Aren't You Sorry You Killed Yourself?

I did a lot of self reflection from a very early age. I knew I was on my own and would have to figure it out from there. I knew this world was not my home. It seemed I had been placed here, on the planet where there were no kindness rules.

I kept talking to God, once I found out there was such a thing as a creator that gave a dam. Well it’s not really that God gives a dam, but on the other hand free will is quite a gift to give the mentally challenged. When young, you don’t think life is a gift. Not at all, but it is because the ultimate question really is to be or not to be.

Somewhere along the line I had counseling that I was to be and I must of thought it was a good idea because here I was, being as fast as I could.

I quickly learned how to turn invisible. When I wasn’t turning invisible I was ignored so it was easy to learn the art of flash! Now you see me, now you don’t!


I only knew I was in deep shit in a subliminal way. God was like, be quiet kid, you’ll grow, you’ll move on, look for the perks, pass go and collect. It’s not as bad as it looks. Patience really is a virtue and that’s what you’ll get out of our deal. Patience. In patience you own your soul. Ok. I sort of understood these God chats.

If God was quiet during these chats it meant He was reinforcing the patience part. So far so good.

About the subliminal area: Our minds here were split. One part was what I came to call the seeker. It didn’t know shit. One part gave rise to the perks offered here, that part I called the finder.

The other part that drew the other two parts together into something resembling cohesiveness, was the underdeveloped observer part, and this part was the creative part, and recognizing this observer part as you got older than 6, was what really caused you to grow in consciousness, in awareness of who you really were, and once in awhile you even got a glimpse of who you used to be, which was a sublime trip to say the least.

This is a ditty about meeting a soulmate. We were both loners who somehow romantically found each other and momentarily lit up each other’s world producing a blazing trail in our wake; this I call my twin girls, the blazing trail of trothlings as Mike called them.

Mike came up with this word while contemplating our marriage vows which we had left up to the minister to create. In the vows it said, I pledge thee my troth…Later, I considered we are going to have to research what that word meant, as we had just pledged it to one another.

Trothlings: it stuck in my head for years, but he and I never did figure out what our troth was that we were supposed to pledge, not in its fuller meaning. Some lessons in life are learned accidentally or by circumstance, and a lot of pomp.

Mike thought it was marriage itself that would make him happy. To say we both had our own expectations of marriage is not the point of this article. In looking back, we had just plunged into the ideal construct of marriage after it was discovered I was carrying a child which turned out to be twins. The proposal I received was sort of a cryptic, “you’re never going to ever marry me are you?”

Mike needed the homemaker type. I was anything but that. My idea of a good relationship was simple. You let your partner be who they were and didn’t try to change them, with the subsequent belief they would let you be yourself too, however that looked.

Neither one of us consequently knew how life would turn out for us. We were in the water and would have to learn to swim or we would drown. My observer part was non-existent. Neither one of us was to blame for what would happen. We could blame our stubborn natures if we have to blame something. I had always wanted a career in music and marriage had interrupted my dreams about that. I never told him so he never knew.

He might have had the chance to understand my dreams if I’d confided to him. I might have understood him better if he’d talked to me about his addiction to alcohol. I hadn’t even noticed it was an addiction, that booze was his real mistress, not I. I noticed it in hindsight.

I slapped myself later. After all, we had met in a bar. I should have known it wouldn’t work.

The glow of love, during the honeymoon phase, causes one to be blind to anything but this good feeling that you finally met “the one.”

We lasted in the marriage a mere five years. Social security didn’t even recognize the shortness of such a marriage. Ten years is what makes a widow a widow. Another way to say the five years you hung in there doesn’t count at all when it comes to .gov and money a wage earner paid in. And so it was.

No matter, in my heart I was a widow even though I was supposed to check the divorced box on the paperwork. We didn’t fight as a couple. If we didn’t accept each other as we were in the marriage, we did accept one another in divorce and stayed on good terms because of the children for one reason. For another, we did have a basic compatibility and still could talk about things, even our dating experiences with others without feeling the relationship was threatened.

When he crashed his car for the 2nd time because of booze and slowly slipped away from this world at the tender age of 43, I was royally pissed. I had come to expect his telephone calls which came now and again and I enjoyed those calls and thought perhaps we could begin again a journey of togetherness.

I had a mere 12 years total with my soul mate. I hadn’t known booze could actually kill you. After all, it was quite legal to drink yourself to death here. It was just frowned on if you drove into a pole while passing out at the wheel. Mike had done that twice, so I should have been prepared, but you are never prepared when death appears.

In his last year of life he had been quite ill. He couldn’t digest food at that point, but he kept moving his feet. When he drove the distance to see the kids, if they were out for the moment, he sat forlornly clutching his stomach, pain in his eyes, trying to be a good dad and failing miserably. He’d run out the door if I offered the slightest sympathy and asked the wrong question. That time I had a feeling it would be the last time I laid eyes on him and I couldn’t do a dam thing about it.

His mistress who had given him such relief from the sufferings of life had turned on him and was going to kill him once and for all.

Turn the page. Mike was the responsible type. Even in death he had come to me and shouted in my head to call the insurance agent. I had money for me and the kids waiting, and there was an error on the paperwork. Only if I called could the error be corrected.

We had discussed life insurance once briefly after the divorce. It was right after my question to him that he knew booze would take him out, right? It was my last ditch effort to get him to see the value of family life and come back to me and the kids. It was too late for him to choose life though. So when I saw the stubborn look on his face, and they way he continued watching the tube while I floundered there with the realization, our divorce really was final. So I asked him to get some life insurance for me and the kids, thinking he probably wouldn’t.

To my surprise, he had actually gotten the life insurance but never gotten the chance to tell me before he crashed.

If I’d had a choice, I would much rather have had a father for the kids and been as poor as dirt. He was stubborn, but he was a kind man, a drunk, yea, but still a kind man. You didn’t find kindness operating here on this planet. Not that often.

I had gotten into some sort of silent rage stage, in my grief response. I knew there was an afterlife. I had to go out and find him just to find out if he was sorry he had drunk himself to death. This was really about me and my inability to effect his decisions regarding the booze.

I had thought if someone loved you, that what you said to them mattered. I felt unimportant in his life. He had felt unimportant in my life when I’d sought a music career. We were totally even now. But I was still pissed. I went out of body and found him.

As the scene unfolded I sat to the right of Mike at a long table occupied by just the two of us. In outer space somewhere.

I checked out his demeanor, he didn’t look too happy, understandably. In the corner of the room was the marriage counselor. I thought he was staying out of sight because this was just between me and Mike. He was there to make suggestions I think if we needed him.

I’d suggested a marriage counselor for us once. Mike had turned down my unimportant suggestion. This might even be the guy we’d have had, if Mike had agreed. He was good. He sent support to both of us.

I turned to Mike since he wasn’t speaking and blurted out AREN’T YOU SORRY YOU DRANK YOURSELF TO DEATH??!

In a somewhat cold manner of speaking Mike said he was sorry for nothing, except that he wouldn’t be around to help with the twins growing up.

A little shocked I heard in my mind “I don’t love you. I only love the kids.” It was only my own program running about the not loving you part. All my life I’d basically had this program I was unlovable.

The counselor was quietly imparting the “try not to judge him” concept. I immediately changed my tune to the less judgmental attitude. I’d had a lot of practice letting him be himself even if he was killing himself. You can only say the warning a few times without it sounding like a broken record.

The meeting faded to black. But we would meet several more times in the ozone. Once he came to me it seemed to try and make me less grief stricken that he was gone now. Just in his simple way he asked me to smile for him while I was cranking out the sobs. He never did have a lot of words to him. I tried to smile, but only because he’d asked me to.

It must have been love. See ya on the other side my friend and thanks for the girls. I Could not have made it this far without my girls.

Has the hurt we did to each other subsided over the years? I know for me it has. It's like Mike is a ghost. I'm pretty sure we had a contract to meet before we were born here but I can't prove it. Just a strong feeling. If I had a moral of this story to share it would be if you have someone, try your best to make it work, and if all fails, see a counselor, and don't be so quick to turn down such a suggestion. A counselor might have helped us stay together but we both would have had to change for it to work.