continued
to see each other without announcing it to anyone. We always had a great time. We talked on the phone almost nightly. However, if the subject of marriage came up,
he persisted with his mantra that we would never get married. He finally asked what it would take to
convince me of this. Very flippantly, I
said, “You will either have to marry someone else or die.” I was becoming quite impatient with his logic
now. Decision time was here for him.
Incredibly, Mike’s
decision was to marry another woman he had known for exactly 3 months. He drove down from Los Angeles to tell
me. This was one of the most difficult
nights of my life. Later I learned it
was very difficult for him as well.
He reasoned that
this was the only solution, the only way for me to move forward and forget
about ‘us.’ On some level that was true
– in my heart I knew our love was strong and that he truly believed this was
the only way for us to move on. However,
I wanted some answers. I was very angry
and hurt and did not understand. I asked
many questions in rapid succession, giving him little time to answer. “Why was this happening? Do you love her? How can you possibly know you want to marry
her in such a short time? I thought you
were never getting married!” Everything
he said sounded so trite and he knew it.
Finally, I blurted out the hard question because I needed the answer. “Is this person easier for your parents to
look at or accept into the family?” With
his head hung, he hesitated briefly before saying, “Yes.” At least he was honest. I told him that was ludicrous and that he was
making a huge mistake. On some level, he
knew that too. Within the hour, he was
on his way back to Los Angeles.
My world
shattered. Everything I thought I knew
was compromised. How could I have been
so wrong? How could have I been so
ignorant to think it was at all possible for me to find a husband? What else had I been ignorant in
thinking? Devastation overwhelmed me.
Five weeks later,
on New Year’s Eve, Mike got married.
Several compassionate friends came over and sat with me on this
tumultuous day. Once the tears started,
they would not stop. I cried until I
absolutely could cry no more. My friends
joined my pity party, listened all day to my epiphany about the unfairness of
the world, how stupid I had been, why me, poor me, etc. Every few minutes, I would place myself in
Mike’s world and wonder what he was doing.
My heart ached like it never had before.
Needless to say, my
outlook on life took an abrupt downward turn.
I no longer believed that my attempts to be “normal” mattered in the
slightest or were worth any effort.
After all, my missing limbs had already cost me a well-deserved
promotion and the only man I ever loved.
I could not muster any more fortitude, strength or determination to cope
with ordinary daily struggles. My
positive attitude had been gravely wounded.
Pessimism was consuming me.
I thought about
Mike every day, constantly. One day, I
became obsessed with depressive thoughts during my drive down the Pacific
coast. I envisioned driving into the
ocean. I wondered if my van would get
stuck in the sand. I wondered how long
it would take for my van to sink. Was
this suicidal ideation? I didn’t
care. Still a faint voice in my head
kept nagging at me, “If you change your mind, how will you get back to shore?”
So…just in case
this dilemma presented itself again, I signed up for swimming lessons at the
YMCA. I was so very deathly afraid of
water so I reasoned that for at least 1 hour a week, my focus would go from
ruminating about Mike to making sure I didn’t drown. It worked!
I learned how to swim. The deep
end, the shallow end – it didn’t matter.
I could not reach the bottom of the pool at any depth. I was sure I would never float, but I was
wrong. It took a while to turn from
front to back and then back to front but eventually I got the hang of it. Swimming with one arm propelled me in a
circle and it took some time to use force that matched the shorter arm so that
I would go forward.
I began to look
forward to my swimming lesson and the 1-hour break from the Mike heartache each
week. Unfortunately, there were still
many hours in the day.
