I Thought He Was In The Living Room!

            I'm not a particularly religious person-- meaning I don't follow any traditional organized religion specifically and I'm disinclined toward the idea of a supreme leader running this crazy show. I am certainly spiritual, but I have culled my beliefs from a variety of sources, Eastern and Western. I have even stood in a field with a group of women and howled at the moon (I have GOT to tell that story one day!) I was raised in the Judeo-Christian world which left me with Santa and the Easter Bunny, but not much else (12 years of Catholic school wasted.) From Eastern religions I incorporated the concepts of Zen, meditation, and the belief in some sort of non-specific rebirth or reincarnation. I don't think this is my first time here, and I'm pretty sure it won't be my last-- but I don't spend too much time focused on what that means or why. I just accept the challenges of this journey. The moon howling thing didn't give me much other than a really good laugh, but I can certainly appreciate the value in that! Although I'll admit to being a bit concerned that with enough wine it would turn into someone's "Dear Penthouse," letter.  Long and short, my own "spiritual" beliefs are an eclectic hodge-podge of varied accumulated ideas that meet my needs nicely. 

            One of these "ideas" is Kharma. I recall learning a smidgeon about Kharma in my High School World Religions class, but it wasn't until my adult life that I really embraced the idea that my unhappiness was  connected to my own negative energy output. Not simply moral consequences of my "bad deeds" but a complex balancing of the universe.   Once I started looking for it, I could see the chain reactions of random unrelated events. I began to make small efforts to improve situations around me. In the "take a penny, leave a penny" world I started trying to leave more than I took- and I decided to look for positive possibilities anywhere I felt negativity. Not a bad way to go no matter what your religious preference.

            Originally I believed, vainly, that Kharma was punishing me for something a former self did, it certainly couldn't have been related to the current version of me. However, I have learned I suffer from (or benefit from, depending on your view) Instant Kharma-- a very immediate experience. Which brings us to Labor Day weekend, or more accurately  the days leading up to Labor Day. Life has a tendency to build up. I'm sure everyone has felt it-- all your unresolved emotional shit has piled up around your soul, crushing you internally with its weight and blocking out the light. Despite what you may read here, which tends to be the extremes of my existence, life is not always love and roses. As a matter of fact, it is rarely love and roses. It's mostly just-- get from today to tomorrow-- especially in those times when I forget to appreciate today, for today's sake.

            My marriage was at one of those moments. When you are in a new relationship you make an effort to meet an ideal; iron out all your little messes. When you have been in one for awhile, and all the messes are the same repetitive ones, you make less of an effort and mostly just maneuver around them. When maneuvering you tend to suppress and ignore a bunch of bits and pieces against your better judgment. You stuff it away down deep in an effort to make life easier. If you don't confront it you can survive another day. At least that's the theory at the time, but we all know different.

            When I was a little girl I described it as a trash can inside me. Every day I stuff some more garbage, some bad feeling or slight, deep inside it. I continue to do this until the trash can is so full it just explodes, leaving an apocalyptic,  littered, war-zone in its wake, but in some cathartic way empting the trash can. As a young adult I made an effort to just not fill the trash can. I tried to deal with each issue and feeling as I encountered them. And I was much more stable and happy. But, life got busy; it got easier to ignore, and harder to find a place or time to share those experiences; and my trash can, much bigger now, began to fill.

            It ends with the first few pieces of trash, precariously balanced on the edge, pushing at the lid and overflowing one piece at a time. Stressed, tired, frustrated, unappreciated, invisible and unloved tumbled out slowly in snide comments and deliberate selfishness. Soon followed by button-pushing, impatience and bitterness, my specialties. Finally followed by pre-explosion, high alert--Bitch Extremis. (The lesser known, but much feared, Transformer.) This played out over a matter of weeks. Months? Years? I don't know, but it came to a head right before Labor Day. 

            At the beginning of the week, exhausted from holding it all in, I started to freely allow pieces of rubbish to escape. By the middle of the week I opted for tirade. Boom! I said all the things I needed to say. I said all the things I wanted to say. I said all the things I should have said sooner. I said all the things I never should have said at all. At my most extreme I was vicious and ugly. Most of it was true, at least in the moment. Some I wanted to be true. Some was intended to provoke a reaction, any reaction. Some I can't ever take back, but I wish I could.

            The hardest part of arguing with my husband is that it's fairly one-sided (completely one-sided.) I can yell, scream, rant, rave, tantrum, sob, curse, threaten; it doesn't really matter, his reaction is always to revert inside, or in laymen's terms "ignore" me--or at least he pretends to.  Sometimes a "good" fight can be cathartic, so it's rather frustrating and leaves you feeling desperately unheard and dissatisfied when this happens, which may be the point-- what a dirty trick!

            At the end of the week we had just stopped talking, except for the occasional under the breath nasty remark from me (although I'm not sure he noticed.) Sometimes it's hard to find a place and a time to confront these things in a busy family life. Two people are never alone together long enough to say what needs to be said and so I had not only lost it, but I had said these ugly things in front of my children, something I have always tried to avoid. They were the collateral damage of my explosion. (Forgive me.) 

            Finally Thursday night, while driving our silent car home from school where my husband had come to claim my ungrateful ass (yes I see the irony now,) I pulled to the side of the road and parked the car outside some stranger's home. I took the time to express myself more appropriately, and to hear the same responses I always hear, which left me with a hopeless void. If you can't live with the way things are, and nothing ever changes, what do you do, where do you go, how do you survive without destroying the other person, do you have a right to? Friday just passed, like another lost day. Unable to sleep, yet again, I stayed up until six am, just…done.    

  

            I was awakened Saturday morning-ish by my younger son telling me my brother-in-law was at the door and needed me. My nephew's birthday was that afternoon and I mentally tried to remember if some arrangements had been made to pick up tables and chairs or  ice-chests. He probably talked to my husband and I never got the message. Typical. 

"Where's Daddy?" I mumbled sleepily. 

"I don't know. He's not here. I just woke up when I heard the door." 

 "Ok. Tell him I'll be there in a minute."

            I sighed that heavy, annoyed huff you do when you feel put upon and made my few angry remarks in my own head about not being told anyone was going to be needing anything and how I'm the only one around here who ever does anything, as I got "dressed." I could hear them talking in the living room from the hallway.

I poked my head out and inquired "What's up?"

"Your husband got arrested. You have to come with me to pick up your car." My brother-in-law doesn't really mince words and seemed slightly amused to be delivering this news.

"What?"

"Your husband got arrested. You have to come with me to pick up your car." Much more helpful. Thanks.

"I thought he was in the living room." Clearly I was wrong! 

My brother-in-law laughed, "That should be the title of the blog you write about this." (You're welcome man, consider this your dedication.) 

 

            On the surreal ride to my car he explained that apparently everyone was asleep at my house when my husband tried to call, so he had finally called my sister's house. He had been pulled over while out on an errand because our registration was expired. The cops found a failure to appear warrant for him and kindly did not impound our only car, instead allowing him to call someone and hand off the keys. They were not even sure the warrant was serviceable. We had not paid the registration in May because…well, we were too poor, like most other people today, and when it came down to food and shelter over registration, we picked food and shelter. My husband had gotten the FTA for an old traffic ticket. He had originally appeared and made arrangements for community service, but had another  heart attack and was hospitalized right around his return court date and had never followed up. (In all fairness he still hadn't done the service so he probably would not have fared better had he been able to show up in court.) 

            Suddenly everything came into sharp focus. He is not a well man. His heart function is only 20%. He had been sick this week. The Doctor up-ed  his medication on Friday and  told him he may need to go back into the hospital this weekend if he couldn't breathe better. I knew he would be upset, maybe panicked. That would not be good for his heart, for his blood sugars. The fact that the car was in a Carl's Jr. parking lot led me to believe he may not have had the healthiest breakfast, if he had eaten at all. I just wanted to hear his voice, to know he was ok. To make him feel better. To make me feel better. To take back the ugly things  I had said to him. He gets a phone call, right?

            I went home and waited for a few hours before I started making phone calls. I tracked him down just after he had been booked and left one local station for another. At least I knew a few things, I knew where he was, sort of,  and that he was alive. I also knew his bail was $35,000. YIKES! If I had that kind of money I would have paid the registration AND the ticket. Even if I had enough to scrape up the 10% for a bail bond it wouldn't have mattered. At that particular moment he was holding all our money. Whatever cash we had was on him, as was the ATM card. Ah Kharma.

            Eventually I got a call. He was calm, but I could hear the edges of nervousness in his voice, the way you do with family; when you know "I'm fine" really means "I'm not." I could tell he was sad, worried, unhappy and unwell. He informed me they were moving him to the Downtown LA Twin Towers building because it had the medical facility to administer  treatment should he need it. This is a double edged sword, because while medical care is important, Twin Towers is not a good place. This is where they keep the gang-bangers, druggies, and all the crazies with something to prove. He knew we couldn't afford the bail. He asked me to call his cousin, who is a DA and find out what happens now. I suggested he "have heart pains" hoping they would take him to the hospital instead. He either didn't understand what I was suggesting or just wasn't sure what to do. We left it there. He was gone that quickly, and I had just as many unanswered questions and concerns. Neither one of us felt better.

            I called his cousin. She is a wonderful woman who has probably dispensed more legal advice to us that anyone else. She told me she would call the prison and talk to him, and see how he was and tell him what to do now.  Yes they would "treat" him if he had a problem, but it would be in the prison hospital, not a regular one, that was why they took him downtown. No, if he had a heart attack or some other emergency, no one would contact me. Omg! No one would even contact me. I wouldn't even know if something happened to him. She informed me I would not hear from him until Tuesday, when he was arraigned because Monday was…of course, a holiday. After 5, I went ahead and took the kids to my sister's house for my nephew's birthday. When I got home I had missed his unexpected phone call.  I was kicking myself. I had no idea why he had called because Time Warner won't accept collect calls from the LA jail. Who knew? So there was just a recording telling me he had tried to call and that if I wanted to talk to him I could call (888)23……ARGH! My machine cut off the rest of the recording. Finally Sunday morning I got a repeat call and placed money in a phone account for him, of course there was no way to let him know this.

            I didn't leave my house for the rest of the weekend. I sat with my phone in my lap. I showered with my phone. I fruitlessly attempted to sleep with my phone. I waited for it to ring, and I dreaded the possibility. I imagined horrible scenarios like you do when your kids are late for curfew, where you know it's unrealistic, but since you are no longer living in the land of reality as you know it, everything is possible. By Sunday I had stopped bothering to get dressed. By Monday I don't think I even brushed my hair, I may have eaten. All I could think about was how those things I said were in his head. Put there by me. Those may be the last significant words we shared. How awful. How regrettable. How useless. 


           Life went on around me. The kids came and went, doing their thing, being their normal selves. They have learned to function at all levels of crisis with ease. They know I'm honest with them. They'll know if there is something they need to know or worry about, until then, I'll do the worrying for all of us. My youngest son (the older one was away for the weekend ) helped me find some light. He watched movies with me, he made jokes, and he made up funny prison nicknames for us to call him when he got home. The phone call never came. I don't think I have ever gone four days without talking to my husband. I missed him. I loved him, and I missed him and I wanted him home safe with me. We have had other scary events, the heart attacks, the strokes, but this time I had those unbearable words hanging between us.

            Tuesday finally came. Tuesday morning passed into Tuesday afternoon. My mother-in-law called late in the afternoon. He had called her, thinking maybe he could get a call accepted there. He had been "released" with time served as his cousin had said. His debt and infraction were taken care of, he just had to "stay out of trouble for a year." Not a problem. Of course, "release" was a vague thing. He had to be transported back to the prison, and processed  to be released. They would dump him out on the street at that point, after returning his wallet, clothes and shoelaces (because apparently there was a risk they would support his weight should he try to hang himself over his traffic ticket despair.) As we passed into Wednesday I tired of being complacent. I took to the internet and started looking for a way to find out where he was, or how long it would take. I discovered a real-time tracking system for inmates so for hours I played Bubble Town and watched the minutes tick by, waiting for "No Release Information" to change. Finally I called the jail around 2 am to inquire. The friendly officer  told me he had been transferred to the release facility and it should only be a few (up to 12) more hours before I heard from him. Hmmm.

            But I couldn't let go of the hope I would hear from him soon. Instinct told me it would be soon, so I continued to wait, popping bubbles and refreshing the prisoner status screen. About an hour later the status magically changed. Released 2:58 am. Now what? I called his mom and filled her in, knowing she was waiting up too. About ten minutes later I heard his voice. Tired, but upbeat, positive and reassuring. We worked out a plan to get him home which did not require me driving alone through Prisonland at 3am. And two hours later my husband was in the car with me on the way home, chatting about his adventure and all the friends he had made (yes, they exchanged phone numbers, don't ask!) We had apparently had very different weekends, but we had both arrived at the same place. Together again and certain that this was the way we preferred to be.

            If you can't live with the way things are, and nothing ever changes, what do you do, where do you go, how do you survive without destroying the other person, do you have a right to? For us, the answer was Kharma. Having taken the journey to the strange world of "what if?"-- having stepped through the looking glass, traveled on the tornado, been trapped on the Death Star-- we both knew what we would be missing if we lived there permanently. And neither of us was ready for that. It's never going to be perfect. We're going to forget again for sure. But we're going to try not to. For now, he is taking his medication and trying to do better at taking care of "us." I am trying to be better at being grateful for the time we have, and I will be careful about the things I say in anger, because I know second chances are rare, and we have had more than our fair share, and one day, I may not get the chance to take them back.

Message received, Kharma.