I Destroyed My First Marriage and the Husband Who Came With It

He's better off without me

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

11/30/93

I am sitting here at work, I swear to God, having a nervous breakdown.

I am cracking like I’ve never cracked before. I can’t even ask to go home. I feel so alone right now. I feel so awful. I’ve never felt like this before. I would love to curl up in a ball and stay there. It’s becoming harder and harder to do this by the day. You have no idea what this hell is like—what this does to you. I will never go through this again, put anyone through this.

I don’t wish it on anyone ever. Especially you.

I am finding it extremely difficult to remain strong.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. Everyone keeps asking. Pressure from everywhere. Everyone. Nobody will leave me alone. I want to go away so bad. This damn play binding me. Who would’ve thought?

The guilt is burning inside of me. It hurts so bad. I can’t stand watching him beg.

Flowers on the table last night. A card begging for another chance. He had fallen asleep with our photo album in his arms. Every time I see him he begs for a chance to save the marriage. He is so hurt. I’ve never hurt anyone like this before. It’s killing me. I feel shallow and burning inside. What can I do? I don’t think I can do this.

I’m sorry. This is just so much worse than I ever thought.

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I was twenty-three years old, immature, and desperate to break free from a marriage I had no right to be part of.

I’ve had dreams of my young groom. Recurring dreams throughout my life; the universe’s way of ensuring the guilt continues to gnaw away at me lest I forget.

It’s easy to blame the follies of youth. Inexperience. Maybe even unhappiness. But I’ve never forgotten. And I know I was selfish. And cruel.

Thirty-plus years later it remains a cancer.

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I remember the days of young love.

He was unlike my typical prey. He was sweet. Kind. Nice.  Yes— nice would be the word to describe him. He was much more conservative than I was, but we got along well. I recall fondly those early days of humid intimacy in an upper bunk while blaring Def Leppard and Van Halen’s new albums.

It was the summer of 1988. Hot, sticky, and passionate. I loved how he’d tenderly brush my hair post-sex.

It was like living a new adult life. It felt carefree—or at least, I thought it did.

I was eighteen years old when he proposed to me by Schroon Lake. It was autumn in the Adirondacks and the colored leaves blanketed everything as we stood on the dock. He beamed with joy as he placed the delicate ring on my finger.

I found someone who loved me completely and would never leave me.

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Later in the year, I received a letter from my childhood sweetheart out of the blue. Jason had moved to California and later broke my heart. Hearing from him shook me to my core, and planted a dark seed deep within me. It grew ever so slowly within, but it poisoned my heart.

Jason, see, was a fantasy.

He was the embodiment of what I dreamt about. Living a life as an actor in Los Angeles — my feet in the ocean, palm trees and golden sunlight, sweet freedom, and laughter. No man could ever compare to my twin flame love, no matter how hurt I had been by him. And now…now he had crept back into my life. With just a yearly letter at first. But that’s all it took.

And when time passed between letters, I could breathe again.

It was my new life. And it was happy. Visions of playing tennis on warm spring days, gin and tonics by the lake, frolicking in the woods, relaxing on the boat, and hot summer nights in the city.

Whispers on her wedding day — “he’s asking about you…he still loves you”—a young bride crying in the bathroom, drinking alone at the wedding party table, caught in time in an elegant photo. Drowning out the what-ifs and chugging them away. Far away. Deep, deep down. Away.

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Jason began writing me regular letters not long into my marriage. They were innocent enough. But I still felt the need to hide their existence. Upon their growing romantic nature, they began to fill a secret PO box close to my work.

And with the growing intensity of my feelings, my desire to be married lessened. I started seeing him as controlling. And nothing like me. Too conservative. I needed to be free. I needed to be me. I needed to write. I needed to be an actress. I needed everything to be about me. I was depressed and I was hungry for attention. I was wild and I was belligerent. Undiagnosed. Stupid.

I look back and see that my young first husband gave me everything. I joined the theatre. I came in late reeking of beer and pot. He selflessly gave me space and time to trollop around wildly as long as I came home to him.

It was one of the worst things I’ve ever written:

The guilt is burning inside of me. It hurts so bad. I can’t stand watching him beg.

Flowers on the table last night. A card begging for another chance. He had fallen asleep with our photo album in his arms. Every time I see him he begs for a chance to save the marriage. He is so hurt. I’ve never hurt anyone like this before. It’s killing me. I feel shallow and burning inside. What can I do? I don’t think I can do this.

I had just reached drinking age and the poison growing inside of me was casting out hurt like peanuts at a circus.

What happened to the young girl with a flushed face and happily closed eyes as the young man tenderly brushed her hair? The one who raced two hours every week to play house in the old apartment next to the movie theatre? The young Marilyn who would light up every time he took her into Manhattan? Where was she? Buried by the creeping poison inside her.

---

I left him just before Thanksgiving. I left him hanging to explain to his family why I would not be there.

With a beret and a pack of Virginia Slims, I jumped in my car and drove home. I smoked and sang and popped into my Mom’s house — “surprise!”

I don’t think anyone knew what to say. I don’t think anyone knew what I was doing. They didn’t recognize the manic symptoms. The poison ivy.

I slept on my friend’s sofa for a few weeks until my coup de grace.

I ran away in the middle of the night with the director of my play. We left on Christmas Eve and headed to Chicago, where I stayed for about six weeks.

In that time, the poison within finally got me.

I had decided to move to Los Angeles to be with Jason. But first, I had to go back to New York, finalize the divorce, and get my stuff. My groom tried one more time to save our trampled marriage. I was dragged on a six-hour ride to see the minister who married us for marriage counseling.

It didn’t work. And within the week, we filed our papers. It would only take a couple of months to receive the official divorce papers in the mail.

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I know he’s remarried and has a family.

But I think of him often. And of his family who treated me much better than I treated them.

Now that I’m older, wiser, on meds, and the poison inside of me has dried up and been swept away — I see just how horrible this experience must have been for him and what an awful young bride I was. And I am filled with regret. When the poison was at bay and not in the way, there was a lot of joy between that young man and woman.

Would I ever contact him now? No way. I would never want to be the poison that creeps into someone else. The way Jason’s poison crept into me.

The poison isn’t completely to blame. The undiagnosed bipolar disorder and major depression didn’t help. The depth of my uncontrolled despair and the wildness of my manic episodes back then had an equal hand. So did immature selfishness. With a touch of blind cruelty. My heart is heavy with shame.

But should that young groom ever read this, I want him to know that from the deepest part of my soul, I apologize. I am filled with regret and shame for what I did to you. For what I did to your family. For abandoning you.

Regret and shame. They live forever. Like a creeping poison.

I don’t wish it on anyone ever.