Daily Spiritual Divorce.

Timothy Golden descended the spiral staircase of Alicia’s parents’ house, bathing in the light of sunrise and blissfully hand in hand with his new lover. Her cheeks flushed rosy red, just a shade darker than the crown of tangled knots atop her head. Timothy felt a little jab of pride in his chest knowing he marked his territory. Alicia was marked head to toe in evidences of his lovemaking. In that moment, love was unquestionably the most appropriate label for the last several hours he had just spent on the playground of her body. Their bodies traveled to peaks of undiscovered pleasure. In some instances it seemed that if there were a heaven, together they had at least made it to the foyer.

As his mind and body slowly retreated back to earth, Timothy exited the foyer of Alicia’s suburban mansion on Walton Road. His Ibanez acoustic in one hand and her delicate fingers wrapped around the other, he bid goodbye to her. Not even a moment of doubt that he’d have her legs entwined with his soon once again.

That was nearly 15 years ago. I have not seen even a glimpse of Timothy’s deep brown eyes since that clear summer sunrise.

My name is Alicia Parkinson and I was once an incredibly skilled and efficient heartbreaker. I could do the job of falling in love and ripping your heart out in the amount of time it takes to thaw a couple pounds of chicken. I have conquered the dangerous and dreary lands of many a man’s heart and soul. I exacted revenge upon the torment and awkwardness of my early years by eating the hearts of innocent young (and old) men (girls too).

In all of these great conquests my conscience did indeed weigh heavily in my gut. To treat the bag of pain I dragged around from the center of my being, I found in the process my mother’s prescription of 80mg oxycontins helped a great deal. My agony I smeared with opiates until it was just a blurry nothingness in the pits of my stomach and my heart. I painted layers upon layers on top of this great mess I was constructing and from far away it began to look like it had always been there.

Of course when you grow up and remain in the same schools and the same cities (child of divorce=2 hometowns) all of your life, you tend to run into people that knew you before you were a drug addicted succubus, and well, that’s always a downer. The worst thing is running into and quickly past some guy you’ve known since you were a baby and loved with all your heart but can’t stand to see the disappointment in his eyes and you’re late for the train anyway and as you make a hard left around the thrift shop on the corner you can see him shake his head in dismay from the distance.

Anyway I pretty much always kept a quick pace. That’s what you’ve got to do when you’re always avoiding the tip of someone’s blade in your back. The years flipped by like chunks of pages in some shitty book I had little interest in reading. But then came the frightful day I found myself devastatingly alone in a detox facility a thousand miles away from home. Stripped of all worldly possessions, not a clue where exactly fort Lauderdale was in relation to anything. Teams of medical professionals entered and exited through a revolving door working quickly to peel back the ten thousand layers of sticky paint I had tacked on to the ever expanding pain tumor glowing inside my belly. Their hands cold and quick worked hard while I was still dumbfounded enough to willingly expose my middle to strangers.

Months passed while I spun like a top beneath the unrelenting heat of the sun in southern Florida. I found small doses and crumbs of broken men and their morbid fantasies to fill the holes left in my body where the drugs usually went until my illness became so obvious that I came to on my knees in front of the halfway house I had been locked out of after a roommate spotted me on the city bus drunk and in the arms of another strange man who’s name I’ll probably (hopefully) never remember.

So once again God and his children cast enough mercy and grace upon my sickened soul to put a roof over my head. More teams of doctors clamored around me. More cold gloved hands moved before me working to expel the scar tissue and demons.

Time passed. My mind began consuming itself without the drugs and the men (samedifference).

Hands in my pocket I stood alone in the bustling crowd outside of the 101 club where a popular Sunday morning AA meeting was held when suddenly my empty gaze was met with the eyes of a man carrying what looked like the same heavy ball of agony and uncomfortability. The recognition of his returning gaze staggered my already trembling heart.

Six (or seven) years later I am sitting here on his Auntie’s laundry porch at 3am typing this unnecessary entry entitled daily spiritual divorce.

In the years that have passed since that day I fell irrevocably in love with him a little (or a lot) more every day. I found in him a home that unbeknownst to me I had always been seeking. I have bared 3 of his gorgeous children and fell even more madly in love with them.

With all this talk of home and family but above all love, where does divorce have it’s place? I too am troubled by this question, but whether I like it or not, his heart bids more goodbye each day. Slowly and steadily his soul retreats from mine. Every day I watch him take careful steps out of the tangles of my love. What’s worse is how unfettered he is by all of it. While I seethed with pain and passion and desperation at the idea of walking away from him, he claws for the emergency exit.

In all of my early years of lovemaking and heart breaking, I never considered the devastating repercussions of causing so much pain. But dear karma, dear Timothy, I feel it now. And not even this inspired little excerpt can hold up the right combination of words to describe it. All I can do now is help him pull the thread and get this over with. So I take heated steps past him in this hole where he spent half of his childhood, and I cast out blame and indifference. I paste more old and sticky paint (which is more like plaster) atop my new and improved ball of pain. I await my chariot to escort me away from his arms reach,  and I promise myself to replace the lid on this stale can of paint and do whatever it takes to fall in love with myself once and for all.

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