Nobody knows you...

...when you're down and out.

My ex-girlfriend used to make fun of me when I turned up the volume on this song, but self-pity is not one of my main vices. I've been around long enough, up high enough and down low enough, to have noticed the patterns in who turns up and who doesn't at the key tipping points in life.

I haven't written about her in a while, but tonight, for whatever set of reasons, she came back into my mind. Maybe because I proposed to her, but she rejected me.

I am going through my second divorce these days, and no matter how you cut it, the divorce process sucks, as a life experience.

You can't help thinking back to how you met that person, courted her, fell for her, imagined all kinds of beautiful futures with her, and then experienced the public ceremony (I may not be religious, but the words "I do" mean a lot to me) before your friends and family.

My parents were alive then, and they were very much there, in the front row of the non-secular church we chose for our marriage ceremony.

It was a hot August day in San Francisco, August 23rd, 1992. My first divorce had become final three months before. Those three months were the only time in my entire adult life, so far, that I was technically "single," though I was so much involved with my second wife-to-be that I was hardly a bachelor in the accepted sense, and I had no bachelor party.

In any event, the day we married was one of the happiest days of my life, as was the day, May 3rd, 1969, of my first marriage.

***

All of those memories have faded now. I try never to look backward, and re-experience the moments of hopeful happiness and deep love for another person that has led me to my present predicament -- father of six, partner of no one, alone, aging, with plenty of regrets but stubbornly (and probably idiotically) hopeful that there will once again be love in my future.

That brings me back to my ex-girlfriend, the person whose departure from my life precipitated this blog, with all its subsequent permutations. Shall I tell you why I fell in love with her? Does it really matter any more?

In recent weeks and months, she has chosen to separate herself completely from me. She never, ever contacts me anymore, and I suppose she never will. I realized this past weekend, as I drove past the building where her best friend lives, that if she had come back to San Francisco, I probably wouldn't even know, because she wouldn't tell me.

Her choice, for her own reasons, is to abandon me, to cut off all communication, even though she must know that is the one true way to drive a stake through my heart, and leave me bleeding, emotionally, on the ground.

A pattern in my life, as a good friend pointed out to me earlier tonight, is to be way too "nice" to other people. Maybe they fall for the illusion the world (not me) has created around a man who looks, talks, and presents himself as I do. Maybe they think I can handle these hurts.

Nobody -- nobody! -- knows you when you've been sliced into little thin pieces like a freshly quartered cucumber. Nobody has enough time or a big enough heart to help you piece yourself back together, because we all lead busy lives, complicated lives. And by my age, especially as a man, I should be able to handle this on my own, right?

Guess what: I can't do that without help.

p.s. Not to worry: After the rain, the sun will shine. There is plenty of sunshine in my world. And, once this divorce is final, I intend to find a partner who can love me, regardless of my worldly circumstances.
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