Life Begins At 40

I would hope that everyone has experienced what it's like to have the world open up for you. This was my experience in the weeks that followed. Everything, and I mean everything was new. The person I met was and still remains, the most influential person I have ever known. Now lets stack, loving, compassionate, funny, brilliant, loyal and breath-takingly beautiful on top of that and you have a perfect situation for me to fuck up.

Having never experienced this level of elation, hope and happiness before was intoxicating. As I was to discover in the coming weeks and months, these emotions can cause severe stupidity, blindness and an increased ability to make very harmful choices, which I did, time after time.

All I wanted was my newly found bliss, but that's too much to ask for, especially when you have a diabolical, temper driven Troll for an ex-wife. It should be mentioned once again that she was having an affair and in a relationship at this time and as dysfunctional as it may have been, I thought it would keep her occupied and demonstrated that she was moving on......another foolish assumption on my part.

However,  I was enchanted by the woman I had met. There weren't enough hours in the day to spend with her, and we used most of them. I couldn't be close enough to her. If I could have unzipped her and crawled inside, I would have...she felt the same.

Life for once was perfect...work was good, my apartment was certainly big enough, I was doing things I hadn't done in years, I bought a new car and then there this woman that believed in me, her eyes would shine when she saw me, when she put her arms around me, I could feel the energy passing between us. We were in separable.

As an individual, she was an accomplished art director, very much respected and admired in her field. Her compassion knew no boundaries, having put together benefits for the homeless, protecting the rights of animals and the environment. She was also a bibliophile, introducing me to countless authors and artists that I was never exposed to before. Her taste and knowledge of music was as wide and varied as her ability to love. She was the most generous person I had ever encountered, both of herself and in her staggering depth of intellect.  This influence would later affect endeavors that we as a couple worked on and things we created as partners. Not to say that I was stupid, but I did find myself behind the curve on quite a few occasions, but in her grace and eloquence, she never pointed it out, but I knew.

She asked me about my current relationship with my soon-to-be ex. I told her it was amicable. I told her about the Troll, but that we were friendly with each other, and at that very moment, we were. I didn't understand that be "friendly" meant, "do what I say, how I say, when I say and we'll get along just fine."
As the situation began to disintegrate, I lied to my new found love, telling her everything was just fucking peachy. It was the calm before the storm. A storm that would take my happiness, my home, my self-esteem, my love and I was a major participant.