Chapter 7
Megan came back to therapy for a week, then begged off for "work" again the following two weeks, despite me reminding her that couples therapy required both parts of the couple to attend. She gave what felt like an insincere apology and practically slammed the door on her way out. Each time, I went alone and talked to Janice about how it all made me feel, which ran the gamut, honestly. Frustration, anger, disbelief, anxiety, fear, exasperation that Megan didn't show again, relief that she didn't so I was able to unload all this without her there.
The more I talked to Janice, just a stream of consciousness blabbering, the more I circled the same conclusion. All this pregnancy planning was a bad idea. Perhaps even deeper than that. Maybe this whole relationship was a bad idea. I fought free from my mother, a controlling woman who never listened to what I wanted, and then married a woman just like her. I was a walking cliché. I reached out to Hill as well. While Janice asked me questions that made me look introspectively, Hill was far more blunt.
"Why did you get married then, you idiot?" I kinda froze on the phone, unable to make any noise at all, let alone a defence for my actions. "Logan this isn't freshman year. You grew up in a lot of ways that are very commendable. But letting yourself get swept up into a marriage you weren't ready for, and now letting yourself get dragged down the road of fertility tests and bassinets, you're acting like the 18 year old dipshit all over again."
"I…" There was no end to that sentence that would explain my thought process simply because there wasn't any. I didn't think any of these things through. I let someone else do all the decision making for me because I couldn't stick up for myself. My anxiety about the wedding and the baby masqueraded as cold feet and not the real and important doubt I actually had. I assumed that since other people my age were doing all these things, that Megan was obviously ready for these things, that I should want them too and I let her and my mom steamroll me into choices I didn't really want because I was too scared to put my foot down and say no.
Hill let me stew for a moment then said, "Logan, this is the real world. There are going to be people in your life that think they know what's best for you. You have to be a grown up and decide if their advice is worth following. You also have to be strong enough to say no and do what is best for you. Yes, it can piss people off, but you are your own man, now. You have to speak up for yourself even if it hurts someone else's feelings. This whole predicament is because you didn't speak up in time and now it's even messier than it could have been." He took a deep breath and paused before finishing. "It might be ugly, but there's still time to stop this train before you find yourself with a child you don't want. No kid deserves that." He sighed again, piquing my curiosity about what exactly prompted that last comment, but decided it was not the time to ask.
Instead I took a deep breath and said, "I know what I need to do. But it's not going to be easy." Exasperated, Hill blurted out "well no shit, Sherlock."
I laughed for what felt like the first time in months. The laughter turned into a grimace as I googled what felt like the last thing in the world I had ever thought I would need- a good divorce attorney.
When I had notified Megan that I had taken a good long look at our marriage and had begun looking into a divorce lawyer, I expected something very different than what I got from her. I expected tears. Ranting. Screaming. Fighting. Instead, she looked a bit hurt and surprised, but after a moment she lifted her head a bit, clenched her jaw and a look appeared in her eyes that I could only describe as "resolute." This should have set off a million alarm bells that something was not as it appeared but in the end I was happy it wasn't going to be the battle I had envisioned.
Megan actually fast-tracked the process. Within just a few weeks I was signing divorce papers. I had been staying at a hotel nearby, not really enjoying the noisy ice machine just around the corner or the smell of the carpet shampoo or scratchy sheets, but I wanted to give Megan her space in the apartment. The day after I signed the dissolution of my marriage, she texted that she was staying with friends out of town, she had taken everything of hers out of the apartments and that she wanted good things for me. It was all very orderly, very quiet, and surprisingly kind. If I had known what the next curveball life would lob at me, I wouldn't have taken the short period of peace for granted.
Logan, wtf man! Did you know this whole time? Is that why you divorced her? The text message from one of my frat buddies greeted me first thing in the morning about two weeks later. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about so I just replied with a question mark. James and Megan being pregnant, dude? You didn't know she stepped out on you?
You know when you receive a shock to the system and time seems to move both really fast and not at all at the same time? That was my whole morning. I kept getting a bunch of messages from mutual friends about them. Did I know they were a thing before we got together? Did I know about the affair? Did I divorce her because she was pregnant with another guy's baby- a guy I was friends with?
The resounding no I wanted to scream out didn't seem like enough. But I decided to reach some level of calm before diving into this.
As it turned out, the calm I sought didn't come quickly or easily. I was basically living in the world but not participating in it for days. I went to work. I ate food. I showered. But I interacted with few and mostly zoned out, completely dissociated from reality. I'm not proud to say I spent quite a few evenings inside a bottle of Jim Beam. It was not a good way to cope but the only way I could face my feelings was after a few fingers of bourbon. Then the dam broke and I would feel emotion in waves- first anger, disbelief, deep sorrow, acute embarrassment, and then the cycle would turn over and go back to anger. If I were to be honest I don't know if I was more angry at her, at James, or at myself.
When I could bear to ask, I found out the details from the friends who had been privy to the whole story from James himself. Apparently, James and Megan had dated freshman year of college but had broken up the summer before sophomore year. The reason why seemed unclear to everyone. When I started dating her, everyone had assumed I had met her through James, which I hadn't. We had been in the same communications class. Then when things got serious between Megan and I, James and her had agreed to keep me in the dark since the window of casually mentioning their relationship had closed. It just seemed easier to them both to just forget about it.
Right before the wedding, when she was at her most stressed, she had reached out to James to chat "like an old friend," in James's words and they felt the spark again. The night of her bachelorette party, they had hooked up in secret. James had told me he had to work which is why he couldn't make it to my bachelor party and the wedding, both. I guess watching Megan marry me was too much for him. (Poor little baby, I thought without charity.) Then they continued to talk, all throughout our entire marriage. When we had gone to New York and stayed with James, they had slept together. All the therapy, the fights, the problems, each day she was talking to James about it. She was even drawing up divorce papers as I was. The look on her face wasn't pain that I was asking for a divorce. It was surprise at me beating her to it.
When she left the apartment we shared, she went straight to James. They were getting married next month- an elopement. I had no idea, the entire time. I felt stupid. I felt humiliated. It was a good while after that for me to trust anyone again. Life became less lived and more survived, for over a year. I look back at that time as dark and lonely, like an entire year of January. It was grey, it was quiet, it was cold and empty. I dove into work forfeiting a personal life, friendships, and my family. Several months in I started going back to therapy, which helped more everyday, but it was definitely a huge battle to get back to wanting to be around friends and family again. My world was small for months: go to work, go home, eat, shower, listen to music and scroll the internet. It wasn't living but it was my life