There are very few people who know many of the details of my relationship with my first wife Mara.  Her own family remains, I believe, happily oblivious to the extent of Mara's health problems, both physical and mental.  As for my family...for reasons that are not entirely obvious to me, I never chose to confide in them very deeply; or to anyone, for that matter.  I felt it was something I had taken on as a personal burden, a responsibility which I alone was supposed to deal with.  Besides, there wasn't much anybody could have done to help me, aside from offering moral support.  Most of the things Mara and I went through we went through together, without outside interference (except for doctors and psychiatrists, when necessary).  On those rare occasions when she attempted to derive some support from her own family, it inevitably resulted in her being disappointed at what they were willing to offer.  And when I would reveal some details to my friends or family, I suspect they felt I was dramatizing the situation for humorous effect...or else they simply had to step away and pretend it wasn't happening, like when someone you know is dying of a terminal illness, and you stop calling rather than deal with it.  Or, perhaps more accurately, when you try to convince yourself that shape crossing the road wasn't a flying saucer or a ghost or a fairy or a goblin.

I've told many of the more dramatic stories since then, and they seem easier to believe simply because when told one at a time, they can be dealt with on an individual basis.  When you try to sit down and look at the collective summary, however, the situation begins to be harder to get your arms (or your brain) around.  While I was in prison, I sent three or four chapters of what I called "The Mara Project" to Heather, where I attempted to tell the entire story from when we met to the bitter end.  I probably finished close to a hundred handwritten pages - first in the form of a narrative stage play with myself telling the history complete with my personal commentary, and later simply as a written record of events.  Yet when I got to that point and stopped, I hadn't even reached our actual wedding in the chronology of events.  Maybe that's why I stopped there: because it was spiraling out of control.  Or maybe I needed to focus on other things.  Or maybe I just decided it wasn't very interesting; probably a combination of all three.

More than those reasons, I think I stopped because the entire relationship is the source of such deep guilt for me.  I have been working on that, and making progress...I'm able to see that just because something ends in disaster and failure doesn't nullify the positive aspects.  I'm also constantly reminded that I am who I am now because of those experiences I've been through, and while I choose to beat myself up for not turning the nightmare into a fairy tale, others are more likely to look at it and find things within the stories that point to a more redeeming picture of myself and my commitment to happiness.  Put bluntly, by a few people, I'm told most of the problems in my later life, including my self-sabotage and eventual imprisonment, were attempts on my part to punish myself for perceived wrongdoings and failures.  Or, in other words, if I couldn't save her, I don't deserve to be saved myself. 

Fortunately, I no longer believe that.  And divulging some of the details of the problems and the struggles and the surreal nightmares has helped me to slowly let go of portions of that guilt.  Not to mention, time does have a slight healing quality to it...life keeps me too busy to constantly remind myself what a screw-up I am.

When I started the Residential Drug and Alcohol Program in prison, one of the things everyone had to do was step in front of the "community" (every inmate enrolled in the program at that time, around 150 men, plus five or six staff members) and make a commitment statement.  In essence, you were supposed to get up and there say "I knew I needed help when...", following that with the moment you knew your life was out of control, or the moment you reached rock bottom.  Not surprisingly, most inmates went up to the front of the group and bullshitted their way through.  The most common statement was something like "I knew I needed help when I had to say goodbye to my children before I was sent to prison."  Maybe for some it was the truth, but it was also a safe and inconspicuous way to get through the exercise without revealing anything truly personal.

As usual, I decided to be different, and I searched my mind for the lowest moment I could find.  Not necessarily the one where I left lowest personally, but the one which to an outsider would illustrate the pathetic state of my life...the moment when the periods of happiness or peacefulness had been overwhelmed by the bad times. 

What I came up with was a specific evening when Mara and I lived in Dallas.  I believe this was early 1996; for some reason in my mind I always see this evening as when we lived in Rahway, New Jersey, but in truth I believe it was later, after we had moved to Texas.  Mara's Crohn's disease was still a problem, although she had experienced short periods of improvement.  Her mental state, meanwhile, had begun to fray considerably.  When we'd moved to Dallas she had hoped a new group of doctors and psychiatrists would be able to get her problems under control, but as usual she'd expected too much and was very unhappy with the way things were going.  She complained of missing her family in one moment, and the next hoping she would never speak to or see them again.  And Mara's weight continued to be a major problem.  When we went out of the house we had to bring her wheelchair, because between her back and her weight she could not comfortably walk more than ten feet on a good day.  In effect, she was tired of living, and tired of hoping for the relief that never came.  Every step forward was somehow followed by two steps back.  Aside from work, I spent every moment, waking or sleeping, by Mara's side.  But nothing I did could ease her misery.

One of my brothers had owned a Bowie knife years earlier, and sometime when I was a teenager he had given it to me.  I never had any use for it, but we kept it in a bedside drawer as a form of protection.   We didn't have any guns; not even I was crazy enough to keep guns around Mara.  There was no telling who she might use them on, including herself.

This particular evening we were lying in bed, watching television.  As a general rule at this stage, I would fall asleep hours before Mara would.  She'd stay up until 2am or later watching television, unable to sleep, and instead would sleep until 10am or later in the morning, waking up only for a moment beforehand to take the handful of pills I'd give her before leaving for work.  I would call her when I got there, to let her know I'd arrived safely, as she liked me to do.  Often she wouldn't remember me doing that, and an hour later would call in a panic wondering if I'd been killed in an accident.

Mara had been strangely quiet all evening, neither laughing at the TV nor complaining of any discomfort.  I rolled over, gave her a kiss goodnight, and started to settle in.  At that point, Mara reached back and opened her bedside drawer, pulling out the Bowie knife and showing it to me.

"Tonight, when you are sleeping," she said with a serious but dull tone, "I am going to stab you to death."

"Okay," I replied calmly.  "And why would you want to do that?  Did I do something wrong?"

"No, but I'm tired of living.  And if I kill you, I won't have a reason to live anymore.  So then I will be free to kill myself.  So that's what I am going to do.  I'm sorry, but I just can't take it anymore."

I could actually see the warped logic of what she was telling me.  But I didn't know what to do, or what to say.  Life had been dragging us both down, and for a long time I'd had no hope of things getting any better.  At any rate, I was tired too, both literally and figuratively.  And I felt completely helpless in my life.

I didn't turn around.  I didn't want to look at her.  I just put my head down on the pillow, said "I love you," and closed my eyes.  In less than ten minutes I was asleep.

The next morning my alarm went off around 5am, as usual.  Mara was still awake, sitting up, holding the knife.  Her eyes were bloodshot and red, and I could see she had been crying on and off.

"I couldn't do it," she said quietly.  "You looked so peaceful and innocent, I couldn't kill you."  I gathered her morning pills, which she swallowed with some water before rolling on her side to pet one of the cats and put on her CPAP mask, which she had to wear when sleeping to treat her sleep apnea.  As I walked to the bathroom to take a shower and get ready for work, she looked up at me. 

"I hate you, you bastard.  Why can't you just let me die?"

And she put her mask on, turned on the machine, and went to sleep.

Years later, when I stood in front of those 150 inmates, I knew perfectly well what I needed to say.  To the confused glances of the room full of faces, I walked to the microphone and announced: "I knew I needed help when my wife told me she was going to stab me to death in my sleep, but I had grown to miserable and tired of living that instead of doing anything about it, I just rolled over and closed my eyes."

I don't think anybody understood what the hell I was talking about, but if nothing else, it got a reaction.