“Folding wash is all the therapy I need,” I realize, angry at the lateness of the revelation. Geri is the only one really trying, and I’m marking time, getting by, quits.
Except for Elton John singing about (or to) Daniel in the background, I’m alone in the house. I stopped folding the wash, thinking that “the seeds of our own destruction, or the seeds of our own salvation are always within us.”
Geri and I had worked out at the gym together, yet apart, not in itself significant. Dropping her off at her therapist, Dr. Levine’s office, came the question I’d been anticipating for a long while…."will you take therapy together, if I ask Levine?”
“No, I don’t believe in that shit,” I blurt out. “Well, if it means saving our marriage or something, of course I’ll come talk to him with you,” I say now as I see Geri’s face clouding up.
“Been there, done that,” I think, pulling away. All I could really think, escaping the situation, was that people say things to each other in the presence of a therapist that might not be conducive to keeping a relationship going. “ I don’t feel like having sex; maybe I don’t feel like having sex with you; maybe we don’t like each other so much anymore.”
I know there is no fucking way I’m going to let this relationship reach separation or divorce, but it has more to do with Kiley, than what my relationship with Geri has become. All these thoughts blow through my consciousness, register, resonate and are instantly suppressed back into the soup of my unwanted feelings. These thoughts are there and gone before I reach the first traffic light.
I breathe a sigh of relief just to be away, on my own in the car, (the Captain, in control?).
Now, after one more fight in the car (from the Doctor to Geri’s job), after making fun of the simplistic drivel Geri’s picked up from Levine (have more sex, put more fun in your life as a substitute for overeating, drinking), I’ve got her in tears, with my “No shit, but what about ‘you don’t feel like having sex,’ or ‘you don’t feel like having sex with someone you don’t particularly care for as a person?” Just my sarcastic tone, even before my unfortunate logic, deflates Geri before my eyes. Shit, she’s crying and unhappy again.
“Look, we’ve got to try to communicate. We’ve got to spend more time with each other, not just sit in front of the TV every night,” Geri manages, drying out her nose, wiping her tears.
“First we have to come to like each other again as people and then as friends again,” I volunteer. “That requires thinking the best, not the worst, of the other person’s motivations. I’ve always thought only the best about your motivations, but when there’s a need to make assumptions, you only think the worst of me,” I point out accusingly.
“We have to work on it,” we both agree, as she gets out of the car to go to work.
Jesus. Driving home, it’s all washing through my mind, unbidden. I am happier away from her, and from Kiley, for that matter… what’s the deal?
Home now, folding the wash, revelation hits. I feel personally, solely responsible to pay the bills, to make it all work somehow. I’m facing a shortening deadline of pilot earnings sneaking quickly up on me, driving me crazy. I cannot relax, I cannot enjoy my wife and daughter, since they are a living reminder of my problem, the mirror always reflecting my nightmare back at me… I run from that mirror.
Finally it all comes clear. Geri is the only one who has been trying to improve this impossible situation. I’ve been trying to “save my family,” the big picture, but I’m destroying it in the process. I’ve allowed my encapsulated thoughts and feelings to isolate me from Geri. I’ve worsened the situation by not trying to improve it, avoiding, just trying to let it all go by… Rodney King’s wimpy “can’t we all just get along.”
Holy shit, I’ve really fucked up. Why should I pass the days trying to skip by, waiting to be called out to fly, passively hoping that my marriage and my family holds together? Why not actively participate in improvement? Am I uncaring? No. Lazy? Yes. “An object at rest tends to want to remain at rest.”
“I hope it’s not too late” I think, wishing Geri were here so that I could immediately share these thought with her.