|
email: Doctor Malamud
|
The Archive's of:
Dr. Malamud©
The mostly unedited ramblings
of a broken-hearted man
|
"There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce."
Norman Mailer
|
Archived Page Number 21:
Feb. 1, 2007 through
Feb. 13, 2007
|
Designed for
Internet Explorer
Medium Text 1024x768
|
Find Comfort Here:
The Book of Psalms
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are
crushed in spirit."
Psalms 34:18
The Book of Proverbs
"The first to present his case seems right,
till another comes forward and questions him."
Proverbs 18:17
HOME/Archives
Nightsounds Radio
w/ Bill Pearce
Locate Radio Stations
That Carry Nightsounds
Return to most recent Dr. Malamud entries
Note: that the oldest entry is at the top of page
while the most recent entry is at the bottom
|
|
Since the ex-Mrs.Dr.Malamud has chosen to revert to her maiden name, in a bid to make her more human, from this page forward, I will refer to her as Hanna-Marie Malamud
|
Jump to Bottom
February 2007
Thursday . . . I was relishing, absolutely delighting in my new schedule which allows me two, almost three, full days off in a row. Then I opened an e-mail from Hanna-Marie Malamud. Reading it my heart sank to depths not plunged since before I began gulping antidepressants. And then, almost as cruel cosmic joke, Eric Clapton's song Wonderful Tonight begins playing on the FM radio:
I feel wonderful
Because I see the love light in your eyes
And the wonder of it all
Is that you just don't realize
How much I love you
I'm not sure what sunk my mood, but I'm fairly certain it was the fact that she has moved another five hundred miles further away. Not like I'm ever again going to visit her. Maybe my black mood comes from the fact that my entire net worth is tied up in her much cherished and unsold residence she's leaving behind sans a whisper to me on its status. Most likely it's because she is moving on with her life and surely doubling her salary; while Dr. Malamud recently suffered a twenty percent cut in gross income as his future continues to swing back and forth like a snake with his head chopped off.
www.doctormalamud.com
|
Friday . . . Couldn't sleep, or maybe I slept too much, so I'm here typing to no one. I cannot comprehend how much Hanna-Marie Malamud's moving has distressed me. It has nothing to do with finances, since being in love at the time, I contributed mightily to the down payment of her home in her previous location and no word of its status has been sent to me.  Going through old Dr.Malamud pages to find this photo of her old place caused my heart to sink even farther. I think the only reason I'm not weeping right now is the effects of both my anti-depressant and time. Even so, my eyes keep filling with tears. I'm almost in such a bad place as to spend precious dollars on some psychiatric counseling, but I don't know what that would accomplish as the only resolution to my situation is for me to do something. Anything. And if I'm not willing to do that, if I'm not willing to change, counseling would simply be a way to again postpone doing anything. (Note that I've been receiving counseling for almost the entire last half-century of my life.) Although group counseling is a way to meet some fine looking women. The only challenge would be is that she would be as looney, if not more, than me. That'd be a great match, eh? The other night, a compassionate and far younger married male coworker, raised in Ohio Amish country, asked me if I wanted to be married to her again. That stopped me in my tracks.  How rude, didn't he know he was not supposed to ask that question? I thought awhile and replied, "No" adding that, "... too much water had gone under the bridge." Gosh, at that instance, I remembered some of the ghastly things that she said to my face. Kind of like jabbing a mutt with a smoldering stick, who had minutes earlier been run over by a Greyhound bus, and was still steaming from the crushing tire tracks. Ouch. What I'm really wondering about is why Hanna-Marie's relocation depresses me so gawddamned much. I just want to crawl into one of my science fiction novels and disappear. Will I ever release myself from this Purgatory?
Great, when I can't be feeling any lower, I found Hanna-Marie Malamud on the web. And rather than retaining the honored "Malamud" surname, she's reverted to her maiden name. What can I expect? We are DIVORCED. But still ... why did I even look for her? And now, with this further separation from Hanna-Marie, I'm feeling even worse. What to do, what to do.
www.doctormalamud.com
Friday/Saturday . . . After I discovered that Hanna-Marie Malamud had begun using her maiden name after a twenty-seven year break, all the cutesy things I've put on this web page didn't quite seem so cute anymore. Reminiscent of the beginning of this divorce, I fell face down on the floor and pleaded for God's help. I prayed for comfort. I demanded help. I asked when would this pain ever end. I wept. I sobbed. Whimpering like trembling chihuahua I explained that, "I didn't know ..." what I was doing wrong in the marriage. Her life, her future is soaring like an eagle on a thermal updraft while mine is more like a stinky old buzzard, fighting over a two-day old dead rabbit, and lucky to tear a rotting ear off for sustenance. Hoping to find something from her, I check my e-mail inbox at every notification dong. But what would it say? Nothing. It's over. And besides, she's too busy reaching for goals, striving for success. I'm so distraught that I'm on the verge of calling in sick for only the second time in six years. But I know work will keep my mind busy and away from all the thoughts of what a waste of time and space my life has become without her. One of my greatest joys is emptying the snail-mailbox, but today the mail sits. Waiting. I don't care. On the left side of my page today, finally realizing my marriage is over, I posted a slew of 'after divorce' links. After all, to help other people, is supposedly the reason I started these pages way back in 2003. And I'm still suffering. The helper is the one still hurting. I sent Covie (who counseled me through the 2003/2004 pre-divorce trauma - running up enormous cell phone bills) an e-mail hoping she'll pick up that I desperately need a call from her. Off the library shelf, I grabbed my well-fingered book, that also accompanied me prior divorce:  Hope for the Separated. I thought about finally turning the pages on the only un-read chapter: 'If Your Spouse Demands a Divorce'. Dammit. I walked to the apartment office to finally pay my rent and even that little bit picked up my spirits. Here come the tears again ...
www.doctormalamud.com
Saturday . . . Prayers do get answers. Yes, it is true, Morgan Fairchild proposed marriage to me. Wait. Yea, that was a dream. Is it normal for Dr.Malamud to weep like Job simply because the Hanna-Marie Malamud reverted to her maiden name?  If I had to guess the answer without a $150 dollar an hour psychiatric session, my answer would be not only 'no', but 'Hell No!' Last night I chatted with my young partner, who hails from Amish Country back in Ohio. I gave him the four hour and forty-five minute condensed version of the Dr.Malamud divorce saga. Wielding a degree in sociology, and grounded with a non-chaotic up-bringing, what he told me had a profound and immediate effect. After reminding me that I had wasted four years of energy on something I could not reverse. (I just received an e-mail from the Hanna-Marie reminding me, one more time, that she had moved. I think she's wondering why I'm not slightly more curious.) My partner then accused me of not picking up over the past pair of decades on the most likely multiple, multiple signs of a coming divorce. And then, after I related to him how the Hanna-Marie had viciously verbally attacked me at my weakest moment since the death of my mother, he deduced that Hanna-Marie Malamud was not flawless. And that she was not God's perfect gift to the business world, while at the same instant declaring that I was not an evil person and that I was certainly not destined for a lifetime branch management in the Jiffy-Lube organization. For a reason unknown to me, as soon as his words struck my heart, it was as if the boot of a six hundred pound lumberjack had been lifted off my chest.
www.doctormalamud.com
|
Sunday . . . For no apparent reason, my heart began racing and if I was wealthy I would even describe what I was going through as the dreaded Baby Boomer anxiety attack. (This happens when all one does is but think about ones self.) But since I was at the office and not wealthy I had to ride it out. Closely examining my feelings of abject fear, like we were taught to do at the funny farm, I was amazed to discover it was rooted in the fact that, as things stand today, Hanna-Marie Malamud will most likely be pulling down in salary over three times what I currently earn. I imagine that thought generated the attack. Because while the Hanna-Marie is moving on and accelerating her life without me, mine continues to float in the toilet like a yellow corn populated turd. Dammit. Later, I went for a ride and heard and felt every single word of the below song. Dammit!
If love is real
Why can't you take love and lock love away
In some safe place
Where you won't lose love and keep love
Each day untouched so warm and near
Where love will stay so pure and clear
The evenings pass
And I wonder where you are sleeping tonight
Are you awake
Running through memories remembering
How good it felt when love took hold
Our future plans that won't unfold
Now days are long
Just patches of time thrown together like clouds
Of empty hours blinded by pictures of places we knew
And now in space I stare
Without your soul and thoughts to share
It all seems lost
Left are just words but without much to say
Cause if love's real
You have to trust and let love go its way
(by Randy Edelman)
"You have to trust and let love go its way ... " So true. And what an exact description of my life since the Missus left me. During the first weeks of Mrs.Dr.Malamud's pre-divorce out-of-state job relocation-separation, I recall a female colleague telling me that I looked horrible and horribly lonely. I guess I sorely missed her even then.
www.doctormalamud.com
Monday . . .How does God acknowledge prayers?  I can suggest two answers
1) The method He uses to answer will always surprise you.
2) He never gives you the answer.
Regular readers know that the other day, while mingling carpet fibers with my nose hairs, I was processing some severe praying. And I believe that today, I received an answer. I had ordered a die cast vehicle as a present for my oldest boy. He had worked at this particular Indian Reservation and I had, as an actor been filmed in a commercial out there, and this toy carried the logo of this reservation. My son, for reasons I will not go into here, is very, very close to Hanna-Marie Malamud. Inside the shipping carton, the company had also packed in a Bible verse printed on an eight by eleven inch sheet of paper. On it was a passage from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. It was about love:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails.
Several things about this answer point to God initiating it. One, when I ordered the toy, I was feeling fine about my divorce. Well, as fine as I could feel. However, by the time I received it, I was bouncing back from a thankfully quick bout of heart thrumming depression about my divorce. Timing. Also, the verse itself is one I memorized almost forty years ago when I was a teenager and facing problems with my love, Jeanie Bateman. And last, but not least, note how the paragraph is comforting, but gives no answers and makes no promises. That is the signature of God.
www.doctormalamud.com
Tuesday . . . I'm feeling light-headed this morning, and I hope it's not related to the vastly increased number of e-mails from Hanna-Marie Malamud. An increase that red-flags me to the fact that most likely, after having moved, she's a lonely lady in a new town. Because, if her neediness makes me feel good, what kind of screwed up person would I be? After one more e-mail from her (which I hoped would appear on my laptop this morning - it did not) I just might reply, gently querying her if she's lonely and if I can help. But even that proposed conversation, with my emotions still as raw as a burn-victim's skin, could prove too much for me. However, it also might be the much vaunted birthing pains of us transitioning from bonded man and wife to just friends.
www.doctormalamud.com
Wednesday 3:09AM. . .
 Lou Rawls promises, "You'll never find another love like mine." Chris Isaak wails, "I never dreamed I'd loose someone like you." While Kenny Rogers testifies, "The sweetest days I've found, I've found with you." Who are the people who write these songs? My gawd, leave me alone already and vacate my radio. Speaking of me imagining she was lonely in yesterday's posting; I recalled back when we were married and she'd e-mail me from distant spots on the globe proclaiming how lonely she was. Sigh. Now I'm the lonely one. (I told a friend, as rare as a pay raise these days, about how I felt guilty at rejoicing at how lonely I imagined Hanna-Marie Malamud to be. He replied it was good I felt that way because it indicated I was for once thinking about how I felt.) And I remember how much she wanted to move Mainio and I to the Lone Star State when she first relocated there. She promised I could stay home and work on my writing career. I remember that with her last job in Scottsdale, before her company was merged, she bought me a beautiful and expensive digital camera and wanted to buy me a gently used Cadillac Escalade. It's odd that even though I'm sure I could say plenty of bad things about her and how I've instead said very little. I wonder if it's because I'm hoping against the bare facts that she'll come back, or because I'm truly in love with her? Wow, if I had wrote those lines a few months ago, I'd be weeping now. And I am not weeping. Finally, I may be getting over her. Maybe the shock of finding she dropped the Malamud name is one of the last emotional speedbumps Dr.Malamud's bruised and battered heart will be dragged over. Hopefully by the time she finds a man-friend, or husband number three, I'll have a woman-friend or be in suspended animation on my way to Mars.
www.doctormalamud.com
2:12PM . . . Damn! now, once again, I'm constantly scouring my in box for e-mails from Hanna-Marie Malamud. I am such a sap. (If I had the money to not have to work, and if I knew Mainio could get by, I do believe I'd have what they call a mental breakdown. The downward emotional spiral I alone have stuck myself into has got to be very near to that of someone preparing to step off the edge of sanity into the abyss.) Finished a quick lunch with Pastor JPC at a Tempe, Arizona In and Out Restaurant. He bought. JPC has been my pastor, and later friend, since the early 1990s. (His wife Covie, was the cell phone counselor who held my world together during the early months of my pre-divorce agonies.)  I was surprised at my eyes filling up as I told him how my life was as a divorcee. But I always do that with people who know both myself and the Hanna-Marie. He told me that when he had left a message a few weeks ago at my tony Paradise Valley apartment, he thought he had heard the name of a lady in the greeting. It was Mainio's name, not a lady. His question didn't register with me until later, when I realized that a normal man would both be living with a new woman and simultaneously complaining about the loss of his ex-wife's love. Too bad I'm not normal, maybe that would be easier. To be the normal pig most men are. JPC had no staff of Moses to wave over me and make things all better like I had hoped. But he did tell me that if I don't do something, I'd be in the same place ten years from now. Remembering he intimately knew Hanna-Marie Malamud, they enjoyed each other being the driver personality types, I expected some insight into my situation, but he gave none. Probably because there is none at this point that would either be helpful or hopeful or realistic. As a pastor he said one of the toughest situations he deals with is rejection. He told me that the person who does the rejection can move on with their life, while the object of their rejection is often times left shattered and numb and asking why. (My eyes are filling up once again while I type this ... dammit.) He highly recommended, well no, actually he said to me, "The stupidest thing you can do is to stay away from church, Hammurabi!" I told you he was a driver personality didn't I? So odd that there are two 1,000 plus people churches within a mile and one-half of my place.
www.doctormalamud.com
|
7:15PM . . .
A man alone he has no future
A man alone he has no friends
There was a time I thought I found her
the one to love me 'til the end
Now I'm wondering, wondering....
where did our love go?
does anybody know?
(Chris Isaak)
Before my marital difficulties began, I simply went to bed, went to sleep and woke up refreshed in a new day. Since February 14th of 2003, after reading a certain incredibly personal e-mail while at work, I took to wearing the saddle of depression. From then on, I went to sleep only to wake up sad or sadder and in the same damned day. Kind of like a not-funny-at-all Groundhog Day. Not a way to live life. And once again a Chris Isaak song sears my heart: "There was a time I thought I found her; the one to love me 'til the end ..." That was the supreme shocker for me (and to you young people this will seem morbid and a strange way to demonstrate permanent love) but I had always thought that the Hanna-Marie and I would be married for so long that she would view me in my casket, or I would view her in her's. Now, as a married couple, neither will happen. As it always seems to cheer me up, I guess I'll putter the Peugeot down to my Starbucks to do some reading and writing and sipping awful coffee.
10:24PM . . . Because it was open until 11PM, instead of Starbucks, I went to my Pima Road Barnes & Noble. Someone to love and to love me would solve all my problems. Kinda. Thoughts of dating began piercing my skull:
"How will I know if it (the new love) is genuine?"
"Will I be able to tell?"
"Should I allow that to paralyze me?"
"Can I find someone near my age who is not looney and doesn't care that I am currently categorized financially as 'Middle Class'?"
"Face it, people my age are not pretty."
  How odd is it that something that cannot be seen, smelt, heard, touched, tasted or bought can hold such dominion over Man? Sitting here, surrounded by literate people (other than that guy face down drooling in a book at the table way over there) I already feel so ... much ... better. I keep denying that I'm a people person, but I guess I am. In an odd and incredibly rare unselfish moment (moments which I labor to keep at a minimum) the thought just struck me of the strain my broken-behavior places on our children; with Aile and Mainio not being able to mention the ex-Mrs.Dr.Malmud's most recent Valley visit or relate her tales of far off places. I think of the comfort and support, which is certainly a manifestation of love, that I could be rendering to her only if I would come to grips with her almost four year old rejection of me. (The bitch <grin>) From the discount table, I purchased a couple of red-covered novels for Aile's additional Valentine gifts. And after searching through no less than forty-eight shelves of 'self-improvement' books, I discovered a single volume that might help after divorce: Rebuilding - When Your Relationship Ends. I read a few spots and it sure looks like it's for me. I would have read more, but I knew that probably immediately, I'd run across a passage whose words would again squeeze tears from my eyes. But dammit, in any case, I'm not going to e-mail the Hanna-Marie until she e-mails me first <grin>.
www.doctormalamud.com
Thursday . . . I keep checking my e-mail, while knowing it would never happen in a million years, for a reconciliation question from Hanna-Marie Malamud. "Oh yes! She's discovered the errors of her ways and she's coming back." How childlike, and as I've stated before, I don't know if I could get back together. Hell, I don't even know if in the future I'll be able to love anything other than an English Bulldog. As I've begun to pray again, and actually remove one hundred percent of my focus off of me, myself and I, I have begun to pray for Hanna-Marie Malamud. I pray for protection (women sorely need it these days), I pray for her health, and her happiness. And during prayer this morning, it came to my mind again of one of the most poignant and disheartening changes I've felt in her. And that is, outside of my far out of proportion feelings of rejection, that emotionally she is becoming hard. She is becoming more and more like a childless and selfish career-woman and that is so sad to me. Being a damned empath (or H.S.P.) that deeply pains me. Because I remember that under her often cold to-the-world-face was hidden a loving wife and a caring and nurturing mother.
www.doctormalamud.com
Friday 00:28AM . . . I'm fighting off depression. My heart feels light but it wants to slide into depression. I'm balancing my checkbook hoping that paying attention to that will keep depression away. Hanna-Marie Malamud was supposed to phone me at Aile's place and did not. Hope nothing is wrong, probably just working late. That's something I still have to get used to: we're no longer married so she doesn't have to return phone calls. I just need to relax and breathe deeply. I would be so great to have someone to hug. How easily do we take that for granted?
8:12PM . . . She finally did e-mail, seems she doesn't have the internet at her new abode and misplaced my phone number that has been written on the walls of so many women's restrooms. I just haven't gotten to her state yet. It is so odd dealing with the Hanna-Marie when she's not my wife, but an adult professional business person who was once indentured to me. I use that word purposely, for that is the way she told me she felt a lot of the time; when we were married. Another storm warning I ignored. She felt as if she was the responsible partner, and often repeated the divorced-parent's catch phrase, "I had four children and I was married to one of them."  Which would be normal in Arkansas, but in the civilized world, if two adults seek to enjoy a life-long marriage, they must share responsibilities. Even now, I can look around my life (and my apartment) and see that I'm still waiting for someone else to be responsible for it. I thought holding down an insanely unjust job, stopping drinking, budgeting my finances and daily showering was where personal responsibility ended. Of course most of this chatter is coming from the Rebuilding: When Your Relationship Ends book. So far, in the first three chapters I've cried more than Donald Trump at a tax audit. But I know, I pray, I hope, that this book will purchase my freedom from this horrible, horrible purgatory I have sentenced myself to. As a matter of fact, I may even recover fully enough to re-marry without visiting a $150 an hour counsellor who would tell me what I already know. A sad fact, that I must agree with the author's on, and that is that dating is out of the question. For without realizing it, I would attract and be attracted to another woman who is just as dysfunctional as I am. However, already I feel so much better. Better knowing that I have choices and that there is a way out of this emotional hell hole.
www.doctormalamud.com
Saturday . . . I was surprisingly clear-eyed this morning at work. Felt fairly light-hearted and when I sensed myself being drawn back into the gawddamned depression pit, I asked myself, "What good will that do?" This depression thing is going to be a tough and long fight. Emotionally it's going to make the Iraq War look like a paintball battle. I started feeling angry about my s**t job, and then I thought, "No, I'll do as good as I can until I find another." I sent Hanna-Marie Malamud the Rebuilding book hoping she'll at least read a few chapters. She's pretty hard headed. The last book I sent her in 2003 I'm fairly certain she punched holes in using her Glock automatic pistol. As anyone who's read the book knows, I'm sending it to help her, not me. I love her and want her to be happy. I labeled it her: "3rd Un-Iversary Present". I'm fond of a pretty red-head at work, who is even older than me, gasp. And she has repeatedly stated that she will always love her ex-husband, who she divorced eight years before he passed, in a way that she could not love anyone else. So, if she can do that for him, I can do that for the Hanna-Marie ... even if we are both still alive. Friends want me to bad-mouth Hanna-Marie Malamud, but why? I see nothing gained. Thanks to the Rebuilding book, I realize she's got flaws and had traumas in her life. At some level, I had always realized she was, at times, heartbreakingly unhappy in the marriage, but being a typical man, I didn't think something that trivial <grin> would cause a divorce. Speaking of trauma, I'm bracing myself to read Chapter 4: Adaptation, in the Rebuilding book.
3:43PM . . . Dammit. Woke up thinking of her. Of course, I immediately checked my e-mail for some inconsequential crumb she may care to send me. I am holding my depressive feelings at bay by working on my web pages. Maybe if I turn my thoughts to positive memories of us? But wouldn't that even make me more regretful and depressed? Like the Rebuilding book explains, I am using the book so I won't ever again have through excruciating pain like this, because I will be able to avoid marriages that peter out after only twenty-seven years <grin>. That's one thing my shrink, Dr. Sarah Nelson used to tell me, I was never without my sense of humor. Even when I came squalling to her like a baby force-fed creamed Brussels sprouts, I managed to occasionally guffaw through the tears.
I will always remember one of the last times I visited Dr. Nelson. It had to be in the 1980s, and with more money than I could spend I was weeving down Tatum Boulevard in my top-of-the-line BMW to her office on Camelback Road. Weaving, because I could barely see through the tears since earlier in the week, the then Mrs.Dr.Malamud had told me it would probably be best if we divorced. When this song came on, I started bawling and heaving, like Senator Ted Kennedy at a Mother's Against Drunk Driving meeting.
WILLIE NELSON
Always On My Mind
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
And maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
If I made you feel second best
Girl I'm sorry I was blind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
And maybe I didn't hold you
All those lonely, lonely times
And I guess I never told you
I'm so happy that you're mine
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
But you were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Tell me
tell me that your sweet love hasn't died
And give me
Give me one more chance
To keep you satisfied
I'll keep you satisfied
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
But you were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
How many of us divorced sad sacks have the words to that song memorized? She did manage to restrain herself ("Restrain yourself, Edith!") and not divorce me for another quarter century, during which our youngest, Mainio was born and raised.
 Live In Concert: Back To Back
www.doctormalamud.com
Sunday . . . My heart races and my spirits sink when I think once again of her changing her last name. I immediately ask myself what good will feeling bad do? I feel so sorry for her because I know she is so lonely in her new location that I believe I'm going to buy her a big, very soft stuffed animal to hug. Just like I would my actress-friend Renee in Burbank, if I knew she was desperately lonely. No, I figured it out. She's not lonely, I'm lonely and I need something to hug. How much clearer could it be? I'm beginning to understand me. My emotions are staying level (never up) and then dropping down with my heart running at double-time while I face my fears. While I face reality. I was thinking that there must be some sort of time formula for getting over divorce or death. So many weeks for each year or something like that? Being a man, I must shed my tears alone (not that I have sobbed in the past, uh, one days). I'd love to have someone to hug when I cry, but who? And would that make it any better? I guess it will finally end when I reluctantly accept the facts - the Rebuilding book seems to suggest that it is quite common for the dumpee to deny the fact of a divorce for as long as possible. Since I'm at work until 2:00PM Sunday, I won't be able to attend church as Pastor JPC suggested the other day. In any case, on the drive to work last night, I imagined myself, sitting alone on a church pew, in a new church. And guess what? The tears started flowing as if I were actually there. S**t!
afternoon . . . Damn I miss her! But every day I miss her a tiny bit less. It's going to be quite different if I do my Rebuilding homework, and for the first time in my life, become a stand-alone-adult needing no one but God. (Sadly, the writer's of the book treat religion as some sort of child's imaginings.) Smelling home-cooked breakfast, bacon and eggs. How long has it been? Years. My mood swings dangerously low even when I'm not consciously thinking of her. I hope it's the fact I've been at work over sixteen hours, because on the drive home I was stuck on the highway of overwhelming sadness. Behind the wheel at 75mph I almost started crying. I was thinking of seeing a psychiatrist Monday. Gawd, what is happening to me? Now that I'm home and hungrily scouring my e-mail box for a message from her (there is none) the grief gouging a swath in my heart has evaporated. I pray my gigantic bout of melancholy is because I am assimilating the fact that I am indeed divorced and that she no longer loves me. There, I typed that without a tear. Are things improving? The aforementioned book states that I must go through this process or the pain of the next failed relationship will be even worse. And I couldn't handle that, I'd rather go to Hell by my own hand.
8:06PM . . . After cryfest #434, punctuated with a three and one-half hour nap, I feel much better. As I prayed to God earlier this afternoon, my somber melancholy broke into outright sobbing and heaving and wailing. Thank Him that it was raining and no one could possibly be standing outside my open bedroom window.  For I'm certain, that if a responsible adult unattached to the situation, were to hear Dr.Malamud's utterances, I would soon be fitted in a very tight garment adorned with a dozen or so sturdy, velcro-ended straps and seated barefoot in a room with exceedingly soft walls and floors! I asked God as to when, or if, this unbelievable, overwhelming sadness was going to end. I pleaded that I wanted the sadness to end. That I was so weary of it. I questioned Him if my deep, deep sorrow for the loss of my marriage was simply due to my feelings of rejection, or could it be that I loved so very much Hanna-Marie Malamud? Again I wheezed out that I was sorry, so sorry and I did not know how badly I was wounding my wife when she was my wife. Prostate on the half-empty Malamud bed, head elevated, I listened as my tears, drool and snot fell like heavy raindrops from my face each impacting the top sheet with its own soft plop. Then, in the midst of my choking and surging sobs I began: "I say goodbye to my love and my wife. I say hello to my friend . . . I say goodbye to my love and my wife. I say hello to my friend." I repeated these soul-jarring words again, and again and again, almost to the point of growing hoarse. Again and again, until I could say them with as little emotion as if I were telling my Russian-barber how I wanted my hair cut. I then dropped into the sanctity of a dreamless sleep.
www.doctormalamud.com
Monday . . . Yesterday would have been, and I suppose it still is recorded in some journal, somewhere in the universe, our thirtieth wedding anniversary.
Here's another so very sad lover's song that I never heard the words to before my love went wrong:
DAN FOGELBERG
Hard To Say
Lucky at love
Well maybe it's so
There's still a lot of things you'll never know
Like why each time the sky begins to snow, you cry.
You face the future with a weary past
Those dreams you banked upon are fading fast
You know you love her but it may not last, you fear
It's never easy and it's never clear
Who's to navigate & who's to steer
And so you flounder drifting ever near the rocks
It's hard to say where love went wrong
It's hard to say just when
It's hard to walk away from love
It may never come again
You do your best to
Try to keep those lonesome blues at bay
You think you're winning but it's hard to say sometimes
It's hard to say where love went wrong
It's hard to say just when....(It's so hard to say)
It's hard to walk away from love
It may never come again
Lucky at love, well maybe so
There's still a lot of things you'll never know
Like why each time the sky begins to snow you cry
You cry
You still have to cry
www.doctormalamud.com
Tuesday . . . On the above Sunday evening, four years almost to the day (2/14/2003 to 2/12/2007) of being told she didn't love me, my heart finally accepted the truth. It was so heavy for so very long - but maybe for me, that was the natural grieving process. I was married a long time and much of my identity (and certainly personal history) was and still is tied to Hanna-Marie. I can say now, that during the Sunday afternoon mentioned above, the anguish, and the pain, and the confusion, and the thoughts of, "Will this ever end?" had become so crushing, I was seriously thinking of putting an end to my life. I was going to walk to my bedroom, get my automatic pistol and put a bullet in my brain. It was pretty intense. However, as the scriptures say, God will never give a man more than he can endure, and when I awoke, I awoke with the realization that Hanna-Marie didn't love me, she wasn't ever coming back and that 1,358 days of grieving was probably long enough.
This morning, I even caught myself looking forward, yes forward, to dating. That is, after I get back to the gym and back in shape. I've never had a problem with working out long and hard when there is a reason for it, and with the next Mrs.Dr.Malamud out there waiting to chosen, that is reason enough <grin>.
 I'm looking forward to making a list of 'responsible' things for me to do around my life, so that I might get into the habit of being a responsible adult. It is an unbelievable feeling to be able to think about my future without being smothered by the fear and sadness that it won't be shared with Hanna-Marie Malamud. I am beginning to think about her as I do my other long-term female (non-love interest) friends. Why should I care what a female friend thinks, i.e., Hanna-Marie, about me or my life? Why should that cause fear and gloom? Would I allow something Dee or Renee or Candy or Cindy or Phyllis or Grace spoke to cause me to leap into the pit of despair? What should I care about what Hanna-Marie thinks about my life? she is the one who chose to depart from it. She is the one who insisted that she no longer wanted to be a part of it. I can finally see her as a flawed and sometimes troubled human being ... just ... like ... me. I mailed her a funny 'Welcome to the Neighborhood' Hallmark card today to welcome her to her new neighborhood. I think that is why those cards are mailed, right?
With my broken-heart no longer blocking my vision, I can appreciate her motivation for divorce, in that she (most likely) saw herself as generating the majority of the labor and producing the majority of the family income, while enduring not being loved or appreciated and on top of that feeling incredibly alone. What possible loss could a divorce inflict on her? She was bearing all the facets of being divorced while still being married.
It is like I've stated again and again, since I refused to change my attitude, and since Hanna-Marie (and our baker's dozen of marriage counsellors over the years) did not ferret-out her behaviors that needed modification, this so very painful divorce was inevitable and could not be avoided.
www.doctormalamud.com
| | |
