The Outsiders
How did we never see a thing?
A couple of days ago, I learned from someone in my family, that the demise of her marriage started many, many years before it ultimately collapsed. Into the depths of a marriage, only two people ever go. It is not the 'norm' to be able to stand outside of the marriage and know its inner workings, it defects, its true joy, or darkest secrets. It is far simpler to stand outside the marriage and point in with an accusing or critical finger when we feel that the ideal has been lost. It is far more convenient to be the ones with all the answers to none of the real questions.
When I was younger, I used to look to my older female relatives for the clues on what to do and not to do with regard to romantic relationships. As I became the observer of these entanglements, it suddenly occurred to me to start a list (mental mostly) of the things I would and would not accept in my relationships, when the time came. I was eight, maybe nine years old when I began to form the ideas and lay the groundwork of what my life had be to be like when I grew up. I dated with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I found fault with each relationship, flaws in every boy, telling myself that he was NOT the guy for me. Too much baggage, issues, ego, idiocy, I said!
I made mental notes of the things I saw that made me cringe with worry or disgust. A screaming husband who would embarrass or demoralize his wife in public. A cruel husband who would cause her to harm herself, as an only means to escape her mistake. One who would beat his children, or one who would look to a man with more lust than to his own woman. Another who saw his wife as the free ride, or bank account he wasn't man enough to have for himself. One who would smoke voraciously in front of wife and child without regard for their health, so long as his needs were being met. And still another whose flaws were so numerous that to count them here would be wasteful and fruitless.
When I met my husband, as the days and weeks and months passed in his company, I was quite alarmed to find myself (for once!) quickly checking off that list in my head with all of my concerns floating away. I did not fear for my safety with him. I did not worry that I would be his servant, slave, maid or doormat. I did not expect to be hit, nor do I believe I would have accepted it. I also did not expect the abundance of kindness and sweetness that came along with Joe, but it was there. I did not expect the full devotion, but it was there as well. I did not expect, nor did I believe it existed, a kind of true and noble love that is enduring. After all, I surmised, enduring, loving marriages ended with our parents' generation!
So to learn just days ago of the years of suffering of this dear relative was truly heartbreaking for me. While even I saw there were issues, I could never have imagined the extent of it. And I ask again: How could a family as large as my own not have seen a thing?
Among the things confessed were physical beatings, verbal rants and put-downs, private and public temper tantrums, laziness, pill popping, gambling, verbal child abuse, brainwashing and more. There was ongoing unemployment for him, two and three jobs at once for her. She confessed these with a sense of triumph, not one of shame. She knows she has overcome and she wants everyone to know it.
Yet despite these telling signs, we never saw any of it. We were all there for the nuptials - the dapper don and his pretty young wife - their eyes aglow, the hopes on display, their promises sounding so real. So, if like many marriages today, they encountered bumps on the road, who were we to interfere?
But then you enter into this marriage and it is just few years before the pretty young wife knows with every bit of her heart, as she knew she loved him once that this marriage was over. Still, her connection to God and Church make her incapable of just walking away - for the guilt that is instilled is such that you think with all your might that leaving would upset God more than staying would grant you happiness. But would God want his daughter beat and hurt? I don't think the God I look up to would ask that of me.
So the wife forges ahead, holding her beloved child steady to her breast, wanting to be stronger for the infant, then toddler, then little child, then angry teen. She thinks she is failing him, but still she is cemented to the floor of this foul marriage. She tries and tries to make this work, but even as she walked down the aisle, it was beyond repair. She keeps up appearances, because is this not what we are all taught to do? She quietly takes one, two, three demeaning jobs as he manages to be fired from one, two and three jobs he doesn't care about at all. Then he sees the simplicity of it all: The less I work, the more she'll take on and I will be off the hook. And the lazy sonofabitch sits on his fat ass and begins the descent into oblivion.
Now his life begins each day with his wife trying to shake him awake as she runs around getting herself and her child ready. She implores, she cries, she yells and nothing comes of it. When he comes to, because after all it is the definition of his manner of wakened state, he rants like a maniac. "Get me my coffee!!! I need a cigarette!! What do you want me to do with the kid? Take him with you! I need to go find a job!!!" Of all of the statements he spews, the one about finding a job is the most laughable because that is the furthest thing from his mind. He is content sitting on a cushion, she is the cushion and she is being suffocated.
As the child grows things worsen. Feeling down on herself one day, she goes out to buy something pretty for her broken home. She returns with pricey, but lovely curtains, which she hangs with pride. That night, while she is at one of her jobs, he falls asleep with a cigarette in hand and burns them all down. No loss of life, thank God because the child was in his “care”. He never said sorry. He never replaced them. He never gave a shit about her tears.
As time wore on, the pretty wife was showing her waste and wears on her face, her hands, and her eyes. We all saw it and somehow we all blamed her. "Why don't you just leave the sonofabitch? He is so worthless! She likes this life, that’s why she stays!" We asked over and over because we all knew she was always working, and he could be found at a local Dunkin' Donuts at any given time on any given day. He is a charmer, that one. He can talk up anyone, anywhere and have them thinking he is worth two shits in 10 minutes. He is an actor, too. He is able to cry at the drop of a hat to get some unsuspecting doctors to write him prescriptions for drugs that keep him buzzed. He is a character, one who will have you feeling sorry for him with just a couple of sentences with just the right amount of gloom and doom.
It’s time for kindergarten, first grade and then second. The child hardly ever makes it to school on time. Some days he never makes it at all. Dad is sleeping, snoring in a drug induced haze. The child is left to fend for himself – to climb tables and chairs for cereal and hope for milk – spoiled or not. He prostrates his little self in front of the TV, unaware of the date and time – not knowing that learning and education is being lost on him because he is not there. Dad finally stumbles out – angry as usual. Grabs the kid and heads to the nearest greasy spoon. He gets coffee, black for himself and for the child a plate of rancid, dripping bacon.
So the years pass. The fights become ugly, dark and dangerous. One day he slaps her and finds he likes the look of fear in her eyes. It gives him power and he enjoys it. He does it again on another day and still she stays. The looming word of God is above her, even as her prayers go unanswered. She is forced to withstand it all. “Didn’t God die for my sins? Shouldn’t I be able to withstand this and more?” Her decisions are clouded by this Almighty power she both believes in and fears.
On another day, he flings a heavy pan at her face. He misses, but she knows enough to rush to call for help. She knows that he aims not just to hurt her feelings, but to physically harm her as well. This all happens before we know words like abuser, dysfunctional family and other fancy terms that mean the same thing. When the policemen arrive, all they offer the terrified wife to console her are these words: “Just let him walk it off, Ma’am. He’ll be fine.” Why are we concerned with his well being and not that of the scared wife and child? Perhaps even God can’t answer that one.
Since the police think this is fine, she thinks, perhaps she is overreacting. She is trying to convince herself, but her gut is wiser than her heart and it never lies. Things escalate as one landlord, then another and still another, throws them on the street. He acts the offended family man to all who are willing to believe his bullshit. “How can they toss us on the street for Christ’s sake? We have a child!” As if the child were insurance to be able to get away with choosing your drugs, cigarettes and gambling debts over paying the rent.
One day she needs surgery, but still he doesn’t care. Still patched up and recovering, she is up at dawn on a frigid winter’s day. She limps in her pain to walk her child to school using her time off to just take on more responsibility. Since the world is so small, as Mr. Disney told us long ago, her angry father and her weeping mother soon see her. Worst of all is that her beloved husband is back home asleep and his car is right outside their place for the world to witness. Her parents know this and the threats begin. Dad warns her that if ever he sees her again in such a state, while he is home asleep, he will go in and yank him by the neck out of bed and then he won’t be responsible for his actions. Though she wishes it were all that simple, that daddy could come and save the day, she fears what the outcome of being saved will mean. Will her father do time for his actions? Will her child see a crime before his little eyes? She continues to endure knowing that all her choices now are the wrongs ones.
Sick and embarrassed, tired and disgusted, alone and afraid the wife tries to run – yet everywhere she goes, he follows because it’s too easy to milk this cow and be free of worry. It is easier than facing up to the fact that he is a waste of human flesh incapable of functioning in a normal, adult manner. It is too easy to corner a woman who depends on the eyes of others to guide her way. It is too good a place he has found where he leans on her crushing the life right out of her.
One day it is his therapist who hatches the plan that will start the beginning of the end of this sickness and of the start of her new life. This highly educated woman has heard both sides and it is her expert opinion that convinces the wife that her gut was right all along: there is no saving this mess now.
Yet, he will not make it easy. The kind doctor convinces the betrayed, belittled and beleaguered wife to run – go stay with family far, far away. Having little alternative and nothing to lose, she convinces him that the separation is temporary, so he can sort out his issues, but her intention is to cut all ties. He can’t leave well enough alone. Down, down, down she goes weighted by his accusations, his rage, his words and his threats. She considers not getting up from the floor where she lies. She considers giving up the good doctor’s plan; it was too good to be true anyhow. But then she looks to her child, no longer a baby, the frown of concern creasing his young forehead making him look older than his years. The wise child looks right at his mother and asks: “Why can’t you just divorce him, Mommy?” She uses this child’s pained expression and his honest question, as a way to catapult her plans forward and lift herself from the ashes of this long-ago dead marriage. She wonders, too, where he heard the word divorce to begin with.
There we all were, standing as outsiders on the sidelines of her life, shaking our heads in disapproval. We lay all blame for the fractured marriage at her tired feet, as if she tangoed alone. “What is wrong with her? Why does she stay with him? It’s her own fault! How come she just doesn’t leave?” Not one of us says: “How come he doesn’t treat her well?” But how come no one saw her inner struggle? How come no one understood that her inner battle had to do with God and love and that both were insurmountable of each other? How come none of us understood that the demons that plagued her were so powerful, she couldn’t free herself of the shackles? In her mind the questions were concrete: Choose to leave and be a sinner, or choose to stay and be a saint? The choice could be simple for you or me, but to her the choice was as impossible as walking on water.
What we never saw was that she was balancing her life on a tight rope high above the ground. While perched precariously there, she juggled everything; the life of her son, the overdue bills, the search for a home, the hunger for food, love and peace and last of all, her own salvation. Beneath her there was no net to catch her, if she fell. In marriage there is seldom a net. If you falter, you fall and when you fall, you hurt.
When she was spent, when her youth was gone, when the time to give her child a sibling was lost, she realized that her life was worth saving, no matter what he always told her. She laid her plans, saved what she could, stood up and told herself that enough was enough and she left. From us and from all, she mainly stayed away. We didn’t see much of her for the next couple of years. We rarely heard from her. When we did, it was with a snicker and a question: “Is she still with him?” We didn’t ask much more about her either. Her battles still existed, but the frequency diminished. With one arm she held up her son so he could get ahead. With her other arm she lifted herself, so that she could get ahead as well. Little by little her tormentor became less of an issue to her and more of a pitiful sight to everyone. The restraining orders were in place and she busied herself putting together the mangled pieces of her shattered life.
One day the divorce papers were finalized. All of her work to reach that day well worth the effort. She confesses today that the joy from it was such that she felt like doing cartwheels in the street. She felt renewed and ready to conquer anything. Strength grew from there. I can only imagine what she felt! She used her new freedom to create a new life for herself and her child who was shooting up like a well-fertilized plant and was near being a man. They became a family of two watching out for one another, thrilled to be allowed to be humans with a sense of self for the first time in many years.
Fast forward…
Today she stands tall, armed with a skill that will always keep her gainfully employed. She depends on none but herself and her son. Along side her child, who is now a man, she has found the love and peace she sought and is hungry no more. Despite the struggles of his youth, she somehow managed to raise an exemplary young man who watches out for his mother and helps her get by. He is more of a man at his young age than his father is, was or will ever be.
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