How To Lose it All

Today would have been my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary—if I hadn’t wrecked my marriage to the only woman I’ve ever truly loved.

But wreck it I did, just as I would go on to wreck most good things in my life. Almost as if I couldn’t stand to let any real contentment settle. As if peace were something to be avoided at all costs, and chaos something to be chased.

I’m forty-five now, as alone as I’ve ever been. I think back to all the women who warned me this would happen—that I’d grow old and die alone. They said it in the heat of the moment, shouting it before slamming a door behind them. After my marriage fell apart—during those lost years before prison—I cycled desperately through girlfriends. Searching for the one who would prove I hadn’t made the worst mistake of my life. Hoping someone could fill the hole that opened up when I left my wife, a hole that only deepened with time.

I’d sit and watch as the latest failed experiment stuffed makeup and clothes into a bag, stomping through whatever shitty apartment we’d shared for a few months, always ending her tirade with the same prophecy: There’s only one way someone like you ends up.

They cried, or they yelled, and told me I was a selfish, hollow bastard incapable of love. The younger me scoffed. I had known love, so surely I could know it again.

I might’ve bit my tongue, not invested enough to argue, but inside I felt certain another chance would come along. There was no shortage of companionship back then. I had a look, a charm—something that drew young women in their searching phase. Freshly freed from their parents’ grip, hungry for adventure, eager for something reckless but not too dangerous. I was just enough of the bad boy to be exciting, but not enough to be a real threat. I looked younger than I was. My boy-next-door act was deceptive. By the time they figured out what I really was, it was too late.

I used love like a weapon, though I didn’t know it at the time. My whole act whispered: Fall in love with me. Fall in love with me so that I might love myself.

And they did, or thought they did—for a while. The attention fooled me into thinking I was worthy of it. With seduction coming so easily, with the devotion of intelligent and beautiful women always there to soothe my conscience, I told myself I couldn’t be all that bad.

But I was. I betrayed every one of them. I was completely lacking in self-awareness, with no thought for how my actions affected others. I wasn’t capable of even the smallest loyalty. My interest always skipped to the next. I was never man enough to set expectations, never willing to give what I demanded. I wanted honesty, but I refused to return it. Only when I was caught did they realize the forever I promised was a lie.

And as they left, hurling their last words at me, I barely heard them. I was already thinking of the next girl. The replacement. Maybe she would be the one to make me feel what I had felt for My Love, my wife.

Never once did I believe I’d end up here—middle-aged, drowning in regret. Not just for the women I used, the love I disrespected.

But for the only woman I ever truly loved. The one I married twenty-five years ago.

The one I walked out on, just months later.

She was so unlike the others. She was all heart, every feeling right there on the surface. Italian on one side, Mexican on the other—her heritage and upbringing forming a deeply family-centered woman. Before her, I never knew that people actually liked spending time with their parents and siblings. I assumed everyone was like me: viewing family as a burden to be dropped and left behind as soon as possible. By my twenties, I had mostly parted ways with my own bloodline, so I didn’t fully understand my wife’s attachment to hers.

Before her and after her, I came to expect dishonesty and disloyalty, because that's all I seemed to encounter. Life proved to me just how rare her character was. If I had stayed with her, she would not have cheated. She would not have left. She would not have hurt me. I was too immature and selfish to understand what a rarity she was.

When I think back and wonder why I left, I can only dimly recall a few complaints that now seem so small. Back then, they felt insurmountable. Her temper would flare—sharp words that cut deep. My skin was thin. I would dwell, let the wounds fester. I began to resent her, when I should have forgiven the sharpness of her tongue. I was far from perfect, and it was usually my own bad behavior that brought out her anger. I could’ve made space for her feelings. I could’ve tried to see the roots of our problems, instead of obsessing over the symptoms.

But I didn’t. I walked. Even after I found out she was pregnant, I didn't know how to make it work between us. I compounded the regret of losing my one true love with that of not raising my son.

Intervening years would be full of mistakes: Over ten years spent in prison, another five spent as a fugitive from the law. I fell into a world I had no business being a part of. I learned how to fight, how to defraud and live on the run. I was introduced to drugs of every variety, and through them I sought numbness and escape from my own inner turmoil.

Late one night, I had hit rock bottom. Completely lost and alone, circling the drain with my addictions and my legal problems having nearly wiped me out, I gave very serious thought to ending it all. Before going through with it, though, I called My Love. How I thought I had the right to do such a thing, I'll never know. But instead of piling on insults and recriminations, telling me off and hanging up on me - which is absolutely what I deserved - she showed me kindness. She listened to me and she encouraged me. She made me believe that I could fix things. I'm not sure I would have had the will to live past that night had I not heard her words. It was more important to me than I think she could ever know. Just to feel that this person I respected more than anyone else could extend a caring hand to me when I most needed it.

That conversation turned things around for me. It wouldn't be an overnight thing, by any means, but she had made me look at things from a different angle. She sparked a motivation to change that had always been there, buried underneath the other garbage I'd let overtake me.

Eventually, I came to accept that many of my troubles stemmed from untreated bipolar disorder. I sought out treatment, and I poured my whole being into climbing out of the grave I'd dug for myself. I went back to prison to finish out the time I owed, and I spent years of isolation really thinking about why I had done certain things, and forcing myself to confront the truth of how those actions had hurt others. It was not a linear process. There would be further missteps and consequences to face.

During those years of change, although spent in confinement, My Love was there to help and encourage me. We began speaking, e-mailing, writing letters. I had never stopped loving her, and I believe she still saw the good in me. She held out hope for me. She wanted me to become the man I was supposed to be all along, the person she had seen way back in our youth, someone who had been worth marrying. In all my moments of self-hatred and doubt, she reminded me that my son deserved to know a Dad who wasn't perpetually locked away or living a reckless and morally corrupt life.

So it came to be that when I finally walked free from that last prison term, I felt ready. I was determined to finally live a life to be proud of. My motivating force was the deep desire to become someone my nearly-grown son might find worthy of accepting into his life. I wanted to earn the chance to be his Father.

And I hoped that My Love and I would have a second chance at our relationship. It was a romance that felt like fate, if you believe in such a thing. How could two people having lived such different lives find themselves back together after two decades apart? It must be True Love, I believed. And I would not squander it or disrespect it a second time. I would not disrespect this woman ever again.

She picked me up from prison on my release day. She took me to the halfway house where I would live for my first several months. She brought me everything I needed: Clothes, hygiene, and she got me a phone. She helped me get around as I searched for a job, she got me an electric bike to get to work. She put so much work and effort into getting me back on my feet.

Everything was beautiful for awhile. I was seeing my son at long last, and I was spending as much time with My Love as our schedules would allow.

But cracks began to show. Everyone in her life was opposed to her letting me back into her life and to our son's. That pressure caused a lot of stress. I didn't like the feeling of being a dirty secret, and I resented the secret nature of our relationship.

She didn't approve of my friendship with another ex-con. He had been a brother to me during many hard times while locked up, we had faced down dangers and bonded over the violence of our prison lives. She felt there was no place for him in my new life, and while I agreed on a rational level, I could not let go.

There came a time when he needed help: He was getting evicted, and about to become homeless. He pleaded for my help. I resisted at first, unwilling to get sucked back into anything that might endanger my freedom.

But eventually I gave in, telling myself it wasn't anything all that bad, it couldn't hurt me or my loved ones. I did a small favor, and I offered some guidance and some expertise.

Meanwhile, I grew tired of the rules and restrictions in place during my probation. I felt stifled and constrained. I couldn't make much of a living with the jobs that an ex-con could get. I wanted to start my own business, and to earn a better living. I wanted to get my own apartment and buy a car. I wanted to pay My Love back for all her help getting me set up after prison, and I wanted to offer her financial support to make up for my years of absence. I wanted to give gifts and experiences and financial help to my son as a way of patching over all my neglect.

Some of the things I did in the following months were violations of the terms of my probation. Things like being self-employed and not reporting my true address.

In time, I came to fear that those violations would catch up with me. When I heard that my ex-con buddy's moves had led to some questions, I feared that my involvement - while very minimal - would be perceived as being an accomplice. I worried that my past would lead anyone looking at things from the outside to believe that I was the guy pulling all the strings, and that I would be charged with crimes and locked back up.

Around that time, I was off my medication. The pills I took to control my bipolar disorder weren't providing the guardrails my mind sometimes needs. I made a drastic choice: I ran. For no good reason, really. Just fear and paranoia and my mind playing tricks on me.

And now, I'm here. For the second time in my life, I ran away from the only woman I've ever loved, the only one I could ever love or will ever love. I'm chased by ghosts through the emptiness. I see her sometime in my dreams - we're both older now, but it's our wedding day.

When I try to speak, I wake before the words come.