"Gone Girl"

This evening I went to the movies and saw "Gone Girl".  It's terrifying.

Not like zombie movies are terrifying.  Not like horror movies are terrifying.

But for someone like me who has had a troubled marital history … well, like I said.

I don't want to give away the plot twists and turns, in case you haven't seen it yet.  Maybe this whole post should be marked …

***SPOILER ALERT***

All I want to say is that I'm glad the movie wasn't made till now.  If I had seen it during the year-and-a-half when I was unemployed … or during the years after that when we were still going to church because Wife insisted on keeping up such-and-such a public image … or during any of the time that she had a deep crush on Church Tenor … or to put it generally, if I had seen this movie any time between 2003 and about the time I started this blog (end of 2007, or for practical purposes 2008), I would have shit my pants with fright. 

Wife has always cared – deeply, deeply – about how people see her.  About how she looks.  But during those years she was also regularly undermining how I looked – systematically, or so it seemed at the time.  She spread rumors at school and at church about how afraid she was of my "violent temper".  At one point one of the kids was playing rambunctiously with her and bruised her … and immediately she grabbed the Polaroid and took a photo of the bruise, then hid the photo in her lingerie drawer. 

(Of course I found it because I usually did the laundry, so as soon as I put away her panties one weekend I saw it there. She was trying to undermine how people saw me, but at the same time she was perfectly willing to let me do the work around the house, sort out her medications, and so forth. It never occurred to her that I might find the photo of her bruise, or accidentally mix up her medicines in a lethal way, or anything … and so she swallowed unhesitatingly any collection of pills that I gave her. On the other hand, clearly she was right to do so: she's still alive, after all, so you can tell I never took advantage of the opportunities she left in my path. You could say she was careless, or you could say she knew I wouldn't do anything to her because I'm too damned chicken. But I digress.)

Anyway, I think in the end she was never systematic enough – not careful enough, maybe not even smart enough – to have laid a really, truly foolproof trap to frame me for anything truly serious.  But that's only a retrospective judgement.  At the time I certainly thought she was, and I feared her.  I feared that she would call the cops one day – over nothing – and that I would never see the boys again. 

It was a tremendous relief to me the night she was arrested for felony spousal abuse.  Counselor said as much in our next session, actually … that it really seemed like I was relieved.  Of course she got off (because I co-operated to get her off).  But I knew it was a matter of public record, at that point.  I began – slowly, all too slowly – to be less afraid that she could manipulate events to make a violent lie about me seem the truth.

I'm not so afraid of her any more, because the boys are out of her house and so am I; because even though we haven't actually concluded the damned separation paperwork yet, there's less she can do to me.  She probably can't send me to jail any more, nor prevent me from seeing the boys.  Life is better.

But there was a while there – years – that I was really scared … partly because of what she could make people think, and partly because I was sharing a bed with a crazy woman.  (Think also of "Basic Instinct". Good think she always took heavy doses of sleeping pills.)  Every single day I had to pray that my golden tongue could smooth over whatever chaos she brewed up, and could keep me safe until bedtime.  Every day I had to hope that I could – as Ben Affleck's character says – "reach just one [woman]."  Namely her.  Say what she wanted to hear, so that I could keep the peace one more day.

It was an exciting time, no doubt about it.  Read some of my early posts about the excitement inherent in being involved with a "high-maintenance woman" and you'll get  a sense of what I mean.

But dear God, I'm glad I'm not there now.  I almost understand why Affleck's character makes the choices he does, but I'm glad I no longer have to make those choices.

It's late and I'm drunk.  It's time for bed.

And it's a scary, scary movie.  I'm glad it never turned out to be my life, but there were years when I really wasn't so sure.