Crash

There are times when you feel you have hit bottom. You fell hard, and that surface you hit sure as fuck felt like concrete, but you hear this creaking, then cracking.

March 2nd, 2012. 277 days after her separation from me by SMS, backed by the threat of not returning with our daughters until I vacated our rental home.

The night before, I’d posted one of my usual absurdist fiction bytes as a Facebook status. Months before, I’d made everything public, on the deeply held principle that I — that all of us — should speak whatever is in the head, filter nothing, let the world know everything or nobody knows anything. This particular update was of the “suicide by cop” genre. I was not inordinately inebriated, or particularly depressed.

Just stupid.

The exish/wife saw it. She called the police. From what I can gather, she did so not because she believed I’d actually walk into a police station with a gun, but because there was a threat of “self-harm.” Am I being paranoid, assuming it was her who called the police? No. I suspected from the start, of course, but later saw it as a fact on the computer screen over the shoulder of one of the state-appointed officials who would determine the validity of my freedom for the immediate future.

Let’s flash back a week.

She was with my daughters, hanging out at the family home of a friend with whom she had (a year or so before we physically separated) suggested having an “open marriage”. That causes a bit of dissonance, doesn’t it? If she’s the one suggesting it, and I’m still in monogamy mode after a dozen years, I suppose it is more accurate to say that she was telling me she wanted to engage in some manner of intimate intercourse with this guy. They’d met at her dojo, been going out for “coffee” regularly. I knew the guy. I liked him. Still like him. I don’t blame him for desiring my wife, although the education and experience required for his profession makes me wonder if his peculiar expertise influenced her feelings toward me.

How did I react? Eyes Wide Shut, right before Nicole Kidman admits her adulterous thoughts to Tom Cruise:

ALICE

And what makes you so sure I wouldn’t?

BILL

Maybe because you’re my wife? Maybe because you’re the mother of my child. Maybe because I know you would never be unfaithful to me.

I should have called a lawyer and initiated divorce proceedings right then.

Anyway, she was with this person and his family, with our girls. I text her some admittedly inappropriate things. It ends with her bringing up a conversation we’d had:

You know, you were right about one thing — the girls and I would be better off if you were dead.

Back to the present.

So, I’m settling into bed. A knock on the door.

Fuck.

Through the peephole, I see the uniformed officers crouched around various corners.

“Mind if I get some clothes on first?”

I understand that the police were obligated to investigate what could, out of context, have been construed as a terrible threat to public safety. I think, especially considering cops have one of the highest divorce rates of any profession, that they empathized with my having a selfish and malevolent wife. In any case, I greatly appreciate their individual compassion in the matter. My hands clasped in front of me, standing at a safe distance, I calmly told them where my shotgun and shells were.

While we spoke, one of them asked if I’d received a restraining order. I choke/laughed a negative response. He handed it to me, but with everything going on, I didn’t have time to read it completely. Later, I found out it was only for a week.

They had to take me in for “evaluation.” One officer chimed in encouragingly, “We took a guy in last week, only took three hours or so.”

One day I’ll write an article or novel on my full experience. Suffice it to say it was not three hours, and as the little hand crawled glacially across the face of the analog clock in the Snake Pit Welcome Center, I became increasingly worried and frustrated and agitated. As a result of my being kind of an asshole to the professionals assigned to evaluate me, I was admitted and put on suicide watch.

“1:1” in red beside my name on the board behind the desk. Someone within eyesight of me at all times.

Again, I completely understand and sympathize with all of the staff. They let me go, and I kill myself? Well, I suppose my wife would sue and get rich.

I got out a week later. Emerging from a taxi on a sunny afternoon, with some donated clothes in a trash bag, I wearily walk into my apartment building and check my mail. There’s a letter informing me of a court session to discuss, challenge, and ultimately determine the disposition of the restraining order preventing me from communicating with my daughters.

The time and date? About eight hours ago.

I didn’t know about it.

That night, the cops come a-knockin’ again. I open the door, drop my head to the door jamb, and plead: “Please don’t take me away again.” They assure me that isn’t the case. Instead, they give me another “order of protection” to keep away from the wife and my girls.

This time, it’s until June.

My wife told my mom she had no idea why I “blew off” the hearing.

She didn’t know that her actions had caused me to be placed in a cage?

My wife told my mom she did not have me arrested.

A clever twist of words. Arrest would have been a pleasure. I’d have been assigned a lawyer, and had a chance at bail. I was taken in the middle of the night and placed in a mental asylum against my will, not to breathe free air until it was determined I was not a threat to myself or others.

I had resolved, when I got out, to just “let her go.” The parable I use is that “my wife killed my bride.” I don’t want her back. The woman who loved me doesn’t exist anymore. And the woman who metaphorically killed her is healthier, at least physically and in the sense of her self-esteem. However, I did want to know why it happened — why the gears shifted from adoration to cold, cruel resentment and malevolence.

Anyway, it’s hard to let someone go when you’re barraged by court orders from that person and second-hand accusations of “blowing off” a hearing that might determine whether or not I would ever see my children again.

Does she understand what not having a father does to a girl?

She must.

Does she care?

She must.

Right?

I’m not going to get into every detail of the past week. One day, a book. I have ten pages of tiny hand-written notes scribbled with a bowling pencil. Never before had I so deeply appreciated the absent luxury of an eraser.

Why this post? I wanted to let anyone who cared know what happened, get things straight in my own head while fresh, explain myself to those who hear “restraining order” and immediately envision drunken wife-beaters and/or child molestors, offer some advice, and maybe receive some from fathers who’ve traveled similar hells.

If you’re ever taken in for evaluation, just try to close your eyes, go to sleep, and wait for someone to wake you and say “the doctor will see you now.” Stay calm. Be honest.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.

You’re a rat in a cage being poked with a stick while snakes coil in wait on the other side of plexiglass, but you must stay calm.

Here’s a review of some accusations in the restraining order petition (a copy of which I received a few days after my exit), along with my responses.

There wasn’t anything in there about not sharing it with anyone, and I can’t afford a lawyer when I am giving my wife (before splitting communal expenses such as cell phone, insurance) about 66.6% of my salary — some 40% above the maximum New York State would require for the support of two children. Why? Because she slacked on finding a place to live after initiating an ill-considered and abrupt separation, and because I want the girls to be somewhere decent and close.

So, here goes.

[He stated that] keeping him away from the kids based on behavior would “kill your children.”

I assume “based on behavior” means my text messages to her, or perhaps my drinking hobby. The messages would never make it to the eyes of the children. Certainly not by me. The drinking? When I was seeing the kids after the split, I never got drunk. Maybe a beer or a light drink once or twice, but less so than on any occasion when we were married, when I’d come home and pop open a beer or have a glass of wine at dinner. I was with them as their sole guardian at those times and had a responsibility to be vigilant. Never to excess, never anywhere near the point of being “legally” drunk or in any way that would impair my judgment and ability to be their guardian.

The words “kill your children?” Is she implying that I actually intended to kill them? I know her to be an intelligent woman. I hope she would have understood that I meant, developmentally, that girls without a father figure go seeking them out and end up in some bad situations.

I really don’t think she believes I would harm the children. So, is that statement perjury? Obstruction of justice? IANAL.

2/14/12 – Email message with picture of pistol, “Why don’t you give yourself a Valentine’s gift?”

Here’s the picture, originally an old Colt firearms ad sent by my dad along with a bunch of other “you’d never see this today” advertisements. I ‘shopped out “Christmas” with “Valentine’s”.

The subject of the email was “Happy VD”. The content was, “Depending on the status of your love life, maybe you’ll appreciate my photoshop.”

Texts from November including references to […] bondage/rape scenario […]

The “bondage/rape” scenario is the worst allegation, so I’ll address that. I watch the kids on Wednesday nights at her place. One night, she’d left her bedroom door open and I saw a black nylon strap dangling from beneath the mattress. Well, I know what that is, and for what it is used. So, I wondered through SMS if she perhaps left because of the lack of a certain boudoir restraint and I did indeed suggest a consensual scenario which she immediately declined in disgust. No threat of violence whatsoever. Bondage? Well, yeah. So?

I will readily admit it was stupid of me to text her such a thing — indeed, to ever text her anything not directly related to my seeing the kids or their welfare.

However, it was not violence or anger or depression or psychosis that prompted me to send that and other messages. It had a more carnal motivation and was directed by an organ lower than the heart or bile ducts. It was inappropriate behaviour, and I’m sorry for it. I do still find my wife attractive, perhaps the epitome of beauty, and I apologize for communicating unwelcome propositions to her. To my wife. I apologize. Sincerely.

[…] drinking alcohol while taking many psychotropic medications

OK, that’s rich. I do take “psychotropic” medications for the (so far ineffectual) treatment of my chronic depression and anxiety. As with just about any drug, mixing with alcohol is contraindicated. As stated above, on the extremely rare occasions I do drink when around the children, it is limited a bottle of beer, a glass of wine, or something likewise harmless. I don’t snort coke in the bathroom or wash down handfuls of Klonopin with Wódka shots. Any medication I take is taken in quantities well within the parameters of its prescription.

Do I drink too much? I don’t think so. I drink, when alone. I drink, to relax. I drink, to stop thinking for a while and just enjoy life, inasmuch as I am able.

It was telling, to me, and somewhat of a confirmation and relief, that I did not once consider drinking during the extreme stress of being taken from my home at midnight, left pacing in a holding chamber, then being confined to a locked and guarded mental ward.

I sure as fuck wanted a cigarette, though.

I made some stupid mistakes. I understand the duties and possible liabilities of all public safety officials and mental health professionals involved. There’s a systemic problem. I haven’t used the word “Kafkaesque” in my entire life more than I have in the past week. But I don’t blame them, whatsoever.

Her?

I know she doesn’t give a fig about my living or dying. She’s stated she believes the girls would be better off if I were dead. So. Why did she do it?

Was it just simple, malicious retaliation against my admittedly imprudent and unacceptable words?

I suppose her true motivations are for the courts to discern.

I’m going to just try to get on with things. To stop wondering why she left. To leave her alone, and to hope there is not a day between now and June when the girls happen upon their dad in public, run up to him with bright and shining faces yelling “Daddy!” with arms outstretched …

And I have to silently back away.