Allison reminded me of a time when she was heading up to go rock climbing in the gunks but decided to turn around before she got there.  I vaguely remember this. I don't remember where or when this was.   Allison says its when we were living downtown.  Who knows.  I'm sure the trip was in the context of her needing to clear her head, get out of the city, get some exercise or any of the other euphemisms that were regularly used. What I do remember is feeling relieved when she came back.  Originally I thought I was happy.  But sitting with it, what I felt was relieved.  So now I  start to think back, how did it feel all the other times when she didn't turn around.  How did it feel to have your girlfriend (wife) running off every chance she could get under the premise that it was something she needed.  That I was too serious.  Didn't like to have fun.  Wasn't really into climbing.  And again I come back to humiliation.  Knowing that she was going up there to hook up.  Or at least tell anyone she was trying to hook up with about what a loser I was.  Explicitly or implicitly.  The very act of going to the gunks wasn't just a thing to which I was a bystander.  I was an integral part of it.  Would there even be rock climbing in Allison's life if it wasn't for me?  I was the perfect dupe.  And it seems all this time the gunks has been almost synonymous with humiliation.   It didn't have to be climbing.  Could have been dancing.  And it was!   How many nights did Allison go out dancing. Hippy dancing.  Dance clubs.  R&B clubs.  Always had the same feeling.  You stay here Phil.  I need you to stay here.  And it always ended the same.   Making out.  Jerking off.  Sucking dick.  Getting fucked.  And I'm right there in place so when she decides to come home she's got me as a cover.   She can still see her family.  Her friends.  Her co-workers.  Classmates.   And when it's time to seem human, she talks about me and how great I am.  And then she punches the clock and the gimp goes back in the hole.  And how sad that the one time she turns around I take it to mean those days are behind us.   But really.  Those days never ended and continued on even more unabated.  And here we are again.  With such clarity.  With such noble intentions.  Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Again.  And again.

Call me Phil.  Just recently, I went for a hike with my wife.  Let's call her Allison.  Just the two of us.  The kid was at school.  My wife and I have hiked many, many miles together over the years, but since my daughter was born, it's pretty rare that we go out just the two of us.  But the other day we did.  And the feelings that came up for me were profound.  Not new.  But maybe new to my awareness.  We were out for a few hours and on the way back, with each step I was getting more and more angry.  Just angry.  No story attached to it.  And then on a long downhill stretch of the trail I found myself running -- it was easier than trying to go slow.  And then came a memory. . . . 

 There was this guy that my wife used to be friends with.  We'll call him Greg.  They met in college.  At a rock climbing class (yes, they paid for college credits to learn rock climbing).  He was significantly older.  Mid-30's while my then girlfriend (current wife) were still barely 20.  Looking back, I should have been more curious as to why a man in his mid-30's was taking undergraduate classes in rock climbing. . . .   But it was college, right?  We had a lot of friends.  All kinds of friends.  So, when the two of them started climbing together, it didn't seem too remarkable.  I'd known my girlfriend for several years already by then.  We were partners.  We both dropped out of college for a while.  We worked shitty jobs to save some money.  We rented a shitty room in a shitty apartment in a shitty college town and reveled in the freedom.  And when we got a couple thousand dollars together we travelled.  Road trip.  No plan.  No time limit.  Just the two of us, all over the US, with nobody to rely on but each other.  Yes, we'd had some rough times before.  Infidelity I guess.  Or maybe just my naiveté.  But I thought that was behind us.  We were living together, we were partners.  All this is to say I trusted her implicitly.  

But the other day when I found myself running down the hill, what came up for me was a memory of being on a trail with Greg and Allison (I assume she was there b/c I can't imagine why I'd be with Greg alone other than to maybe smoke a joint or something.)  And Greg would run down the hill, the same way, for the same reason -- it was easier for tired legs.  Of course at the time, I had no idea that Allison and Greg were anything more than friends and fellow climbers.  But of course, I came to find out later that there was much more.  And as intriguing as that might sound, that's not why the moment running down the hill was so important.  I realized at that moment that merely being out in on a hike with my wife was a major trigger for me to re-experience so much of the pain I've been housing.  And I traced it back.  As far back as I could.  And this is the story that I remember:

One summer, maybe it was between freshman and sophomore year, we decided to take some classes at the local state college to make up for some of the time lost in taking a year off to work and travel.  We took an intensive Latin seminar.  And then Allison was going to go to Utah for a four-week Anthropology program on her parents dime.  Given that I'd been taken by surprise by her finding a new boyfriend so quickly at the beginning of freshman year, and really having my heart broken by that, I made sure to have some serious and explicit conversations before she left for this program.  Allison, are we going to be together through this or do you want to see other people while you're out there?  I figured this was about as straight-forward as it could be put.  Allison said she's wasn't going to see anyone else.  Looking back, and knowing what I know about her now, she probably really said the she wasn't planning on seeing anyone else.  But hey, at least we're on the same page, right?  I mean, we're together now and of course, who knows what the future brings, but at least we're on the same page in thinking that we're not going to be looking for a new relationship over that month in Utah.  And while Allison was in Utah, we wrote letters.  We talked on the phone.  We stayed in touch.  And when the month was over, at Allison's request, I drove with her parents to pick her up at the airport.  I missed her.  

We hadn't seen each other in so long.  There was so much to catch up on.  We decided we'd get away, just the two of us.  We'd drive up to Vermont with backpacks and a tent and we'd hike into the woods and catch up without any distractions.  So we drove.  And we hiked.  And after a few hours of walking we set up camp.  And when it came time to lie down for bed, I put my arm around Allison.  But there was nothing there.  Nothing but a turning away.  What?  We'd been hugging and loving each other just hours before.  What's going on.  Allison?  What's up?  Not a word.  But suddenly I knew the feeling.  It was the same feeling I got in freshman year when I found out she had already found a new boyfriend just a few weeks into the semester.  Allison?  What's going on?  I'm still not sure that anything was said.  But I knew she'd been with someone else.  And it was dark out.  And we were in the middle of the woods.  And I was trapped.  And I needed to know what was going on.  And Allison went to sleep.  And when I tried to wake her up to get her to talk to me, she told me no.  She needed to sleep.  And that's how I spent the night.  Sleepless, lost, ignored, betrayed, tricked and alone.  Why would she drag me up here for this?  I was gutted.  We talked about this before she left.  We talked while she was away.  We wrote letters.  And on Allison's end, they were all lies.  She lied to me the whole time.  She lied to me when she said she wasn't looking for anybody else.  She lied to me to get me up here.  What kind of vicious, manipulative sociopath does this?  I mean, cruelty is easy.  Just ignore me.  Tell me it's over with no explanation and move on.  But a lot of thought went into this.  It was calculated.  Why?  I had no reference point.  Except maybe to feel like I was somehow at fault.  I wasn't cool enough?  not good looking enough?  I wasn't talking Anthropology?  Hell, she even told me what a big dick the guy had.  So, what, my dick's not big enough?  Looking back, I'm even more stunned now by the level of viciousness.  Almost as though the infidelity was only a means to an end.  That the real end was to humiliate me as thoroughly and effectively as possible.  So, before the sun even fully came up, I was out of that tent and packing my things while Allison still slept.  I was alone in the woods with a monster.   I'd survived the night, but I wasn't sticking around for even another minute.  But in those dawn hours I had a vision and I carved it in a tree.  The words just came to me.  "Allison and Phil lost love here."  All I had was the smallest pocket knife, but I carved those words into a tree.  And it wasn't until just the other day, running down that hill, that I realized that I'd been thoroughly traumatized by that very brief camping trip.  Trapped, deep in the woods, hours from civilization, I found out that the entire last month of my life hadn't happened the way I thought it had.  And that  feeling I had 25 years ago in the woods with Allison were still as fresh today as they were then.  That none of that had lessened.  That it was as much a part of me now as it was 25 years ago.  

Now, you'd think that with such a clear vision, clear enough to have the words to carve into a tree, I'd have known that it was over.  But I didn't.  We eventually talked it all out.  We eventually came to an understanding.  We started on the path to rebuilding a relationship.  Or so I thought.  But we certainly didn't break up.  Probably more accurate to say we took the rotting, collapsing floor of our relationship and put down some cheap carpeting over it.  Looking back, I think I really saw it as an isolated incident.  Probably the result of Allison being so liberated and me being so uptight.  It was me, not her.  I should be more. . . something.  

And now, 25 years later, I'm on a hike, on a beautiful California trail on a beautiful California day and this all comes back to me like it just happened.  Like it just happened.  And I remember, for the first time in ages, about those words that came to me and are now a 25 year old tree carving.  And here I am, with that same monster.  In a ghost of relationship, where the love was lost so long ago.  And she never stopped.  

A Home for Heartbreak

I'm started this blog as an attempt at healing.  It's a purely selfish endeavor.  I've got so much hurt in me that I haven't been able to get out and I'm hoping that this forum will provide some of the relief I know I  desperately need.  And it will be salacious.  And shocking.  And pathetic.  And maybe, just maybe, there's someone else out there in the same situation.  And maybe by putting it all out there we can find some peace together.
These will be stories about betrayal, infidelity (lots of it), manipulation, humiliation, and all manner of interpersonal deviance.  I'm going to make my best attempt at relating my feelings, memories and recollections in real time, as they come up for me, which at this moment feels like a massive undertaking.  The torrent of emotions I go through on a daily basis is stifling and I feel like I'm still just at the beginning of having any real awareness of them.  But my aim is to use this as an outlet for honest expression of what goes on inside of me.
And these are not going to be your ordinary stories about heartbreak.  I think far from it.  Because in my experience, most broken heart stories are about the past.  Things that happened but now are over.  But these stories are different because the one who broke my heart is my wife.  IS my wife.  She's still here.  I'm still here.  We're still, somehow, married.  And we've got a kid.  She's in second grade.  And I love her.  And that's the only thing in this world I trust -- that I love my daughter.  And maybe that's the only reason I'm here, trying to write about the pain that comes from this situation.  So, thank you, my daughter for showing me my heart.  And giving me the desire to become whole.  For you.  And for me.