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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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11:20 a.m. - 2005-08-10
Did you ever have faith in something or someone and then one day that faith is gone? Faith is a funny thing. You can't pretend faith. Either it's there or it isn't. Some would say faith and belief are the same thing. They are kissing kin, but faith and belief aren't the same animal. Belief, to me, is acknowledging the reality of something. Whereas faith is about keeping true to an intangible. When faith dies I don't think you can ever truly recapture it. I know there are those who claim they have lost faith in their religion and then they get born again into a pious life. But mostly I think those folks never had religion in the first place and their 'born again' status is really taking up a new faith. Oh there's the few who rededicate their lives to their creed, but they hadn't truly lost faith, they'd just been pissed at God. Until this week I was one of the latter kind. Only my faith wasn't in God. My faith had been in my husband and my marriage. I'd had faith that despite the awful stuff that went down my relationship was worth it. I'd had faith that Mike was a good person beneath his assholery. I had faith that at the end of the fights and the tears and painful chipping away at the toxic walls around his heart there'd be the decent person I just knew was in there. I was wrong. There is no gem in there. The man is truly as small and as miserable as he acts. There is no larger, finer person trapped inside Michael. He is exactly as he appears and nothing more. It's been a startling couple of days. You know what the saddest part is? I'm not even mad. All that's left is sort of a weary disgust. I'm disgusted because after 23 years of living with me he's learned nothing. Being here with me while I crawled off the slag heap of my early life and learned how to stand up. All the growth and change and dedication to realizing my potential, going from beaten dog to reasonably whole human being and not a bit of it rubbed off on him. Mike is just as petty and narrow and selfish as he was the day we met in college. He's put a more pleasant patina on his outside. If he hadn't he'd have been beaten to death by now. Oh not by me, there's plenty of folks out there who think of Mike with a frown and a curse. People he's skewered over the years with his belittling and his bullying. When we first moved back to NY Mike so pissed off and humiliated his co-workers they hired a couple of guys to tail him home and break his knees. I kid you not. Those guys hated Mike so much they hired thugs to hurt him despite the fact that my dad, Mike's father-in-law, was their mutal boss. Mike's in with the boss man wasn't enough to protect him from the fury he'd engendered with his cruel remarks and constant one-upsmanship. Over the course of our relationship Mike has been fired 9 times. Not because of his work, the work is always top-notch. It was his attitude. The people he worked with and worked for ended up hating him. They'd cut loose a guy who did stellar work. Never missed a day, never blew a deadline, often saved his company a ton of dough with his clever repairs and fabrications, but they'd fire his ass anyhow. They just couldn't take it anymore. Mike was so awful, so cruel, so arrogant and visibly happy to rub their noses in their own lesser abilities that the emotional cost of having him around was too high, screw how good the work was. You know what Mike is? He's the ultimate white sneaker stomper. A cowardly jerk who delights in ruining other people's happiness and then sulks and feels sorry for himself when people object to his nastiness. He's completely convinced he's a wonderful guy and that the whole rest of the world is 'picking on him'. Frankly, I think he's a sociopath. He is so far out of the loop of his own reality it's an illness. Mentally sick or simply a shitty human being with major personality flaws, I realized I don't care. There is no 'there' there. All the faith I'd hung onto is gone. I see him for what he is and all I feel is a twice-removed contempt. Sadly, nothing more intimate than that. No howling anger. No frustration. Not even any pain. A switch was flipped, the lights came on, and the shadow puppet show is revealed for what it is- one piss poor excuse for a man, who with the help of clever lighting and the willing participation of the audience, had made himself look big and enthralling. Show's over, folks. ~LA
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