Emotional Detox
"Marriage is a fine institution, if you like living in an institution..."
I forget who originally said that (Groucho Marx, perhaps?) but I actually enjoyed life in the institution. It now seem though, like other mental patients around the country, the institution is closed and I'm out of the street again, wandering lonely as a cloud... (Thank-you William Wordsworth)
The weird thing is, after nearly twenty years to the day, I don't seem to feel anything about this. Perhaps I'm autistic? Mrs P once said I showed all the symptoms, though I don't recall ever sitting silently in a corner, nodding my head, and obsessively plucking lint from my navel. Perhaps she meant it as a compliment? She did qualify her statement with the word mild, but still. Maybe she meant it in the context of Autistic Savant. I do have an extraordinary memory for things like the names of people I've met, an eye for patterns, and I'm a talented musician and composer, albeit it a bit of an underachiever, so I'm comfortable with the genius label. But Autistic Savant conjurs images of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman and, well, I'm a hell of a lot taller than Dustin Hoffman. The age difference (6 years) between me and Mrs P might have made her something of my Mrs Robinson, but I digress.
They were twenty long, miserable years...
They were twenty years of the most heavenly bliss...
It was love at first sight. We first met on a blind date, got engaged four months later and were married within a year. I was totally and utterly enchanted with her and, though we had our ups and downs over the years, I thought we were happily married. At least, I know I was happily married but it seems Mrs P wasn't. More's the fool me for not checking on that more often.
In hindsight, I should have taken the advice of a friend way back when who once said, "before you marry anybody, take a long, hard look at her mother because in twenty years time, that's what your wife will be." I thought he was joking. Seriously though, it's not as if Mrs P ever became just like her mother though that dragon woman spent all her waking moments vandalizing our marriage and ultimately, I guess it became as much the emotional black hole for Mrs P as it did for me.
The nuptual holocaust came the Eighth Day of Christmas, 2005. The irony of this is I had anticipated 2006 (a numerological "8" year) as one that promised much good fortune, as per the Chinese belief in the magic of the number 8. I'll be turning 44 later this year -- another 8 in numerological terms. For my last birthday, I got myself a tattoo of a tiger that I had wanted for many years because it's my Chinese astrological sign and, in keeping with my superstitions for 2006, I (only half seriously at the time) imagined it would keep me safe from evil spirits, such as my mother-in-law. Alas, it appears now as if the Chinese voodoo worked on Mrs P as well, much to my chagrin.
I've never been much of a keeper of diaries, but this blog might prove interesting, if not entirely cathartic. If nothing else, I suppose it gives me something constructive to do rather than be out there, climbing wheat silos and going crazy with a high-powered rifle.
In the meantime, I've decided to just take things as they come. This isn't exactly any profound attitude change on my part as serendipity has always been a cornerstone of any philosophical bent I might have had, or still have. I'm also of the opinion that a person can't change the past or invent the future, but that the only time over which we have any control is now. To that end, I'm putting the lyric of one of my favorite jazz tunes into practice: "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."
Yeah.
I forget who originally said that (Groucho Marx, perhaps?) but I actually enjoyed life in the institution. It now seem though, like other mental patients around the country, the institution is closed and I'm out of the street again, wandering lonely as a cloud... (Thank-you William Wordsworth)
The weird thing is, after nearly twenty years to the day, I don't seem to feel anything about this. Perhaps I'm autistic? Mrs P once said I showed all the symptoms, though I don't recall ever sitting silently in a corner, nodding my head, and obsessively plucking lint from my navel. Perhaps she meant it as a compliment? She did qualify her statement with the word mild, but still. Maybe she meant it in the context of Autistic Savant. I do have an extraordinary memory for things like the names of people I've met, an eye for patterns, and I'm a talented musician and composer, albeit it a bit of an underachiever, so I'm comfortable with the genius label. But Autistic Savant conjurs images of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman and, well, I'm a hell of a lot taller than Dustin Hoffman. The age difference (6 years) between me and Mrs P might have made her something of my Mrs Robinson, but I digress.
It was love at first sight. We first met on a blind date, got engaged four months later and were married within a year. I was totally and utterly enchanted with her and, though we had our ups and downs over the years, I thought we were happily married. At least, I know I was happily married but it seems Mrs P wasn't. More's the fool me for not checking on that more often.
In hindsight, I should have taken the advice of a friend way back when who once said, "before you marry anybody, take a long, hard look at her mother because in twenty years time, that's what your wife will be." I thought he was joking. Seriously though, it's not as if Mrs P ever became just like her mother though that dragon woman spent all her waking moments vandalizing our marriage and ultimately, I guess it became as much the emotional black hole for Mrs P as it did for me.
The nuptual holocaust came the Eighth Day of Christmas, 2005. The irony of this is I had anticipated 2006 (a numerological "8" year) as one that promised much good fortune, as per the Chinese belief in the magic of the number 8. I'll be turning 44 later this year -- another 8 in numerological terms. For my last birthday, I got myself a tattoo of a tiger that I had wanted for many years because it's my Chinese astrological sign and, in keeping with my superstitions for 2006, I (only half seriously at the time) imagined it would keep me safe from evil spirits, such as my mother-in-law. Alas, it appears now as if the Chinese voodoo worked on Mrs P as well, much to my chagrin.
I've never been much of a keeper of diaries, but this blog might prove interesting, if not entirely cathartic. If nothing else, I suppose it gives me something constructive to do rather than be out there, climbing wheat silos and going crazy with a high-powered rifle.
In the meantime, I've decided to just take things as they come. This isn't exactly any profound attitude change on my part as serendipity has always been a cornerstone of any philosophical bent I might have had, or still have. I'm also of the opinion that a person can't change the past or invent the future, but that the only time over which we have any control is now. To that end, I'm putting the lyric of one of my favorite jazz tunes into practice: "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."
Yeah.
posted by Mister Pervert at 10:40 AM
1 Comments:
HAHA! Indeed, Gecko. Thanks for the heads-up on that one.
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