Chapter 2:
Leaving.

When I believe in myself, so do others

Not long ago, I left my husband…

Not, “Fuck you, Frank, I’m leaving,” followed by a divorce proceeding where we divide up half of what would rightfully be half-mine. No—I just left. Said fuck the house, fuck the mortgage, fuck everything about this life, I can’t take it anymore I’m going to leave town and he can figure it out.

I know it seems mean, cowardly, but that’s what being with him did to me. Everything that he had been at the beginning was buried under so much baggage.

Obviously, it was probably okay at the beginning. But Frank hit a downward spiral, drunk every night and waking up in odd places, crashing his car in one horrific incident. It’s stuff that has worked its way into his mythology of his self-help home improvement, excuse me, self-improvement story that he has used to sell books and make massive bucks at speaking engagements.
It was understandable that he would want to change. While he was off destroying his life, I was fighting to make my own life better. I was going to school and trying, in my own slightly more adult way, to make a difference by helping people. By the time of Frank’s accident, I had been wrapped up in my own studies and problems.

Frank’s accident was his own Personal Wake-Up Call, or his PWC, as he outlines in his book. His tactic is to make everyone share their own PWCs and how one can use that experience as a springboard for personal growth.

It’s just in Frank’s case, it got way out of hand way too quickly. That’s when he started attending AA meetings and swallowing the program whole. Soon, however, he felt so good “spilling all” and being around other people who spilled all that it occurred to him that this sort of experience shouldn’t just be limited to alcoholics. He went a step further and, in his own somewhat admirable way, made up his own steps to personal recovery.

I was with him for a while, but then it stopped making sense to me. It’s like he buried any trace of his past self under a cloud of denial, like he had to push out any remotely negative thoughts in place of a new matrix, like a planet being remade after all the life has been killed (okay--first big confession: I am a huge Star Trek geek, and all I can think of when I think of what happened in Frank was that whole thing about the Genesis device in Star Treks 2-4, in which using this device would destroy old life in favor of creating
new life.) It got to the point where I couldn’t say anything negative without being shot down as being somehow detrimental to his “progress.”
I tried to stay with him in his quest to become a more perfect and self-actualized individual, but, well, it happens. I couldn’t just buy into some of the things that Frank was trying to sell me. There really were bad things and bad people in this world, I couldn’t just shut them out by throwing “good feelings” at them.
Don’t get me wrong---I’m as big a fan of using awful experiences as a learning opportunity. I don’t say any of this as a “fuck you” to Frank. I applaud the way he turned his life around. I guess I’m just jealous that I couldn’t follow along on his program, that I couldn’t take the same leap of faith that he did, that I maybe wasn’t quite as fucked up as he was, to hit a bottom and climb out of it.
It also didn’t help that he was a millionaire many times over, and I was living on leftover Mac and cheese with the people I was living with. I credit him for turning what must have been an unexpected pain into the great success story he’s invented. I really do. I just wish he didn’t involve me in it. I hate to think that I crushed his life the night I left, but I had to leave. I just couldn’t stay with him on the path that he was on. No way.

I left on an impulse and never came back. I am horrible to the people who love me. It’ one of the things I try to talk to my therapist about, but I never seem to hit upon any solutions.
I think of things I left behind--records, books… but not people.

But when I got married, I don’t think I really knew what I was
getting into. I don’t think I was ever prepared for the reality of it, and I couldn’t see that it was not about temporary happiness, but about being in it for the long haul. And that’s part of the reason it fell apart when it did, and how it did. That said, even though I’m older now, I still don’t think I could have handled Frank’s transformation very well, under any circumstances. I certainly didn’t
expect to be in this position, 32, living like this, but as they say, here we are.

I might as well tell you a little about the house in the town where we lived, as it might be important. Poplar Street was on the west side of town, and our house was a row house, connected to the rest of the block in a neighborhood that could comfortably be described as “mixed,” racially and economically. The house was large, much larger than some of the other places around town, with four bedrooms, and a
few other spaces that could be creatively converted into bedrooms, if given the motivation, such as the spot under the stairs. The living area, used by everyone, had a good sized TV (my contribution) with a cable hookup (because I pushed it on everyone and offered to pay a little more).
The furniture was from whatever people cobbled together, with no
regard for color or whether or not it “matched.” In a way, at least at first, the chaos of it was good.

It was a good place, probably even better if I had been a different sort of person. It was a lot different than living on my own—not that I was able to afford that. But in my own way, I was happy to be where I was. With so many characters around me, it was like I could just let them do the acting for me…I didn’t need to be anyone. I didn’t need anyone to expect anything from me but just to be there and pay the rent and be the possible adult voice that was missing from the situation before my arrival. It was only later where divisions sprung up and made me question this living arrangement.