NOTE: This is a continuation of last week’s article. Click here to catch up on part one.
The best part of feeling like nothing matters in the world, is that you feel surprisingly free at times. I was the absolute life of the party wherever I went, because I was basically living like I was gonna die young.
After being away from home for two years, I did find a lot of enjoyment in hanging out with family and friends from the area I had left. I brought a 60oz bottle of Captain Morgan over to Uncle’s place to simply hang out in his garage. He had his own Vodka, so I basically took down that entire bottle myself and drove home. Not a care in the world.
Looking back, it was extremely selfish behaviour, but I figured the universe owed me something. Little did I know the universe doesn’t give a fuck about give and take.
My Dad was camping out at a small town festival, the same festival where I got my DUI only a mere five years earlier, and I had nothing but time to burn. I still had a guitar and if we were drinking, I knew i’d be the toast of any campsite I walked into. Small town like that, there’s a good chance you know somebody by proxy at every site.
I only cared about three things that weekend; trying to get laid, drinking, and playing softball. The last two were givens, the former was a long shot. But that weekend ended up being life changing for me. It was that weekend that I met my ex-wife.
We had a spark immediately after being introduced through my Dad’s family friends he was camping with. She was 18, and I was 23. Young love they say. But of course, I was way too shy to make the first move, but even after missing as many signs as I did, I noticed I had a shot.
A week later I asked her to be my girlfriend, and even though she was a 90-minute drive away and was moving to Edmonton once the summer ended, she said yes.
With finding love, I got a new lease on life. But that was all I had going for me. I still needed to make something of myself. If I didn’t, I would lose her. She would find out what a loser I was and then I’d be back to square one.
Over the next few years, I would swap jobs more times than I could count. I moved to Edmonton to be with my girlfriend, and spend time at three different companies in three months, before finding somebody to take over my lease. I’m sure my Dad would like his money back for the amount of damage deposits he lost trying to help me out through the years (something I understand now that I have a son of my own.).
I was a full-fledged alcoholic, and I didn’t even see anything wrong with it. Looking back I know I wasted so much of my potential living the way I was. But remember, at this time, I was a happy alcoholic. I had a girl who loved me, so all was well.
Every job opportunity would play out like this; use my charm during the interview process to get hired, enjoy the easy days spent training and doing paperwork, find a flow with the day to day, call in sick at least twice during the first three weeks, get down on myself for not being good enough at the work or lose interest because the work feels beneath me, half-ass it while I look for another gig, get call for another interview and never show back up to previous job. Repeat. Repeat.
Every now and then I’d find a job that I could tolerate enough that I could show up almost every day and not completely hate my life during the day. I guess I developed those habits while working part time jobs when I was going to school. And I thought the booze didn’t affect me? No, no, it wasn’t the reason I’d wake up exhausted and feeling like shit that I would rather lay in bed all day. I was just meant for greater things.
Ever had to really stretch out a resume????
My girlfriend and I had our ups and downs for sure. To be completely fair to her, I probably wasn’t easy to live with. Or support in any way. And she didn’t treat me like somebody she loved or respected a lot of the time.
Today, I am very content that we weren’t a good match. She wanted me to be somebody I was not, and the traits that I believed I brought to the table were traits that she didn’t have much stock in. Still, somehow we stayed together almost 7/8 years depending if you believe the divorce papers are synonymous with the end of the relationship.
The biggest factor I have found is that we weren’t best friends. We were more like roommates who put up with each other and had to share a room. That’s the biggest difference between that relationship and my relationship with my fiancee today.
My ex and I probably only liked each other three months of the year, and during one of those good months, I decided it was time to get engaged. I think I liked the idea of marriage more than I did wanting to marry her. I did everything right. I bought a ring. I asked for her father’s permission. I proposed. She said yes.
There was a lot of unnecessary stress planning the wedding. I learned very early on that my opinion and preferences didn’t matter at all. We drained our savings and it became a big show. She called me the morning of our wedding day and it almost felt like she was trying to give us an out. Like in hindsight, I think she may have been wanting to not go through with it, but my calmness changed her mind.
When she walked down the aisle, I didn’t have that amazing feeling I’ve heard so many married men explain. The only thing I remember strongly from my wedding day is that I could finally exhale. I felt relieved that I did something normal. I got married. Something I thought was never going to happen to me when I was lonely in my early 20’s.
We fought a lot on our mini-honeymoon, and even more on our actual honeymoon. She barely wanted to touch me almost immediately after we got married. I felt so unloved and under-appreciated. This is not what love is supposed to feel like.
Everything came to a screeching halt over the first few months of our marriage. I worked hard at my job and got promoted to a management position that took me off of night shift and strictly gave me day time hours. I thought she would’ve been thrilled when I called to tell her I got the promotion. Instead, it was almost like she was bummed out because that meant she would have to spend more quality time with me.
Then over a fight one night, she explained how if she were to get pregnant it would be the worst thing to ever happen to her. As somebody who had always wanted to be a father, that hurt me more than you can even fathom. Why does she hate me? Why does she not want to have children with her husband?
She didn’t want to take my last name, something that she didn’t explain prior to getting married. She started really pulling away from me. I stepped up my husband duties and even tried to take on a greater role within her family farming business. I thought if I upped my game, she would love me again. Instead, the opposite happened. She got even more avoidant. She got even more cold toward me. She hated the sight of me. I turned back to the bottle even more heavily.
Then one night, April 18, 2020, the damn finally broke. It was a friday night, and I had to work the next morning on Saturday. She was getting all dolled up to go visit a client of hers. I asked who it was, and she said she couldn’t tell me because it was not allowable through her company’s code. When I explained that since we’re married, I’m impartial in the confidentiality, she responded with anger. I was extremely suspicious.
She left without kissing me goodbye, and nothing felt right. She didn’t let me know she arrived and I was worried about her. I called and called again. No answer. Eventually, she texted me back two hours later to say she was alive. I called again. And again. And ten more times after that. She turned her phone off. Something wasn’t right and I didn’t think she had come across a homicidal maniac. So, I hate to admit it, but I started snooping.
We shared a laptop and I was able to log into some of her social media where I saw what I could only describe as “Cheating behaviour” with “guy friends”. With the dates (and timestamps), I was able to determine that it’s possible she had cheated on me after we went to an Oilers game together. That night, she hung out with a guy friend while I hung out with my Uncle and Dad. I called it a night early so I could spend time with her. God that makes me feel so fucking foolish now.
It was approaching midnight and she hadn’t come home yet. So I decided I didn’t want to be home when she came back. So even though I had been drinking, I got in my car and drove over an hour to my Dad’s house. I just couldn’t believe this was happening. I had finally gotten to have a normal life, and now this was happening??? Why does God hate me so much? Why do these terrible things keep happening to me?
She cheated on me that night with her client. But she didn’t confess the next day. Instead she said she wanted to separate. I was manipulated into thinking I was overreacting from her gaslighting. So I vowed to quit drinking that very day.
Over the next two months, I got into a treatment program at work. I started exercising. I started making changes. I sought out self-help books and podcasts to make me better. But I also was trying to get my ex-wife to work on our marriage.
Eventually when I pushed her for answers about what she wanted to do with our marriage she eventually confessed to cheating on me. But she didn’t say it like she was guilty. She said like it was a weapon to get rid of me. She said it with spite. I was devastated. I was ready to relapse right there. Instead, I called somebody from the program and talked until I didn’t crave a drink.
My marriage ended for real that day, but I didn’t want to admit it. I spent the next couple of months in a fog. On the outside, it just looked like we were the same couple we had been over the years, but it was like we were performing in a play. It was all an act
I remember my inner monologue being like “well, what else horrible can happen to me? Take away my Grandpa, my Mother and my Sister and now you’re going to take away my marriage? You’re gonna crush my soul? Fuck it, what’s the point of living anymore??”
I probably would’ve stayed in that horrible marriage for a lot longer, but one comment ended up pushing me to leave. I don’t know if this was her way of ending it for good because she knew I’d never leave because of how I viewed marriage, but I hope it is because if not, she’s more of a horrible person than I believed she was.
During one of our fights about working on our marriage, she genuinely said something along the lines of “Do you know how many people think you would kill yourself if I left you? Do you know how hard that is on me???”
Once it was decided that the marriage was over, I went back to drinking. I quit for her, not for me.
While I did want to make something of myself, I think I wanted to reinvent myself to show her she was wrong to let me go. Probably a very childish way to go about it, but I’m just laying it all out.
April 18 was the worst day of my life at the time, but I now fondly look back on it as one of the best days of my life. A new me was born when my marriage ended. The next couple of years I would transform more than I had ever transformed in my life. And it all lead to me finding the most peace I had ever felt.
I had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in those post-divorce years, and while I was reckless and stupid a lot of the time, I wouldn’t trade those years for anything…
CHECK OUT PART THREE OF THIS ARTICLE NEXT WEDNESDAY
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