The cats are hovering. Concerned by your presence, zipping, strapping, locking, and popping at all hours of the night. I can feel the existential loneliness again. Creeping back in. Muddying up my happiness with dredged memories and loss.
My first wife had filed for divorce while I was on a business trip with my company. I was served at my first day back in the office. I drove immediately to the condo, grabbed both cats and a guitar. She would keep me locked out of my own house, with an unnecessary restraining order, a gift of her father, the divorce attorney. She attacked preemptively, even though we discussed something cooperative. I had asked for a divorce before. This time she ran the show. She had moved money, secured bank accounts, and purchased ten thousand dollars of “good faith” jewelry.
In a massive geographic, I left my executive role and joined a startup in Boston. It wasn’t a startup really, but a UK company that was trying to make inroads in the US. I was going to be the “interactive” arm of media|forum. They put me up in a house they had rented during a recent development push for Texas Instruments. That team was gone. I had the empty house to myself. An odd experience.
Over the course of a few months, I moved into all of the upstairs bedrooms to find the one I liked the most. On a night of infinite sadness, I was awake at four am. Outside my bedroom the orange-tinted halogen streetlights illuminated an incoming snow storm.
Snow!
A source of fun and joy in my past. The house was always cold. I shivered looking out at the horrific beauty. I could not have been further from my faith at that moment. I was holding on. The job was terrible. I had no company. Even the one guy in the office besides the boss became estranged. I was an island in the storm.
At that moment of crisis, the opening storm of a New England winter called in a massively dysfunctional stretch of anxiety mixed with depression. I called a psychiatrist I’d seen once. He represcribed Prozac. I took the pill each morning with hope but little optimism.
“We can get a week or so on board before you head home for Thanksgiving. We can see each other when you’re back,” said the generic doctor.
Peter, my Machiavelli, tried to include me in an afternoon of tennis and dinner a few days before I went home for the holiday. He started introducing me to some idea about his “guru” and the “association” he and half the company seemed to be into. I’m not sure if it was a cult, well, that’s not true. It was a cult. One of the primary data scientists wrote the takedown book on his experience trying to extricate himself.
“You can fly on Thanksgiving,” Peter said. “The airport will be much easier.”
In some ways, he was trying to be helpful. I was clearly suffering some sort of emotional breakdown, and he expressed his willingness to be part of my support team. And he didn’t care about much beyond the work we were doing for a video teleconferencing company.
Alone in Welsley, the night before I flew back to Austin, the biggest storm of the season in 1994 shut down all flights. I was standing by the window watching the end times. I could not stay. This was not going to work out for me.
There was no god that night to call out for. I was on my own. Peter couldn’t help. My mom couldn’t help from Austin. I couldn’t even tell my family how dark things had gotten. I went dark. It was Wednesday morning. I learned hours later that I would not be making it home until Thursday or Friday. The office was closed. I bundled up and walked into town for an Egg McMuffin and a coke. Comfort food.
I spent the day on a weak wifi signal playing a strategy game about space travel. When you discovered a planet in the game, you were told several details: how much metal could be mined, was the planet ripe for terraforming, or was it a junk planet. Space was full of junk planets. The game, Spaceward Ho! had great sound effects based on a western theme. When you aimed a spaceship toward a new destination, the game would shout, “Ye haw!” When you landed on a good planet the game would say, “Oh, Yeah!” And “Yuck!” when it was worthless.
Spaceward Ho! kept me alive that holiday season. I did finally make it home late on Thursday night. Home and family brought no comfort. Texas was hot and muggy. I had come in from the surface of the moon to the barren and burning desert and a forgettable birthday. My first as a divorced man. Boy, really.
