Lost and Found
It was — in the view of anyone watching — a perfect moment. A warm but not humid August day, sunshine streaming through leafy boughs, friends and family gathered in my parents’ backyard, a flowered arch set up for us to walk under. As the first strains of Nick Cave’s “(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For” hit my ears, I began walking toward the arch, arm-in-arm with my father as my husband to be waited for me. We eyed each other, smiled, let the song play out while everyone got settled in their places.
Because fathers know best and because fathers can’t help but look after you no matter how old you are — this wedding was on my 40th birthday — he whispered to me at the last minute “You don’t have to do this.” I gave him a half-smile, told him it would all be ok, and let him reluctantly hand me off to my waiting fiancé.
Of course, my father was right. I shouldn’t have done it. It should never have gotten that far.
But it did.
Nick Cave’s voice provided a soundtrack to a moment, one that used to play in my mind often, a source of pain that too often lingered. We were married for three years before I sent him away. Three years of Nick Cave songs constantly playing in the background. Three years of collected memories of a toxic relationship that turned so many things I loved into boogeymen which made me afraid to even look at or listen to them.
When he left, he took his possessions with him. And while those possessions may have been meager, he counted among them our shared passions. The music of both Nick Cave and Faith No More became caustic to me. Comic books, graphic novels — things we both loved dearly — were now touch points to memories I wanted no part of. The movies that played seemingly on a loop in the background of our days and nights whose soliloquies were part of my life — those quotes and scenes cut me apart when I heard them after it was all over.
It ended somewhat abruptly. I put up with everything for so long — the emotional abuse, the threats of physical abuse, the refusal to get a job, the toxicity of the entire relationship dynamic — that one day I just snapped. I had been thinking about it for so long, drumming up scenarios in my head where I would tell him to leave, that the actual moment of the actual act being at hand shot so much adrenaline through my body I was shaking. I summoned up the courage I needed— courage it took me three years to build up — and told my husband he needed to go back home. Back to Pennsylvania, back to his mother, back to a place where he couldn’t harm me.
That harm was already done, of course. The damage to my self-esteem, to my mental stability, to my relationship with my children was deep and unforgiving. I thought that would be the crux of the damage, and that I would work on healing, work to overcome all the hurt and anger and sadness, and it would be okay in time.
But I had little things to contend with. The smudges of the life we painted together loomed larger than I thought they would, and the things I loved were suddenly turned into the things I couldn’t tolerate anymore. This gave rise to an white hot anger inside me, a resentment that festered and wore upon my psyche. No longer could I listen to Nick Cave or Faith No More or Nine Inch Nails without feeling the pains of our relationship. Every song reminded me of something; the drives to Pennsylvania in the snow to see him before he moved here, the quiet hurt I endured during demeaning sex, the passive-aggressive arguments, the times I would turn up the stereo so no one could hear me cry. I no longer had a desire to kill time by playing video games because they all reminded me of him mashing those buttons while I cooked and cleaned and worked. I couldn’t read a comic book without feeling my stomach turn, I couldn’t watch a baseball or hockey game without remembering how he made fun of me for liking those things, constantly undermining anything I took pleasure in.
He did go back to Pennsylvania. He was unhappy about it, of course. It wasn’t so much that he loved me and was losing me, but that he loved the life he had with us, where he ruled above me and lived off of me. He didn’t just live off my money, but off my emotions. He fed on my misery.
After he left, we didn’t have much to say to each other, unless it was regarding proceeding with the divorce. We had no shared property, no shared children. There was no need to carry on any conversation with him. I thought he would then fade from memory and my anger and hurt would fade along with that, but that’s not what happens, at least not at first. I remembered everything. Every pointed insult. Every fight. Every night spent crying myself to sleep. And the things I would normally console myself with — music, losing myself in a baseball game, a good graphic novel — were all lost to me, victims of our separation.
I mourned these losses. Each thing I lost was so much a part of my life that I felt a hole burning within me where those pleasures used to be. I put away my Nick Cave CDs. I gave away my comic books. I stopped watching baseball and hockey. My video game consoles sat gathering dust. I buried myself online, in various internet forums, sitting at my computer for hours on end, deep into early morning hours, trying to fill my time with something, anything. I started to live deep within myself, foregoing family functions and visits with friends for staying home and wallowing. I became nearly agoraphobic, venturing out only to go to work and food shop, and I called in sick to work too often. I missed my best friend’s son’s bar mitzvah. I was in mourning. Not for my marriage. I was in mourning for all things in my life I lost, for the rugs that were pulled out from under me when it all ended.
When he left, he stole a priceless necessity from me — my music. Not the CDs or mix tapes or albums, I had all those. He stole the joy I experienced while listening to them. Gone was the rush I’d get from listening to “Deanna,” replaced by the repulsion I’d feel as I could hear the song jangling in the background as he pushed me against the closet door, his hands around my neck.
I had to navigate the holes in my auditory life, gaping holes. I couldn’t just fill them with other artists, the void was too deep for that. I would listen to my mix CDs in the car, listen to my iPod at home and have to skip, skip, skip, the void looming at me then, over and over giving face to the place where that emptiness lay, each skip of a song a reminder of all I lost. I took to listening to the radio, where it was unlikely I’d hear any reminders of my marriage and its myriad failures. I missed Nick Cave’s voice, I missed Mike Patton’s screams, and I’d often find myself crying over past transgressions when I did hear them. Giving up those pleasures was hard and constituted an admitted failure on my part to breach the chasm that came between my ex and I.
It was years before was willing to try my hand at bringing the things I lost back into my life. I missed Nick Cave. I missed baseball. I missed being me. I had met someone else meanwhile, someone — now my husband — who is in personality and actions the opposite of my ex. The lack of anger and sadness in my life now meant I was able to try and fill the small holes left in the aftermath of my previous marriage.
I started with Nick Cave. Not our wedding song, I couldn’t do that right away. I started with “The Ship Song” and worked my way to “Into My Arms” and “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry.” It hurt at first. I remembered everything. But I kept listening and eventually my emotions leveled out. I reminded myself that I’m not there anymore, that those times are long gone and while the wounds might not ever fully heal, I can take back what was rightfully mine without damaging myself mentally.
In fits and starts, I allowed myself to re-experience what had been stolen from me, one wound at a time: I’d open a Gaiman book and view it as new; each rush of the old I would forcibly block with a new or different insight. I dragged the Playstation out of its dark confines. I played Crash Team Racing until my eyes were dry and my thumbs ached and the emotional pain dissipated.
The memories became dust that I softly blew away with each reintroduction. I started watching baseball and hockey again without feeling ridiculous for doing so, without feeling like I was going to be reprimanded for it. I let go. I let so much go. It wasn’t easy. To purposely reach into the void and pull out the emotions sucked into it was torturous at first; I had to baby step each song, each lyric, each inning. I felt sick to my stomach at one point and almost gave up but I knew I had to keep going if I wanted to fully heal.
Eventually the notes of each Nick Cave song rang with once again with wonder instead of sadness. The things I lost were the things I now reclaimed. No longer his to harm me with; my passions became mine once more. I learned how to live all over again. I learned how to be myself, how to not live in fear of the memories, monsters that would devour me if I let them. I have forgotten more than I remember. There are months and years that are blank now, places where I rubbed a metaphorical eraser so hard I made a hole in the notes that made up our lives, leaving just a small smudge.
Sometimes I’ll listen to “(Are You) The One…” and I vaguely remember the wedding day, but it comes with a mere shrug now. The details of the day have become foggy. I remember the entrance and not much else, because I have chosen to learn to forget. I will eventually forget what he looked like, forget the color of his hair, the color of his eyes, the very weight of him. I will not remember the sound of his voice, what his whisper was like or how it sounded when mad. I yearn for a blackness, a void where he used to be, where we used to be, where I will have forgotten all but his name. Even then, the feel of it on my tongue should be foreign and sour. I will try not to speak it, ever. When asked about him, I will reach for his name but that is all I will grasp. I will not remember the clothes he wore, the foods he liked, the shows he watched. I will not remember anything we did together or the way we fell apart.
I will not let the things that were taken from me remain forgotten, though. I have taken them back.
