Theater of the Soul

Lisa complained in the comments of the previous post that she never gets to see any good neighborhood drama where she lives. Well, sit back and let me tell you a story about THE most excitement I’ve ever had.

My foster dad once owned a 9-unit apartment building in the center of the town we lived in. My girlfriend, JM, used to rent one of the apartments from him and I spent a lot of time there. One afternoon in the dead of winter, she called and invited me over after work to help her mourn the loss of her latest boyfriend. When I got into town and went through the one traffic light, I almost hit some fool running down the center yellow line. He ran in front of my car and straight up the steps to the police station. I slammed on the brakes and swore a blue streak as I turned up the road to the building. Next to the apartment building where JM lived was another apartment building with a small white cottage down in back. From JM’s windows, we had a good view of that cottage and the back parking lot. Anyways, I walked in and was greeted by JM, who poured me a glass of wine while I sat down at the kitchen table. Her little pomeranian came over and, when I bent down to scoop him up, the window behind me shattered into a million pieces.

We screamed in unison, neither of us sure what the hell had just happened. After a minute or two of discussion -and picking glass out of the back of my jeans-we came to the conclusion that the incredible cold and wind had made it shatter. It had to have been around -20 below and it seemed like a logical explanation. While we ran around looking for plastic bags to tape up over the window and swept up the glass, we heard a POP sound from outside. We looked around and still didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Suddenly, her apartment door busts open and her brother, who lived two floors below, came in yelling at us to get out of the building because there was some guy outside with a gun shooting at people. JM and I kind of looked at each other and started to laugh -thinking it was all a prank- until one of our town cops came running through the door and said the same thing. But HE had a gun, drawn and at the ready, so we were definitely more inclined to believe HIM. D, the cop, started to ask what had happened to the window but stopped and followed an invisible trajectory upwards from the cottage out back, through the window and finally, pointed out a hole in the ceiling. He declared it a bullet hole.

JM’s mouth was moving but she couldn’t say a word…just pointed at me. Her brother took her momentary speechlessness as a sign to press her dog, our jackets and car keys into our hands and pushed us out the door, down the stairs and outside to her truck.

By the time we got outside, the neighborhood was crawling with police and displaced tenants from all of the surrounding buildings. Since the truck was parked out in front of the building, we were still in danger of being shot, so an officer told us to move to one of the side streets on the other side of the road. An officer was posted on that street corner and we finally got the whole story of what was going on. Apparently, some distraught man was holding his wife and baby hostage. He had shot his teenage son when he escaped, grazing the boy in the arm as he ran down the street. That’s the kid I almost ran over before I got to the building.

Minutes ticked by. Then hours. At around 11pm, they called in a SWAT team from another part of the state, who had to arrive by helicopter. The copter landed in the center of town so the SWAT team had to hoof it from there. Ladies and gentleman, you have not lived until you’ve seen a large team of men armed to the teeth running up the streets of your sleepy little town in the middle of the night. It occured to me that some serious shit was about to happen and NOW might be a good time to get the hell outta Dodge, but JM and I couldn’t tear ourselves away.

With all that man and gun power out there, it didn’t take long for the man inside the house to realize that this could all end very badly for him, so he gave up. JM’s apartment was a crime scene until the next afternoon and I was quite relieved to hear that the bullet had entered near the top of the (very tall) window…it missed me by feet, not inches. Our guess is that the guy was aiming for the streetlight mounted on that side of the building.

That night was the first time in the history of our town that anyone had ever attempted anything so serious, but within the next 6 months of that incident, the SWAT team was called in twice more for standoffs of the same nature. The year after all that happened, we had our first honest-to-goodness murder.

Small towns don’t get a lot of drama…but when they do…LOOK OUT.

I probably shouldn’t be so blasé about it, but G has been sent away to nurse his wounded ego and find someone with a little less baggage than moi.

He just couldn’t adjust to the situation and, to be quite honest, he was making a bigger deal out of it than he needed to. I enjoy a little competition every now and then but this was truly a disaster in the making I think. While TheEx isn’t a part of MY every day life, he is and always will be a part of the kids’ every day lives…and that’s not something that’s going to change. Ever.

The thing with G was that it was ‘comfortable’. He lives quite a few hours from me and that didn’t bother me in the least…which should have been my first clue that this wasn’t a match made in heaven. I’m not a needy girlfriend to begin with. If you’re the man in my life and you’re around, great. If not…well, don’t expect me to pine away for you because I’m just not wired that way. I’ll miss you, surely…but it’s not going to debilitate me. God knows I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied.

My girlfriend, H, is the complete opposite of me. She literally grieves when her hubby is gone and hates being alone. I love her to death but that shit would drive me bonkers. She makes her hubby CALL HOME on his breaks at work every damn day. It works for THEM but damn…if I were in her shoes, it’d be a relief to have 8 hours of peace and quiet. Another girlfriend bounces from one relationship right into the next because she totally fears being alone.

And it’s not just limited to women either. I’ve got several male friends that are so scared shitless to be alone that they stay in relationships that were doomed from the get-go. I’ve nicknamed my sofa the Lonely Heart Sofa because they all make the rounds through here when things finally blow up.

I just don’t get it. I myself have two very different trains of thought regarding relationships. First, good relationships are deserving of a hell of a lot of work from BOTH participants. Second, life is too damn short to be stuck in a BAD relationship. So how does one tell the difference?

Damned if I know.

I guess it comes from knowing yourself and what you’re willing to put up with. I didn’t realize I was incapable of forgiving infidelity until it was rearing it’s ugly head and biting me in the ass with TheEx. I honestly tried to forgive it, but knew myself well enough to know that my limit had been breached. We had been together since high school and had done the Break-Up Dance more times than I care to remember while we were still trying to figure our own selves out. Marriage was good for both of us because it taught us how important respect and taking responsibility were in a relationship. We wouldn’t be able to provide the united front that we do with the kids if it wasn’t for those lessons learned.

My gut told me that the relationship with G was headed nowhere. I finally realized it on Tuesday night when my caller ID told me he was calling and I just really did NOT want to talk to him that it was time to end it. I don’t lay the blame on him or on myself for that matter…which is a refreshing change.

I’m a mother and already have enough guilt, thank you very much.

Somewhere out there, there is a girl named Emily. And boy is she PISSED.

UPDATE 5:24pm: I smell bullshit but can’t quite put my finger on it. The archives sound like they were written by a teenager.

UPDATE 6:22pm: I have such a wonderful bullshit detector. Still…should be interesting to see what happens.