As Much as I Can

I can’t sleep. It’s an ongoing problem. I have a pattern by this time. First of all, as I’m getting ready for bed, I wonder why I’m even bothering. I know the outcome. But I let myself complete those mindless tasks anyway. Then upon getting into bed, I immediately start phase one. Phase one is me lying here pretending to sleep. I close my eyes; I force my breath to slow and deepen. I lie still. I relax as much as I can – which always amuses the part of my brain that finds this entire exercise sarcastically humorous in its repetitious futility. It’s difficult to relax, because the chronic anxiety that takes up all my personal real estate these days demands that my entire body ache with a have-to-keep-it-all-together-and-not-let-anyone-see-me-sweat urgency that clenches my middle so painfully that sometimes I think I’ll pitch over into a hairpin shape and never be able to straighten back up again.

Phase one is where I tell myself I don’t need to have thoughts. I can clear my mind and have nothing there – blessed emptiness. During this phase, even when unwelcome thoughts present themselves, I ignore them. No need to inspect them. Certainly no need to dissect any of them. Instead, as much as I can, I focus on a thought that brings me joy – or that at least doesn’t make me sad or then (I keep lowering the bar) that doesn’t piss me the fuck off. But I don’t contain any of those categories anymore. Maybe one day I will possess those thoughts again, but tonight, once again, I do not. I make a mental note to not skip phase one tomorrow night, though, because one never knows when something resembling a good thought will step forward to present itself. Then, giving up on phase one, I open my eyes and get on with phase two.

Phase two involves staring at the ceiling and admitting to myself that I’m not getting to sleep anytime soon and then attempting to be okay with that. I try for a middle school basketball coach tone of voice. You know the one. He’s every kid’s coach, cheerleader, dad, and big brother – who also teaches history – all rolled into one cheesy, middle-aged, Ted Lasso of a guy with a beer gut and a comb-over. I let that tone of voice tell me that I’ll take a nap tomorrow to make up for it. I go on about how it’s just one more night of no sleep. Anyone can survive just one more night of not sleeping. I got this. I can handle this. This is no big deal. I imagine him doing a lot of energetic hand clapping like in the huddle on the sidelines of a game. Now get out there and win! On three! I continue the pep talk for as long as possible, but it usually fades quickly into phase three.

Phase three consists of making up excuses for why it’s okay to give up on phase two. That shit is too exhausting. It takes up way too much energy. And instead of being hard on myself about not being able to sustain the pep talk, I let myself off the proverbial hook by telling myself I’m reserving my energy. This is where I’m myself again: depressed, angry, anxious, conflicted, alternating between determined and totally defeated. I’m myself, but attempting to be kind instead of brutal. This is usually where Fear begins to rear his nasty-ass head. Jesus’ balls, Fear is a rat bastard. He is always looking for an opening. Even a teeny, tiny crack is enough for that octopus of an emotion to work his way through.

I’d like to have a phase four. I tell myself it would be better to cultivate a phase four rather than let the next usual thing happen. But so far, no phase four. I try and fake Fear out by continuing to make a mental outline of what might make up phase four if I could produce one. But Fear has taken up residence in the room and is making hostile advances into my mind.

My sleep problem is not a problem in and of itself. Rather, it’s a symptom. I wish I had a simple sleep problem. Then I could take a sleeping pill and be done with this shit. And I wish I had some other – much more exotic – reason for this symptom rather than the fact that my husband is having an affair with the next-door neighbor. And don’t think I’m being glib or using a tired metaphor when I say “the next-door neighbor,” because she is the literal next-door neighbor. We share a wall in this apartment complex.

It’s way too clichéd, isn’t it? Even I, in as much pain as I am, recognize how trite and boring it is. I always watched those movies where the wife is lying in bed like I am right now, sleep not even in the same hemisphere, her mind vomiting up images of her husband with the other woman, her self-confidence dead and buried, her pillow wet with the tears sliding down the sides of her face; and I’d think what an idiot she must have been to let herself get into such a stupid, clichéd situation. Surely she could have seen it coming. She should have simply paid more attention to her marriage instead of giving all of her energy and attention to her job/children/church/friends/insert an equally clichéd distraction here.

A few weeks ago, when I already suspected my husband was having an affair but still didn’t know with whom, I actually confided my fear to her. We have mirror image apartments; the sliding glass doors that exit from the kitchen are so close together that we can both hear when someone in the other apartment opens and closes that door – even from inside our respective homes. I had come out to try and let my body maybe absorb enough heat to de-clench. Even back then, I ached from trying to hold off the confusion, fear, worry, shame, sadness. I sat in a patio chair facing the sun and closed my eyes. I heard her glass door open and close and knew she had come out also.

“It’s a nice day to be out,” she spoke softly, like you would if you came upon a person sitting in the sun with their eyes closed.

I grunted a reply and nodded my head, not opening my eyes. I heard her sit down in one of their patio chairs. Shit, I thought, she wants to talk. I had come out to try and relax. I didn’t want to be bothered. But I’m also not rude (or maybe I’m simply too co-dependent and can’t honor my own boundaries?), so I opened my eyes. She was looking at me.

“I think John is having an affair,” she jumped right in. 

I let myself look as shocked as I truly was, but probably not for the reason she thought. Because I was thinking something along the lines of, holy shit, it’s an epidemic. Is it in the water?

“Oh fuck, I’m sorry.” And I was, because I knew how very devastated she must have been. “That is so horrible. And I know for sure how horrible it is, because I suspect Dan is having one too.”

It was the first time I’d said those words out loud, and they sounded cruel and ugly out of my head and turned loose in the world. She never flinched. She never gave anything away. In fact, she got this sad, sympathetic look on her face, like she understood and empathized with me. We both cried some then. I was thinking how nice it was to talk to someone who understood. I wondered if she was feeling the same way.

“Do you know who she is?” I asked, because it was my worst fear to find out Dan was cheating with someone I knew, and I thought maybe that was her worst fear too. She shook her head.

“Do you?”

“No,” I said, wondering if I’d ever figure that out. “I can’t think who it would be. If you hear anything, will you let me know?” She nodded, still looking sad.

“Will you too?” She was acting like we were brothers-in-arms, and I took the bait.

I nodded in what I hoped looked like a sagely manner to indicate we were, indeed, in this together. We cried some more then, sitting there in the sun. I thought about that conversation a lot after I knew it was her, wondering how she could live with herself. Did she only initiate that conversation to see if I knew? Did she think I knew but was pretending I didn’t know? She was playing me. Did she suspect I was playing her too? God, what a fool I was. After several days of repeatedly pulling that conversation apart and putting it back together, I concluded that lying is really not that high of a hurdle in the ethics track field of life when you’re already having an affair with that person’s husband. So maybe it wasn’t that difficult for her to live with herself.

The story they had concocted was that he would tutor her in calculus. She had decided to go back to college, and he was being a good neighbor and friend by helping her out. Originally, it seemed plausible to me. We were couple-friends. We were close neighbors. We did stuff together all the time as couples, so why would it be weird that he would tutor her? He was studying to be an engineer, so he had the knowledge. I didn’t question it. I thought we were all good friends. I couldn’t count the times we’d grilled together and sat at the picnic table out there to eat and laugh and share time.

They began meeting in the rec center for a couple of hours after dinner several nights a week. I was stupidly relieved to have him occupied with her – someone I thought I could trust, one of our best friends – rather than having him sneak out to be with “the other woman.” And besides, hadn’t she and I confided in each other? Weren’t we, besides being couple-friends, on our way to becoming real girlfriends? Jesus fuck, I was so naïve.

Fear has a choke hold on my thoughts now, that sonofabitch. I should just start calling this phase four, I guess. It happens every time. I try to ward him off as much as I can, try to close my inner eyes to not see what he’s showing me. But he’s a master at his craft. In slow, painful detail, he shows me what they must be doing, how they are laughing and kissing and in a hurry. They are yanking at each other’s clothes, frantic in their desire and haste. They are laughing at how gullible and stupid I am, at how easy it was for her to play me. They probably came up with that idea together. I imagine them nervous and happy, afraid they’ll get caught in such a semi-public place. I imagine how that adds fuel to the sexual energy. Maybe they do it standing up against a wall with their clothes still on. Or maybe they decide, to hell with it, and take their time.

I am tempted, once again, to walk over and rap on the glass door of the rec center, and to stand there and knock and knock and knock and knock and knock until either they answer the door or my knuckles starts bleeding. Each household gets one key to the rec center for their personal use. So of course, they have both keys. They obviously put some thought into their plan. I can’t simply walk in on them. And honestly, I’m not sure I want to. I think the pain and shock of that would easily and quickly override any self-righteous satisfaction I might feel at catching them with their literal pants down.

Her husband can’t walk in on them either, of course. I asked him one time what he thought about our spouses having an affair. He laughed at me and told me not to be ridiculous. He doesn’t seem concerned. But then he’s having an affair of his own. In fact, instead of sleepless, only the span of the shared studs, insulation, drywall, and paint separating us in our respective beds, he’s probably out with his other woman. Or maybe he’s already soundly sleeping, smug in his own right. He’s well-loved and well-fucked. Why would he be sleepless? Why would he care that his wife is having an affair? And why am I the only person in this farce of situation that isn’t getting laid? Everyone else involved has I’m-falling-in-love-and-might-get-caught-at-any-second adrenaline getting them through this (whatever “this” is). They are high. I am definitely not high.

Fear mutates into the defense attorney and begins to once again inspect the details of how I found out she was the other woman. Early in their tutoring pretense, I noticed how Dan always came home happy and smiling from their sessions together. When I jokingly questioned him about it, he stopped being so obvious. But I was already in the habit of covertly observing everything about him, so I knew he was happy and trying to hide it. Then one night he came home smiling and laughing – looking more like a conquering hero returning from battle than an engineering student coming from a tutoring session. He was actually strutting. I watched him strut the entire distance from the rec center to our backdoor, stupidly wondering the whole time what could possibly be so strut-worthy. He had on one of his favorite t-shirts. It has a very distinctive, goofy design on it, so it’s easy to remember.

Two days later, as I was sorting clothes for the laundry, I came across that same t-shirt. As I picked it up to throw it in the washer, I noticed it was crumpled and glued together. I pulled it apart, revealing the tell-tale clear, dried and crusty, aftermath of sex. They had used his shirt to wipe themselves afterward. I stood there holding up the t-shirt, turning numb and cold. My entire body began to shake. My ears began to ring. I felt stranded and alone in a frozen, high-pitched void. I don’t know how long I stood there looking at the evidence. Suddenly it sank in that I was in contact with their shared bodily fluids, and I dropped the shirt with a shutter of revulsion.

Finally, my brain wormed its way out of shock and began to almost function again. Thoughts began to float into consciousness. That must have been their first time having sex, I thought, explains the self-congratulatory strut. It’s always the laundry that gives men away when it comes to affairs, was my next thought. We wives understand laundry – know what to look/smell for. Men, obviously, do not.

I thought of not washing the evidence and using it to confront him. But he’d only do and say the same things he’d been doing and saying for weeks. He’d accuse me of being paranoid and crazy, making me feel guilty for asking him if he was having an affair. He always ended up smug and laughing with derision. I ended up crying and defeated again. As if handling a radioactive substance, I used a clothes hanger to pick up the shirt and drop it into the washer.

I look at the clock on his side of the bed. They are staying later and later at the rec center. Fear is clawing at my throat again, and he’s brought his good friend, Grief, this time. I want to do more than merely shed some tears. I want to thrash and wail and break some expensive shit. I want to be the kind of person who doesn’t give a big hairy fuck what anyone else thinks. That person would open the window and haul all his crap over the sill and let it fall onto the patio below. He’d have to step over that pile to get into the apartment. He’d know I know. That person would lock the doors and not let him in – and then scream accusatory obscenities at him from the upstairs bedroom window until the entire apartment complex was awake and had come outside to see the show. That person would make a scene; she’d make some noise. She really would go over and knock until her knuckles bled. Or maybe she’d call the police and say she saw someone suspicious in the rec center and would they please come check it out. She wouldn’t lie in bed and stare at the clock. She’d cause a ruckus. She’d kick the other woman’s ass. She wouldn’t be here when he got back. She’d take their car, all her shit, his wad of cash he didn’t know she knew about, and get out and never have to look at his lying face ever again. That person would do something – anything.

I hear her sliding glass door open and close, and then the metallic click as she snaps the lock into place. I look at the clock and start counting. Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, I hear our sliding glass door open and close. I wait to hear the lock click on our door. Instead, I hear him coming up the stairs. I close my eyes, turn toward the wall, and pretend to be asleep, a new wave of anxiety spawning in my middle. He goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower. He’s forgotten to lock the backdoor again, I think. Distracted much? I keep my eyes closed; I force my breath to slow and deepen. I lie still. I relax as much as I can. I start over with phase one.