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Letter #3 - SMLB

Letter #3 - SMLB

Letter # 3

Dear Aireos,

Last night was a bitch. About 1:30AM I got ran over by a truck load of Depression and fired off the following e-mail to my two girls and their mother. The next morning I followed it up with an apology e-mail. First, the crazy e-mail that jumped out of my mouth before I could put a cork in it. (The subject is a spreadsheet where we are dividing our assets - cutting the baby in half.)

Dear Peachy, let me work through the stuff that is starting to stick in my throat. Some how you got your five-year-old, $14,000 luxury car down to the price I had on the spreadsheet for my five-year-old Camaro. You some how have it in your mind that this five-year-old Dell computer I'm using for e-mail is worth more than $300 so you listed it at $1,000; plus the more I think about how you weaseled our "earthly" belongings down to less than $1,200 the more angry I get. Come on, $1,200 for a house full of furniture, a two-story house at that. Remember, we bought an ebony entertainment center only six months ago and a couch, coffee table and end tables with lamps only three months ago, all from Ethan Allen. Come on! Ethan Allen! The place is so expensive they charge a cover charge with a two-drink minimum just to go in and look around.

You don't want "it" to get ugly - Well, I'm getting to the point where I have no reason not to get ugly. What do I have to lose? Your decision to divorce me has hurt me profoundly and has made me a very unhappy human being so why not share the unhappiness? If you come up with one more stupid idea, like listing your Eldorado for the same price as my old Camaro or trying to sell me this Dell Notebook computer for more than $300, I'm going to start sharing the unhappiness you've given me. If you don't stop sharpening your pencil and seeing what "hav'zees" you can weasel out of, I'm going to insist that we hold a garage sale and sell everything piece by piece, just to show you the street price has a higher value that what your pencil is scratching on the spreadsheet. Julian

The next morning this is the follow up apology e-mail I sent to my girls and their mother:

I see everyone has answered my e-mail from last night, actually this morning at 1:30AM.

Before I open and read your e-mails, first let me say I'm sorry. I know some of you are going to be angry and some of you hurt. So again let me say I'm sorry. And this coming from a guy who considers saying your sorry to be a "cheap out". Better to practice self-control and not do or say something that you later have to apologize for. Given all of that, I'm still sorry.

Last night I was at a low ebb. I had gone to bed at 11:30. At 1AM my eyes popped open and refused to close. Instead of fighting it I got up turned on the TV and surfed aimlessly.

I guess on divorce's psychological roller coaster of: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally Acceptance, I was Depressed. I've never been depressed in my whole life. I was sitting there watching some mindless movie named: Psycho Beach Party and didn't care. Someone could have screamed, "Julian, your shirt's on fire" and I wouldn't have cared. Someone could have said, "Julian, your shirt's NOT on fire" and I wouldn't have cared. Someone could have said, "Julian, your face just fell off" and I wouldn't have cared.

They talk about losing your grip. I never knew exactly what that meant. It means you sit on the couch and nothing means anything because you don't care. You don't care if the sun comes up. You don't even care if there is a "sun". You don't even care if there is an "up". You don't care. Nothing has meaning or worth or value - you just don't care. Last night, this morning, I realized what "losing your grip" really meant. It means losing your anchor, losing your footing, losing your compass, losing your grasp, and losing meaning to the word meaning. You just sit there and you don't care.

To get out of the funk and take charge of my situation, I turned on my computer to check my e-mail and got your mother's message about turning her luxury car into a "rolling garbage can" just to make her side of the spread sheet look better.

This is after having lunch with her and her doing much the same to all the worldly belongings we've collected over our thirty-six years of marriage. In fact, things we had just bought months before at Ethan Allen. Things we had paid in excess of $3,000 just to have custom upholstered were now worth "zip" on your mother's side of the spreadsheet or maybe fifty-bucks at best, next.

I don't want to get back into "he said, she said." I just want to apologize. I'm sorry for sending that crazy message to people I love.

Before I open and read each of your e-mails let me send this. And again, I just want to say I'm sorry.

Love Dad

Needless to say my wife didn't accept my apology.

The next day we had our May 23rd pre-Marital Separation Agreement meeting with the mediator. The first words out of my wife's mouth to the mediator were: "Julian has a Web site about some un-mailed letters junk. I'm very upset that he is using my real name and yours on a public Web site."

I guess she had read my nocturnal e-mail and was profoundly moved. Not!

Aireos, I owe you an explanation over what she was so angry about and what she was hoping to get the mediator angry about also.

What I did that she was fuming about was - I created a Web site to have somewhere to post my un-mailed letters.

Why, you may ask?

I guess to help others, with bleeding hearts, weather the storm of divorce. To help other "Soul Mates Left Behind" understand that the anger, hurt and despair they are feeling are feelings they "did not invent", even though the hurt is so close to the bone you just know for sure you must be the first to hurt this bad.

I guess I was trying to provide others with the opportunity to read how someone else is riding the roller coaster of divorce and trying to survive the best he can. I was hoping my Web site and letters, for other S. M. L. B., could be cathartic like a Cancer Survival Group which sits around crying on each other's shoulder, propping each other up and finally helping each other get upwards and onwards with the rest of their life, even if they are now missing a breast or a lung or some other necessary part of their body like their heart.

But really, Aireos, I guess, I was secretly hoping my wife would read the un-mailed letters, think about what she is doing and have a change of heart. But that was not to be. Instead she tried to incite a riot and enlist the mediator to help her throw rocks, shake fists and shout obscenities. Unfortunately for the "riotous provocateur" the mediator comely said, "I don't care, as long as he spelled my name correctly and didn't defame me or my character."

That was not the reaction my wife was hoping for. My wife was looking for a buddy to help start a class action lawsuit to shut me down and shut me up. The mediator's passive reaction to the whole matter was enough to take the wind out of my wife's sails and pull the plug on her getting puffed up enough to report me to the moral police and get me whipped with a bamboo pole at a public forum or at some coffee shop PPP kangaroo court.

Man Aireos, she is turning into something I've never seen before. The old hack about; "hell hath no furry like a scorned woman" has taken on new meaning for me. It's like she's walking around "pissed off" all the time, just waiting to jump in somebody's face. It's like she's turning into some kind of man hating feminist whose too busy grooming a chest full of new hair than to look up and say something nice, especially to a male, especially to me-male.

But it's probably just me. She's probably the same sweetheart of a lady that everyone loves and likes to be around. I guess it's just being around me that brings out the claws and precipitates the malicious and venomous rejoinders.

Other than the false start with a lawsuit, the meeting that day went well. We covered a lot of ground. I guess that happens when you have a good mediator, whose new name is Ms. Bee Gordin (AKA. Sorry I can't tell you her real name. The last mortar shell was too close for comfort. My wife's hopes for a lawsuit rattled me so badly; I kept the Web site but quickly changed all the real names up there to pseudonyms, nom de plumes.)

We went through the numbers quickly and smoothly. Within an hour-and-a-half, we had agreed on everything to put into the MSA, no more cutting, snipping or pinching needed. The rough draft was agreed upon and within three weeks we'll have the finished Marital Separation Agreement.

Before it's filed with the court, we'll each take the finished draft to a consulting attorney to make sure we understand all that we have agreed to. That little exercise will take a couple of hours at a cost of $350 an hour per attorney. But better, they say, to have a new set of eyes check it out than to wake up later having your wife's collection agency repossessing your gold tooth in the middle of the night.

In California the time line for the Marital Separation Agreement is like this: Once the consulting attorney blesses it, we sign it, the judge blesses it and then we're on a six-month countdown clock.

Six months from now, having gone off in our own directions with our half of the pot of gold, we'll have to remind ourselves to check the X marked on the calendar to see if our "dissolution date" is due to arrive or has already come and gone. Only after that unemotional "X" on the calendar has come and gone can we consider ourselves no longer legally married. Only then can we marry someone else with out being a bigamist.

I don't know Aireos, I've grown exhausted with this whole thing. At first I couldn't believe it. Now I believe it; then I tried to turn the tide and the tide wouldn't turn; then I tried to slow it down but it wouldn't slow down - I drug my feet until the soles of my shoes wore out. Now Aireos I'm just tired, tired to the bone, tired, tired, tired -I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of being tired. I'm at the point where I'm ready to quit and just walk away from it all.

Honestly, Aireos, I sit and listen to her. I watch her and it's like she's somebody else. Maybe that's the problem. I'm still the same old lump of coal I've always been and she is somebody new and somebody different. Frankly Aireos, she is becoming somebody I don't even want to be around. And I can tell you something else - she sure as heck acts like she doesn't want to be around me.

Maybe the guy was right - Relationships don't end, they change.

After I got home from the final MSA meeting, this is the e-mail I sent my cousin in Arkansas, outlining my future plans.

Dear Ginny, just to bring you up to date. We had our final Marital Separation Agreement meeting today. It will take about three weeks for the mediator to draft the document for our signature. We need not see the mediator ever again. She can FedEx my copy to Arkansas, Jamaica or wherever.

Here is my plan. Since Peachy wants me out of the Sunnyvale house so she can have it cleaned it up and put on the market ASAP, if you guys are up for it. I'll fly down next week like Tuesday or Wednesday, May 28th or 29th. I'll stay with you guys for a couple of weeks and maybe look for a house or something down there. When the Sunnyvale house sells (It's a hot market right now and offers to buy from two or three couples simultaneously are not uncommon.), I'll fly back, sign the escrow papers, pack up my valuables in a trailer and tow it back to Arkansas with my car.

Thank you and I know I will be welcomed with open arms. I just hope I don't bring everybody down. Sadness is contagious. I know I caught it. I'm a poster child for it. Would you guys like to see me next week? Love Julian

As I sit here writing this, I'm really looking forward to a vacation. Like I said, Aireos, I'm just tired, tired to the bone, tired, tired, tired. I'm tired of trying and I'm especially tired of all the bull-kukka. The courts are so cheerless and these lawyer people are all so humorless and the poor participants are all so dispirit. How can judges and divorce lawyers love their job? How can they get up every morning, shower, shave, drink a cup of coffee and go off to work - where they spend the rest of the day ripping soul mates in half and destroying family relationships, friendships and futures.

O' well, I guess somebody has to do it.

Somebody has to pull a rotten tooth. Somebody has to clean up after an AIDs patient who is suffering explosive diarrhea. Somebody has to pick up the garbage every Monday morning. Like they say, "it's a rotten job but somebody has to do it".

So I guess somebody has to be an attorney to help people tear their lives apart and bury something that started off so wonderful, warm and loving. Happy people can't laugh enough at a wedding. Sad people can't cry enough at a funeral. I wonder what would be the appropriate thing to do at a divorce - stop feeling? Hover?

I don't know. After each mediator's meeting, I would follow my wife to her car trying to say something so profound it would turn her head and stop the world long enough for us to see the sunlight or feel the wind blow or hear the obvious; that we were just two young kids madly in love who wanted to grow old together, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, until death do us part.

Aireos, I didn't ever bother to walk along with her to her car anymore.

Like they say, life's a bummer and then you die.

Aireos, throughout the letters I have passed over or whizzed by some facts or information that would have slowed down my headlong rush to get all of this on paper. So let me slow down and take the time to back up and fill in some of the holes I've left behind.

I said I was no prize but I was well educated, with a Doctorate in Business Administration, nearly. Nearly means I've completed the course work in my DBA but did not do the dissertation. You may ask, why go that far and stop? Well the long and the short of it was, back then, I was dealing with hard-core academicians, and my street smarts and flippant street mouth didn't mix well with the thin air in their ivory tower. Who knows? Maybe they were wise not wanting me as a spokesperson or poster boy for their institution. Whatever.

Any way, after they passed over the first half dozen subjects for my dissertation, I got the hint. By the time they passed over the next half dozen subjects for my dissertation, I finally got the message. Frankly, I have no problem with being close to a Doctorate in Business Administration. Some say that close is only good in horseshoes and hand grenades. Whatever (sorry, I'm starting to sound like a Valley Girl). Any way by being nearly a DBA instead of calling me "Doctor Olson" you can feel comfortable in stopping short and just calling me "Doc". Well, that wasn't funny. But I'm working on getting my funny back, so you're going to have to bear with me.

Back in my first letter I made this comment, "Come the weekend, just so I don't have to be around her and make small talk, I'll go do something. The something, if you can believe it, is hang-gliding and para-sailing and some other crazy things."

I know. I know, Aireos. I can't believe it myself but I really have. And remember "this" is coming from a guy who does not ride a roller coaster or any other white-knuckle, "life threatening" type rides.

Right! And here I am really seriously considering taking hang-gliding lessons. Aireos, I'm serious. I went as far as visiting the school, getting their price page and visiting the high hills they launch from, "the wind permitting".

I seriously compared the advantages and disadvantages of hang-gliding verses para-sailing (para is short for parachute). In para-sailing the wind puffs the para-sail up and you sail around in a sitting position verses hanging from a bar in hang-gliding. I found that the participants in each have the same animosity toward each other as sail boaters and power boaters have toward each other, like oil and water.

Fortunately, I got serious with myself before I got serious about invested money in lessons for either. I also, if you can believe this, went as far as going to the Sears Race Way to find out how much it would cost to take race car driving lessons.

Honestly, now that I think about it. All of the above might have been a displaced attempt at suicide. I guess I'm lucky I didn't decide to take skeet-shooting lessons at the local shooting range, or quick draw lessons or learn how to pack my own ammunition - just kidding.

Back in my first letter I also made this comment, "Frankly, it's not hard for me to conjure up images of me getting accosted by a half-dozen pissed-off pajama clad X wives as I try to get on a plane headed for Jamaica.

Jamaica?

Ja mon!"

For the last couple of months I have been telling anyone and everyone - who knew about the divorce and were kind enough to ask about what I was going to do next - that I was going to retire to Jamaica. Ja mon. I was going to take my half of everything and go to that island paradise and live out my years in the sun, fun and surf.

A funny thing, Aireos, whenever I revealed that my wife, after "thirty-six years" of marriage, was divorcing me, they would gasp and say "ah". It hurt me so badly that I finally stopped telling them "how long" I had been married, just that I was getting a divorce and moving to Jamaica. Once I told them Jamaica the conversation took on a new light heartedness. It suddenly went from "sympathetic sighs" to "ah, man, I wished I could go."

Frankly, Aireos, the reaction toward the "island paradise" was so positive that the "sorrowfulness of the impending divorce" was quickly shuttled aside and all but forgotten. So I started "working it" and it felt good. It felt so good that the Jamaica story became the sustaining power that helped me with the periodic tidal waves of sadness that could wash over me at a moment's notice and destroy my composure.

"Jamaica, mon. No problem mon." I told people I had been to Jamaica a half-dozen times on different cruises. Which was true. I said I loved the people. Which was true. I said I loved reggae music. Which was true.

I remember on my first cruise there. I got off the boat and walked up to a cab driver leaning on his cab and asked if he could take me to town, about five miles from the pier, "No problem, mon, no problem." When we pasted an open-air market and I saw a T-shirt with "Ja mai ca me crazy, mon" on the front. I asked if he could pull over and let me jump out and buy the T-shirt, "No problem, mon, no problem." Everything was, "No problem, mon, no problem."

I considered asking him if he could drive me to New York City. I didn't. But he probably would have answered, "No problem, mon, no problem."

I love Jamaica and the people. I figured if you could wake up every morning with, "No problem, mon, no problem" on your lips - you owned the rest of the day. Plus Jamaica was a third-world country and my social security check, once I hit sixty-five, would stretch a mile, maybe a mile-in-a-half, heck, my money would out live me. Where as here in Silicon Valley California my half of everything would last about a nanosecond.

Ja, mon.

Who knows, I could buy a cab and live in it. My cabby's cab looked like he lived in it. It had tassels all around the inside windows and doors. He had every kind of plastic idol he could find, borrow or steal on the dashboard and in the back window. One of the back doors was wired shut and the windows won't roll up all the way but it was so hot the breeze was refreshing. The seats were a little damp from the many downpours the tropical island enjoyed but other than that the cab moved forward and stop faithfully enough - what more would you want in a vehicle and a home?

"Jamaica?" My daughters sniped. "Well, how about health care?"

My money would buy me a place at the head of the line, in a socialized medicine, 3rd world country. I argued back. And if I got really, really sick and needed special attention, Miami hospitals were only a forty-five minute plane ride away.

It all sounded so good. It became my mantra.

I started carrying around with me a newly purchased Amazon book full of pictures of white beaches, blues skies and water "so clear" the boats looked like they were floating in thin air. "Jamaica, mon. No problem, mon." Ah yes - the book, the pictures, the jive - it all helped. As I said, it sustained me. It may have been all bull-kukka or maybe it wasn't. I'm not sure. But it worked.

Man Aireos, I really am looking forward to some kind of a vacation. Like I said. I'm tired. Tired of trying, tired of hoping she'll change her mind, tired of all the bull-kukka. I'm especially tired of lawyers. I think I'll take off and go to Arkansas, ASAP.

My cousins in Arkansas are so warm and loving I may never leave once I finally get there. But if I do leave for some place else, some place else will be - "Jamaica mon."

Oh before I forget, Aireos, remember I asked how could divorce lawyers love their job? How could they get up every morning, shower, shave, drink a cup of coffee and go off to a job where they spend the rest of the day ripping soul mates apart? After a little research on the Internet, I now have a better fix on why there are so many divorce lawyers - money.

In my reading, I discovered that 48% of first time marriages end in divorce, about 1.2 million out of 2.5 million marriages a year. The average cost of getting a divorce is $15,000. If you multiply 1.2 million times $15,000, you have an 18 billion dollar industry. Billion, Aireos, billion! With that kind of money at stake, it is no wonder there are so many divorce lawyers. Frankly, it's a wonder that there are not MORE.

Aireos, I'll write more to you soon - Julian.