Chapter 6: The Coming Undone
The endeavor of total accountability and transparency took us through Christmas and the new year. The beginning of January celebrates Orthodox Christmas (knows as the Epiphany to Catholics). My father and Luca also have birthday’s in January and since the family was together we decided to celebrate all at once. It was Luca’s first birthday.
My family loves to make a big deal over birthdays but this family gathering was incredibly strained. We had a little cake for Luca and the family sang and took pictures of the three of us. In every pair of mahogany eyes was sadness. Every forlorn gaze at our beautiful young family acknowledged Elaine’s pain and expressed fear that our marriage was slipping away. They showered adoration on baby Luca as he smeared icing over his face but each laugh rolled on an undercurrent of uncertainty that they’d ever see or celebrate him again.
I only remember heavy and sad eyes, except for my father’s. He refused to even look at me but I could sense his fury. At one point I noticed my older brother speaking emphatically with him in the corner trying to calm him down. I don’t know the details but I assumed my brother was intervening to stave off a confrontation between us. Eventually, my father resolved to merely harpoon threatening glances across the living room without ever making eye contact. He never said a word to me the whole time. That was Saturday, January 6, 2007. The next day with somber well-wishes and timid hugs we left the family and headed back to Gainesville. It was a long and silent drive home. We arrived late at night and crept into bed.
And so it went for a few weeks into the new year. In short order things became more grueling for both of us as hope quickly faded. I lost steam for the process I initiated. Conversations became more awkward and strained. Even after the crushing work days I began to dread coming home. I began to resent the online therapy and grim self-reflections that always seemed to end with the same conclusion: “I want to want to fight.”
As much as I loved Elaine and as guilty as I felt, I couldn’t imagine continuing on in such a state of dissatisfaction, hopelessness and miserable self-loathing. I loved Elaine but was exhausted of hating myself.
A threshold had been crossed in my life. I’d experienced the world as a gay man. I’d fallen in love with another man. I was missing Elliot and the freedom I experienced to express my love toward him.
Part of me had come alive and I couldn’t put it to rest again. It was a part that felt deep, innate and natural and I didn’t have the will to walk away from it. Instead of growing closer to Elaine and moving toward reconciliation I became more withdrawn and distant. It was death by a thousand cuts for both of us. It felt as though I was just waiting out some sort of penalty. I can’t image how difficult it must have been for her.
I came home one day to find Elaine sitting on the couch waiting for me. Luca was napping. She told me we needed to talk. In her quiet voice she told me she knew I wasn’t in it anymore and that she and Luca were leaving. She’d tried everything to stand by me and yearned for me to make the right choice but she now knew I was going down a path that did not include her.
I knew she was right.
She had the courage to speak what I could not. I wanted Elliot. I wanted to breath. I didn’t want to drag her and my son through the mire of my spiritual apocalypse. As terrifying as it was to hear her words, I nevertheless sat silently and tacitly welcomed them.
We sat on the couch, facing one another Indian style like we’d done a million times before over a million different conversations. It was in that posture our life was built piece by piece and now in that same posture our carefully nurtured vision was, in one fell swoop, demolished to rubble. Within long pauses I sat silently as the gravity of our situation wrapped its callous fingers around my gut and mercilessly twisted. Her lip quivered as she softly told me I was forsaking the gifts God gave me through her and Luca. My head hung in shame and nodded in acknowledgement of that truth.
She took my hands into hers and looked at me, the agony in her eyes reaching out through her strained composure. Our wet eyes met and with a broken sob she exhaled “The worst part is I’m losing my best friend.”
It was the last time I held her. On that couch, tightly wrapped in a hug as our tears pooled together in the napes of our necks like a final rain on a barren promise; the promise of a marriage I scorched, the bridge with my best friend I set ablaze. As we let go I could, by the moment, feel the emotional expanse between us growing beyond the confines of that small room. She asked me to pack some things and stay elsewhere until she could move out. I silently nodded and began to collect some things to throw in a bag. She brought Luca out to me, placed him in my arms and turned her head unable to watch her husband say goodbye to her son.
Let me step outside this narrative. It’s taken me years to write this part. I’m not a seasoned author used to sculpting life’s most sacred and frightful moments out of words. I sit here, fingers trembling, trying to find my voice and the strength to describe what that was like; the farewell to my best friend and the good bye kiss upon my infant son’s head.
It was a farewell mired in shame; a farewell of my doing.
I was at the same time a hopeless and drowning animal clamoring for breath and a son of God making a choice to walk away from everything I believed to be right.
Luca is a child of love. He is the product of a love that was the best part of me. He is the a product of promise, of hope, of laughter and of the intimacy in deep and easy breaths.
I didn’t know when I would see him next.
The farewell kiss upon his head was the mark of condemnation upon mine.
I left the apartment that night and got into my car, immune to the cold night clawing at my arms and chest. I remember just sitting in the driver’s seat for what seemed like hours, physically numb, pieces of the last 48 hours and even the last few months flashing incongruously in my mind like screeching voices of accusation.
I sat utterly still in the dark of my silent car, save for my wimpy breaths, just feeling the cold air move in shallow waves through my chest. They were the only reminder I was still alive and that this was really happening.
After some time I somehow noticed Elaine’s silhouette holding Luca on her hip peering through our second floor apartment window to see if I had left. I turned on the ignition and drove blindly out of our apartment complex. I had no idea where I was going.
I managed to get to what must have been the cheapest motel in town. It happened to be not far from where we lived and advertised fifteen dollars a night. I drove by it everyday on the way to work. It was another flat, cinder block, barely noticeable, run-down, dirty and dark place despite being painted some nondescript shade of beige. You’d assume it harbored drug dealers and prostitutes.
I drove around to the back.
In a little office enclosed in bullet-proof glass, like the ones you see at a subway station or late night gas station, sat an old, disinterested Indian lady. She checked me in. By the time I rented a blanket and towels that fifteen dollars a night multiplied to forty dollars a night.
I drove around to my room, parked and prayed no one would steal my old car. Everything about that room appears yellow in my memory; that kind of anemic, jaundice yellow, a step away from ashen gray. A floor lamp held together with duct tape emanated a paltry glow that seemed to augment the faint scent of stale beer and piss. The carpet was a poorly coordinated shade of dirt brown. There were no pictures on the wall, not even the old fashion prints of light houses or star fish you would expect in such a place. I climbed onto the lumpy twin mattress in my clothes and laid on the thin, worn polyester bedspread, staring at the ceiling and allowing the cold in the room to keep me numb.
I was lucky to be in such a place. I deserved worse.
I awoke early for work, exiting my sallow cage into a pencil drawn world. Nothing seemed to be real or alive. Everything was a shadow in tints of grey.
Somehow I crawled through that day of work. My oldest brother called me in the afternoon. He and his best friend, who I affectionally refer to as my “American brother” and who married my cousin, were going to ride their motorcycles up to Gainesville to take me to dinner. It was a two hour trip each way.
They arrived that evening and we went to the local Golden Coral. Amidst peanut shells and low lighting I forked a wilted salad and downed a beer or two. Jeremy tried to sound encouraging and gave advice about keeping my spiritual battle against homosexuality creative. He said he believed in me and what God had planned for my life. He spoke about not giving up and assured me everything would be okay. My brother simply said I was making a mistake and that he would try to help me and Elaine as much as he could. I used the “I want to want to fight but I can’t do it anymore” line but knew they didn’t understand. I was exhausted and short on words. I thanked them and drove back to my motel.
The next day at about 11am I got a text from Elaine saying she was leaving. My brother was helping her pack a U-haul. I could come back that evening and reclaim the empty apartment.
Receiving that text marked one of the many breaking points the following months would bring. I was a senior anesthesia resident and that day I was in a complex orthopedic case. My patient was under a general anesthetic. They were asleep and on a ventilator. The surgical area of the patient is sterilized and covered with sterile sheets called “drapes”. Those drapes are pulled up to make a sort of canopy around the operative part of the patient and leaving me access to their head and airway. The drapes are also easy to hide behind.
As I read that simple text I could feel an imminent wave of emotion about to crush and consume me under its weight. I was cracking. I retreated behind my ventilator, obscured from sight by the surgical drapes. I doubled over, shaking and dropping my phone. Clutching my sides I tried to hide from the nurse and operating room staff as I wept uncontrollably.
With heaving breaths I bit the back of my hand to muffle the groans exploding from my body. I couldn’t control it. My heart was racing. The slow and steady counter-beat of the patient’s heartbeat on the monitors felt like a suffocating metronome spinning me more out of control.
Eventually, between waves of tears, I wiped my face and called my attending physician to the room. I had to escape as the walls closed in. He came in, saw bloodshot and tearstained eyes, and told me to take whatever time I needed.
I ran and hid in a bathroom stall, forcing my breaths into a slower and deeper pattern. I noticed that in my earlier efforts to muffle myself I’d bitten the back of my hand so hard it broke skin. I washed my hands and face and eventually scraped together some composure. I pushed myself back to the operating room.
Having found my cell phone on the ground, my attending handed it to me. The text was clearly displayed. My director knew I was having marital troubles so I assume the word spread. He simply looked at me, placed his hand on my shoulder and said “I’m sorry.”
By the time I finished work I sheepishly drove back to our apartment. I slowly opened the door to reveal only those $50, second-hand gray couches which had witnessed so much. All the pictures, furniture, baby toys and warmth were gone. I stood frozen in the middle of that empty room, mostly in disbelief of all that was happening.
Then I heard sobbing coming from our bedroom and turned around in shock.
The only other furniture left was our marriage bed.
Sitting on the ground at the foot of that bed was my mother.
She sat holding some of Elaine’s clothes and weeping. It seemed she’d been there for hours. Running mascara made cruel lines down her face, like merciless claw marks where her smile used to be. She looked up at me. I was stunned to see her and terrified at what she would say.
“How could you?”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“He’s a snake.”
“It has nothing to do with anyone other than me. It’s my fault.”
“I know that God delivered you from this.”
“I can’t fight anymore Mom.”
“You’re choosing a curse.”
“I’m sorry.”
She broke down into sobs again. I hesitantly began to move toward her, crossing the room’s threshold.
“Don’t touch me. You have a wicked soul. Your soul is wicked.”
I couldn’t respond but I wasn’t stung.
The day had already carved me into a hollow shell. Those words only reverberated off the walls of my consciousness as they worked their way through me.
“Get those bags and put them in my car”, she commanded.
I looked toward where she pointed. She had come to pack up Elaine’s abundant closet.
She had come to see the end of our marriage for herself.
The remnants of both were in garbage bags.
I stood still, shaking, and processing the scene. Our life was literally in trash bags.
“We left your bed and these linens. They were for you marriage bed. Burn them.”
I picked up a trash bag of Elaine’s clothes and carried it outside to find my mother’s car. I packed up her car, disposal bags swelling with memories. I don’t remember anything else. My mom left. My brother told me she wore black for forty days as is customary in bereavement.
It was over a year before she spoke to me again.
And so it was done.
The undoing was done.
Ten years of building a friendship, a romance, a marriage was broken by my hand. My wife and son were gone. My family was gone. I was alone on an island and all the bridges to it were ash. I knew things would get harder before they got easier but there’s no real way to prepare oneself for these sorts of things.
The following days were filled with hours of numb weeping and exhausting phone calls. My middle brother, an attorney by trade, advised me that he would do everything in his power to keep Luca from me and that I would never be welcomed into his house or around his children. I told him I didn’t know what to say and I thanked him for looking out for Elaine.
My oldest brother told me he wouldn’t tell me where Elaine and Luca had gone and that I should get used to never seeing my son. The days went on like this. Gentle calls, harsh calls, all in efforts to elicit some change of course from me.
But it was done.
Exhausted and empty I was nevertheless an arrow fiercely jettisoned from a crossbow on an entirely new trajectory of life.
I had re-established contact with Elliot but only as friends at this point. He was understandably hurt that I’d cut things off so suddenly and ruthlessly. I tried to explain some of the context while also shielding him from all the difficult details. He mercifully understood I was in duress and needed some support. He agreed to dinner. I tried my best to conceal the depth and details of all that was happening. I simply told him it was rough with Elaine and my family and asked him to forgive my awkward demeanor. At the end of dinner of I drove him home. We pulled up into the driveway. He looked at me compassionately and kindly said “Thanks. Have a good night” and hopped out.
I was so vulnerable and sensitive and desperately in love with him. His perfectly reasonable and dignified reserve felt like rejection. I sat there raw and stunned by his casual departure. I understood in my head but my bleeding heart was desperate for him. A wave of emotion began to rise like the thunder of a thousand wild horses galloping toward me. I fought to swallow and focus so I wouldn’t be trampled. My body started to shake in the way sinew, muscle and bone vibrate under overwhelming strain. I was breaking again. I sped home and rushed up into the apartment. As dramatic as it sounds, I physically couldn’t stand. I collapsed on the dirty, linoleum floor of that apartment kitchen. Mud formed as my tears and dirt mixed and the weight of perceived rejection pressed me into it.
Again I’d lost everything; my wife, my son, my family and now the man I loved. That suffocating cold from the motel crept back, its probing and ruthless fingers worked their way through every inch of me and tightened their grip around the bent neck of my failing spirit. I shook, shivered and groaned with tears as I just kept repeating over and over: “God please don’t abandon me. God please don’t abandon me. I’m so sorry.”
And so it went during this time. The undoing was done but the fracturing relentlessly continued for a brutal season.
The next day I mounted enough strength to go to Walmart and try and buy some things I needed for the apartment. I leaned against the cart like an old lady as I crawled up and down the aisles. An hour or so later, with only a few items in my cart, I went to check out only to realize I didn’t have my wallet. Mortified but sure it was in my car, I left the cart at the register and ran back to search.
It wasn’t there.
With mounting frenzy I clawed at anything I could grab and threw it out of the car: floor mats, gym bag, CDs and parking tags. But no wallet. On a cold winter night in a Walmart parking lot I lost myself yet again. Yelling profanities at the top of my voice, I wildly flung the contents of my car out onto the asphalt. All to no avail.
In defeat I slumped against the side of the car and slid down to the ground as I slung a few remaining swears toward the dark sky.
“Ok God!! Is this how it’s going to be?! Is this really how it’s going to be?!”
The physical and emotional contents of my entire life were a dung heap upon which I sat but I was no righteous Job.
I was undone and haunted and a mess even by Walmart people standards.
It’s terrifying to feel that the maker of the universe has not only ex-communicated you but has also set himself against you.
It’s a scary rock bottom to not know who or what you are anymore but to know that you hate yourself and suspect that God probably hates you too.
And it only got worse. Just as in my childhood, I was again stuck on a figurative stairwell, pinned in place by guilt and fear. I would stay there for a very long time in fragments, unrecognizable to myself, struggling just to pass from one day into the next. It wasn’t merely suffering or pain I experienced, it was the effacement of everything that gave my life identity and value. I was now an unfaithful husband, absentee father, fickle lover, mediocre doctor and unredeemable heretic. For many, many months when I could feel anything other than pain, it was the desire to complete my dissolution, to un-exist, to die.
But that’s the thing about rock bottoms, eventually they force you to make a decision. If you choose to look down when you’re on a rock bottom you won’t see much more than an ending. But if you choose to look up there might be a way out through the darkness. Rock bottoms force us to choose between going on or giving up. Rock bottoms force us to choose between hope and despair. And it’s hope, of all the pistons of the heart, that has the potential to power through guilt and fear.
It doesn’t take much to power that piston. A little love can spark a big hope and a lot of love can do even more. So even though I hated myself, love for Luca eventually gave me hope to see him grow, love for Elaine would give me hope to see healed what I hurt, love for Elliot sustained a hope to be with him and love for God gave me hope to find Him again.