A few have asked a couple of questions recently that both have the same answer. They have asked why Boston went so badly and how my marriage is going. Recently, Elaine let me know that due to a job change, while she’s already moved away to California, she’s also now moving on. She’s about as private as people get so I won’t get into too many details in regards to her take and also don’t want to speak to it but I am about as public as it gets and this is some way to think it through.
As is well chronicled in this blog, I was very closed to romantic encounters of any seriousness after Kiana’s mom left. I’d gotten left behind shortly after cancer and turning 30 and seizures and thought well if you can get through that without a significant other what do you need that from. There were women for sure but I called them the George Clooney girls, committed to staying single. They would all get speeches about how I was happy to hang out until the next seizure or MRI and for a long long time that was exactly the pattern.
Elaine and I developed a working relationship that grew into a dating one. I had been damaged and closed for so long that I struggled to even call her my girlfriend. In due time, I finally realized I should. We’d move in together and almost exactly 4 years ago today I proposed at the beginning of a spartan race. It was and remains the coldest obstacle race I’ve ever done, where I ran it next to her, helped her with all the obstacles she couldn’t do (next to none, maybe one or two) and kept her pace. It was great. I proposed there because I was projecting the simile of my hope that whatever the mess, no matter the challenges, we’d get through them.
The last 18 months or so have been rough for a variety of reasons. Our relationship was never traditional by any sense as I’ve shared often. The job loss, the move, the sharing was not good for us. Still, I had enough faith in us, that we’d be looking back on the rough times at the finish line with the only medal being given to us being the journey together.
As I look back though, I realized, from the start, I’d over projected completely unfairly. Elaine was my first real relationship since high school but at the time it started I was 36 and she was 25. The age alone should have been an indicator much less the other factors. I had grown up in a rough neighborhood where too much crime happens, lived in 9 or so places before becoming an adult, never once with a room of my own, worked full time since I was 14 at a variety of jobs to where Kiana now says I’m like Barbie. I had lived in 3 countries, had been divorced, had a kid, had had cancer for several years, had watched people die at home and in hospices. I didn’t even meet my father till I was 15 and he didn’t know I existed till then. Any of that much less the combination of it creates attachment issues.
She is a brilliant girl, having gone to specialized schools since middle school and a high prestige school, Rice for university walking away with no debt. Her father is a PH. D in government labs, an immigrant like myself concerned with practicality and contribution. She’d grown up in the definition of middle class suburbia with both parents and a sibling.
I always thought she was out of my league. But we worked so well together, so well. There were things that showed some of the chinks in the armor that are coming to light. The first time I said I love you was when I was drunk from a beer mile (like a lot of my family, damaged hearts only show emotions when out of control) but that was also when I said, maybe we’ll get married some day after Kiana graduates high school. Elaine had said she never wanted to get married or have kids before we started dating and out of my weakness of fearing attachment and abandonment, that made it easier to have a relationship but somewhere I should have seen that someone who didn’t want kids of their own… But I over projected because for the first time in holding back not feelings but actually “feeling” itself the loneliness was wrought. It is a genuine connection but I was trying to fix everything through one person without having given anyone a chance but that even then I realized that our connection was somewhat exempt of Kiana being part of the unit… not good.
There was the first and only time I took her to an MRI, my own attempt to let her into my fears. I communicated so little because I’m so nervous in there about what may result. She sat in the room on her phone, presumably to fight the boredom. I did not ask nor correct what I wish would have happened that as I looked up from the mirror in there I’d be making eye contact. I hoped it would be organic and it wasn’t but it was okay right? Who could understand cancer who hadn’t really been through it? Rather than share or try to correct, I said oh this anxiety is my problem and never invited her back.
I can think of a variety of little examples that many may consider over reaching but say something to me like shortly after I proposed she tried to join me at an attempt for a beer mile and couldn’t get the second one down and faded away. I won it and came back and said we don’t quit in this family and finished the rest of her beer and race with her. That post race picture of us finishing together is one of my favorites. There was another race she was injured and started and didn’t finish. I proposed at a start line, we got married under one in a running themed wedding but I didn’t realize that DNF’s (did not finish) were a far smaller problem for me than they were for her. For me, they aren’t an option.
I have had chances to address some of her frustrations with me recently in counseling. I failed to do so. I felt like I was being asked to change who she’d always dated, the old adage that men marry women hoping they won’t change and they do and women marry men hoping they will change and they don’t. I should have listened better. I have now heard her too late. Like the over projection, it takes two to tango but again I was far further into adulthood, experience and life and should have known better. Still, a year in too marriage she wanted to do a Spartan Ultra, still the longest I’ve ran next to someone, to me a happy memory in that we did it together but her mindset was more on how it was going for her and she left pretty frustrated that it was a rough race with lots of failed obstacles.
Her job loss that resulted in a move to California complicated the situation. Due to a variety of reasons, we weren’t seeing each other enough at first. She shared moments like that talking to me used to be the highlight of her day but now she wanted to be with her friends. I misheard that and shared that it was a good thing as she was at a new place that I couldn’t go to as leaving Texas would cost me custody so why not cheer for her to be happy? The times we connected there in California and in New Mexico and DC were happy moments for me but turns out I’m far simpler in happiness than the average person much less her.
Somewhere though, she was fading and I wasn’t noticing, at least not enough. I had enough (too much) hope that the finish line was where we’d get to, come what may along the tight rope, we’d find balance.
Our most recent time together was supposed to be this past weekend in Boston. This marathon was supposed to be my favorite one with me having qualified at the last two I’d raced where she was running her own on one and a half at the other. Her father had qualified for the first time and I thought it’d be time with her family who by extension is mine like we had not long before in their hometown in Maryland. A couple of weeks out she let me know she wanted a divorce. No paperwork was getting done so somewhere I was in denial (coincidentally a river we were on together).
I ate and slept poorly due to this heavy stressor. When I arrived in Boston, I tried to talk to her and it was mostly unproductive. We’d not see each other again after then I tried to hug her on first seeing her but there was little response and it was tough to see her without a wedding band, one that said the word hope on it. I offered for her to hang out with Kiana sometime whether it was on her own or with the three of us since it is quite possible they may never cross paths again. By sheer coincidence of crashing into them at the lobby twice, I saw her parents more. She never responded to that offer much less accepted it. Kiana was asking if I was okay and I finally told her what Elaine was asking after it was getting obvious that the woman she she’d carried flowers in for the wedding and had made drawings for was in Kiana’s own words “ghosting us.”
I ate 1 meal in the two days before the Boston marathon as I was sick to my stomach. I shared this with a friend as we walked towards the the start line and he said try not to think about it for 26.2 miles. I tried to just focus on the run but somewhere very early on the body was breaking down as the heart was broken open. I started walking and while they say to never let them see you sweat, that’s unavoidable in a race but it will go down as the first time in a race so many people saw me cry. One kind stranger could tell something was going on and cheered out my number and said just keep going to the finish line, no matter what. With tears in my eyes and in my voice, I looked at her and said “I promise you not getting to the finish line is never an option.”
Life was kind and an old man noticed something was wrong and we shared a few blocks together but I couldn’t keep it together. An old friend who was at the wedding let me join for some but I couldn’t keep up even though he was injured. Finally, life was kind enough to where another brain cancer survivor Tom passed me and said there he is. We would run and walk together where he would shout with enthusiasm that isn’t this amazing that a 13 year brain cancer survivor and an 11 year brain cancer survivor are out here together. We’d do the rest of the race together with him regularly shouting that out. I shared this latest news with him and he reminded me how lucky we are to be alive and told me about his daughter’s college experiences and said we were sticking together till he got to meet Kiana at the finish line as I shared some of her high school ones. I couldn’t quite fully feel what he was trying to share about the beauty and joy of life. It’s against my religion to have bad days but this was one of those rare days, I was sinning. We got it done, he met Kiana and there were two responsive hugs after I got my slowest marathon ever by far done.
What will happen now? I don’t know but hasn’t that been the theme of my life for most of the last 11 years? I had a couple of short years of reprieve with Elaine where life almost felt normal, perhaps in that desire to get back to that is where I over projected and over trusted but clearly took some things for granted and did not take proper care enough of that relationship to where she understood that it was absolutely a relationship I wanted to keep. I took full responsibility for all that, well maybe not full since relationships are a two way street but I’ll take 98%.
In certain situations, I hear the idea that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. I do love Elaine but I have a hard time applying that idea in the context of marriage. I wish I’d figured out my over projection and magnification much earlier for everyone’s sake. How long and how the legal proceedings will go is a question that I hope is simple and easy but one never knows. Someone shared a joke with her that she repeated while we were engaged that marriage is when you love someone so much that you have to do a lot of paperwork to break up. Maybe they won’t happen at all since they haven’t even started. Elaine is oddly enough back in her childhood in a sense, a suburban neighbor working for a government lab. I am back in a similar place as to where her and I started, a single dad, with no income and brain cancer. I’m on the job hunt.
As Tom and I were talking running the last while of Boston, I told him there was one section there was no option to walk on and it was heartbreak hill, the infamous late hill in the game. We ran it all the way up. Right now, the guy who put off brain surgery to run a marathon, won one pushing a stroller, who hasn’t missed a day in like 3 and half years, well I am struggling to envision a desire to run again. Perhaps, it was the running themed wedding, perhaps its that I over projected the narrative that with that life this girl I started dating as we were President and Vice President of a running club, that we got married wearing running shoes, that she was a cancer in her astrological sign, thus a cancer I could embrace. I pushed too much stock into her and it’s stinging because I don’t think she was ready for that or saw that because her background is so different and so much better and I neither educated nor wanted to believe in the gaps.
Anyway, we ran heartbreak hill and we got to the finish line. I hope I can run through this massive heartbreak and get to my finish line.
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