who had bad feet, bad eyes, depression, insomnia, hemorrhoids, carpal tunnel syndrome, clenched jaw syndrome, lousy ankles, freezing extremities and a host of additional ailments minor and major. She survived on Butterfingers, PMSed three-and-a-half weeks a month, and was, as it turns out, sleeping with another man. She was the writer of two published novels and she lived with an almost-dead cat in a grand old house that was filthy beyond description, a haven for cat hair and dustballs the size of a toddler's head. But she had great cheekbones and spoke passable French, she knew of a great restaurant for steak pommes frites, she was an adamant carnivore and she had interesting friends who seemed to like me.
There was something initially charming about the intellectual chaos that surrounded her, the stacks of unread books everywhere, the broken-legged sofa covered with a Hopi blanket from New Mexico, even the clothing closet I'd been asked to straighten up, only to discover a ludicrous photo of her other lover on a sailboat, shielding his privates with a sailor's cap. She liked talking about her exes, prided herself on the fact that many were still friends who would come and spend the night in the guestroom when they were in town. She taught writing, wrote book reviews for major newspapers and was regularly published in the better short-story magazines. She was constantly overworked, exhausted, on the edge of a major breakdown.
Her depression surfaced like a U-boat whenever we fought which, towards the end, was often. I would drive 90 minutes to see her and find her in tears over a comment made by an illiterate freshman student, or by a neighbor, a store clerk, a colleague. She would lock herself into her room, demand that she not be disturbed. I would go to the local eatery, order a slice of pizza and a diet Coke and wonder about the meaning of life.
My picker, as they say in the rooms, is often broken. I have a tendency to forge relationships with people who are, for one reason or another, largely unavailable. I am not the only one with this ailment, witness the growing ranks of Al Anon attendees, and judging from what I hear there, I wonder if broken pickers aren't more likely to be poorly built pickers. Most people I know who find themselves in untenable situations with friends or significant others come from families where the exact same scenario existed a generation earlier. Alcoholic mothers and absent fathers, poverty or over-wealth, haphazard lifestyles that did little or nothing to engender an environment of warmth and safety.
I have a friend, a woman who has been counseling other women for years and has a respected and thriving practice, who's persuaded that at the core of any alcoholic woman's issues is a thread--or rope--of sexual abuse. I those cases, she believes, addiction serves to mask the unspeakable. In men the antecedents are different, I'm sure, and I don't know what they are. Overbearing mother? Bullying siblings? Poor male role models? I have no idea... I do know that as many men get into impossible relationships as do women, though not necessarily to each other. It's a vast and confusing world out there, and, as we know--or should know--all relationships, even the best ones, end in tragedy. There are no survivors.
I often wonder about the few couple I know--older folks for the most part--who've had marriages lasting several decades. They've often been separated for months or years by war or work, and if anything the separations have made them stronger.
Maybe that's the problem; we have it too easy nowadays.
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