Like I watched this one show all about how this one guy every year has a total freak-out on the anniversary of his father's death. And geez, it's not like it was some violent trauma; the guy was old and died a natural death, it wasn't even unexpected. Yet every year he'd freak out. I guess it was just so that we, the viewing public, would get the idea that he was a good person and a loyal son.

 

But is it possible, I wonder, to be a good person and a loyal son without freaking out every year? Does it make you a better person to repress your grief for 364 days out of the year?

 

It's the same as how I missed church this year at Easter. At Easter, if you can believe it. I've been told how wrong and bad it was of me to miss services on Easter Sunday. And forget that I go to services every other Sunday of the year, and forget what's in my heart and how I believe and how I live my life; I'm supposed to believe that God is more pleased with the 99% of them who attend service just on this one Sunday of the year...right?

 

You can usually get a good rant out of me on this topic every year at Christmas. But now in particular I am thinking about it because today would have been my fifteenth wedding anniversary.

 

It's like, sometimes I have these pictures of us sitting up in bed reading the paper, or long walks in the evenings, or parties with friends. And then I remember that none of that actually happened and what I'm remembering are scenes from beer commercials or whatever, just images that I used to imagine how I wanted things to be, and that no matter what I did or how badly I wanted it, it was just never going to be that way, and I guess my biggest problem was that I never stopped believing that it would be. And even being that freakishly optimistic, in and of itself, is not a problem; it's not so much that I always expected things to get better, but that I expected it to happen all by itself.

 

Like, you may think of all those miners and prospectors who dropped everything and gave up their homes and careers to move to the Yukon and get rich in the gold rush, and think of them as being blindly optimistic and hopelessly stupid. But at least they were doing something. They weren't praying to God and expecting the gold to drop from the sky.

 

And so as the conflict level in my home continued to rise, and her emotional state continued to deteriorate, I just spent less and less time at home to avoid the whole thing. She blamed me for everything and said that I was neglectful and worthless and, worst of all, she continued to put the children in the middle of everything by telling them every little detail of our relationship.

 

I could go on and on about what all of her problems were, but the truth is that I did neglect my family and I allowed things to continue this way for far too long. I had my own problems and I contributed to the break up of the marriage just as much as she did. The difference is, I got help, I've admitted my problems and I've been doing what I need to do to improve myself as a person and, most importantly, as a parent.

 

I have a lot of very conservative fundamentalist Christian friends who'd tell me that divorce is wrong and divorce is bad and God totally hates divorce. And I believed it, even as it grew increasingly harder to accept as I saw how badly my children were being treated by her, and how she would take the kids and disappear for weeks at a time and not even let me have contact with them or even know where they were. I could have dealt with anything, any kind of schizophrenia, bipolar manic paranoia, whatever, as long as someone is willing to admit that there's a problem and is willing to seek help, however difficult it was. That's what I signed on for when I got married in the first place. But how is anyone supposed to deal with it when their spouse is on this downward spiral and refuses to even admit that there's a problem, even continues to say how perfect they are and that everything is someone else's fault (usually mine), and all the while continues to inflict this huge emotional burden on the children? So maybe I could agree that God hates divorce, but I was really starting to believe that He hated this situation even more. And so in the end I had to put aside my own personal feelings about divorce, and even my feelings for her and my desire that she get better, and start looking out for my children's needs first.

 

They tell you in all the divorce classes and parenting seminars that divorce is never just one person's fault, and I can agree with that. I don't have any problem accepting responsibility for my own mistakes; what I won't do is accept responsibility for her mental state, particularly since she had every opportunity to get therapy.

 

And I do feel bad for her for how things turned out, and how alone she is. I didn't want things to be this way. But, honestly, how bad am I supposed to feel? She made her choices, just the same way I made mine, and we both have to live with them.

 

Now, if I could step into a time machine and go back to the absolute very best point of my marriage when we were at our happiest, and walk in the door holding that monkey lamp, I can tell you exactly what would happen.

 

First of all, she would have made it clear to me that it was the most hideous, grotesque thing she had ever seen. She would have spent a great deal of time on this, believe me, until it was absolutely clear that she would rather have a lamp molded from fecal matter and powered by a moldy potato battery, than to put this monstrosity on display. And no matter how much I spent on it, even if it was just one dollar, she would have gone on and on about how we couldn't afford it, and all the other things we could have done with that dollar, and how many starving Bolivian orphans could eat rice for a year just on that one dollar (she could do these calculations in her head).

 

When this was absolutely clear (maybe after a day or two of screaming about it), she would move on to her next point, which is that, since I brought it home, that I was the most useless and hopelessly retarded man ever, and that my enthusiasm for it was just further proof that I was irreversibly brain-damaged.

 

Now I don't say any of this to make her look bad, really; at least no worse than I look. Because while all of this was going on, I would be listening to her and feeling guilty, and stupid, and not at all that it was inappropriate or unacceptable for her to talk to me this way, and so it would go on like that for many years. This is a hypothetical situation and so of course it never really happened, but it could have happened. It's just the way things were, and I was just as much to blame as she was for just letting it go on that way, for accepting it and just thinking that one day it would spontaneously get better.

 

You may read this and think that I sound bitter and angry. Or you may be thinking that all of this is my own damn fault for marrying such a castrating shrew in the first place. And you would probably even be right, at least about that second part about how I'm the one who married her, but maybe not so much about the bitter and angry part, I don't think.

 

But anyway, I'm all done placing or accepting blame. I'm tired of it and I honestly don't care anymore. The fact is just that I was in this horrible relationship, and she would probably talk about what an ass I was and how I would yell and stomp out of the house, or whatever, but it's all in the past and none of it matters anymore.

 

You know why?

 

Because I have a monkey lamp.

 

I have this totally awesome lamp, and a Green Lantern ring and a mounted jackalope head. And I don't have anyone in my life telling me how stupid and immature it all is, and even if I did I wouldn't care. Because whatever else it is, it's mine.

 

So perhaps my biggest problem, after all, is that I knowingly married someone who had no appreciation of my need for a monkey lamp. The biggest challenge now is not repeating my mistake.

 

It may seem that I have this monumental task before me now, finding a woman who will accept the monkey lamp. But not really. First of all, because I'm not really "looking", and I honestly don't expect to find anyone again, ever, and if a woman expressed interest in me I think I would wonder what was wrong with her. Second, I would of course love to find someone who could appreciate the glory that is the monkey lamp, but the reality is that if she could even just appreciate that I loved the monkey lamp, she'd be light-years ahead of what I'm used to. And third, I'm a little more flexible than to have to have it right in the middle of the living room, and if she wanted it all kind of off to the side in my own little study, I'd be open to that.

 

I guess I'll have to wait to see how all this turns out. For now, I'm too busy being a parent.