Floating in the Milkyway

I climbed up on a boulder and laid back against the still-warm rock, weary to my bones. I don’t think I had ever felt so worn out and emotionally drained. My life had never been easy, but the past year of betrayal and loneliness seemed more than I could bear. I was waiting for my friend to climb up and join me when everything went dark and quiet. Everything that is except the night sky which came alive. It was a moonless night and other than the glow of the campfires and quiet voices of the people around them, there was no other light or sound. I felt like the stars were washing over me as their light bounced off the large white boulder that I laid on. I could see millions, maybe billions of stars. At that moment, I felt like I was floating in the swirling clouds of the Milkyway. 

I was visiting a friend who worked and lived at a camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range at 8,000 feet elevation. The camp had a lodge with a kitchen and dining room that ran off a generator during the day. 

The generator was turned off for eight hours every night. Both the visitors and the staff stayed in canvas tent cabins with no electricity and were heated with potbelly stoves. Even though it was early summer, at that elevation the little stoves are needed. At that elevation and distance from city lights, there wasn’t anything to block the light of the stars. My friend told me to be prepared for an incredible sight, but my senses were overwhelmed by the sight I saw in the sky and the deafening silence when the generator was turned off 

I went to the camp to clear my head and make some decisions while visiting a dear friend who worked and lived there. It was to be a long weekend of sorts away from the stress and responsibilities in my life. It was the first time I had ever been away from my five-year-old daughter for that long. It was the first time my husband would be responsible for my daughter for that long. I had to remind myself he wasn’t considered my husband any longer since he was planning his wedding to another woman.

It had been a long day. I left my home in Bakersfield early in the morning to drive the 90 minutes through the desert and salt flats to hire a  manager for a store on the Air Force base. I spent the day training the new manager before heading up the eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas. I relished driving through the desert with my windows down and the radio blasting. By the end of the four hour drive through the desert and mountains to the High Sierra camp, I was exhausted.

I arrived well after dinner, but my friend invited me to eat with the employees after the evening shift was done and the kitchen and camp were cleaned and ready for the next day’s breakfast. The food was amazing. The slab of chocolate cake my friend put down in front of me had multiple layers with raspberry filling and the smoothest chocolate frosting. I thought it was what remained after dinner for the employees to share, but it was all for me. I shared it with my friend while we listened to the chatter of the other employees sitting around the big table. I soaked in the comradery of it all. These people had all just met a few weeks ago, yet they were all friends and seemed to belong.

I missed that feeling in my life. Not like I missed the days when I had this in college or high school, but rather I missed out on having this in life. My childhood was far from ideal, very, very far from ideal. Between the abuse of my step-mother and indifference of my other parents, my younger years were unbearable. As a teenager I wasn’t allowed to participate in normal high school activities such as music, sports, or clubs and the abuse was worse. My family often moved so I wasn’t able to form lasting friendships.

My dad moved us during my senior year of high school. That year, while working at a chicken joint, a co-worker introduced me to the man who would become my husband. He was mesmerizing and a poet. He had my heart the first time I ever spoke to him. He proposed at a Rennaisance festival, and our courtship was like a fairytale. The books never tell what happens after the prince rescues the princess and it is good that they do not. We probably wouldn’t read them anymore or have as many cartoon princesses. The changes are not always good after the prince finds his princess.

My new husband joined the Army and we had a baby girl. We were seldom together or even in the same country. The Army changed both of us. I grew up and became an adult in order to raise our daughter. He closed himself off from anyone associated with his time in the military, including me. The first several years were very rough and I was surprised every anniversary that we were still together. In the last six months or our marriage, I felt we were turning a corner and things were getting a lot better. Little did I know what I thought was him being more open and considerate of my feelings was actually him hiding his affair.

I could hear bits of conversations from the people around the campfires. Sitting high above them I felt like I was privy to their secrets since they couldn’t see me from where I was. I wish I could have sat outside under the stars all those months ago to see what was going on in my own life. There seemed to be a nebulous cloud of secrets and lies surrounding me that I couldn’t see through. At least this night everything was clear, both the night sky and my mind. I could see everything around me here and looking back over my past.

Yes, I was clueless. I didn’t want the fairytale to end. It was just beginning to feel like a fairytale once again. I was caught off guard when he broke the news, especially the way he broke the news. It was our fifth anniversary. I made his favorite dinner and gave him a candle from an artisan that made it around a custom ring I had made for him. The ring would appear after the candle burned for a couple of hours. The ring was just beginning to show when he stood up from the table after telling me that he had strayed while I was away visiting my family with our daughter. He swore nothing really happened and it would never happen again. He assured me that he loved me, and he would make it right. 

As I sat there for the next several hours watching the ring that I had made just for him appear and then land in a puddle of wax, t tried to take it all in. I wanted to believe what he said was true. I felt like a fool. I didn’t want to be left once again. I didn’t want to lose our friends who were mostly his from high school. Most of all, I didn’t want my daughter to go through life with divorced parents.

I took in a deep breath and sighed. It was starting to get cold laying on the rock. I looked around and noticed several of the campfires were already just embers, but there were a few groups sitting around a fire here or there and several campfires had couples snuggled under a blanket together. That made me feel sad and lonely once again and I thought of heading to the tent, but as always, my friend must have been reading my mind because just them a blanket was put around my shoulders. It felt so good being taken care of.

After our anniversary dinner, things really changed. Maybe I was just being super aware or maybe he was being careless, but more and more clues were being left and found. It soon became apparent who my husband had been seeing and that hurt even more. I think I could have handled a stranger, but not a friend. He insisted they were not seeing each other, but it was obvious they were. It took less than a week for him to be caught with her while at the grocery store with his best friend. 

He was such a coward. The three of them were standing in line at the checkout register when my daughter and I walked in to get milk, which he was supposed to have done the day before. My daughter saw them first and ran up to the trio. My husband looked up at me, did an about-face, and double-timed it to the other end of the store. At least the Army taught him something. I picked my daughter up and handed her to my husband’s traitorous best friend and looked at the girl who didn’t have the sense to put down her groceries and leave the store. In a very calm rational voice, I told her to look at my daughter. At first, she refused, but with some prompting from the man holding my daughter, she did. I proceeded to very calmly explain to her that she can have my husband and I will not get in her way, but if she ever hurts my daughter, I would kill her and it would be a slow painful death. I then had my daughter say her goodbyes and we went to find her daddy and get some milk.

Looking up, the stars had shifted position and I realized if I stared at one spot I could see satellites moving in the sky. The colors had changed also. The blues and greens in the nebulous clouds were starting to become more yellow and orange. There was just beginning to be a thin line of silver at the horizon. Only a few of the campfires had embers in them and there wasn’t a soul sitting around them. I realized the birds and night creatures were quiet and must be nestled someplace cozy also. I felt completely alone sitting in the mountains on top of a boulder. I reached out my hand and the thick dew that had started to form in the air felt like I was touching the Milkyway, not just looking at it. I felt strong and with a sense of purpose.

I felt strong that night after the grocery store incident when my husband walked through our apartment door. I had dropped off our daughter at his mom’s house for the night. I had told him in the grocery store when we finally caught up with him that we were settling things that night. I sat very calm and collected. Probably much calmer than he expected. I asked him to tell me everything he felt he needed to because this was going to be his one chance. I then explained that I would tell him what I wanted and needed from him and what I would be doing from then on. 

I think my matter of fact composure unbalanced him because he started to talk. He told me it was true that he met the girl in his college writing class and they were assigned a project together. He swore when he first brought her home to meet our friends that they were only friends. He said he did have feelings for her and felt guilty when we threw her a party for her eighteenth birthday.  He swore nothing happened until after she turned eighteen, he wasn’t a monster. I told him not to go into details on that part. He told me he never planned to fall in love with her. The fact that he said he loved her made me wince and broke my composure, some. He continued on that they were making plans to be married and signed a lease on an apartment. 

It was my turn to talk and I did with more strength and loneliness than I had ever before in my life. I told him I still loved him, but I was releasing him to the world and that I did not need him. I said that I was stronger from this than I had ever been. I said it, but I wasn’t sure I really believed it yet. I knew with walking away I would be loosing so much more than just a husband. At that time, I didn’t know if I’d ever be loved again. 

It has been almost a year since that discussion. Being a single mom and going through a divorce has left me exhausted, but I learned that I am capable of being on my own and not being lonely. I came to the mountains to recharge and find myself. I thought it would take more than a weekend, but I found I was fully charged in the time that the generator was quiet. Looking at my friend sitting next to me watching the sunrise while the stars still shined, I knew I was ready to take on the world. I knew I was already loved and that life can’t get better than floating in the Milkyway.