Personal

Because Kevin is not the “typical age” for prostate cancer, meaning he is not over 65, the wait and watch method is not an alternative. He has to treat it, even though it is in the early stages. To do otherwise is gambling with his life.

I have told you all before to have your PSA levels checked if you’re 50 or over.  After all that I heard today, I would revise that recommendation: start around 45, if you’re told you have any enlargement to your prostate, through the normal exam. (i.e.  the latex finger up the ass)

The anxiety I think let up some after hearing the doctor talk positively about treatment alternatives, with every indication that by the time he is done with treatment, he should be cancer free. They are going to do a bone scan, and a cystocopy to make sure there hasn’t been any spreading to other areas, although the doctor felt confident in saying what they will find should be nothing.

A close friend told me not long ago, that he thinks we have a bit of a backwards mentality towards the word cancer. That it is in some cases as simple as an overgrowth of irregular cells. And basically that is what Kevin has. I like to agree with my friend, because I positively hate that fucking word! I hate how many lives it touches, and how many lives it ends. The treatment at times almost as scary and toxic as the disease itself.

In the beginning of his diagnosis, he was, and to an extent still is, concerned about who knows. But after what we heard today, who knows seems to have very little relevance in dealing with this. So, I ask for those of you who read here to pray for a successful outcome. And that the sick feeling in the pit of our guts will dissipate. I want to be a strong support for him as he goes through his treatments, and my lack of confidence in my ability to be that for him also is in the back of my mind. I know I will do my best, but I can’t help but think of my basic jump-and-run mentality that provokes me to run from all things painful or scary.

It brings me back to my mother’s breast cancer, my girlfriend Cathy’s cervical cancer. I moved away by the time Cathy’s cancer had returned, and didn’t have to see or experience her struggle, or the family’s struggle over her disease. It’s not that I am not empathetic or had no compassion, it’s mainly because I’m a coward and completely fall apart when things seem out of control. I can’t deal with it, so I hide from it. And I didn’t return home for her funeral either. Part of me knows I should have, but I couldn’t.

When my mother had her double mastectomy, and I asked if she wanted me to be there...she said no, that my being there would be more of a drain as she would feel the need to “entertain” or make sure her house was clean. I asked several times, but I have to admit a slight sense of relief that she didn’t want me there. And, yes, a little hurt. (I’m pretty sure she was well aware of how much of an emotional mess I would have been. Which would have no doubt rendered me useless.) So instead I opted for sending flowers, which admittedly is what I do a lot when words and intestinal fortitude fail me.

So now it is my own husband about to go through the battle with cancer. I can’t make up for what I did or didn’t do in the past with others who I have loved dearly. But I can make a conscious effort to be more of what my husband needs while he goes through treatments that are going to be painful, uncomfortable and will cause a certain amount of his dignity to be compromised temporarily.

I pray for God to give me that strength and the wisdom to be what Kevin needs, during what I also pray will only be a small hurdle to overcome in our lives together.

What I did next may very well have been the pinnacle of my childishness. I read each and everything in that box. I kept a few pivotal letters that provided the proof that he was seeing Troll during his marriage. A good deal of them I ripped into pieces, and then I high tailed my ass over to her house, where I threw all of these pieces all over her yard while she was at work. Yes, it was a tantrum. I didn’t know what to do with my rage, and this was how it manifested itself. Kevin had denied ever seeing Troll during his marriage. There just was not an area in his life, he had not lied about, misrepresented his self, or played by his own rules while we dated.

I remember an episode where my friend from Palm Springs called on my cell. I was napping after a long week at work, and Kevin was there too. He brought my cell to me and I picked it up out of a dead sleep. My friend was in town, and wanted to get together for a drink. I made up some excuse seeing the total rage on Kevin’s face and hung up. He exploded slamming doors and screaming at me. I told him that I had no control over who calls. And if he remembered I was not the one who sought out the cell to answer it. It was him. He told me in no uncertain turns, that when you quit seeing someone, you cut them loose! There was no reason to hang on to the past! So basically I quit emailing my friend in Palm Springs, that in all honesty had evolved into nothing more then a friendship. The hypocrisy still amazes me to this day. To Kevin’s credit, he knows and realizes my Palm Springs friend is only a friend, and he backed off his hard core stance.

The ugliness of our marriage during those first months was complete. I did my best to run off the Troll, as did Kevin, once I gave him permission to. This woman had found a way to worm herself into every area of Kevin’s life. From freelancing where he worked, and befriending Kevin’s coworkers, to his family, to the ex-wife she was responsible for cuckolding. It was incredible to see the lengths this woman went to, albeit subtly. My hatred for her was consuming. My fear of her very real. I have to admit that in choosing to stay with Kevin, some of my betrayal and anger at him, was redirected in her direction. She only did what he allowed her to do. The very fact that she lives in this state is his doing as well. He allowed her to come here and live in his home for nine months while she searched for a job, and got on her feet. Which still the thought of can cause me to do Linda Blair/Exorcist head spins!!!

My final act before I decided to do my best to let go of his past, my anger and betrayal, was to send to Kevin’s X-wife the letters the troll had written to him during their marriage. He had conveniently kept them in the original post marked envelopes, and she had conveniently dated the ones that were not mailed. With a note explaining how her good friend who now emailed and talked to her occasionally on the phone was the one he was having an affair with during THEIR marriage. As she had long since been remarried, and moved on, luckily my evil gesture was irrelevant. All I can say, was I so wanted to hurt the Troll I would have stooped to anything to accomplish it. Even when I thought I had found what had eluded me for years, a marriage to a man I loved, who knew how to be intimate (or so I thought) a man who loved me completely, the ugliness in my own person reared it’s ugly head and struck with vengeance.

Putting aside all that had transpired has not been an easy task. My own actions give me more then a moment of regret. Why Kevin stayed also amazes me. I made his life a complete hell on earth for months and months. My rage knew no bounds. My heart felt as if it had been filleted like a fish being gutted.

The fourth and final part of this ugly tale from the early days archives will be where we have gone from there. And what I personally have learned about life, and not just the sins of my husbands, but my own transgressions as well. We lived a special kind of Hell, brought on by our own actions, and our own pasts. In all honesty, there was nothing that Kevin did in his past that I couldn’t have matched from my own past. It was not his sins that floored me, I had more than my share as well. It was the fact that I bared all mine, trusted him with my ugliness, and he didn’t seem to care enough to trust me with his. Yes this hurts on occasion when I dwell on it. Everything I had thought we based our lives together on, wasn’t real. Only in my own mind. I/We had hit rock bottom, and needed to come to a point of “Where do we go from here?”

So instead, I decided to go to the source. I called Troll up, since I found all of her information inside his email account. And before anyone bitches me out for snooping? Fuck off.(I mean that lovingly of course) I was out to save my relationship, and truly believed the only way to do that was to get at the truth. Any stone unturned could hold the key to the truth, and I had committed myself so completely to this man, I wasn’t going down without a fight. In my mind I believed he sold his right to privacy the first time he lied to me, betraying my trust. Especially since basically I had lived my whole life as lies in one form or another. And in him, thought I’d found my salvation.

This bitch in my mind was no match for me, as I know I had his love, if not his honesty. He had summed up this innocent friendship as not much more than he felt sorry for her. Which since I was not aware of just how many times he had screwed her over in that 16 years, not two that was casual, didn’t quite make sense to me. Troll dodged my calls for well over a week. I enlisted my girlfriends help, using their cell phones trying to get her to pick up, to no avail. The bitch would not pick up her phone. Kevin had just gotten on my cell phone account, and gotten a new phone, although his old one was still active, he just left it at my house. So in a last ditch effort, I used this one to call Troll, and of course she picked up this time.

At first, my anger and hatred were the root of the phone call, and she met it with her own. Mid sentence it struck me that if I wanted the truth, the only way to get at it, was to make her feel sorry for me. Or make her an “ally.” Knowing her reasons for doing so would be to end my relationship with Kevin. As the saying goes, Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. And one I have used off and on through life, usually for evil motives, was you get more flies with honey that you do with vinegar. Kevin came home mid conversation with the Troll, so I said I would like to talk with her some more, that I was confused about Kevin and his past. She ate it up hook line and sinker, and played her own agenda under the guise of giving me the truth.

The next day while I was at work, I sent her an email asking her to meet me for a drink, that I needed to talk, I was upset. She agreed to, and we met. Over a glass of wine, she gave me every rotten detail of this man’s past, including the awful things he had done to her several times over. The one sentence that stood out, after listening to her best effort to get me to call off our engagement, was “This man is dangerous Teri, he will hurt you and your children.” Now realize that “dangerous man” and “hurt you and your children” had far deeper meanings to me, due to my first husband. I was acquainted with a dangerous man, and this man was the most gentle and loving men I had ever met.

By now, I had lost around 10 pounds, not from a diet, but from being so sick to my stomach over Kevin’s lies, and this woman who would not go away. My wedding was only a week away, and I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. I had started having panic attacks to the point of not being able to breathe. All my cynicism about the male gender and their lack of any depth came front stage. (Yep, pretty much the last person who should be getting married in a week) I worked hard to trust this man, gave him my trust completely, let go of my cynicism that was there to protect myself emotionally for so many years. And in the end, I saw that I didn’t really know him at all. The betrayal in my heart was complete.

Throughout this whole process, Kevin would tell more lies to cover up the lies that would be uncovered, through the Troll, and the many boxes of his memorabilia I would go through. He always professed his love for me, although his honesty was something I knew he wasn’t giving me. Why I went ahead with the wedding, I’m not sure. But after meeting with Troll, I was more determined than ever to not let her break us up. One of the last emails I received from her, was one suggesting I make the ceremony a commitment ceremony, and not go through with the wedding. My only thought was “fuck you lady.” I knew without a doubt that even through everything he had put her through, she still wanted him back. During this time, she also had forwarded the original email of his announcing our engagement that had been forwarded by one of Kevin’s sisters to both her, and his ex-wife. So I now saw Kevin’s siblings (a select few actually) as my enemies as well. She had insinuated that this email was sent so that she could aid in breaking up Kevin’s engagement.

The day of our wedding, one of his brothers called him on four separate occasions, and I believed it was to hear that I had called off the wedding. As that was supposed to be Troll’s job, and I think she said she thought that was exactly what would happen. As I may have insinuated as much to her, when I quit emailing her before the wedding.

During our honeymoon on our cruise, my new husband told me he finally understood what it was I was saying, about sharing intimacy with anyone other than your spouse. That although they were not physically involved anymore, I still saw this as a betrayal. And now he understood this. My deep seeded hurt, anger and resentment at him for what he had put me through was still there, and as far as I was concerned, I was not done overturning the stones of his past. Not until I had it all out there.

A week after our honeymoon, began another 9 months of turmoil, brought on purely by my own actions.

I was having my own moments of self awareness through my therapy appointments as well. Dealing with my past, and all that I did that was not conducive to a good marriage. I’m not going to bother and try and justify my sins here. They are what they are, and I can’t change the past. Out of sixteen years of marriage to the kids’ father, I was faithful a whopping 5 out of them. We never put a marriage together, we were roommates and co-parents at best. Although the now X was a decent and God fearing man, who did not drink or beat me, and was a good provider, there just wasn’t anything there to “get close to.”

I’m sure some may wonder why I married him then. Well to be brutally honest, I had a small baby, had just come out of an abusive marriage, and was looking for a father for my son. The X was a Christian, and stable, and I believed through a lot of my Christian background, that love is a choice, we could chose who we decide to love, and I was going to chose him. At 28 years of age, the X was a virgin and intended to stay that way until his wedding night. So a lot of what I felt was missing in our relationship, I assumed would be there after our wedding night. Which transpired almost exactly 6 months from the day we met. (Not something I recommend btw)

During the next 16 years of marriage I would have four affairs that lasted years each. They were decent men who I felt connected to in ways I never managed to feel with my husband. Two of those men were married with children. I wasn’t out to break up their marriages, and both of them knew that. I was just looking for some intimacy that was so greatly lacking in my own marriage, and made the loneliness of being married to him more bearable. Fucked up justifications? No doubt.

My conscious throughout the years would almost drive me insane. I drank so heavily that I would have black-outs. During one affair, I went through a cocaine phase that lasted approximately two years. I didn’t like who I had become but believed I wasn’t capable of changing it. The five years of faithfulness was sparked by a spiritual experience that helped me give up cocaine and have my two beautiful children. I believed God could fill the needs that my husband was incapable of meeting, and I just needed to pray more and let Him fill those needs. I did affirmations, where if I said I loved this man enough, it would make it so.

By baby number three, the husband’s distance and indifference became blatant. He believed now that he had strapped me with three kids, there would be no way I would ever leave him. I remember warning him, that I would get counseling and become stronger, and one day I would leave. I met my fourth lover two years after Riley was born. It would see me hopping flights to Palm Springs every few months, to go on what even my husband had dubbed Teri’s Retreats. Yes he was aware of the affairs, and chose to look the other way, to keep his world in tact.

When we moved to Arizona, it was with the understanding that divorce was eminent. He slept in the livingroom, and let me have the master bedroom. I was in counseling twice a week. I just could not continue to live with my own behavior. I hated myself for my life style, and saw my actions as self destructive. The only relationships I knew over 16 years were the fantasies called “affairs.” Which we all know, or should know, is not a real relationship. With being 38, coming up on 40, I knew in my heart I wanted to experience a whole relationship. To be married to a man I loved, who loved me, and who was my best friend. What I saw in mom and dad. I was jealous of my own parents and the relationship they had. I was sick of living lies, and feeling like shit.

After living this way for so many years, I wasn’t sure I even knew how to have a “real relationship.” Then I met Kevin. When we started getting serious, and when I heard him talk of openness and honesty, trust and loyalty, I decided to give it my best shot. If I wanted even a decent relationship with a boyfriend, I needed to be honest and get up front about my past. And learn how to love someone. I spilled my guts about who I really was, what I had done, and he accepted me completely. He shared his past with me, although not half as bad as mine, or so I thought, from what he shared.

As Kevin’s history is not mine, I won’t be going in to deeper detail than to say, he lived by his own rules in his personal life. Honesty and openness were not part of his life where women were concerned. Although he was a strong romantic who enjoyed the chase and the challenge, this never lasted too long before another woman would catch his eye, and off in her direction he went. If I inserted the details here, let’s just say, he left a path of broken hearts and destruction in his wake as well. One of those hearts was Troll.

In actuality, Troll was part of his life off and on for 16 years, although these details he left out. The last time that he dumped her was when he moved to Arizona, as he was having an affair with another woman many many years younger than him. In the end he had asked this other woman to marry him, caught up in the romance, and what we now define as his mid life crisis. Although this woman was described to me as a brief romance, also casual in nature.

Do you see the theme here? I spilled my guts, in all of it’s ugly details, and had believed he did the same. By the time he asked me to marry him on May 11th 2002 in a bar called Kona Grill, my enlightenment was on it’s way. As was the end of my unrealistic perceptions.