Shortly after I returned to Florida, my wife and I came to the realization, through a series of long emails and tearful Skype calls, that we’d rushed in, eloped like young fools, and that through time and distance, we’d grown too far apart. There was no way we could reconcile, go back to how it was back in South Beach. She
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent didn’t want to live in America, anymore, and I didn’t want to live in Austria. It was brutal, splitting up, deciding to divorce, but it was for the best. And it was amicable, at least at first...
I’d gifted her the cash I’d saved working in Austria, nearly $8,000, a TON of money for me at the time, to help her start off when she was discharged from the hospital, especially since her parents had decided to kick her out of their house and force her to pay for her own apartment.
However, once she left the hospital, she immediately had breast augmentation surgery, spending almost all the money I’d transferred her. Then she demanded I return to Austria, file and pay for divorce proceedings there, which would have cost several thousand dollars.
That wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t get the time off work, and I’d already filed for divorce in America. The pressing problem for her was she’d been attempting to claim state benefits, welfare, in Austria, because she was having trouble finding work, and since her parents also didn’t want her to work at their company any longer.
She could have used the money I gave her to start up, see her through a couple months of job searching, job retraining, or pay for the divorce proceedings there.
But no, she’d decided to buy a big pair of fake tits. Fake tits that looked strange on her slender frame, anyway, made her look like a chicken.
I didn’t have much sympathy for her, because she’d wasted the cash, in my opinion. And things turned ugly. She sent me a series of castigating, threatening emails, naked pictures of her fake tits, and told me sordid tales of her sexual exploits. That she’d been getting gangbanged. Had also been gangraped and had been sleeping with countless men. I’m not sure how much of that was true, but it wasn’t pleasant to hear. Those weren’t pleasant emails to read.
Thinking back to high school, to Jessica, what an asshole I’d been to her, I didn’t want to be that guy again. And I held my tongue. I was a gentleman. I didn’t resort to shit-slinging. I simply ignored her emails. I also ignored the letters I got, in German, from an Austrian court, saying she was suing me, for various superfluous causes, the letters demanding me to show up to court hearings halfway across the world.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent (During the process of the divorce, I drank heavily and again returned to listening to heavy metal, 80s metal, in particular. Those songs, soothing me, alleviating my pain. Music is such sonic power, such a time machine. Those old metal songs from Motley Crue, Guns N’ Roses, Poison, took me away to happier places, simpler times…)
After a few months of her terrorizing my email box, her constant belligerent voice messages and pestering phone calls, Skype calls, finally, the divorce went through.
Once I’d received the paperwork from the court, I mailed copies to her, and then called her.
A strange voice answered when I called. It was some Austrian dude. He didn’t speak English. I asked, in German, if she was there, and he asked who I was. I told him my name. He told her. Then she rushed to the phone.
She immediately wanted to fight and said she’d been receiving harassing phone calls from an unknown caller and accused the caller of being me. I told her it wasn’t me. I then told her the divorce went through. Once I said this, her tone changed from one of anger to one of sorrow. I wished her well. That was the last time we talked on the phone.
We didn’t speak for two years after that. Fortunately, last I talked to her, via text chat she initiated on Skype, I discovered she had gotten better. She’d become a vegan and health nut, finding herself on that course through the help of a shrink she’d had in the hospital I sent her to. I was happy that I’d helped her recovery, in a way, by pushing her to seek treatment, and I was happy she’d found a better path. It’s my sincerest hope she can remain in remission, forever, from her demons.
We ultimately became estranged, my ex-wife and I, due to distance, and I believe also because of the psychic pain it caused us both, just talking, how it was a reminder, a living ghost of our relationship. Tragedy can have that effect. Just talking to or seeing a person’s face, hearing their voice reanimates the trauma, resurrects it… However, at least with our last talk, we signed off on good terms.
(It is strange how a breakup is like a death. When the relationship is done, that person, in a way, dies. A part of me definitely died after my divorce… However, what’s stranger about breakups is that the person can be dead to you, but still
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent alive and in the world, and with other people. Further proof that in our macro life, we live micro lives, follow different paths. And journeys, paths, for better or worse, diverge…)
My ex-wife, last I knew of her, was again in remission. However, for me, though I’d stayed strong through so much craziness, once back in America, I was about to have my own reckoning, flirtation with depression and madness…