The first couple of weeks hanging out with Bill (after my wife left), we were out every night. Basically drink and party until about 3:00a, then crash at my place, then I would get up around 7:00a and go to work. We always ended up at my place because I would let Bill drive my car once we started drinking. I wasn't worried about getting in an accident, but I didn't want to be the one driving just in case we got pulled over. Bill loved to drive, but hadn't had a valid drivers license in years.
Anyway, there was one night that we were partying at Rosey's bar, and a 'friend' of Bill's was there. We were sitting with him near the end of the night. As it turns out, this friend (Dave) was a cocaine and crack dealer. Bill wanted to take some home at the end of the night. I've never done any of the 'white' drugs before, and have only done weed (or hash or oil) a handful of times in my life. I was always curious as to what type of high you get with the 'other' drugs. I said, 'sure', and I gave the last $17 that I had in my pocket to Bill. Dave gave Bill whatever 'crumbs' were left over at the end of his bag. Admittedly, it was considerably more than $17 worth. This was the hard stuff, - crack.
We went back to my place and Bill showed me the proper way to smoke it. Admittedly the high was quite the incredible feeling. Mind you, we only did small amounts per 'hit' so it didn't have any of the 'weird' side-effects that this drug can and does have.
As a disclaimer, I have to reiterate that drugs are not part of my lifestyle. I've done them (the green variety) with friends maybe once or twice a year, and often went years without doing any. Knowing what I know about how this drug gets on top of people and really 'changes' them, I wouldn't have bothered getting into it with Bill at all. I didn't understand how people start to behave when they start getting a taste of this drug. To me, drugs were drugs. Though not much of a user myself, I've always knew people that smoked weed fairly regularly. I am very self-disciplined and do not have an addictive personality, so even though I was aware and somewhat leary of the addictive qualities of this drug, I wasn't concerned with me becoming addicted. I had always been curious about what it was like too. But I wasn't aware, and didn't properly respect how this drug does change the people around you once you start using it. As WONDERFUL as the high is, I wouldn't recommend it for anyone. It will start to get on top of anyone if they start using it.
But we did do it a number of times and it was an INCREDIBLE high. It really is the only drug whos effects I really like. We usually only did small amounts at a time though, never spending more than $30 for a buy, but Dave would give us really good quantity for the money.
Anyway, it wasn't really part of our partying routine. Bill would always want to do it, but I am more of a drinker anyway. But I did enjoy it, and started doing it occassionally at the end of the night.
Then there was one night, a friend of Bill was having a poker party. I've met this friend (and his friends) a few times already as we would drop in there from time-to-time. They were always in the garage drinking beer and usually working on some souped-up car or machine of some kind.
Anyway, I was in the kitchen getting another drink and started talking to this other guy that was there. He was another friend of Bill's. His name was Jeff. I was just telling him that me and Bill were out drinking and partying most of the last three weeks. Then he asked me, "Do you just mean 'drinking' partying, or do you mean 'other' stuff as well?". I said, "Well, mostly drinking, but we have done 'other' stuff on occassion." So he tells me that later on that night, he is going to have some stuff 'delivered' at his place and if we wanted to throw in a little bit we could drop by too. Basically I said, well, I'll mention it to Bill and see how we feel about it later.
We did end up going there. Jeff lived with his brother, Jack. Jack is the one with all the 'connections'. So we threw in $20 each and Jack made his phone call and did his deal. He gave us our $20 rocks, but they were only about half the size of what we got from Dave the couple times we bought from him.
We socialized, drank our beers, and also did our 'hits'. It was good. Once again, we were all 'social' users, and didn't do big hits, and didn't have the 'noiding' affects that I learned some people would when they use this. So we used it up, finished a few more beers, then me and Bill went out the the bar for last call.
But we did get talking about how small it was, and how Jack seemed to think that it was a really good size. This got us thinking. Bill had already told Jack that he cold get a better deal with his connections. Seeing Bill always runs out of money before the night is over and I end up paying the last $20 or so myself, we decided that this may be a way to get some 'supplemental' income. Just with Jeff and Jack though. So we decided to try it. I would front Bill the money. Bill would buy $100 worth from Dave. We would take it back to my house and break it into smaller $10, $20, and $30 chunks. Once we did that, we would generally have $150 worth of chunks for the $100. We would smoke $20 ourselves, and sell $120 worth to get an extra $30 drinking money for Bill. Once we put the $120 worth in the 'sell bag' it would not be touched by us. That was for sale only.
Just in case, I didn't see or handle any transactions. I didn't have any part of any transaction. Bill would buy it from Dave and break it up into the chunks. Bill would set up a time for us to visit Jeff and Jack. We would go there, have a beer and Bill would go to the next room and do all the transactions with Jack and Jeff. Then give me the money to hold. Essentially I was the chaufer, and I also held the money. We also kept the 'sell bag' of stash at my place.
This worked really well for about a week. We made about $60 a week from it (not exactly big time) but that bought an extra 12 pitchers of beer which is why we were doing it in the first place. The problem is that I didn't understand how much Bill like the stuff once we started having it on hand. When Bill bought the $100 from Dave, we would always use $20 worth after dividing it into chunks. Well, Bill started making the chunks smaller and smaller so there would be more for us to use. (At first I let it go because Jack would buy it anyway. Jeff was only a fairly new social user, but it turns out that Jack was quite the addict. He also had a job that paid over $60K a year so he had ample money to spend.) But it started getting ridiculous how small Bill would try to make the chunks.
By then I was not staying out all night anymore. After a couple of weeks of partying until 3:00a and then getting up at 7:00a (ish) to go to work, I decided that I'd better be a little more professional. So I would go out with Bill from around 8:00p, not drink much, then drop Bill off closer to his place around 11:00p. That way Bill could continue drinking, and I could go home to bed. About twice a week we would drop by Jeff and Jack's place earlier in the evening if they wanted to do a transaction with Bill. The 'stuff' always went home with me.
I would go to bed around midnight. The problem was that Bill knew I was 'holding'. So EVERY morning around 3:00a I would end up getting a phone call from Bill. He always had some crazy reason for calling me. Like, "I went out with these dudes from the bar, and they got really crazy and tried to kill me. You've got to come and get me, they are still looking for me....". Anything to get me to come and pick him up. Of course, once I did that then he would want to break out 'the stuff'. Forget it though. That was the 'sell' bag. The whole reason for doing this in the first place was for Bill to make a little extra beer money so that I wouldn't end up paying for any of his beer. This of course caused 'tension' between us.
After three weeks, I put an end to our 'social experiment'. But not before a crazy night at Jeff and Jack's ensued. The first two nights that Bill called me at 3:00a I ended up picking him up. Then I had to argue with him because he wanted to 'use' our sell bag. The third time he did it, I didn't go and pick him up. He kept calling and getting more and more irate. I unplugged my phone and went back to sleep.
This obviously wasn't working. I no longer wanted any 'stuff' at my place. When Bill was sober he was fine, but once Bill got drunk, if he knew I had some on hand, he wouldn't be able to leave me alone and would get crazy trying to get it from me. So I let him know that this was over. We were going to sell the rest of the bag, and not buy another one. But it wasn't pay day for Jack yet. So in order to get rid of the stuff, we fronted it to Jack and he would have to pay us back in two days. Jack knew that Bill would go crazy on him if he tried cheating us, so we knew Jack would be good for the money once he was paid.
So we unloaded it all on Jack that night. Bill cut it even further and pretty much sold Jack and Jeff $50 worth for $80. But they wanted it so agreed to Bill's terms. We met up with them at their place on pay day (two days later). The idea was we were going to get together, get our money, have some beers, and we were going to end up at the bar (maybe they'd join us). Daryl was over there too. That's Bill's friend that was having the poker party where we me Jeff. (Jeff works with Daryl.) Daryl doesn't do any of this stuff (but knows Jack is a functional addict). Jeff only recently started using it, so Daryl was unaware that Jeff used. Daryl is a pretty big boy and Jeff thought he could pull a fast one by saying that Bill was forcing it on Jack while he was all 'f#cked up'. They figured that Daryl could intimidate us into not collecting the money. But it all backfired. Daryl was talking to me about it, and I was learning the story that Daryl had heard. I let him know the real details, and that is when Daryl learned Jeff was using too (not only Jack). Well, essentially Daryl is Tim's boss, so Jeff didn't want Daryl to know that he was using. So once I started explaining the real details of why they owe us money, Daryl was shocked to find out that Jeff also was using, and as I continued my details, Jeff was yelling at me to 'be quiet'. Too late though.
As I continued talking to Daryl (and ignoring Jeff), Jeff attacked me. He sucker punched me in the eye while I wasn't looking, then tried hitting me again. I basically spun him around, put him on the ground, and when he tried to get up I gave him a swift hard kick in the balls. Then stepped on his face to hold him there. He wasn't moving after the kick to the nuts anyway. So, I now had my first fight in over six years.
Then Daryl had them give us our $80, and me and Bill went to the VIP lounge for cocktails. I did have a black eye though. The bartender ("Wild Child" was the nickname we gave her) thought that it was quite amusing. People always expect Bill to get in fights, but I'm the quiet one.
No real hard feelings though. We went out with Daryl and Jeff for drinks a week or so later.
That was the end of the drugs though. That was enough. I put it all behind me and stopped using. Me and Bill were back to drinking only.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Crazy Bill
I met Bill in 1999. My wife went to a conference in Chicago for the weekend and I was supposed to go visit a friend in Pittsburg. At the last minute my friend cancelled so I now had no weekend plans. I decided to visit this bar that was in the area of town that I refer to as the "North Hood". Essentially, in Columbus you have the ghetto (run-down or boarded up houses, mostly black people, drug-addicted prostitutes, nobody works, everyone just hangs out on the sidewalks, etc.). Just north of that is the "Hood", which is basically like the ghetto but predominently white people. A little nicer neighborhood. Not nearly as many run-down or boarded up houses. Then just north of that is a neighborhood that 20 years ago was a really nice and affluent neighborhood. But since then, the Hood creeped northward and enveloped it. So you have a mixture of decent homes, but also you got the drug dealers, and pimps, and all else that you get from the Hood. This is the "North Hood".
I first went to this bar when I was new to Columbus and my wife was away for the weekend. So I decided to be adventuresome and check out a few different parts of town. The bar was called "Dreamer's Lounge", and Dreamer used to be my nickname. (Hence the blog name.) There's some more 'colorful' patrons there, and usually some very 'interesting' people to talk to. I had a tendency to drop in there maybe every three or four moths. Anyway, seeing my Pittsburg plans got cancelled and my wife was out of town I decided to drop in there.
Bill came in a little after me and sat next to me at the bar. We started talking. Apparently he had just spent nearly a year in the hospital and got out just a few days earlier. He was in the hospital for being shot at point blank range seven times in the chest and stomach by his girlfreind's ex-boyfriend. He showed me the scars. It was quite the mess. We talked and drank and had a good time visiting. We decided to meet up again tomorrow evening and go out again. We ended up drinking and partying and shooting pool all evening, and all night, and up until around 5:00p Sunday. He knew of some after-hours bars in that area that were open 24 hours. I went home and my wife got back from Chicago later that evening. I did tell her about Bill and my weekend. I always told her everything that I did.
After that, I would meet up with Bill for drinks once every three to six months (usually at Dreamer's Lounge) as Bill lived just down the road from there. Bill was the type of guy that on occassion would call me up at 3:00am on a weeknight, all drunk, and asking if I wanted to come out drinking. Back then I still lived a very staid and corporate lifestyle and was in bed by around midnight so I could be to work in the morning. I remember finding it so bizarre that some people lived that lifestyle where they wouldn't think it inappropriate to call someone in the middle of the night on a weekday. I would have to tell him, "Bill I work in the morning. Call me on Friday, and maybe we can meet up sometime this weekend."
Anyway, once my life fell apart and my wife had left me to go live with her sister in Winnipeg, I began to hang out with Bill every night. Like I mentioned in a prior post, there was no way that I could come home to my empty house after work. Bill was the only 'non-professional' that I knew, and the only person that would go out and drink every night of the week. He was also tons of fun and lots of laughs. Exactly what I was looking for at that point in my life.
The bar we mostly hung out at was called Rosey's. It was further north than the "North Hood" and had a mixture of patrons from both the North Hood and also from the 'nicer neighborhoods' in that area. From there we would also do a lot of bar hopping in the nicer bars in that area. Eventually we started hanging out at a bar called the VIP. They had really cool and hot bartenders working there who also liked to hang out there when not working. Not to mention a pitcher of beer that filled seven mugs was only $5. This was also important because Bill drank like a fish and always ran out of money before the night was over. Then I would buy the last two or three pitchers myself. We started hanging out at the VIP more and more. Eventually that replaced Rosey's as our main hangout. Seeing me and Bill were always laughing and having a good time (regardless of whether the bar was empty or full) all the patrons (and bartenders) liked hanging out with us. What we quickly noticed is that every Wednesday and Saturday night karaoke broke out around us while we were busy having a good time. The thing is the bar was PACKED on those nights, especially on Wednesdays. And it was packed with FUN people, and TONS of HOT young chicks! The singing was even good too. It was a HUGE party. EVERYONE had a BLAST! Every other night of the week, the bar was pretty quiet. Still fun, but not too busy.
We had also noticed that there was a bar down the road that advertised the same karaoke show on Thursdays and Sundays. We started going there for those karaoke shows and sure enough the bar was PACKED full of the same fun people and lots of fun HOT chicks! Cool, fun bartenders too (but not hot chick bartenders). Plenty of fun hot patrons though. So that became our Thursday and Sunday night spot. (Though we would have to run down the road at 1:45a for last call at the VIP. Thursday night was when 'My Girl' worked. (We had a nickname for each of the four bartenders. Each one of them was cool, 20-something, and HOT!) We couldn't go a Thursday night without at least saying 'hello'. There was no rush, she would serve us until 2:30a anyway.
Basically, this karaoke show was running in a bar in this area seven nights a week. Given how fun and packed it always was with this karaoke (regardless of night) we started following the karaoke show. Low and behold, so were all the other fun people. Every night of the week, no matter which night, or which bar it was always fun and packed, with tons of hot young chicks. Hot chicks in their 30-s and early 40-s as well. There was a really good variety.
Seeing a lot of these karaoke 'regulars' also shot pool, me and Bill got to know a whole lot of them. Plus we would see them every night because they were following the same 'karaoke circuit' as we were. Just like us, the ones we got to know were also young, fun, and outgoing. Good mix of men and women too. All the guys ranged in age from 26 to 33. The girls that hung out with our crowd ranged from 21 to 27 (and two 19 year old's - but they will get their own post). Once we all started hanging out together we were all one big 'party cloud' that everyone wanted to be around. We blew into a room, partied it up, then blew out of there. And most nights we ended up with a bunch of hot naked young chicks in my hottub. BUT, actually this was not quite yet. I'm getting ahead of myself.
Here's the problem. Bill is from the North Hood. That's where he was born and raised. He's got that 'hood boy, mentality. Once he got drunk, he got very obnoxious. He would break into his 'hood talk' and start talking about fighting, and would grab the asses of girls around us including the ones that now hung out in our new crowd. It was all very good when it was just me and Bill. It was also fine when we were hanging out at the Hood bars, or even Rosey's. But Bill just didn't fit in with this new environment. What would happen, is that once Bill started to get really drunk and obnoxious, usually around midnight, I would have to get him out of there and take him to bars in the North Hood (where his actions and mentality fit right in). This was fine, and fun, but the problem was that I wanted to stay with the fun people and the hot chicks.
This eventually worked itself out a month or so later as Bill had to spend 30 days in jail due to something that he got himself into prior to being hospitalized. Now that he was healthy again, he had to do his time.
I'll have to continue this thought at a later post. There's more to tell about me and Bill prior to when we started hanging out with the karaoke crowd.
I first went to this bar when I was new to Columbus and my wife was away for the weekend. So I decided to be adventuresome and check out a few different parts of town. The bar was called "Dreamer's Lounge", and Dreamer used to be my nickname. (Hence the blog name.) There's some more 'colorful' patrons there, and usually some very 'interesting' people to talk to. I had a tendency to drop in there maybe every three or four moths. Anyway, seeing my Pittsburg plans got cancelled and my wife was out of town I decided to drop in there.
Bill came in a little after me and sat next to me at the bar. We started talking. Apparently he had just spent nearly a year in the hospital and got out just a few days earlier. He was in the hospital for being shot at point blank range seven times in the chest and stomach by his girlfreind's ex-boyfriend. He showed me the scars. It was quite the mess. We talked and drank and had a good time visiting. We decided to meet up again tomorrow evening and go out again. We ended up drinking and partying and shooting pool all evening, and all night, and up until around 5:00p Sunday. He knew of some after-hours bars in that area that were open 24 hours. I went home and my wife got back from Chicago later that evening. I did tell her about Bill and my weekend. I always told her everything that I did.
After that, I would meet up with Bill for drinks once every three to six months (usually at Dreamer's Lounge) as Bill lived just down the road from there. Bill was the type of guy that on occassion would call me up at 3:00am on a weeknight, all drunk, and asking if I wanted to come out drinking. Back then I still lived a very staid and corporate lifestyle and was in bed by around midnight so I could be to work in the morning. I remember finding it so bizarre that some people lived that lifestyle where they wouldn't think it inappropriate to call someone in the middle of the night on a weekday. I would have to tell him, "Bill I work in the morning. Call me on Friday, and maybe we can meet up sometime this weekend."
Anyway, once my life fell apart and my wife had left me to go live with her sister in Winnipeg, I began to hang out with Bill every night. Like I mentioned in a prior post, there was no way that I could come home to my empty house after work. Bill was the only 'non-professional' that I knew, and the only person that would go out and drink every night of the week. He was also tons of fun and lots of laughs. Exactly what I was looking for at that point in my life.
The bar we mostly hung out at was called Rosey's. It was further north than the "North Hood" and had a mixture of patrons from both the North Hood and also from the 'nicer neighborhoods' in that area. From there we would also do a lot of bar hopping in the nicer bars in that area. Eventually we started hanging out at a bar called the VIP. They had really cool and hot bartenders working there who also liked to hang out there when not working. Not to mention a pitcher of beer that filled seven mugs was only $5. This was also important because Bill drank like a fish and always ran out of money before the night was over. Then I would buy the last two or three pitchers myself. We started hanging out at the VIP more and more. Eventually that replaced Rosey's as our main hangout. Seeing me and Bill were always laughing and having a good time (regardless of whether the bar was empty or full) all the patrons (and bartenders) liked hanging out with us. What we quickly noticed is that every Wednesday and Saturday night karaoke broke out around us while we were busy having a good time. The thing is the bar was PACKED on those nights, especially on Wednesdays. And it was packed with FUN people, and TONS of HOT young chicks! The singing was even good too. It was a HUGE party. EVERYONE had a BLAST! Every other night of the week, the bar was pretty quiet. Still fun, but not too busy.
We had also noticed that there was a bar down the road that advertised the same karaoke show on Thursdays and Sundays. We started going there for those karaoke shows and sure enough the bar was PACKED full of the same fun people and lots of fun HOT chicks! Cool, fun bartenders too (but not hot chick bartenders). Plenty of fun hot patrons though. So that became our Thursday and Sunday night spot. (Though we would have to run down the road at 1:45a for last call at the VIP. Thursday night was when 'My Girl' worked. (We had a nickname for each of the four bartenders. Each one of them was cool, 20-something, and HOT!) We couldn't go a Thursday night without at least saying 'hello'. There was no rush, she would serve us until 2:30a anyway.
Basically, this karaoke show was running in a bar in this area seven nights a week. Given how fun and packed it always was with this karaoke (regardless of night) we started following the karaoke show. Low and behold, so were all the other fun people. Every night of the week, no matter which night, or which bar it was always fun and packed, with tons of hot young chicks. Hot chicks in their 30-s and early 40-s as well. There was a really good variety.
Seeing a lot of these karaoke 'regulars' also shot pool, me and Bill got to know a whole lot of them. Plus we would see them every night because they were following the same 'karaoke circuit' as we were. Just like us, the ones we got to know were also young, fun, and outgoing. Good mix of men and women too. All the guys ranged in age from 26 to 33. The girls that hung out with our crowd ranged from 21 to 27 (and two 19 year old's - but they will get their own post). Once we all started hanging out together we were all one big 'party cloud' that everyone wanted to be around. We blew into a room, partied it up, then blew out of there. And most nights we ended up with a bunch of hot naked young chicks in my hottub. BUT, actually this was not quite yet. I'm getting ahead of myself.
Here's the problem. Bill is from the North Hood. That's where he was born and raised. He's got that 'hood boy, mentality. Once he got drunk, he got very obnoxious. He would break into his 'hood talk' and start talking about fighting, and would grab the asses of girls around us including the ones that now hung out in our new crowd. It was all very good when it was just me and Bill. It was also fine when we were hanging out at the Hood bars, or even Rosey's. But Bill just didn't fit in with this new environment. What would happen, is that once Bill started to get really drunk and obnoxious, usually around midnight, I would have to get him out of there and take him to bars in the North Hood (where his actions and mentality fit right in). This was fine, and fun, but the problem was that I wanted to stay with the fun people and the hot chicks.
This eventually worked itself out a month or so later as Bill had to spend 30 days in jail due to something that he got himself into prior to being hospitalized. Now that he was healthy again, he had to do his time.
I'll have to continue this thought at a later post. There's more to tell about me and Bill prior to when we started hanging out with the karaoke crowd.
Friday, March 20, 2009
The Hits Just Keep on Coming
So here I am, single for the first time in nine years, still stuck for another three weeks in my project from hell, and alone in this big ass 2000 sq ft, 4-bedroom house. I have just found out that my wife had left me three weeks ago but didnt bother telling me. She didnt even take any of her clothes or any of her things with her. They were all still at our house (which was in both of our names).
I know, I could have left the project and went to Winnipeg to try and work things out with my wife. But for one thing, back then I was a young career professional. My wife and family life was more important, but career and commitment was always a priority. If you were committed to a project, then you finished that project. End of story.
Youve also got to consider the fact that after pouring my heart and soul into our very loving marriage for the past eight years. Fully believing that it was a wondrous and unbreakable bond that could stand any test. Then see my wife walk away at the first sign of problems or issues without even ever mentioning it. She abandoned me. She who up until a few months earlier suppossedly loved me unconditionally and forever. Not to mention the zombie-like person that she had become the past six to eight months. I was always the one that supported her, both mentally, emotionally, and financially. I was always sacrificing my own needs or wants for the sake of building a beautiful and loving marriage. For the past eight years that is what we seemed to have. There was no question in my mind that our love was true, unbreakable, and forever. To find out that she walked out on it without even trying to mend it. Without even talking once about it.
My attitude is that if our marriage, or me wasnt important enough for her to come back to our home and work things out, then she can stay in Winnipeg with her sister. As far as I was concerned, if she was unwilling or unable to try to work it out, then it was already over and my life was much easier and better off without her. And I do still believe that.
It still hurt beyond compare though. I wont get too far into that, but to realize that if her love could go away, or fade, or die so quickly without even wanting to fight for it. To save it. It means that she never truly (truly) loved me in the first place. I think that was to me the ultimate betrayal. She betrayed me. She betrayed us. She turned all my sacrafices, and all my love, and all my life for the past nine years into a mockery. A joke. A sham. It was never real...
That revelation left a complete knawing emptiness in my heart, in my stomach, in my head, and in my very soul. I cannot begin to describe that complete hollow emptiness that my whole being became from that. The only way that I could cope with that emptiness was to become dead inside. At least for a time anyway.
As long as I was busy, then I can keep my mind off of it. Keep myself focussed on the task at hand. Which meant work. There was plenty of work to get done still in my project from hell. But when it was time to go home at the end of the day or evening. That was a different story. I couldnt go home. The one thing that I couldnt do was think about it. All my mind wanted to do was to keep asking over and over again what on earth went wrongÉ How did this happenÉ Its the only thing that my mind could focus on, but it was also the only thing that I couldnt cope with. There was no way that I could sit in that big empty lonely house by myself. The only thing to do there was to think, and think, and think.... Its the only thing that I couldnt bear to do.
So I didnt go home. After work I would go straight to crazy Bills house. He didnt work because his stomach muscles and tissue was all torn away two years ago by being shot seven times in the body at point blank range by his then girlfriends ex-boyfriend. Thats another story though. I will write a separate post about Bill sometime soon. We would grab a sandwhich at Bills place, then be at the bar by 8:30p. There we would talk, and laugh, shoot pool, and have a great time drinking $5 pitchers of beer until closing time. Bar hop if we felt like it. But we would have a great time, and because we were having so much fun, all the other fun people would gravitate around us. I would get home around 3:00am (after having such a fun night), crash, get up and go to work, then repeat the process again the next night. We werent wallowing. We really were having a ton of fun. It was a distraction for me. A diversion. It was something that allowed me to not think about what on earth went wrong with my marriage. It was something that diverted me from thinking at all. That is what I needed then.
Luckily I am the type of person who doesnt need much sleep. Therefore I can do this all week and then crash on the weekend. My project from hell ended three weeks later and I was put to work on the team writing the proposal for the next project. This sucked, because due to time frames I had to work six days a week getting this proposal completed. That means not sleeping at all Friday night, then making it to work Saturday morning. But I did it.
Unfortunately, that project was delayed six months by the client. That was the state of the current market. The dot-com crash that lost me $65K in the stock market six months earlier, also was ravaging the Information Technology budgets. Which meant a serious slow down in new technology projects. Three weeks later, a large part due to the fact that my manager from the project from hell took a dislike to me, I was laid off.
So, at 31 years old, I was single for the first time in nine years, and for the first time in my adult life (13 years, including University) I was unemployed. BUT I did own a 4-bedroom house with a hot tub, and had $45K in cash (in the stock market).
I didnt even know who I was anymore, or what path or direction I wanted to be moving in. I didnt want to be anything. I just wanted to be and to not make any decisions (especially career decisions) until I was in a more stable frame of mind. So I just didnt work. I took several months off and just existed.
...It was this time that kicked off the second phase of my adult life. The years that I refer to as the Crazy Days...
I know, I could have left the project and went to Winnipeg to try and work things out with my wife. But for one thing, back then I was a young career professional. My wife and family life was more important, but career and commitment was always a priority. If you were committed to a project, then you finished that project. End of story.
Youve also got to consider the fact that after pouring my heart and soul into our very loving marriage for the past eight years. Fully believing that it was a wondrous and unbreakable bond that could stand any test. Then see my wife walk away at the first sign of problems or issues without even ever mentioning it. She abandoned me. She who up until a few months earlier suppossedly loved me unconditionally and forever. Not to mention the zombie-like person that she had become the past six to eight months. I was always the one that supported her, both mentally, emotionally, and financially. I was always sacrificing my own needs or wants for the sake of building a beautiful and loving marriage. For the past eight years that is what we seemed to have. There was no question in my mind that our love was true, unbreakable, and forever. To find out that she walked out on it without even trying to mend it. Without even talking once about it.
My attitude is that if our marriage, or me wasnt important enough for her to come back to our home and work things out, then she can stay in Winnipeg with her sister. As far as I was concerned, if she was unwilling or unable to try to work it out, then it was already over and my life was much easier and better off without her. And I do still believe that.
It still hurt beyond compare though. I wont get too far into that, but to realize that if her love could go away, or fade, or die so quickly without even wanting to fight for it. To save it. It means that she never truly (truly) loved me in the first place. I think that was to me the ultimate betrayal. She betrayed me. She betrayed us. She turned all my sacrafices, and all my love, and all my life for the past nine years into a mockery. A joke. A sham. It was never real...
That revelation left a complete knawing emptiness in my heart, in my stomach, in my head, and in my very soul. I cannot begin to describe that complete hollow emptiness that my whole being became from that. The only way that I could cope with that emptiness was to become dead inside. At least for a time anyway.
As long as I was busy, then I can keep my mind off of it. Keep myself focussed on the task at hand. Which meant work. There was plenty of work to get done still in my project from hell. But when it was time to go home at the end of the day or evening. That was a different story. I couldnt go home. The one thing that I couldnt do was think about it. All my mind wanted to do was to keep asking over and over again what on earth went wrongÉ How did this happenÉ Its the only thing that my mind could focus on, but it was also the only thing that I couldnt cope with. There was no way that I could sit in that big empty lonely house by myself. The only thing to do there was to think, and think, and think.... Its the only thing that I couldnt bear to do.
So I didnt go home. After work I would go straight to crazy Bills house. He didnt work because his stomach muscles and tissue was all torn away two years ago by being shot seven times in the body at point blank range by his then girlfriends ex-boyfriend. Thats another story though. I will write a separate post about Bill sometime soon. We would grab a sandwhich at Bills place, then be at the bar by 8:30p. There we would talk, and laugh, shoot pool, and have a great time drinking $5 pitchers of beer until closing time. Bar hop if we felt like it. But we would have a great time, and because we were having so much fun, all the other fun people would gravitate around us. I would get home around 3:00am (after having such a fun night), crash, get up and go to work, then repeat the process again the next night. We werent wallowing. We really were having a ton of fun. It was a distraction for me. A diversion. It was something that allowed me to not think about what on earth went wrong with my marriage. It was something that diverted me from thinking at all. That is what I needed then.
Luckily I am the type of person who doesnt need much sleep. Therefore I can do this all week and then crash on the weekend. My project from hell ended three weeks later and I was put to work on the team writing the proposal for the next project. This sucked, because due to time frames I had to work six days a week getting this proposal completed. That means not sleeping at all Friday night, then making it to work Saturday morning. But I did it.
Unfortunately, that project was delayed six months by the client. That was the state of the current market. The dot-com crash that lost me $65K in the stock market six months earlier, also was ravaging the Information Technology budgets. Which meant a serious slow down in new technology projects. Three weeks later, a large part due to the fact that my manager from the project from hell took a dislike to me, I was laid off.
So, at 31 years old, I was single for the first time in nine years, and for the first time in my adult life (13 years, including University) I was unemployed. BUT I did own a 4-bedroom house with a hot tub, and had $45K in cash (in the stock market).
I didnt even know who I was anymore, or what path or direction I wanted to be moving in. I didnt want to be anything. I just wanted to be and to not make any decisions (especially career decisions) until I was in a more stable frame of mind. So I just didnt work. I took several months off and just existed.
...It was this time that kicked off the second phase of my adult life. The years that I refer to as the Crazy Days...
Thursday, March 19, 2009
My Life Collapses (continued...)
Continuing from my last post...
Anyway, my life with my wife seemed to be 'clearing up'. At least I thought so anyway. After we had that talk things seemed to be better between us. Our careers were still stinking though. I was still struggling through my project from hell and workink unbelievable hours. But, the tension and distance between me and my wife seem to dissipate. My golf league had ended so I wasn't hanging out at the bar much anymore. I pretty much worked. I had to get up at 6:20am in order to make it to work before 8:00am. Then I worked until 8:00pm and went home. My wife was never hungry, so I would make myself something to eat (in fact, the only food she ate at home for the last 6 months she lived there was peanutbutter and jam sandwiches). Then I would veg out and try to clear the stress from my mind as much as possible. Then repeat the process the next day. The project was going to be ending in a matter of weeks. All I had to do was keep pressing on until it was over.
My wife was still having the same problems at her work. She was still fighting with her boss and not doing what he was saying and was still getting repremanded every week for not covering her ass at work, and not balancing the books at their main troubled house. But she had started looking for other work and even got a job offer doing the same type of work for roughly the same pay. A little bit higher pay in fact. She just had to fill out all the visa paperwork and then wait the (roughly 6 weeks) for her visa to clear. (My job description was on the NAFTA free trade agreement, so it was a much faster and easier process for me to get a work visa.) Shortly after getting the job offer from the other company, she did get fired from her current employer. We knew it was only a matter of time before that happened. It did not matter though, she had another job ready to start as soon as she submitted the visa paperwork and waited for it to clear.
The night she got fired she went out with all her former coworkers. I got home from work and she called me to let me know she did get fired and was out. It was a Friday. I asked where she was so I could meet them there, but she told me she would rather I did not join them. This really upset me. I was sitting at home, but was upset by this and could not just sit at home by myself. So I went to that bar that I used to hang out at after golf. My idea was that I would call home every hour until my wife was home. Then I would go home to join her.
I did call home once, but then this pretty crazy dude named Bill showed up. We had met a year earlier and partied pretty hard for the weekend one time when my wife was in Chicago at a conference. I will talk about Crazy Bill in another note some time. After me and Bill started partying at the bar, I never bothered calling home again. This was bad, because about ten minutes after I called home last, my wife showed up at home to be with me. She had thought about what she had said to me, and felt bad. She decided that she did want to be with me that night. But I ended up going to an after hours party with Bill and never got home until 6:00am. Whoops.
This did not help our marriage. In fact, there was another incident that happened several months earlier before either of us were having any problems at work that it turns out made my wife think that I had cheated on her. Which I never did do, and never would do. I loved and cherished her and would never betray her. But I can see how she could think what she did. I had no idea that she was thinking that, and she never ever brought it up to me, but she was thinking it all along. This also contributed to the breakup of our marriage. It is actually kind of an amusing story. I will write about it in a separate note some time.
Anyway, it was a few days later that my wife told me that she was going to go to Toronto for a week or two to visit her friend. I thought that this was a good idea. It would give her a chance to clear her head and have a bit of a vacation and when she got back we could talk more about us, and about getting our lives back to something more normal. My project was ending in a matter of weeks, and I was going to be working even longer hours now to get it completed.
So she left for Toronto, three days after my 31st birthday (Oct. 13). We talked via email every two or three days. She left it pretty open-ended about when she was planning to come home. A week or so later, we were invited to a halloween party. So I emailed her and asked her if she was expecting to be back home for halloween. I needed to know if I should prepare a costume for her. She replied that she wasnt sure. Another week went by, and I was starting to really miss her. Work was still kicking my ass and there was some fall out from some corporate political stuff that had happened a few months earlier that made my manager at work take somewhat of a negative view towards me. I had thought we had worked that out and smoothed it over, but then I found out that he didnt think so. It was rather upsetting to me and I wanted my wife around me for support. I emailed her and let her know that I was missing her and asked when she was planning to come back home. She emailed me back and said that she had never ever intended to come back home. In fact, by now she had already gone back to Winnipeg, Manitoba to be with her sister. She had left me three weeks before I even knew that she was gone.
I know that it sounds niaive, but I thought all of our problems were work-related. I didnt even realize that our marriage was having problems. Looking back, I realize now that our marriage was having problems, but at the time I was so focussed on completing that project and getting out of that environment and back to a regular life, that I completely missed it.
Basically our marriage was so wonderfully good for so long, that I literally had no clue that it could ever end. I figured our love was strong and secure enough that we would be able to work through any issues. We had never had any issues in the eight years up to that point. Now she was gone and wouldnt even come home to talk about it.
I had even told her via email that I had no idea our marriage was even having problems. But she responded that that was bull-shit, and that we had talked about it several times. Which we didnt. Only in her head did she think we did. In fact, it was then that I found out that she was thinking all along that I had cheated on her, and that I was thinking and saying all these nasty things about her, and that I was hating her, and treating her terribly. But I wasnt doing any of those things, and she never ever told me what she was thinking, so I was oblivious to it. I was only trying to complete that project so that I could get back to my real life. I know that the Paxil had something to do with all the paranoid thoughts that she was having. It was amazing to me to hear all the things she was accusing me of thinking and doing the past several months. To this day, shes still convinced that I was doing and thinking all of those things. The only thing that I was ever thinking is that I had to complete that project and get out of that work environment. It was the only thing that had consumed my thoughts the past several months.
I desperately tried to get her to come back to Columbus so we could talk about it, and there is a little more story left, but its not very relevant. The bottom line is it would be four more years before we talked again...
Anyway, my life with my wife seemed to be 'clearing up'. At least I thought so anyway. After we had that talk things seemed to be better between us. Our careers were still stinking though. I was still struggling through my project from hell and workink unbelievable hours. But, the tension and distance between me and my wife seem to dissipate. My golf league had ended so I wasn't hanging out at the bar much anymore. I pretty much worked. I had to get up at 6:20am in order to make it to work before 8:00am. Then I worked until 8:00pm and went home. My wife was never hungry, so I would make myself something to eat (in fact, the only food she ate at home for the last 6 months she lived there was peanutbutter and jam sandwiches). Then I would veg out and try to clear the stress from my mind as much as possible. Then repeat the process the next day. The project was going to be ending in a matter of weeks. All I had to do was keep pressing on until it was over.
My wife was still having the same problems at her work. She was still fighting with her boss and not doing what he was saying and was still getting repremanded every week for not covering her ass at work, and not balancing the books at their main troubled house. But she had started looking for other work and even got a job offer doing the same type of work for roughly the same pay. A little bit higher pay in fact. She just had to fill out all the visa paperwork and then wait the (roughly 6 weeks) for her visa to clear. (My job description was on the NAFTA free trade agreement, so it was a much faster and easier process for me to get a work visa.) Shortly after getting the job offer from the other company, she did get fired from her current employer. We knew it was only a matter of time before that happened. It did not matter though, she had another job ready to start as soon as she submitted the visa paperwork and waited for it to clear.
The night she got fired she went out with all her former coworkers. I got home from work and she called me to let me know she did get fired and was out. It was a Friday. I asked where she was so I could meet them there, but she told me she would rather I did not join them. This really upset me. I was sitting at home, but was upset by this and could not just sit at home by myself. So I went to that bar that I used to hang out at after golf. My idea was that I would call home every hour until my wife was home. Then I would go home to join her.
I did call home once, but then this pretty crazy dude named Bill showed up. We had met a year earlier and partied pretty hard for the weekend one time when my wife was in Chicago at a conference. I will talk about Crazy Bill in another note some time. After me and Bill started partying at the bar, I never bothered calling home again. This was bad, because about ten minutes after I called home last, my wife showed up at home to be with me. She had thought about what she had said to me, and felt bad. She decided that she did want to be with me that night. But I ended up going to an after hours party with Bill and never got home until 6:00am. Whoops.
This did not help our marriage. In fact, there was another incident that happened several months earlier before either of us were having any problems at work that it turns out made my wife think that I had cheated on her. Which I never did do, and never would do. I loved and cherished her and would never betray her. But I can see how she could think what she did. I had no idea that she was thinking that, and she never ever brought it up to me, but she was thinking it all along. This also contributed to the breakup of our marriage. It is actually kind of an amusing story. I will write about it in a separate note some time.
Anyway, it was a few days later that my wife told me that she was going to go to Toronto for a week or two to visit her friend. I thought that this was a good idea. It would give her a chance to clear her head and have a bit of a vacation and when she got back we could talk more about us, and about getting our lives back to something more normal. My project was ending in a matter of weeks, and I was going to be working even longer hours now to get it completed.
So she left for Toronto, three days after my 31st birthday (Oct. 13). We talked via email every two or three days. She left it pretty open-ended about when she was planning to come home. A week or so later, we were invited to a halloween party. So I emailed her and asked her if she was expecting to be back home for halloween. I needed to know if I should prepare a costume for her. She replied that she wasnt sure. Another week went by, and I was starting to really miss her. Work was still kicking my ass and there was some fall out from some corporate political stuff that had happened a few months earlier that made my manager at work take somewhat of a negative view towards me. I had thought we had worked that out and smoothed it over, but then I found out that he didnt think so. It was rather upsetting to me and I wanted my wife around me for support. I emailed her and let her know that I was missing her and asked when she was planning to come back home. She emailed me back and said that she had never ever intended to come back home. In fact, by now she had already gone back to Winnipeg, Manitoba to be with her sister. She had left me three weeks before I even knew that she was gone.
I know that it sounds niaive, but I thought all of our problems were work-related. I didnt even realize that our marriage was having problems. Looking back, I realize now that our marriage was having problems, but at the time I was so focussed on completing that project and getting out of that environment and back to a regular life, that I completely missed it.
Basically our marriage was so wonderfully good for so long, that I literally had no clue that it could ever end. I figured our love was strong and secure enough that we would be able to work through any issues. We had never had any issues in the eight years up to that point. Now she was gone and wouldnt even come home to talk about it.
I had even told her via email that I had no idea our marriage was even having problems. But she responded that that was bull-shit, and that we had talked about it several times. Which we didnt. Only in her head did she think we did. In fact, it was then that I found out that she was thinking all along that I had cheated on her, and that I was thinking and saying all these nasty things about her, and that I was hating her, and treating her terribly. But I wasnt doing any of those things, and she never ever told me what she was thinking, so I was oblivious to it. I was only trying to complete that project so that I could get back to my real life. I know that the Paxil had something to do with all the paranoid thoughts that she was having. It was amazing to me to hear all the things she was accusing me of thinking and doing the past several months. To this day, shes still convinced that I was doing and thinking all of those things. The only thing that I was ever thinking is that I had to complete that project and get out of that work environment. It was the only thing that had consumed my thoughts the past several months.
I desperately tried to get her to come back to Columbus so we could talk about it, and there is a little more story left, but its not very relevant. The bottom line is it would be four more years before we talked again...
My Life Collapses
I was a Business Analyst and did Project Management-type work for an Information Technology consulting company. So I worked as a business and technical consultant on client sites building large-scale business systems. I started my career as a technical person (computer systems analyst) but was now doing more of the people and business-side of the projects. The non-technical side of systems design was fairly new to me at the time. I started a new project as a Business Analyst and Team Leader for my first 'offshore' project. That means we had a programming team on our client site that was fresh from India, and we also had another programming team that worked in India on our project. There were a handful of us from North America that were overseeing the business and planning side of the project and managing the technical teams from India.
The company that I worked for was now an Indian owned company. What had happened is that the year before, they bought the two largest and most successful independent consulting companies in Columbus and merged them into their company (CBSI - Complete Business Solutions Inc.). I was an employee of one of the bought companies so was now a CBSI employee.
We quickly learned that there is a HUGE difference between managing an offshore project than there is in managing a North America-only project. The skill and communication levels are totally different, and though very technically sound, the communication and level of 'instruction' required for your technical team was VERY different. It added an entire layer of management 'overhead' that we were not initially expecting.
I won't go into any further details but this project quickly became a 'project from hell' where I literally was working from 8:00a until 8:00p every day and most weekends. Being a salaried employee in the U.S. I was only getting paid for 40 hours a week as well. As one of the Team Leaders, my job became increasingly difficult, time-consuming, and EXTREMELY stressful. I have never failed at anything in my life, so in typical fashion I poured myself into it and did whatever it took to get the job done sufficiently. In the end it was successful, but by no means was the final product my usual 'quality'. I also suffered some 'political' set-backs where I was taking a lot of the blame for one of my team member's 'short-comings'. Being new to this, I didn't play enough 'cover your ass' politics. I didn't realize that I had to. I was just focussed on a team success and getting the job done. But in the process was overstating some of my team's accomplishments, and understating my own. Meaning, I had a team member that I originally wanted removed from my team because of his 'inability' to do his job. But for political reasons (it would look bad on my boss) this was not possible. So, I ended up having to do most of his work for him. (His heart and effort was in it, but he just lacked the 'understanding' to be able to do the required work.) But we still logged it as work that he had completed, even though I was the one showing him how to do it, and in the process ended up doing all of it myself. If I didn't have to try to teach him how to do it, I could have completed it in half the time it took me to explain to him, and in the end I had to fix it for him when he couldn't do it anyway.
Meanwhile my wife's career was also taking a nose-dive. She was also a supervisor for a group of residential care homes (people and adults with higher-functioning 'special needs') that lived independently in assisted living houses. My wife managed/ oversaw the staff of all the different residential care homes, and also was responsible for drawing up the 'life-skills' programs for each individual resident.
Her very capable manager who just gave her RAVE reviews during her annual evaluation was promoted up. The person they got to replace her was someone who was doing the same job as my wife (a supervisor) and now was promoted to overseeing the supervisors. Unfortunately, he was quite incompetent at that job. More and more he was starting to get repremanded for 'shoddy' record keeping, and for shoddy management of the residences. This caused him to lean much more heavily on the supervisors, and caused him to implement policies and procedures that shifted the supervisor's focus away from caring for the residents and more towards 'cover-your-ass' type of politics.
This did not sit well with my wife as she is all about caring for the residents and felt that 'cover your ass' record keeping was not only not part of her job, but also would keep her from doing what she considered her real job. This caused clashed between her and her new boss (which was a former friend/ coworker). This caused her to start being singled out as one of the 'problems' with the organization.
In particular, there was one troubled house that she supervised that ALWAYS had misbalanced books (accounting). Every week, the books didn't balance. That's the job of the staff that my wife supervised to do that, but for this one house it just was never done right. This was one of the many things that my wife's new boss was getting criticized for. He told her that above all else, her number one responsibility was to make sure that those books balanced every week. She essentially refused. She told him, flat out, that her primary responsibility was to look after the care and development of the residents. If she had time left after that (which she rarely did) then she would make sure the staff is balancing their books properly. So, the books never balanced, and she was getting reprimanded EVERY week for the same thing. Not balancing that house's books.
For the past nine years I (along with her older sister) was my wife's number one supporter. I was always the one that she could count on to be on her side. I was always the one who could lend my own strength and energy to her to get her through her troubles. It's the relationship that we had always shared. Given the extreme stress that I was under at work, I didn't have the time, energy, or strength to be able to give any of it away to her. It's the first time in my life that I was under such extreme stress and was in danger of failing in my project. Meanwhile I also had to manage all the bills, and yardwork, and whatever else at home went along with being a new home owner.
For the first time ever, I did not support my wife in her stance at work. I took her boss's side. I told her, that if her boss told her that her number one priority was balancing those books, then her number one priority was balancing those books. It didn't matter what she felt her job was. It was up to her boss to determine what her job was. That is just how business works. (She'd never considered her job a business before, but it is.)
I also didn't support her when she stated that she wanted to quit her job and go to university to get a four year Pharmacy degree. I replied that I would LOVE to quit my job too, but we can't. Six months ago it would have been fine. But we've just bought this house and have expenses now. When we decided to buy the house, we both agreed that we'd have to both work for the next two years to pay down all the initial expenses. Besides, I've already put you through college. When the time comes, it's my turn to go back to school.
None of this sat well with my wife. She did not convey this to me at the time, but she now felt that I was no longer 'on her side' and that I no longer was supportive of her. Now the only person that she could 'trust' was her sister, back in Winnipeg (Manitoba).
There is a few other things that I should explain about my ex-wife. Number one, she had a BRUTAL childhood, which makes her a LOT more insecure than your average person. She also has some hereditary 'chemical inbalances' that she takes medication for. Namely she had Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder (ADHD) from her dad's side of the family, and clinical depression from her mother's side of the family. Because this is also the field that her and her (much) older sister are in, they are experts on the subject. Especially when it came to the ADHD. So it usually didn't impact our life together, becuase she knew exactly how to counteract it's affects, and exactly how to explain to me how I can help. EXCEPT, when her job started getting more stressful, she started getting more and more anxious about being able to 'manage' everything. So she went to the doctor and changed her anxiety medication (which was working MARVELOUSLY for years) into a fairly new drug called Paxil. (I have learned to HATE Paxil.)
Even though the affects of the Paxil made her feel more 'secure' and comfortable with herself, it also made her much more 'flakey' and withdrawn and disfunctional. It greatly contibuted to her 'screwing up' more at work as well. It also made her a LOT more paranoid. I didn't realize this at the time though. These are things that I came to realize 'after the fact'.
The other thing that I should explain is my ex-wife's extremely deep relationship with her older sister, who is 16 years older than her and is more like a mother to her than a sister. My ex-wife's mother had clinical depression throughout my ex-wife's childhood, and as a result was always 'high' on prescription pills. Basically she layed around on her couch all day like a zombie. It was my ex-wife's older sister who actually raised my ex-wife. So she really is like a mother to her. Also, when the marriage of her sister failed, my ex-wife moved in with her sister and helped her raise her three ADHD children. So they can a MUCH stronger bond than most sisters do.
Basically, my wife pretty much 'shut down' at home the last six months that we were together. I was never home anyway. I was ALWAYS at work, and ALWAYS under a lot of work-related stress when I was home. My wife was also under a lot of work-related stress as well. That's the primary reason that she changed her medication and was now more 'shut down'.
There was a lot of distance between us the last few moths of our relationship. We were both very focussed on our problems at work, and we were both under a lot of stress. We definitely both weren't at our best, but we weren't argueing or fighting or anything. We just weren't communicating much. Even though we were in the same room together, it's as if she wasn't even there anymore. I felt very alone when I was with her. I was also less 'understanding' of her needs than normal because of my stress, and because I harboured some unrealized resentment towards her shutting down and shutting me out of her life. She had shut everything out of her life really. It was the Paxil that was doing it.
A couple months after she had (mentally) shut me out of her life, I began doing the same to her. I didn't even realize we were doing it. We were just so focussed on our troubles at work. Seeing she would never talk to me at home any more, she was like a 'zombie' just sitting on the couch, doing her needle-point (a hobby), and pretty much 'zoning out'. She would even place things between us on the couch, so we couldn't sit with one another. I started staying out after work some nights. Mostly Monday night, because I was in a corporate golf league that I went to from work every Monday night. But I started hanging out at this bar I used to frequent from time-to-time after the golfing was over, so that I could at least talk to someone and forget about my troubles and stresses at work. Occassionally I would stay out quite late, which would only fuel the paranoia that she was having about me. Only at the time I had no idea she was having such thoughts ab0ut me.
Eventually, I became consciously aware of the fact that we were shutting each other out of our lives. I remember one night trying to address the issue with her. I talked about our troubles at work, and how that was making us behave much less like ourselves and that it was only temporary, and that my project would be over in a couple of more m0nths and then I'll be much more myself again. And much less irritable and more understanding of her needs. I also talked about how I realized that I had been shutting her out the past couple of months, but that I started doing it a couple months after she had started doing it first. I also addressed the issue that I didn't think that her new medication was working very well, and that she seemed so much more 'flakey' and 'out of it' than she normally is. (Throughout our nine years together, this would occassionally occur with her medication, and once we identified that it was happening she would go to her doctor to 'adjust' the medication and she would be her normal self again.)
We talked a little bit about it anyway. She wasn't really prepared to talk about it though. She had said that she knew that our troubles were only temporary, and that she needed time to sort through what was going on in her head. This was not unusual. That's part of her ADHD. Sometimes she has to organize her thoughts before she is able to talk about them. So we left it at that and went to bed. Back to work in the morning.
I later found out (after the marriage was over) that pretty much the only thing that she got from that conversation was me saying "This is all your fault".
....well, you can see where this is going. The marriage did eventually end, before the project did actually. My wife got fired from her job before then too. I will explain more details in a later note. I guess finish this note. But in summary, there were contibuting factors on both of our ends. But in the end it ended when it should have. The first eight years that we spent together were absolutely WONDERFUL. Everything I would think a young successful marriage should be. Even that last year which wasn't by any means good, it wasn't bad either. I mean, our jobs were SUCKING, but there was no bad memories about the marriage itself. To tell the truth, I have no bad memories of my marriage. Very few divorced people can say that. But I do know that we had grown apart that last year, and the marriage would have had more 'issues' if we stuck it out and tried to keep it working.
The company that I worked for was now an Indian owned company. What had happened is that the year before, they bought the two largest and most successful independent consulting companies in Columbus and merged them into their company (CBSI - Complete Business Solutions Inc.). I was an employee of one of the bought companies so was now a CBSI employee.
We quickly learned that there is a HUGE difference between managing an offshore project than there is in managing a North America-only project. The skill and communication levels are totally different, and though very technically sound, the communication and level of 'instruction' required for your technical team was VERY different. It added an entire layer of management 'overhead' that we were not initially expecting.
I won't go into any further details but this project quickly became a 'project from hell' where I literally was working from 8:00a until 8:00p every day and most weekends. Being a salaried employee in the U.S. I was only getting paid for 40 hours a week as well. As one of the Team Leaders, my job became increasingly difficult, time-consuming, and EXTREMELY stressful. I have never failed at anything in my life, so in typical fashion I poured myself into it and did whatever it took to get the job done sufficiently. In the end it was successful, but by no means was the final product my usual 'quality'. I also suffered some 'political' set-backs where I was taking a lot of the blame for one of my team member's 'short-comings'. Being new to this, I didn't play enough 'cover your ass' politics. I didn't realize that I had to. I was just focussed on a team success and getting the job done. But in the process was overstating some of my team's accomplishments, and understating my own. Meaning, I had a team member that I originally wanted removed from my team because of his 'inability' to do his job. But for political reasons (it would look bad on my boss) this was not possible. So, I ended up having to do most of his work for him. (His heart and effort was in it, but he just lacked the 'understanding' to be able to do the required work.) But we still logged it as work that he had completed, even though I was the one showing him how to do it, and in the process ended up doing all of it myself. If I didn't have to try to teach him how to do it, I could have completed it in half the time it took me to explain to him, and in the end I had to fix it for him when he couldn't do it anyway.
Meanwhile my wife's career was also taking a nose-dive. She was also a supervisor for a group of residential care homes (people and adults with higher-functioning 'special needs') that lived independently in assisted living houses. My wife managed/ oversaw the staff of all the different residential care homes, and also was responsible for drawing up the 'life-skills' programs for each individual resident.
Her very capable manager who just gave her RAVE reviews during her annual evaluation was promoted up. The person they got to replace her was someone who was doing the same job as my wife (a supervisor) and now was promoted to overseeing the supervisors. Unfortunately, he was quite incompetent at that job. More and more he was starting to get repremanded for 'shoddy' record keeping, and for shoddy management of the residences. This caused him to lean much more heavily on the supervisors, and caused him to implement policies and procedures that shifted the supervisor's focus away from caring for the residents and more towards 'cover-your-ass' type of politics.
This did not sit well with my wife as she is all about caring for the residents and felt that 'cover your ass' record keeping was not only not part of her job, but also would keep her from doing what she considered her real job. This caused clashed between her and her new boss (which was a former friend/ coworker). This caused her to start being singled out as one of the 'problems' with the organization.
In particular, there was one troubled house that she supervised that ALWAYS had misbalanced books (accounting). Every week, the books didn't balance. That's the job of the staff that my wife supervised to do that, but for this one house it just was never done right. This was one of the many things that my wife's new boss was getting criticized for. He told her that above all else, her number one responsibility was to make sure that those books balanced every week. She essentially refused. She told him, flat out, that her primary responsibility was to look after the care and development of the residents. If she had time left after that (which she rarely did) then she would make sure the staff is balancing their books properly. So, the books never balanced, and she was getting reprimanded EVERY week for the same thing. Not balancing that house's books.
For the past nine years I (along with her older sister) was my wife's number one supporter. I was always the one that she could count on to be on her side. I was always the one who could lend my own strength and energy to her to get her through her troubles. It's the relationship that we had always shared. Given the extreme stress that I was under at work, I didn't have the time, energy, or strength to be able to give any of it away to her. It's the first time in my life that I was under such extreme stress and was in danger of failing in my project. Meanwhile I also had to manage all the bills, and yardwork, and whatever else at home went along with being a new home owner.
For the first time ever, I did not support my wife in her stance at work. I took her boss's side. I told her, that if her boss told her that her number one priority was balancing those books, then her number one priority was balancing those books. It didn't matter what she felt her job was. It was up to her boss to determine what her job was. That is just how business works. (She'd never considered her job a business before, but it is.)
I also didn't support her when she stated that she wanted to quit her job and go to university to get a four year Pharmacy degree. I replied that I would LOVE to quit my job too, but we can't. Six months ago it would have been fine. But we've just bought this house and have expenses now. When we decided to buy the house, we both agreed that we'd have to both work for the next two years to pay down all the initial expenses. Besides, I've already put you through college. When the time comes, it's my turn to go back to school.
None of this sat well with my wife. She did not convey this to me at the time, but she now felt that I was no longer 'on her side' and that I no longer was supportive of her. Now the only person that she could 'trust' was her sister, back in Winnipeg (Manitoba).
There is a few other things that I should explain about my ex-wife. Number one, she had a BRUTAL childhood, which makes her a LOT more insecure than your average person. She also has some hereditary 'chemical inbalances' that she takes medication for. Namely she had Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder (ADHD) from her dad's side of the family, and clinical depression from her mother's side of the family. Because this is also the field that her and her (much) older sister are in, they are experts on the subject. Especially when it came to the ADHD. So it usually didn't impact our life together, becuase she knew exactly how to counteract it's affects, and exactly how to explain to me how I can help. EXCEPT, when her job started getting more stressful, she started getting more and more anxious about being able to 'manage' everything. So she went to the doctor and changed her anxiety medication (which was working MARVELOUSLY for years) into a fairly new drug called Paxil. (I have learned to HATE Paxil.)
Even though the affects of the Paxil made her feel more 'secure' and comfortable with herself, it also made her much more 'flakey' and withdrawn and disfunctional. It greatly contibuted to her 'screwing up' more at work as well. It also made her a LOT more paranoid. I didn't realize this at the time though. These are things that I came to realize 'after the fact'.
The other thing that I should explain is my ex-wife's extremely deep relationship with her older sister, who is 16 years older than her and is more like a mother to her than a sister. My ex-wife's mother had clinical depression throughout my ex-wife's childhood, and as a result was always 'high' on prescription pills. Basically she layed around on her couch all day like a zombie. It was my ex-wife's older sister who actually raised my ex-wife. So she really is like a mother to her. Also, when the marriage of her sister failed, my ex-wife moved in with her sister and helped her raise her three ADHD children. So they can a MUCH stronger bond than most sisters do.
Basically, my wife pretty much 'shut down' at home the last six months that we were together. I was never home anyway. I was ALWAYS at work, and ALWAYS under a lot of work-related stress when I was home. My wife was also under a lot of work-related stress as well. That's the primary reason that she changed her medication and was now more 'shut down'.
There was a lot of distance between us the last few moths of our relationship. We were both very focussed on our problems at work, and we were both under a lot of stress. We definitely both weren't at our best, but we weren't argueing or fighting or anything. We just weren't communicating much. Even though we were in the same room together, it's as if she wasn't even there anymore. I felt very alone when I was with her. I was also less 'understanding' of her needs than normal because of my stress, and because I harboured some unrealized resentment towards her shutting down and shutting me out of her life. She had shut everything out of her life really. It was the Paxil that was doing it.
A couple months after she had (mentally) shut me out of her life, I began doing the same to her. I didn't even realize we were doing it. We were just so focussed on our troubles at work. Seeing she would never talk to me at home any more, she was like a 'zombie' just sitting on the couch, doing her needle-point (a hobby), and pretty much 'zoning out'. She would even place things between us on the couch, so we couldn't sit with one another. I started staying out after work some nights. Mostly Monday night, because I was in a corporate golf league that I went to from work every Monday night. But I started hanging out at this bar I used to frequent from time-to-time after the golfing was over, so that I could at least talk to someone and forget about my troubles and stresses at work. Occassionally I would stay out quite late, which would only fuel the paranoia that she was having about me. Only at the time I had no idea she was having such thoughts ab0ut me.
Eventually, I became consciously aware of the fact that we were shutting each other out of our lives. I remember one night trying to address the issue with her. I talked about our troubles at work, and how that was making us behave much less like ourselves and that it was only temporary, and that my project would be over in a couple of more m0nths and then I'll be much more myself again. And much less irritable and more understanding of her needs. I also talked about how I realized that I had been shutting her out the past couple of months, but that I started doing it a couple months after she had started doing it first. I also addressed the issue that I didn't think that her new medication was working very well, and that she seemed so much more 'flakey' and 'out of it' than she normally is. (Throughout our nine years together, this would occassionally occur with her medication, and once we identified that it was happening she would go to her doctor to 'adjust' the medication and she would be her normal self again.)
We talked a little bit about it anyway. She wasn't really prepared to talk about it though. She had said that she knew that our troubles were only temporary, and that she needed time to sort through what was going on in her head. This was not unusual. That's part of her ADHD. Sometimes she has to organize her thoughts before she is able to talk about them. So we left it at that and went to bed. Back to work in the morning.
I later found out (after the marriage was over) that pretty much the only thing that she got from that conversation was me saying "This is all your fault".
....well, you can see where this is going. The marriage did eventually end, before the project did actually. My wife got fired from her job before then too. I will explain more details in a later note. I guess finish this note. But in summary, there were contibuting factors on both of our ends. But in the end it ended when it should have. The first eight years that we spent together were absolutely WONDERFUL. Everything I would think a young successful marriage should be. Even that last year which wasn't by any means good, it wasn't bad either. I mean, our jobs were SUCKING, but there was no bad memories about the marriage itself. To tell the truth, I have no bad memories of my marriage. Very few divorced people can say that. But I do know that we had grown apart that last year, and the marriage would have had more 'issues' if we stuck it out and tried to keep it working.
Preceding the Crash
So, how did the collapse all begin? There was a number of factors that all combined pretty much all-at-once to contribute. 1999 was the best year of my life. Actually every year in the 90's got progressively better and better, each and every year. The 90's started out great, and just got greater and greater as each year progressed. By the time 1999 rolled around, I was 29 years old, making $66K per year, loved my wife, enjoyed my job, and was very highly respected by my peers at work.
(Note: When I talk about my ex-wife, I still call her my 'wife' because at the time she was still my wife. When I talk about her now in the present tense, I call her my ex-wife. Believe me, I know that she is no longer my wife. Nor do I harbor any desires to rekindle that union. Just so you know.)
My wife, who was 30 years old, loved her job (and me) even more. In the mid-90's while living in the Toronto area I had put my wife (live-in girlfriend at the time) through a two year college program (in the field she was already working in and loved - Developmental Services). The idea at the time was that we would invest time and money to build her career while I supported her. Then once she was where she should be in her career, I would quit my job and start in a full-time MBA program for 18 months while she supported me. That's initially what my 'savings' outside of my retirement savings was earmarked for. Tuition fees for an MBA program.
She had just graduated from that two year program when we decided to accept my job offer in Columbus, Ohio. This move suited her just fine as the fairly new "Mike Harris" Provincial government (some Ontario political history) was in the process of making huge cuts in Provincial social programs (which is what funded all of the work in her field - Developmental Services).
The first year in Columbus, she didn't have an income. But that's okay. She kept busy enough. The first part of the year she planned our wedding (which we were having back in Manitoba - where our families were), then the second part of the year she did volunteer work in the Developmental services industry. This volunteer work is what eventually led to her securing her full-time 'dream job'. It was the work she always dreamed of doing, and after one year was highly praised by her supervisor during her annual review.
I thought my job and Columbus for that matter was 'fine' but could 'take it or leave it'. I didn't mind staying, and I didn't mind moving elsewhere either. But because she LOVED her job so much, we decided to make roots in Columbus. Buy a house and start our family. We were both very happy and loving life.
Mind you, buying the house meant I had to put off my MBA plans an additional few years. But that was okay, because I was doing so well in my job and making such good money that it didn't make sense to quit to go back to 'school' anyway.
Life was good.
Then EVERYTHING started falling apart.
...to be continued next post.....
(Note: When I talk about my ex-wife, I still call her my 'wife' because at the time she was still my wife. When I talk about her now in the present tense, I call her my ex-wife. Believe me, I know that she is no longer my wife. Nor do I harbor any desires to rekindle that union. Just so you know.)
My wife, who was 30 years old, loved her job (and me) even more. In the mid-90's while living in the Toronto area I had put my wife (live-in girlfriend at the time) through a two year college program (in the field she was already working in and loved - Developmental Services). The idea at the time was that we would invest time and money to build her career while I supported her. Then once she was where she should be in her career, I would quit my job and start in a full-time MBA program for 18 months while she supported me. That's initially what my 'savings' outside of my retirement savings was earmarked for. Tuition fees for an MBA program.
She had just graduated from that two year program when we decided to accept my job offer in Columbus, Ohio. This move suited her just fine as the fairly new "Mike Harris" Provincial government (some Ontario political history) was in the process of making huge cuts in Provincial social programs (which is what funded all of the work in her field - Developmental Services).
The first year in Columbus, she didn't have an income. But that's okay. She kept busy enough. The first part of the year she planned our wedding (which we were having back in Manitoba - where our families were), then the second part of the year she did volunteer work in the Developmental services industry. This volunteer work is what eventually led to her securing her full-time 'dream job'. It was the work she always dreamed of doing, and after one year was highly praised by her supervisor during her annual review.
I thought my job and Columbus for that matter was 'fine' but could 'take it or leave it'. I didn't mind staying, and I didn't mind moving elsewhere either. But because she LOVED her job so much, we decided to make roots in Columbus. Buy a house and start our family. We were both very happy and loving life.
Mind you, buying the house meant I had to put off my MBA plans an additional few years. But that was okay, because I was doing so well in my job and making such good money that it didn't make sense to quit to go back to 'school' anyway.
Life was good.
Then EVERYTHING started falling apart.
...to be continued next post.....
Introduction to my 'Inital' Life
I've been meaning to start a blog for a few years now. Many of my friends have wanted me to as well. I love to write. I find it very meditative and therapeutic. I've also had a tremendous amount of 'experiences' in the past several years that has amused my friends to no end. They keep telling me that I should write some of these stories down so they do not get entirely lost. Mind you, the 'stories' are really most interesting to people who do know me and the other 'characters' in the situations.
I also continue to build interesting experiences that I like to keep and to share. Free-association thought is also a hobby of mine where I like to just write whatever is on my mind. Basically, I do like to share my life and my views, which myself if nobody else. So I guess I'm just going to write whatever 'catches my fancy'. At least it will be a log to myself if nobody else.
Let me give a brief history of how my life started out. It'll be somewhat of a 'dryer' read, but will give you a background of what my life was like throughout my 20's. Then I can get more into the more 'interesting' stuff.
I'm in my upper 30's now and I have already lived a few 'different' types of lives in the past two decades or so. I started out as a ambitious and success-oriented person and for the first ten plus years of my adult life lived a pretty stable and career-focussed life. I have a university bachelor's degree, had a highly responsible job where I had to work very hard, but also was paid quite well. I was married to a attractive, wonderful, and intelligent person whom I met when I was 22 years old (Summer after I graduated university) and she was 23 years old. I wore a suit and tie (or business casual) to work, travelled whenever it suited my fancy (and when I had the time), put lots of money aside for 'expenses and leisure' and also saved plenty for my retirement savings. I liked to socialize, liked being active, also enjoyed reading and learning, and amoungst my other hobbies were body building and regularly playing the stock markets. That pretty much was my life throughout the 90's.
I am a Canadian citizen, growing up in Manitoba. After graduating university I took a job in the Toronto area. Five years later I accepted a different job (same career) in Columbus, Ohio. My girlfriend (who was living with me - she followed me from Manitoba to Toronto) once again moved with me to Columbus. Our first year there we legally married so she could legally live in the United States (with a spousal visa - I had a work visa). My career progressed quite nicely in Columbus. I negotiated over $22K in salary increases the first two years I was there. My wife eventually got a full-time job as well. She was in the social services industry so was paid less than half of what I made but our combined income was about $96K per year. Meanwhile our monthly expenses were only about $1,000 per month. We were both still in our upper 20's as well.
Being the 'investor' type of person that I am, I took a significant portion of our extra cash flow and started investing more heavily into one of my passions, the stock market. This was the late 90's, while the stock market was flying high based on all the Internet growth hype. I invested in more high risk/ high return stocks using a form of contrarian investing strategies. Buy low, sell high, repeat the process. In two years my stock market portfolio when from zero to over $100K (from investing $2K - $3K every couple of months, as well as selling for profit and reinvesting that money). All told the actual investment was about $35K. (Plus the taxes I had to pay on the capital gains.) At that point, with the type of stocks I had (mostly small to mid-sized telecom/ fibre-optic/ wireless companies, as well as some oil drillers) my portfolio value fluxuated up or down $4K - $7K per day, every day. But overall, I was making an average of 50% returns per year for two years.
In February of 2000, I took $40K out of that and used it as a downpayment on a $140K house. Nice 4-bedroom house in a nice neighbourhood. Me and the wife were planning to start a family. I was 30 years old at the time. So, my stock market portfolio was down to around $70K, but all the inital investment was now taken out of it. It was now all (on paper) profit.
The stock market was doing quite the 'run-up' and I knew that it couldn't last, but my philosophy was I didn't want $100K, I wanted a million dollars. Mind you I also said to myself if my portfolio gets up to $200K, then I'll sell and invest that into much 'safer' investments. But, once again, this was my 'play' money. I also had RRSP's (retirement savings) that I had been building since I was 22 years old. Now I also was a home owner. (Or a mortage owner to be more accurate.) So my philosophy for my stock market investments was always "never invest anything that you cannot afford to lose".
I consider those ten years (basically the 90's) the first part of my adult life. Things were very good then. They didn't continue that way.
Sure enough, in the next three months my $70K ran itself all the way up to $116K (which was the final run up) without me putting any additional money into it. Then the bubble burst and my $116K fell to about $45K in one week. So on paper I lost over $65K in one week. But, this was all profit anyway as all my inital investment was now into my house. This was a major "Bummer" to me, but didn't really bother me that much. I did understand the high risk/ high return type of investing that I was playing with.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, the rest of my life was soon to collapse as well. Which would kick off the second 'phase' of my adult life. That's the one that was MUCH more painful, crazy, fun, and interesting. We'll be getting to all of that very soon...
I also continue to build interesting experiences that I like to keep and to share. Free-association thought is also a hobby of mine where I like to just write whatever is on my mind. Basically, I do like to share my life and my views, which myself if nobody else. So I guess I'm just going to write whatever 'catches my fancy'. At least it will be a log to myself if nobody else.
Let me give a brief history of how my life started out. It'll be somewhat of a 'dryer' read, but will give you a background of what my life was like throughout my 20's. Then I can get more into the more 'interesting' stuff.
I'm in my upper 30's now and I have already lived a few 'different' types of lives in the past two decades or so. I started out as a ambitious and success-oriented person and for the first ten plus years of my adult life lived a pretty stable and career-focussed life. I have a university bachelor's degree, had a highly responsible job where I had to work very hard, but also was paid quite well. I was married to a attractive, wonderful, and intelligent person whom I met when I was 22 years old (Summer after I graduated university) and she was 23 years old. I wore a suit and tie (or business casual) to work, travelled whenever it suited my fancy (and when I had the time), put lots of money aside for 'expenses and leisure' and also saved plenty for my retirement savings. I liked to socialize, liked being active, also enjoyed reading and learning, and amoungst my other hobbies were body building and regularly playing the stock markets. That pretty much was my life throughout the 90's.
I am a Canadian citizen, growing up in Manitoba. After graduating university I took a job in the Toronto area. Five years later I accepted a different job (same career) in Columbus, Ohio. My girlfriend (who was living with me - she followed me from Manitoba to Toronto) once again moved with me to Columbus. Our first year there we legally married so she could legally live in the United States (with a spousal visa - I had a work visa). My career progressed quite nicely in Columbus. I negotiated over $22K in salary increases the first two years I was there. My wife eventually got a full-time job as well. She was in the social services industry so was paid less than half of what I made but our combined income was about $96K per year. Meanwhile our monthly expenses were only about $1,000 per month. We were both still in our upper 20's as well.
Being the 'investor' type of person that I am, I took a significant portion of our extra cash flow and started investing more heavily into one of my passions, the stock market. This was the late 90's, while the stock market was flying high based on all the Internet growth hype. I invested in more high risk/ high return stocks using a form of contrarian investing strategies. Buy low, sell high, repeat the process. In two years my stock market portfolio when from zero to over $100K (from investing $2K - $3K every couple of months, as well as selling for profit and reinvesting that money). All told the actual investment was about $35K. (Plus the taxes I had to pay on the capital gains.) At that point, with the type of stocks I had (mostly small to mid-sized telecom/ fibre-optic/ wireless companies, as well as some oil drillers) my portfolio value fluxuated up or down $4K - $7K per day, every day. But overall, I was making an average of 50% returns per year for two years.
In February of 2000, I took $40K out of that and used it as a downpayment on a $140K house. Nice 4-bedroom house in a nice neighbourhood. Me and the wife were planning to start a family. I was 30 years old at the time. So, my stock market portfolio was down to around $70K, but all the inital investment was now taken out of it. It was now all (on paper) profit.
The stock market was doing quite the 'run-up' and I knew that it couldn't last, but my philosophy was I didn't want $100K, I wanted a million dollars. Mind you I also said to myself if my portfolio gets up to $200K, then I'll sell and invest that into much 'safer' investments. But, once again, this was my 'play' money. I also had RRSP's (retirement savings) that I had been building since I was 22 years old. Now I also was a home owner. (Or a mortage owner to be more accurate.) So my philosophy for my stock market investments was always "never invest anything that you cannot afford to lose".
I consider those ten years (basically the 90's) the first part of my adult life. Things were very good then. They didn't continue that way.
Sure enough, in the next three months my $70K ran itself all the way up to $116K (which was the final run up) without me putting any additional money into it. Then the bubble burst and my $116K fell to about $45K in one week. So on paper I lost over $65K in one week. But, this was all profit anyway as all my inital investment was now into my house. This was a major "Bummer" to me, but didn't really bother me that much. I did understand the high risk/ high return type of investing that I was playing with.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, the rest of my life was soon to collapse as well. Which would kick off the second 'phase' of my adult life. That's the one that was MUCH more painful, crazy, fun, and interesting. We'll be getting to all of that very soon...
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