Those of you who have been reading Eternal Sunshine for a while, or who first encountered me through my old zine Maniac’s Paradise, will probably remember that Heather is my second wife.  My first wife and I divorced in 2002, although we’d split up as a couple a few years before that.  Mara had been my High School sweetheart, my first (and only) love up to that point…and someone who saw her mental and physical state deteriorate year after year from the day I met her.  It has always seemed to me that Mara simply did not get a fair chance at life.  She suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of one of her grandparents, enjoyed little of the kind of support she longed for from her parents, and watched as her dreams passed her by to be replaced by lower and lower expectations.  Eventually her goals would be just to be able to go out to dinner without getting sick, or on a really good day go out to dinner.  When I met her Mara seemed like such a vibrant, strong, driven person who had incredible talent and promise.  When we split up she’d attempted suicide, weighed over 400 pounds, could only comfortable get around in a wheelchair, had been on SSI for years, took about 12 different medications a day (not including those she took on an as-needed basis), and would drift from reality to fantasy without warning.  Her bipolar disorder at its worst would have her up all night and asleep all day, weeks at a time.  And despite what her family might have thought, I had to handle this all on my own; they made every attempt to minimize her conditions, and interaction with them inevitably led to crying fits or throwing things like a child.

I’ve already written in Eternal Sunshine about her suicide attempt in 1998, and how at that point I was finally pushed over the edge, no longer willing or able to carry on the marriage.  Yet even then I couldn’t fully break free, and Mara clung to the hope that after she’d spent 6 months in various hospitals and another 4 or 5 months in New Jersey – living with her sister – that she could come home and we’d be able to rebuild the relationship.  I knew it was impossible, but I couldn’t find the strength to tell her so…although I did my best to lower her expectations.  But, being me, I still let my least favorite memories haunt me like ghosts passing through my body. 

I still feel like a complete piece of shit when I think of the day she realized it wasn’t going to work, that we were finished.  This was perhaps four months after she had returned to Texas, or maybe six…my memory of those days is very hazy now.  We were in the kitchen, and she’d decided to make us something for dinner.  I still loved her then – fuck, I still do today – but the bond between us had been shattered irreparably.  I like to say that it was when she truly attempted suicide that she gave up on life, and I gave up on the marriage.  But I don’t think that’s honest…I had given up on it months, if not years before, and was simply going through the motions waiting to see how the movie would end.  That hurts for me to admit, but I now believe it to be true.  Anyway, we were sitting there eating dinner, not saying much…maybe talking about the cats.  The fact that we were eating in the kitchen, at the table, rather than in bed is memorable in itself.  That didn’t happen very often; only when Mara was feeling well enough.  But all of a sudden she burst into tears and, through the gasps of misery, said “This isn’t fair.  You never even gave me a chance to prove that I could be your wife again.”  All I could do is sit there and let my own tears run down my face.  I had nothing to say which could make her feel better, and nothing to do to make any difference.  After all, she was right; I’d left very little room for the marriage to be saved, if any.  And considering I had based the last 13 years of my life to finding a way to save her from herself, her past, her family, her demons, and her illnesses, to face the fact that I’d given up on us as a couple made me feel as if I’d given up on her as well…and me too, if I hadn’t already done that years earlier.

So soon afterward, Mara moved back to New Jersey to live with her sister again.  We stayed in touch, speaking at least four times a week on the phone as well as by email.  Mara told me that in general she kept those communications secret from her family (although I believe her sister knew).  Apparently they blamed me for the failure of the marriage, as well as for Mara’s physical and mental state.  I think they also hated me for allowing Mara to become “their problem” again.  This was the daughter who had attempted suicide; who had stopped speaking to them for over a year; who accused her mother of knowingly sending her to spend summers with a man who was sexually molesting her.  I can only imagine that their hatred and anger at me was a convenient way to replace some of the guilt they might have felt.  Not once in all my time with Mara did I hear either of her parents admit they had made even the smallest mistake in the way they raised her, or in any of the parental decisions they had made (except, my implication, their decision to allow her to have a relationship with me and later to marry me).  Since I haven’t spoken to them in 10 over 10 years, I can’t ask them if they’ve changed their views.  And I don’t think I’d want to ask, because I am fairly certain none of their opinions have changed. 

While I tried to piece together my own life, Mara’s didn’t seem to be getting much better.  She gained even more weight, fought constantly with her sister and her parents (who were moving to Florida), and threatened suicide a number of times.  I know she really missed the support I had given her emotionally (I sent her money every month so the financial support was still there), even if I was a terrible enabler at the same time.  Still, she was now in a situation where she had to fight for herself, manage her own medication (a dizzying array of pills), and decide what was best for her life.  Her parents had been trying to get her to agree to gastric bypass surgery for a number of years; Mara was afraid of the complications from the surgery, and more afraid that if she was able to successfully lose weight she would uncover the reasons she kept herself so obese in the first place: her history of molestation and the sexual problems it had left behind, which she had never been able to overcome.  As I saw it, aside from the medical reasons she had gotten so heavy (years of prednisone, a bad back, no exercise, etc.) she had added the fat as a defense shield.  As long as she remained undesirable to men, no man would approach her.  This, for Mara, was the preferred scenario…because she seemed to have no ability to turn down sexual advances.  Whoever, whenever, however…if a man propositioned her Mara was willing to oblige.  She wanted desperately to be liked, to be loved, by everyone she met, and sexual favors was the way she had been taught by her abuser to show the most personal, special, true love and affection. 

When her weight started to approach close to 500 pounds, Mara finally decided to have the surgery.  She knew that at the rate she was going it was life or death anyway (I used to ask her “How many old but morbidly obese people do you know?  Not many, because they all die young.”), so the surgery was her only option.  Mara had a number of potential complications to worry about…aside from anesthesia on someone so large, she had Factor 11 deficiency in her blood which made it hard for her to clot properly.  And with so many medications, how to keep them balanced within her system was in question.  But the whole procedure went surprisingly well.  I had to wait until she could call or email me herself, since nobody in her family could be bothered to let me know if the woman I was still married to, and had dated since 1983, had died while under the knife.  There were no major complications, just some minor surface infection on the incisions which she’d have to deal with for a few weeks.

So now that the bypass was in place, Mara was ready to begin to lose weight.  It would be physically impossible for her to eat enough to sabotage herself THIS time.  Even if her stomach was to stretch out, it would a good deal of time.  And in the meantime, the pounds would simply drop off.  And that’s exactly what happened!  She looked forward to being able to walk more easily, to climb the stairs to and from her basement room, and one day to walk around a shopping mall again like a normal person.  There were so many things for Mara to look forward to once she continued to lose weight.

And, as she and I both knew, but everyone else seemed to ignore, plenty of pitfalls waiting in the path as well…