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IOWA CITY
I drove to Iowa City because my husband had lied to me again and I didn't know where else to
drive
And because Jesus' Son was the only book that made sense to me
Once I realized I was in love w an addict
I kept thinking how much everyone I know loves that book
But how no one probably loved Denis Johnson when he was actually living the stories in it
Ppl only like addicts after the fact,
After they've gotten sober and been in the New Yorker
Until about three weeks ago,
My husband was still stealing copper from the auto factory he works at
He was never going to be in the New Yorker
He was always going to work in that auto plant in Warren, MI
Sober or not
It was a seven hour drive and I pulled over in a Whole Foods parking lot
Before getting on the highway Saturday
to cry and call my mother on my burner phone
And to contemplate going
It was killing me leaving all forms of communication w my husband at the house
But that was the point
It didn't make sense to continue to try to communicate w a known liar
As soon as I got to the hotel in Iowa City seven hours later
I tried to call my husband using the room phone
The room phone said to dial 9 and then his number but it wouldn't go thru
It said for credit card calls to dial 0 and then his number but that didn't go thru either
I wonder when the last time someone wanted to make a long distance call with a credit card
from a hotel room phone was
I bet it was 2009
I just kept trying anyway, the 9 before the number and the 0 before his number
I was compelled by my obsession to keep trying
I think that is the definition of insanity or something:
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results
I kept expecting one time the call to go through
I didn't know what I would do if it did
I thought I might hang up on him
It was funny to think of spending all this effort to get a call through to my husband
Only to hang up on him when he answered
Maybe I just needed to hear his voice
Maybe I just wanted to hear him say something that wasn't a lie;
Hello?
But the call never went through so I never got to hang up
Instead I got in bed and reread pages of this embarrassing self help book I have on my Kindle:
Ignore the Guy, Get the Guy
I'd read it about six times
It was the only thing that soothed me when I got like this (compelled/obsessed, like an addict)
I was an addict myself; I was an addict for my husband)
Also, it worked
When I drove the seven hours back the next day he was eager to talk to me
There were photographs of him and the former rodeo rider/current heroin addict Eddie
Fishing from the pier in Naples
Eddie had one of those big open grins
Like you'd think a rodeo rider would
I thought he must have been beautiful in his youth
Riding those bulls
He was still kind of beautiful and staring at the photograph of him and my husband fishing in
the Florida water I thought how I could fuck Eddie to get back at my husband for cheating on
me
Even tho he denied having cheated on me
I could fuck Eddie to get back at him
Like a story in Jesus' Son
Like a story the New Yorker might wanna publish.
11PM ON A THURSDAY
I was in my husband's house on his couch
And my husband was at his baby mama's
It was eleven p.m. on a Thursday
Twelve hours earlier he had shown me a text message from his partner at the plant
Calling him in to work
"Do you have some money for gas?" he asked before leaving
I knew it was unlikely he was going into work
I gave him the money instinctively
An hour or two later I tried the "I'm not leaving your house alive without you" method of
manipulation
I looked through all the baskets of medicines and drugs in the bathroom pantry
Old Xanax bottles and 600mg motrin bottles
All prescribed to the woman who lived here before me
I got the pills out along w a couple bottle of Nyquil
A bottle of Sudafed
A bottle of Benadryl
There were a lot of OTC medicine bottles in the house
I had half a bottle of rose in the fridge from the night before
The night before my husband and I had gone for a walk
Then played our old game of Truth or Truth in side by side lounge chairs
In his back yard
Smoking cigarettes
The night before that we had taken photographs of ourselves together,
Smiling, in the backyard, because he was going to go to a Betty Ford center in Naples
For treatment on Monday, Memorial Day
Last night our old game of Truth or Truth
Wasn't the fun lighthearted game it had been almost two years earlier
When we'd played in a rented by the hour motel room with a hot tub
And two TVs
That night the questions had been something like "will you marry me"
And "what if I said I love you?"
We'd only been dating a month
Last night the questions were more of the "what does your daughter think of me now"
And "why did you ghost me and go to your baby mama's last week if you don't love her and
love me?" variety
My husband was coming down with a cold and two hours later he could hardly breathe
I put him in a tub with Vicks drops and washed his hair
He leaned his head on mine at the side of the tub
It felt like we had moved into a new world of intimacy
I should have known better than to feel happy
I should have known the cycle by this point
Sometimes I'm a fucking idiot
He'd been acting a little peculiar mid morning
Out on his knees obsessively pulling larvae off his plants with tweezers
I shouldn't have let him leave without me
I should have squeezed myself into the car as I had in the past
Forced the situation
Followed him to Romeo, Michigan
I like to think I have something like pride left
I don't have anything like it
I drank my half bottle of rose at four p.m.
Slept on the couch amid weeping
Contemplated the pills I'd found
Searched reddit on mixing them with Nyquil
Who was I kidding?
I wasn't kidding him; he knew I could never do it
To my daughter
Instead I spent four or five hours reading reddit threads on BPD and cheating
I read two books on Amazon Kindle Cloud abt loving someone with BPD
I drove to the drugstore down the street and bought two small bottles of champagne
Drank them intermittently while watching the Johnny Depp trial and reading
Walking on Eggshells;
Trying to figure out how to disengage, how to stop my codependent behavior
How to save myself
I remembered a time when I wrote every day
I remembered recently having reread Love Is a Dog from Hell
I decided to write a poem
This is the poem I decided to write.
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