As Mara began to lose weight, my own life was facing major stress.  Work was a nightmare; I had left a job where I was busting my ass 60 or more hours a week, and was now making more money but with nearly the same hours, and much more daily stress.  I was drinking more than I wanted to, my relationship with my girlfriend seemed to be going nowhere, and even with the additional income I wasn’t able to put anything in the bank.  I’d developed a twitch in my eye, I was sleeping badly, and I left work every day feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach.  Taking time off was out of the question, the business itself was slowly fading into obscurity, and the office was a constant firestorm of shouting matches and fits by the various owners.  I’d gone to my doctor to see what he thought, and he simply put me on some type of antidepressant to combat a bit of the stress.  I noticed no difference in my mood or my outlook on life.  I was simply miserable.

At home I was paying all the bills while my girlfriend finished Cosmetology School, but I wasn’t feeling any appreciation for how I was treating her like a princess.  Instead there was just the constant pressure of making ends meet.  I was giving Mara money every month to help her out, as best as I could, and I still felt a tremendous emotional obligation to her.  Whenever Mara called, either on my cell or my “private” home phone (because I didn’t want the two women in my life to go at each other), I would find time to listen to her, to laugh with her if we had something to laugh about, to tell her how the cats were doing…and most of all, to try and be as understanding as I could be when she told me about her problems and the complications of her life.  I knew that, since her only other emotional support was coming from her family, she was in desperate need of someone who would listen instead of waving her feelings away like an annoying gnat.

As much as I had hoped for good news, whenever Mara called it was anything but.  Her sexual and mental issues were reasserting themselves, and gaining strength.  Yet she refused to discuss them with her family, especially her sister (whose basement she was living in).  Mara’s sister was not ready to handle any mental issues; as it was they could barely get along with each other.  They were always fighting over something: privacy issues, money, the lack of air conditioning in the basement, respect (or lack of it), thanks and appreciation (or lack of it).  As sisters they had never gotten along anyway – they were VERY different personality types – and Mara living in the basement of her sister’s made her feel indebted in a way she was not happy with.  Likewise, her sister felt that since Mara was living in her house, she had the right to boss Mara around when she wanted to.  All in all it was an unhappy arrangement, and more than once Mara called me crying, asking if she could come back to Texas and live with me “just as roommates.”  I found the strength to say no, but I always felt like such a piece of shit for doing it, even though I knew that if we were ever to live together again in any capacity it would lead to more of the same behavior patterns we’d dealt with: her self-destruction and by enabling.  As guilty as everything about Mara made me feel, I wasn’t about to put myself through that wood chipper again.

The worst of Mara’s problems was the re-emergence of her inability to refuse sexual advances from men she encountered.  The scars from years of sexual abuse she had suffered had never healed, and looking back I don’t think enough emphasis was ever put on them in her countless therapy sessions.  Some of the blame for that could be placed on my shoulders, but I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.  Keeping Mara going was hard enough…keeping her going on an upward trajectory was nearly impossible.  Now that she had to do a lot of this on her own, it looked the spiral downward would resume; the better she got physically, the worse her life and mental state became.

Details from Mara were often sketchy, or perhaps I’ve blocked some of them out.  I do remember when she confided to me that she’d begun sexual relations with one of the Handi-Ride bus drivers that took her to and from appointments.  If they were alone in the bus, she’d often gratify his sexual urges one way or another.  And while she tried to make light of it to me, as if it was something she chose to do in some sort of sexual reawakening, the mere fact that she even mentioned it was proof enough that she hated herself for what she was doing.  But despite my suggestions that she try to get more therapy for these issues, Mara rejected the idea.  Her sister had made it rather clear that if she was to suffer any kind of mental regression, Mara would have to find somewhere else to live.  So Mara’s world of secrets and lies was reborn, the same world she lived in as a child and as an abuse victim.  Not surprisingly, I became more miserable about her situation and my inability to do anything to help, except listen.  In my mind, Mara was and always would be my responsibility…not just because I had accepted that position when we married, but also because her family (through actions rather than words) had always made it pretty clear that they preferred to rationalize her conditions and pretend everything was fine, unless they were thrust into a sudden crisis like her previous suicide attempt.  And then, once out of the hospital, they’d go back to the stance that she was okay again.  Their shifting of blame, directly and indirectly, onto my shoulders was always another red-not poker driven into my stomach, and my heart.

One day I received the phone call from Mara that I had been dreading; she was unsure where she would be living, but it wouldn’t be with her sister any longer.  Apparently she had gotten upset and cut one of her thighs up.  The cuts were small, and not deep, but quite numerous.  As usual Mara tried to play it down as not a big deal, but the damage was done.  As she called me, her sister was on the phone with her parents, and they conferring on what the next step should be with their troubled relative.  I knew that moving in with her parents was completely out of the question.  But they were holding their private little phone conference, deciding Mara’s fate, without asking for any input from her.  I don’t know if she was in a position to offer anything but roadblocks, but it did hurt me to think that she had – once again – lost control of her life. 

And, as I always did, I couldn’t help but think that if I’d stuck it out longer, and Mara and I were still together, maybe things would be better for her.  Not necessarily for me, but at least for her.