At last, a hard, honest look at the relationship

Kat still edgy, depressed: “I hate myself!” This time burning rice meant for dinner; out of sorts, suicidal?

The emergency brake won’t work: she drove 200 miles with it on …

As she said, Saturday morning, looking at parents and their children in this town: “They never had a chance.”

“There’s no place I feel home,” she pouts in her hometown

Unlike a turtle, going anywhere!

Iron pills seem to be helping her green complexion and mine.

Sunday morning [note, I was writing day of the week rather than the number of the month through this stretch of journaling]:

“My wife was a great thumping bitch this morning.”

I find myself shocked that I actually admitted that. Typically, I make excuses for those closest to me; I try to see their good side rather than shortcomings.

Bly’s Tooth Mother or Stone Mother describes my Nikki, earlier, ultimately pulling me toward paralysis.

I kept seeing the girlfriends in my life as dancing goddesses, not that we were actually dancing. Their role, though, seemed to be as a counterweight to my seriousness.

I’ve been stunned to see notes regarding a playful Gopi at the ashram who at 15 had been drugged, raped, taken lesbian, involved in crime, as well as exposed to museums, art, and literature. She nearly swept me off my feet, and here, two years later, Kat was coming in second by comparison, even at the core of my obsession.

Now, with Kat, I was placing great hopes on our Indiana move: a hothouse, in a way, to raise our seedling in. As I journaled, “We’re so apart here: there are no models, no challenges, no competition. The wind beats her down. She’s afraid to give rein to her private visions, her terrifying garden, ‘going over the edge.’ She won’t know herself till she does.”

On the reflection of this span of my life, I’m seeing how bitchy she was throughout the marriage. Where would she be if I had just walked? I was about to say this is the biggest point where I ultimately failed, but will leave other possibilities open for comparison.

Revisiting these pages is emotionally heavy for me, I’ll confess.

Now I see neither Nikki nor Kat or even Fay as “mothers,” at least with me. And Celeste had already ruled herself out.  

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.