Sunday, May 25, 2008

one year ago..

A year ago tomorrow was my wedding day. Had we not called it off after our disasterous spring break in San Antonio (scene of the Alamo-and we stayed at a hotel that used to be the jail--that pretty much paints the picture), I would be out buying an anniversary card for Dave. Or not. Sometimes I think that is overly optimistic. 
I met Dave on eharmony and we were together for a little over two years. We had hideous fights in all the best places: Minneapolis, Sante Fe, Denver, Tuscon, Milwaukee, chicago.....even the wilds of the UP. We had sleepless nights at all  the best hotels.  We bought lots of cards for each other which described our endless love for each other, and we slammed doors and screamed into telephones and I cried more tears than I thought you could produce.  We saw therapists, read spiritual guides and psychological profiles.  We even consulted the Enneagram, trying to determine how a fearful 6 like him and a bossy 8 like me could find lasting happiness.  We wrote beautiful, spiritual vows, hired a hip minister, rented the coolest house on the beach and hired the caterer. I had a beautiful wedding dress waiting in the closet.
Peachy flowing bridesmaid's dresses for Annie and Sarah.  Nifty pinstripes from Banana Republic for the boys.  Annie worked on artistic invitations.
After it all went to hell, we decided that we would somehow stay together and see what happened. It was kind of like the movie Frankenstein--the one with De Niro,  when Dr. Frankenstein takes his dead fiance and attaches her beautiful dead head to another body and re-cooks her and then they have that gruesome dance scene when he is smiling frantically (he is utterly mad at this point, of course and saying to her, "remember? remember???" 
Anyway, we spent the wedding weekend at the beach house. What an appetite for pain we had.
By the way, for the exact hour that the ceremony was to take place, there was a torrential downpour. We sat and watched it and I cried and cried. Dave politely got after me for leaving my kleenexes all over the place.  We had an unwedding night.
The next morning, a young deer appeared on the edge of the water. He had gotten separated from his mother and appeared to either be exhausted or injured. We couldn't get too close to him, and didn't know what to do, so Dave called the DNR and then the cops but no one was interested in a stray deer on the beach.  People walking the beach stopped to take pictures.  An hour went by.  Finally, in a burst of speed, he began to swim, moving farther and farther from the shore.  We watched him until he was out of sight. 
That evening, another beach walker told us that they had seen a dead deer on the beach up the shoreline a ways. I don't know if it was him.

Dave and I dated all summer and had an almost anticlimactic breakup in October. I will remember those months as an uneasy truce. We took a couple of trips and all went well, and then, the cracks began to appear....an explosion on our anniversary weekend in Saugutuck, and then the final bullet to the head prior to my birthday trip to Traverse City.  
To paraphrase Tom Waits, the music had stopped long ago, but we had kept trying to dance. That gruesome, sleeping, trancelike dance of denial, smiles plastered to our faces.

After the breakup, I went to DC, to Shambhala in Colorado, and Austin....I lost Miles and got Bella, got cancer and lost an eye, started this blog, reconciled with people who I thought I had lost, and learned a lot about myself, love, friends, happiness, art, and breathing.

Happy Memorial Day weekend...love to all of you out there in cyberspace. May your troubles be small and may you feel the sun on your faces today.
Love,
Claudie

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