An Ornament

The next twenty-five years were a real shit show. They convinced me I should try to fit in, so I got married. I ruined it immediately. I got drunk at the reception and didn’t even go with my husband that night. A still, small voice had spoken as I walked down the aisle. You don’t really want this. I heard it. I kept walking. I said everything I was supposed to say. The paper was signed. I didn’t belong to something. I belonged to someone. I was an ornament.

It didn’t take long for my body to respond. It felt like violation, and it shut down. I was exhausted all the time, not tired but flattened, like something heavy had settled over me and wouldn’t lift. I was still young, just thirty. Doctors didn’t know what to call it. Chronic fatigue, maybe, which felt more like a guess than a diagnosis. The naturopath had me injecting B-12 three times a day and taking a list of supplements I couldn’t even keep track of. None of it made a difference. I thought I needed to quit my job as a casino dealer, so I did. One night at work I left the table, walked into my boss’s office, and lay down on the floor. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. Someone drove me home, someone else brought my car. That was it. I never went back.

At my request, we were living in the mountains far from the city. It was beautiful there. Elk would gather on the front lawn. It was also isolating. All I had up there was a man I didn’t understand and didn’t know how I ended up with. I had to try to like him. Love wasn’t even part of it. He was fourteen years older than me. I was trying to please him. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as pleasing myself.

We eventually divorced. I found someone I liked better, another woman, but that didn’t last either. On one level it worked, on another it didn’t. Maybe she didn’t want an ornament, but that was all I knew how to be. My sense of self had narrowed to one question: how can I make you act like you’re happy with me? It turned out I didn’t fit there either. Not with the life, not with the identity. I was still outside of it. No matter where I went, I didn’t belong.

I went to Europe. It was supposed to be six months. It lasted three weeks. I remember looking at groups of people talking, laughing, animated, and feeling completely invisible. I could see them. They couldn’t see me.

When I got back, I got a dog, an old German Shepherd from the pound. She got me. She was fierce. No one could come within ten feet of me when I walked her, which suited me just fine. Her bark was enough to stop people, and sometimes more than that. She once bit a man who came running toward me, yelling. He wanted to report it. I handed him a hundred dollars and it ended there. For a while it was just me and my dog.

Eventually my mother got worried. I was too far down. She flew me home, my dog with me, my car shipped separately. I stayed for a few months, but I didn’t want to stay. It felt like landing back inside the same nightmare. So I left again.

I went to California. I met my next husband within a week. My dog tried to bite him too, but he didn’t seem to mind. We had three children in three years, and he was gone before the last one was even born. He left for another woman. It turned out he was a con artist and never intended to work. He had already taken money from my parents by the time it was over. He was a convincing liar. If I said the grass was green, he could make a case for red. It was easier to agree, but I still knew it was green. When the money ran out, so did he. He never came back.

Those are only the highlights. The day-to-day reality was worse. I thought maybe I was cursed, maybe I had done something unforgivable and this was the result. If something could go wrong, it usually did. The climb out would take another ten years before anything even resembling solid ground appeared.