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With the post, I am starting the darkest chapter in my life. There were other things that happened to me that were a lot worse, but I count this as the darkest because there was very little relief from the emotional torture I was enduring.
On Tuesday, 01/05/93, Chez, Joad and I arrived at our new apartment in San Diego around 6pm. When we went inside so she could see the apartment for the first time, she asked if I had gotten a twin size bed. I said, no, I'd bought a double size bed. "Oh, good!" I guess she either thought I was going to be cheap on the bed or that I wanted extreme closeness when we were sleeping together.
She seemed to approve of the apartment and the furniture. I brought everything from the car inside. One of the surprising things was that when I opened the microwave, there was a toaster inside. I'd forgotten that I put the toaster there when I moved from Denver.
One of the things I told Chez around this time was that while she and Joad were free to go to the park across the street at any time, she just needed to know that there were homeless people that hung around there all day. She said she wasn't going to take him to the park, then. I told her that the homeless people mostly stayed to themselves and wouldn't bother them, but she still didn't want to go over there. (And I have a feeling they never did go over there. So much for this great location.)
After we put everything from the car away. We went out to get something to eat. Chez put Joad in a stroller and we walked over to the Burger King on El Cajon Blvd. It was lightly raining. We came back home, watched a little TV and went to bed. Chez was concerned about Joad adjusting to the new environment, so she had him sleep in the bed between us. She said she would eventually transition him over to the crib within the next week. I didn't have a problem with that.
The next morning, Chez was playing with Joad. At one point, I tried to hold Chez and kiss her on the cheek. She got kind of mad that I tried to do that while she was playing with her son.
That was the day I had to do maintenance at the theatre, so it meant I didn't have to work at night. Chez stayed home with Joad. After I was done, I came home and we ran over to Lucky to buy groceries. We spent about $80 on food. After putting all the food away, Chez said, "I want to go to Godfather's Pizza." I replied, "We just spent $80 on food. What do you say we eat that before we go out and get pizza." "I DON'T CARE! I WANT GODFATHER'S PIZZA!" Still stinging from the rejected kiss earlier that morning, I agreed, hoping that going out for pizza might change her mood. It didn't.
And this set a precedent. While she was able to make food for herself and Joad at home when I was working, she would want to go out for food after I got home. (In other words, she never made food for me.) Because she wasn't going outside any, the second I got home from work, she wanted to get out of the house and drive around. I always caved in to these demands because I wanted her to be in a good mood. I figured she was homesick, so I thought anything I could do to make her feel better would help.
A couple of weeks into this situation, Joad was still sleeping in the bed with us. Chez made no attempts to have him sleep in the crib. I would ask her when she was going to have him try the crib, but she would keep saying he wasn't ready and continue to have him in our bed. But there were some nights that I would go to bed before her. She and Joad would just fall asleep on the couch. I didn't know which was worse: Having Joad between us or not having Chez share the bed with me at all.
But during all of this, we would still hold hands while we were driving places. I thought that as long as we still had this connection, things were still good between us. All she had to do was get used to her new home, appreciate everything that I'd done for her and Joad and that would turn into loving feelings for me. But it didn't work out like that. About the third week in, she stopped letting me hold her hand. I wondered if she would ever have positive feelings toward me again.
While this was a setback, it was not insurmountable. I remained optimistic that things would improve.
And there was some improvement, but that won't be until later this week. Tomorrow's post will be more downer stuff. There was a lot of that to go around.
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