Chapter Part Installment 4 (I've not been consistent with my sequencing and so now it's all muddled)

"I'm running scared from a ghost, The ghost of myself. I've no hope left in what I want, Just the memory of your direction.

I need real, I need truth I need promises to stay my long long nights. And where is the meaning? And all of the healing? That all of us prayed for? When I tried to pray what was right?

I'm reaching up and I'm hoping That you are still there. I need to know you still hear me That I am not lost in what I bear. That I am not lost in what I bear..."

Psalm Two ~ Songs To Sail By ~ M. Coffee

**********

I started this at 1 a.m. though now it's closer to 2 a.m. and this is my third attempt at writing this fourth installment although I've written it five or six times out in my head.

This isn't the easy part to write. Not because of anything horrid but because it was the hardest part. Shall I just launch into it then?

The clean and lovely version would be that I left Steve's bookstore basement toy store/art studio blissful in the knowledge that Zack loved me. That I spent the next -- why, the next year --working and being an amazing mommy and volunteering at soup kitchens and baking homemade pies for the elderly neighbours I didn't have and smiling wistfully to myself, feeling lucky at this amazing time in my life to grow and become a better human being.

Instead I think I ended up drinking way too much that night on the bus and, Brent, Edwin's monitor guy, had to help me into my bunk. I woke up with a ridiculous hangover in Boston and let the wife of the sound guy convince me I needed to go shopping where I ended up buying a shirt that said, "No Photos Please" in bright pink letters across the mammary area of my body. (In my defense I didn't try it on and didn't know that it would feature that area of my body so prominently. I'm a real prude...)

Instead, the next day, I called Zack on the phone, knowing that he would answer.

Instead.

Oh, yes. It was hard not to want to see each other after the high of that bright November. I tried to convince myself, actually, I DID convince myself that love like ours couldn't be kept down by anyone or anything and that was that.

But that wasn't that.

"That" was just my piss poor excuse for not dealing with the fact that as much as Zack and I wanted to do the right thing we were failing miserably at it. We would speak on the phone, or email, or steal quick moments together. "That" was the very sad month of December where everything was stolen. (Except for Christmas Day when my father and I took Phoenix to see the movie Night At The Museum and who should be sitting 4 rows in front of us but Zack and Caleb? That was weird. And not stolen.)

It would be a mutual friend of ours, J___, (I'll leave her name blank for now until I find out if she wants to be known) graciously, and with that fantastic no nonsense way she has, stepped in and gave us a proverbial spanking.

This is my attempt at paraphrasing what she said,

"You guys are using each other to fill a void and so subsequently are not dealing with the very real issues at hand and so therefore you need to stop using each other and both go down with your "ships" as it were and stop clinging to the other. If you continue in this way, without addressing how you got here in the first place, you will fall apart all over again."

Ouch.

In looking back at the volley of emails that were going back and forth I want to reach back through time, grab myself by my shirt front and yell,

"SHUT UP."

'Cause good LAWD was I full of excuses. I was so scared to have be alone and deal with my shit I was throwing out all kinds of stuff just to validate anything.

I can't speak for where Zack was at this time, really. I know that he was horribly depressed and dialed my number dozens of times only to hang up at the last second.

Finally, at the beginning of 2007, it was done. The contact ceased. It really and truly did. And that was when I plunged into the scariest place and yet the most healing...ist place I had ever been.

**********

I was pathetic at first.

I was alone.

Yes, yes, I had Phoenix and roommates but I had no one to "check in" with but myself. Which meant that I had to actually look at myself.

It was awful. The worse part? Realising that a lot of the things that I thought were so horrible in my marriage, a lot of the things about myself that I had attributed to my woefully wretched marriage, were still present. That my issues were still my issues. That I had more issues than National Geographic. (I feel that I have gotten my issues down to a much more manageable indie magazine size. You know, a one issue every 3 months kinda magazine...)

I'm making light of this precisely because it was so painful. I grew very small and still on the inside. And then I let go. Then I started dealing with it all. That is when the healing began. I stopped looking to everyone else, anything else, literally got down on my knees, sometimes face down on the floor, and made myself face up to all of my stuff.

"That is very very ugly and awful and I am not like that AT ALL."

When, in truth, I was. Being faced with one's own brokenness is down right 'effin gross.

I used to say that my decision to get divorced was just like the decision to cut off a limb because of gangrene. There was so much infection that if it hadn't been cut off the whole body would die. I still believe that. The only thing was, now, I was having to face the fact that most of that gangrene had set in because of me.

So. Much to my surprise -- I grew up. I began to heal. I walked with a limp. But I was healing.

I was doing GREAT.

Until the night I allowed a friend of mine to buy me a couple of drinks at a Friday night fundraising event, (Extra dirty vodka martinis) and I ended up in front of Zack's house around midnight with the notion that I needed to pray for him.

*facepalm*

I want you to know that I was going to leave this part out. But, I figure I've shared everything with you thus far, why stop now? I mean, HECK. If I'm going to mortify the snot out of myself I might as well do it properly.

So.

There I was, in the dark, mooning over his, "hoooouuusssee....sob sob sob....and his caaahhhhhaaaaarrrrrr!!!!! snort snort blubber blubber...," when I saw someone moving down the front walk and who should it be but?

G_______.

We both gasped.

She spoke first, I remember that.

"What are you doing here?"

I think I launched into some crazy account about the fundraising party and the martinis and that I felt like I just had to come over here and pray...It was so lame I started to sober up a bit because of the lameness.

G______ knew all about Zack and me. He had been very up front with her about it and, according to him, she had said,

"If you feel like you have a chance at love with Meghan Coffee, you should go for it."

Wha-huh?

(Come to find out later she was trying to trap him...)

So there we were, standing in her front yard somewhere close to midnight. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to me.

I took it, gratefully. I sucked on that cigarette as if it was the only thing in the world worth paying attention to. Trying to act normal, you know. Just hanging out in the front yard of the man I loved but wasn't supposed to love having a cigarette with his wife in the dark of midnight.

I know we talked a bit but the only part I remember is the following:

"Zack and I have a history together."

"If you have a history together then why don't you want to keep it that way?"

"Because I don't love him and I don't want him."

"You don't want him. You don't want him, but you don't want anyone else wanting him either."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"I'm sorry about coming over and disturbing you like this. I've had a little too much to drink."

"I came over to your house one night, too. I stood on your front porch. I could see you through the window."

Cue the record scratching noise.

Er.

Whoa.

That gave me the heebeejeebees.

I got out of there pretty quickly after that.

The next morning when I woke up I laid there in bed moaning audibly. Phoenix came in to see what was the matter.

"Mommy? You okay?"

"No. Yes. Yo."

"It's 8 o'clock and my tummy is hungry."

"Okay, I'll get you some breakfast." I swung my legs over the side of the bed and onto the floor. I sat there and moaned again.

"OOOOHHHHHMIIIIIIIGAAAAAWWWWWD."

"What? What happened, Mommy? Do you have a migraine?"

"No, bud, Mommy had something happen that she feels really embarrassed about."

"Oh. Like the time I assidentally sneezed chicken nuggets all in Eden's hair at school?"

"Yes. But a million times more embarrassing."

"Oh," and in that darling Phoenix way, "That's horrific."

Four months would pass before I would hear from Zack again. And when I did it would be because of a most bizarre and disturbing reason.

That I shall write about later. 'Cause right now it's 5 a.m. and I need some sleep. ;-)

{to be continued...}

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