After five years of sea duty I was looking forward to spending time at home and increased time out in nature. All the problems I initially had with my wife seemed minor after so much time underway…absence makes the heart grow fonder is a very true statement. It didn’t take long for that phase to move on and we were back to not knowing what to do with each other. Once again I threw myself into my favorite sport of competitive bass fishing. I bought a bigger and better boat to fully suit my needs for the tournaments in which I competed.
Most of my friends that fished tournaments with me were hunters as well and they tried to tempt me into becoming a hunter too. I must admit that do to my recent experience at Tom Brown’s school, I was very intrigued. My wife had a hard enough time with my fishing obsession and I knew she would never support me hunting. She loved animals and understood hunting however she would never accept her husband partaking in it. As miserable as I was in the relationship I still tried to avoid pushing the envelope on controversial issues so out of respect for my wife, I declined every opportunity that I had to hunt.
My best friend Curt started to feed us venison when we came over for dinners. I had never had truly wild game, all of the “wild game” I had tried in restaurants was actually farmed…glorified cows for lack of a better way of describing it. I’m pretty adventurous when it comes to eating but I was actually slightly nervous about eating it; all I ever heard about true wild game was that it was gamey tasting (whatever that means). Curt happens to be an excellent cook and the meals he served could be described in one word…DELICIOUS! The problem with finding out that you like venison is that there is only one way to procure it and I wasn’t prepared to take that step.
Things with my wife continued to take a downward spiral; I was spending as much time as I could away from the house to find some sort of happiness that I wasn’t receiving at home. The bad thing was that my happiness was only temporary in nature because all of the bills from fishing were stacking up. I would enjoy my time out on the water but the minute I returned I would be thrust back into a reality of mounting debt and a failing relationship. Things really started to unwind for me after our best friends had their first child…I always wanted children but my wife was dead set against it. I always thought that she would change her mind but I was coming to the realization that she wasn’t going to.
My career in the Navy was quickly coming to a close and I was extremely fortunate to spend my final three years at the same command I had spent the previous three at. I started to look at what I was going to do after the Navy and I honestly didn’t have a clue. I loved teaching and I figured that I could change hats and become a civilian contractor and basically do the same job. I believe that the realization of my impending retirement and potential loss of income scared my wife every bit as much as it scared me…I say “believe” because it isn’t something that we discussed because we never discussed anything anymore.
The year of 2005 will forever go down as the most emotionally difficult year in my life. It started with my mother passing away suddenly in January. She had been having health issues and finally went in the hospital for exploratory surgery. A 45 minute procedure turned into four hours and later that evening we found out that she was dealing with terminal cancer. One week after being diagnosed she passed away three days shy of her 57’Th birthday from a pulmonary embolism. More tragedy struck my family when three months later my grandmother also passed away. I was wrecked emotionally and spent even more time on the water trying to bury my pain because I really wasn’t getting the emotional support I desperately needed and wanted at home.
The summer of 2005 will probably go down is my loneliest ever…living in house with someone that you are incapable of relating to anymore is maddening. I also was still reeling from the loss of my family members and feeling resentful towards my wife for her not being able to give me the emotional support I needed. The silence in our house was definitely deafening and we both lived separate lives under the same roof. For the first time in my life I found myself trying to pick a fight with her just to get some sort of response...any response! It never worked though and we continued to live in a vacuum.
In the beginning of September I had enough and I decided that we needed help to save our marriage. I picked an evening to have this conversation and prepared myself emotionally for what I expected to be the most difficult discussion in my life. I waited for her to return from work and when she did, she walked over to me and handed me a letter. Apparently my wife had enough as well and instead of trying to fix what was broken she decided it was time to desert a sinking ship. With all that had happened to me in the year I was hardly prepared to read that and as bad as things were, I had never had considered divorce…some things however are not what we get to choose.
I had hit rock bottom in my life and I really didn’t know which way to turn. I knew I had to find something positive to turn to and start crawling my way back out of this hole. After being separated for a couple of months I realized that we would not be getting back together and my path forward had to be my own. I started to think about the different things that I had wanted to do but I didn’t because of my marriage such as hunting and realized that I now had a second chance to experience these things. My best friends bow hunted and that intrigued me to no end…you had to be very close to the deer and very stealthy with all of your moves. I started to think about it more and more and went through a lengthy internal debate over whether or not I could actually do it or not…after going back and forth on this issue I finally made up my mind and called my friends. It was time for me to purchase a bow!
Next week: A Stick and a String
Recommended listening: Fred Bear by Ted Nugent
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