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| At the Getty Villa |
My girlfriend moved out at the end of January and things got really dark for me. I did a lot more drinking and smoking than I previously had, at least since graduate school. Also, however, I got a little nasty with my girlfriend. I sent her dozens of emails and texts. Some were deeply heartfelt and emotional, some were downright mean. I was up and down and all over the place with my emotions. I loved her so much but I felt that she was going to leave me anyway, hence the nastieness. I didn't mean any of it; I was just hurt and when I drink and I'm hurt, I can lash out. Suffice to say, those actions did not actually endear me to her and she decided to break things off and I do not blame her in the least.
After talking with a friend in the middle of February one drunken night (for me at least), I decided to start going back to AA. I began having revelations I had never had before and my ex-girlfriend and I began talking again. Things were getting a little better between us but I was still drinking, though nowhere near as heavily as I had, especially in February, and I stopped smoking cigarettes, although I was smoking e-cigarettes.
After a change in my work schedule, I began waking up early, doing my stretches and exercises, cooking breakfast, meditating and enjoying my beautiful deck for something other than booze and smokes.
Things really began to get better between my ex and me and I made a strong effort to stop drinking. I had successfully interviewed for a job teaching English in Saudi Arabia and was set to leave Los Angeles at the end of April. I really struggled with sleep however. For the first week in March I went completely alcohol free, but the lack of sleep was literally killing me; at one point I took over eight sleeping pills plus three melatonin with no effect other than to make me feel like a drugged animal. One night, as insomnia was clearly setting in again, I could no longer take it so a walk up to the 7-11 at 1 AM and a beer did the trick. Unfortunately, that became a crutch. I tried the next few nights not to drink, but I became anxious at the thought of not sleeping so I just went up and bought beers anyway. I was doing my best to be constructive with my life as I had once been in the past. I would go to my meetings after work, a quick run every other night, clean a bit around my apartment, cook a light dinner or make soup for the week. Mostly I would head up to the Starbucks on San Vicente and attend to projects I had been putting aside for literally years.
Things were getting better and better between my ex and me and she had promised me that we would be able to communicate via Skype after 90 days of sobriety. I tried, I really did. I never wanted to tell her about my drinking because I knew how much it would disappoint her. She began trusting me again and we hung out together one beautiful Sunday on the beach in Santa Monica. Things went really great, but when I got home that night, I drank. The next weekend she invited me over to her apartment one day. We hung out for a few hours then she asked me if I had been drinking that day or the night before. She has a nose of a bloodhound and the thought process of a DEA agent. No, not that morning, but last night, yes, I confessed. She did not want to be around me and asked that I leave. I went home and drank. She forgave me later that week and one day asked me if we had 85 days left. Lying, I told her yes and she glowed. I felt so ashamed.
My last weekend in Los Angeles, at the end of April, was a chaotic one spent moving all day on Saturday, then cleaning and packing on Sunday morning. I did a lot of packing; I ended up having to buy to wheelie suitcases just to get all of my stuff packed. Wheelie suitcases are something I swore I would never buy. My buddies had come over on Saturday to help me move. Plans began going sour early on as I had done everything to prepare for my move except reserve a rental truck. I had to wait until afternoon when a friend came up from Orange Country with his truck. The original plan was to move my bed and mattress over to my ex's apartment first thing in the morning, then move things into storage later and then do a little cleaning. By 9 AM, with everything packed, broken down and ready to go, knowing that my ex now had to put her morning plans on hold to wait for me, I cracked open a proferred bottle of beer from my friends. I had two more before we were finally able to get over to Santa Monica and deliver the bed and mattress. I avoided any direct contact with my girlfriend. Later that night, exhausted and completely forgetting about my promise to my ex that I would not drink on Sunday, I went up to 7-11 and got some more beer and did some more cleaning. I woke early the next morning and upon waking, discovered two unopened cans of beer. Again, not remembering my promise, I drank them then went to get breakfast. I did not want her smelling booze on me, and I figured that since it was so early, after breakfast, a shower, brush my teeth, cologne, she would not notice. She did. Instantly.
We met in Santa Monica and went to McDonalds. She asked me about my drinking and I tried lying, but I couldn't conceal it; I was always crap at lying to her. We walked out to the beach and she confronted me about my drinking and I completely waffled; I told her a small part of the truth but I lied completely about the rest. I lied about the drinking that night and I lied about drinking that morning. She was heartbroken, sad and I think, somewhat disgusted. We didn't talk for a little while. I felt like running away. Running away to that Saturday morning and slapping the shit out of me as I reached for that first beer. Running away as far as possible so that I never had to see her broken heart again.
We wound things up pretty quickly and formally. She hugged me, told me that she understood then walked off under the pier, one glance backwards over her left shoulder was the last I saw of her. I ran to the top of the pier and to the other side in order to get one last look at her but I could not see her anywhere.
I went home and drank some more. I called a cab and went to my hotel by the airport. I wrote her an apologetic email and tried calling. The next morning I tried calling again but she texted back to leave her alone for a little while. She was hurting too much.
A couple more beers and I was on the bus to the airport. The lines were out of this world and I had nine bags with me. The driver was not able to park near my airline so I had to shuttle the bags from the curb to the first door into the departures area then from there to the check-in line which was also ridiculously long. I had left the hotel with 45 minutes to spare which was enough, I thought, but less than I had originally planned because I had to make time for drinking and smoking.
I finally made it into the gating area but my flight had left so I got onto the next flight. After unloading all of my bags at my parents' house, I realised that I was two bags short. The next day and weeks later, I spent calling the hotel, the taxi company, the airline, LAPD, TSA and airport security, all to no avail. I mean, who takes two bags of someone else's luggage at the arrivals area?
For the next three weeks while at my parents' and trying to get everything in order for my visa, I did not drink. I went to meetings nearly every night. I began my stretches and exercises again. I went on several hikes. I went to the library and got a lot of work done. I helped my mother out with her enormous garden. I tried volunteering to help alcoholics get to meetings and with their 12th Step. There were some very trying times during those three weeks when I really wanted just one beer but I would not drink. I realised that I had to go back to LA to go into storage to get my diplomas and I wanted to personally search for my missing luggage. And I really, really wanted to see my ex-girlfriend at least one last time. I could not bear the thought of leaving the country without seeing her one last time.
I so badly wanted to show her how I looked and felt; I had lost some weight, my skin, teeth and eyes were looking better than they had in years and I wanted to tell her that we had less than 90 days before we could begin Skypeing. I also desperately wanted to try and make up for that wretched last Sunday together.
After leaving LA I tried to give her as much space as I could. After a week had passed, I could no longer stand it and sent her an email asking if we could talk. I also included a link to Ingrid Michaelson's Soldier. Those lyrics, I felt, aptly described her:
I don't believe in anything but myself
I don't believe in anything but myself
But then you opened up a door, you opened up a door
Now I start to believe in something else
But how do I know if I'll make it through?
How do I know? Where's the proof in you?
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
But it can be won
I sit in the back of a bus watching the world grow old
Watching the world go by all by myself
I took a faith full leap and packed up all my things and
All my love and gave it to somebody else
But how do I know if I'll make it through?
How do I know? Where's the proof in you?
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
But it can be won, but it can be won
But it can be won, but it can be won
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
The part about sitting at the back of the bus describes her and us to a T. The part about the battle with the heart being won was what I wanted so much. It was what I clung to those three weeks leading up to my return to LA. They were what I repeated in my head all that fateful day; in the car to the parking lot, in the bus to the airport, in the airport and as I sat waiting for her in the coffee shop from her work.
In that last email, I had also included a link to my latest blog post, a post that has since been deleted at her request. In that blog I had written more or less what I have written here, except that at the end I wrote of wanting to start over with her again. After she received that email, she wrote back that night to please leave her alone. I begged her to speak with me. There is no cell reception in the narrow canyon where my parents live so I walked down to the 7-11 to get some cigarettes, my first, really, since I had "quit" in March. It was all I could do to not have a beer. Or two. I called and left a tearful message but I never heard from her.
About a week later she apparently read my post and was furious with me as she felt I had included too much of her personal information and she demanded that I remove the offending post. I tried calling and texting her about it, but she would not respond so, a little confused by her reaction to something that had been created only out of love and hope, I removed it later that day. She thanked me a day later.
My plane was thirty minutes late getting into LAX. I wandered around first looking into Southwest Airlines' lost luggage then going over to LAPD and asking them where to look for my luggage. The officer on duty gave me a paper with two addresses and phone numbers and pointed to the bottom one as the one to go to look for my bags.
By the time I got my rental car (another long line), it was one-thirty. I got a little lost on Century Blvd trying to find the address and after finding it was told by the woman behind the counter that I was at the wrong address. She took out a small piece of paper, pointed to the address on it and told me that being that it was now after 2 PM, they were closed and would not re-open until Monday.
A little dejected by my morning so far, I drove towards 405 north and was going to stop in at my storage unit to get my diploma but felt that I did not have enough time. By the time I got onto the 405 it was nearly two-thirty. It took me nearly an hour to get to Santa Monica Boulevard and I realised that even were I to make it to my university, way out in Northridge, I would not make it back in time to try and meet my ex who got off from work at five-thirty. Now, a little more dejected and my nervous anxiety beginning to start, I turned off onto Santa Monica Boulevard and made my way to the parking lot across the street from the church where I used to attend nightly AA meetings and which was also just two blocks from her work.
Changing shoes I grabbed my iPad and went into the coffee shop across the street. I did my best to remain calm; I drank tea, I read the news, I listened to music. Not wanting to bother her while she was working, I waited until five=twenty to send her the text, the one about which I wrote in my journal, "the most important text of my life". And I waited. And waited.
Five forty-five. Six. Six fifteen. Every shadow, every form that approached or passed the door my heart jumped. My anxiety was going off the charts by six-twenty. Finally, at six-thirty, I resigned myself to the fact that she was not going to, or could not come. I wrote her an email, writing that I was defenseless and on my knees and was in town until the following afternoon.
I walked back to the car and decided to stop in and see some of the friends from my AA meetings. I hung out and talked with them until after seven then walked towards the center of Westwood with a young woman from the meeting, talking about her studies and finals. She was on her way back home to study. I was on my way to Ralph's to get some beer.
I was walking back to the car when my ex texted me; she was home with her family. I texted back, asking if everything was OK, but I did not hear back from her. I drove up to a scenic spot and drank. And smoked. And thought. And the more I thought, the more the anxiety left me and was replaced by growing resentment at my ex.
I left, stopped at 7-11 to get more beer then went off looking for a motel by the airport figuring that I was never going to see my ex again, how unbelievably fucked things were with trying to get my visa, and with what a horrible day that I had had. I drove around to about eight different places but the only one with a room was the Travelodge where I had just spent the night not three weeks earlier, only that time they had charged me $60 less for a nicer room. Resentment was being replaced by anger now as I threw my stuff into the room, went outside and drank and smoked.
A little later I walked across the street and got more beer, now very angry. I got back to my motel room and began sending my ex angry, nasty texts. The next morning I woke up, got some more beers, returned the car and went to the airport. This time around, things were much less chaotic and I was through security in no time. As I was walking toward my gate my phone rang. It was my ex. Stupidly, I answered. She began nicely enough, but I cut her off and began yelling at her, about how she didn't care about me, about how hurt I was, about how hard I had worked. Then I hung up on her. That was the last time I have spoken with her.
Since then I have tried texting her a few times, and she responded, angrily. And I can not blame her.
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