I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway

by Tracy McMillan

  Apparently, when you have a father who takes excellent care of you, who is dedicated to giving you what you need and what you want (and not just Pixy Stix between prison sentences), you grow up feeling like you should be treated very, very well. You feel deserving. And other people just naturally feel like you deserve stuff, too. So they give it to you.

  This is obviously not quite what happened to me. But rather than mourn that, I’ve just decided to middle-school-hate Gwyneth.

  My whole Gwyneth-Daddy obsession culminates a few years later at work. I’m supposed to be writing something for the five o’clock newscast when Gwyneth’s lovely face pops up on the twelve-inch TV that sits on my desk. She’s on Oprah. I have to watch.

  I turn up the sound just as Gwyneth is sharing a story about how her dad surprised her with a father-daughter trip to Paris when she was ten. They stayed at the Ritz or something five-star like that, just the two of them. What kills me is the part where Gwyneth tells Oprah her dad’s reason for the trip.

  “I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who will always love you,” he said.

  That’s a quote.

  My first reaction is white-hot anger—A man who will always love me? No man will always love me. Tolerate me, maybe. Marry me if I beg him to, or if I’m pregnant. But love me so much he’ll whisk me off to Paris?

  Stop it.

  Then—and this surprises me—I begin to cry. Right there at my desk in the newsroom where everyone can see me. Big, clean tears, like summery white cotton. The kind good for halter tops and elephant bells.

  Because Gwyneth was loved like that. And because I wasn’t, but I wanted to be.

  THEN THERE’S MY PARTYING, which is starting to look an awful lot like a drinking problem. Dan and I have started a band. Actually, Dan started it; I demanded membership when I saw how much fun it was and how much time he would be away from the house without me. There are almost always one or two musicians at the house now, and the band gives me a nice little cover story for my near-constant use of marijuana, and later in the day, wine.

  Here’s the thing about my drinking and pot smoking—you would never know. I make sure of that. It’s almost like I have two lives: in one, I’m a stay-at-home mom learning the ropes of new motherhood; in the other, I’m a chick in a band. In the first life, I’m surrounded by women; in the second, I’m surrounded by men. In one, I hide my partying; in the other, it’s pretty much all I do. It’s like I have two opposing parts of myself: one that nurtures, and one that destroys.

  I am trying to convince myself that I am freethinking, a countercultural hippie. But it’s hard. I am paranoid about the next-door neighbor, a do-gooder with a brand-new master of social work degree. I have these morbid fears that she is going to smell the marijuana smoke wafting out of our garage and turn me in to Children’s Services, who will take my baby away from me.

  Interestingly, my morbid fear doesn’t seem to be enough to make me stop doing it.

  I have a bottle of wine to myself pretty much every night and smoke all kinds of weed at all hours. I try to leave at least one inch on the joint and at least one inch in the wine bottle, so I don’t feel like I finished it. If I finished it, that would mean I have a problem. Most awfully, I have been doing all this drinking and weed smoking while breastfeeding Sam. I try to limit the feedings to when I’m sober, but I’m very ashamed of myself. It might sound kind of harmless—It’s just a little red wine and marijuana—but it’s not just a little and more important, if I could stop I would. But clearly, I can’t.

  As my baby grows—he’s almost two now—it’s getting easier and easier to just finish the bottle every night. And harder and harder to ignore the fact that, in spirit, I’m just like my own mother—except with a husband, a house, and a college degree. It’s gotten to the point that I don’t want to do anything without getting high first.

  Like today, when I went to a toddler Halloween party. Three minutes before walking out the door, I had to smoke myself out. In the middle of the afternoon. For me, topping off my high is like freshening up my lipstick. The one last thing I have to do before I leave the house. I don’t know how I would feel if I didn’t do it, but I don’t want to find out.

  The party is being held at a very swanky house in the hills. I’m not intimidated by the house, as I have grown used to the level of wealth all around me in Los Angeles, which can border on the ridiculous. Still, I am very aware that I’m a long, loooong way from Minneapolis. But being impressed is a dead giveaway that you don’t belong. So I cultivate my unimpressedness.

  The crowd is made up of the women from my playgroup (most of whom have retired from whatever career they might have had, in order to become full-time moms) and their ambitious, clubby husbands, many of whom are quite successful in the music industry and seem to talk only to one another. They are a lot like the guys on the hockey team.

  We all stand around discussing preschools and Teletubbies while watching our toddlers grab stuff from each other, lurch around, and occasionally fall over.

  I feel weird. I know my eyes are bloodshot—there aren’t enough eyedrops in the world anymore—and I’m spacey and woozy. I can hear myself saying things that sound, uh, stupid. I spend all of my mental energy making sure no one knows I’m high. Acting “normal.” It never occurs to me to ask myself why I get high when I spend my whole time high acting as if I’m not high.

  After an hour or so and a bunch of crudites, my high begins to subside, and some of my self-consciousness (er, paranoia) wears off. Then my worst nightmare occurs.

  Nora, the pert, short-haired mother of little Olivia (or Amelia, or Isabelle, or some such turn-of-the-century name), perkily says to me, “Tracy, were you really stoned when you got here?”

  She doesn’t mean anything by it, but my stomach sinks. Or rather, drops like an elevator in an action movie where the bad guy has just cut the cable with a dozen innocent people inside, including children and old people.

  “No,” I lie halfheartedly. And, I hope, convincingly.

  “Ohhh,” Nora trills, “because you seemed, well, really stoned.” She’s smiling broadly. It’s almost as if she, too, is a pot smoker and was hoping I’d hook her up with something. But what she’s saying is way too close to the truth for me, the truth I’ve been trying really hard not to have to acknowledge.

  Later, that night, I’m at home with Dan. The baby is asleep. I am thinking of what Nora said with an intensity that I usually save for thinking about the power lines and Gwyneth. “She knew, Dan,” I say plaintively. I feel caught. I’m angry and desperate. “She knew!”

  “Oh, Tracy, calm down.” Dan’s dismissing me, as usual, not so much because he’s being mean but because if he doesn’t, he’s going to catch what I’ve got. Anxiety is more contagious than chicken pox.

  “I’m serious!” I’ve never wanted Dan to concur with me more. “I’m a terrible mother.”

  I burst into tears, or what passes for tears for me—a moistness at the corners of my eyes, accompanied by a manic, stormy energy. “I don’t think I can do this anymore,” I say quietly. “I don’t think I can.”

  Dan looks at me, worried. He knows that if my life changes—any part of my life—his life will change, too. And he’s very well adapted to the way things are. It’s like how none of your appliances work in Europe because the shape of the plug is all wrong. He’s worried that if I change, his battery charger will be useless. So he tells me not to change.

  “You’re fine, Tracy.”

  “I’m not fine, Dan.”

  “You’re fine.” That’s it. Dan’s final answer.

  I know I’m not fine. This isn’t how I wanted to be a mother. I was determined to do better than my parents, and alcoholism and drug dependency—even if I can convince you that I’m okay—do not fit with that picture.

  Here’s how I know for sure. I give myself what I call the Grocery Store Survey Challenge. I imagine myself emerging from Ralph’s, where there are a couple of college kid
s with matching T-shirts holding clipboards. They’re taking a survey.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, can I ask you a couple of quick questions?”

  “Sure,” I say. I like to think of myself as a nice person who helps out when possible.

  “Great,” says the girl, smiling brightly. “Okay, first question.” She adopts an officious voice, like a community-organizer version of Alex Trebek. “If you were the mother of a baby and/or toddler, would you drink a bottle of wine every day?”

  Oh. This one’s easy. “Of course not!”

  The girl checks the “of course not” box. She smiles. I think I got that one right. “Next.” Her pen is poised. “How about smoking endless joints?”

  I yank my neck back a couple of inches in an exaggerated gesture of fuck no! “No way!” I say, chuckling. The idea is so ludicrous I can laugh at it.

  At least in my fantasy I can.

  But in real life, it’s not so easy. It’s not how much I drink, or how much marijuana I smoke, or how often I do whatever other drugs are put in front of me—I could easily rationalize, or minimize, or justify all that, and you would believe me because it’s really not all that much and I hide it well and you’re probably doing even more than me because I like to hang around with people who do more than me, since they make me feel a lot better than people who don’t—it’s that, in my heart of hearts (per the Grocery Store Survey Challenge), I know I’d rather not be doing what I’m doing. Which leads me back to my original question. If I’d rather not be doing what I’m doing, then why am I doing it?

  I already know the answer: because I can’t stop.

  I really don’t want that to be the answer.

  TURNS OUT REHAB is not really that bad. I went outpatient. Six nights a week for thirty days. Dan would come home from work, I’d hand him the baby, and he’d hand me the keys to the 1977 wood-paneled station wagon we bought on a whim for $800. Then I’d drive—in rush-hour traffic—to Van Nuys (an act of willingness if there ever was one), and sit on a folding chair from six to ten P.M. in a circle with a dozen other losers fortunate enough to still have spouses, jobs, and health insurance. Or spouses with jobs and health insurance. It is the most time I’ve ever spent away from Sam.

  For the first hour I can’t get over how bad the fluorescent lights are, but right after that this amazing thing happens: I really want to never drink again. Really. Never. And I am willing to do anything not to have to.

  Almost a year later, I’m still going strong, but my marriage isn’t. I first allow my real feelings to come to the surface during a phone call with my dad. He wants to know, as usual, how the marriage is going.

  “Fine. I guess.”

  “You guess? What do you mean by that, Tracy Renee?” My dad’s not stern, he’s just inquisitive.

  I really want to tell him what I mean by that. I want to tell someone. But I’m afraid to say out loud what I’ve known since that first night in rehab, because things that are said out loud have a way of coming true. So I crack a joke.

  “Well, the marriage is fine. But I’m ready to start dating.”

  I laugh. My dad laughs. He knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  But it’s not funny. I really can’t stop wanting to leave Dan. This is just the first time I’ve dared utter it. I’m filled with this driving urge to be alone, to ruin something, and to have sex, all at once. It’s like the Pimp’s Daughter has resurfaced—she’s been safely contained in a Ziploc bag (of weed) all this time, and now she wants to party. But not with drugs. Those are messy and debilitating.

  With men. (Like they aren’t messy and debilitating.)

  That part of me—the Pimp’s Daughter—whispers in my ear about how different I am now, how I’ve changed since I’ve had a baby, how it’s time to explore my sexuality—finally. You’ve been holding back so long, she tells me. It’s time to find out who you really are. And I can’t stop believing her.

  But I’m not a cheater, and I’m a crummy liar, so only one choice remains.

  Leaving.

  I have a million “reasons” to leave: Dan only married me for the baby, Dan never really talks to me, Dan didn’t want me to stop drinking, Dan’s super shut-down, Dan refuses to dig deep into himself (and digging deep has now become my raison d’être), Dan’s dismissive of me, Dan hardly ever spends time with me when there isn’t a gaggle of band members around us. And also, did I mention Dan’s super shut-down and he refuses to dig deep within himself?

  Dan’s a very big problem for me, apparently.

  But hindsight will show me that underneath all of these reasons is a realer, larger reason. I don’t know how to just be with a man. Oh, I think I do. I think that all I need to do is find a more talkative guy who “understands me” and I will be able to form a real partnership. I think it is my choices that have been the problem—my so-called “picker” is broken—because when I was drinking I just didn’t know myself well enough to choose well. And that’s sorta true.

  But secretly I would just like to have another spin of the wheel, another roll of the dice, another walk in the park, another go at falling in love. It feels so good, and I’m not ready yet to never feel that again. Never is a really long time.

  I’m like a kid at a carnival who throws a dart at a balloon and wins a prize and now wants to bring it back and win another one. It’s not so much that I don’t like the prize. It’s that I really like throwing darts. I like the high of popping the balloon and hoping that this time I’m going to get the super jumbo-size stuffed animal.

  I spend hours debating what to do about my marriage with girlfriends who have zero experience in any kind of successful long-term relationship. They totally support my vision for the life I’m really supposed to be living. It’s a vision that involves two things: “getting what I want” and “getting my needs met.”

  ME

  I really don’t know what to do. I want to leave. But I feel guilty.

  MY FRIEND

  Guilty? It doesn’t sound like your needs are being met.

  ME

  You’re right. That’s the question. Are my needs being met?

  MY FRIEND

  It doesn’t sound like it. I mean, is this what you really want?

  ME

  God. Right. Is this what I want? Not really. I mean, Dan barely even talks to me. The other day, I said something about, oh, I don’t know, the weather, and he didn’t even look up from his newspaper!

  MY FRIEND

  That’s, like, abusive. To be ignored like that.

  ME

  But what about Sam?

  MY FRIEND

  He’s better off with two happy parents apart than miserable parents together. He’ll be okay. Look how I turned out.

  ME

  That’s true. [Deep sigh.] I guess it’s over.

  MY FRIEND

  Sounds like it.

  …and scene.

  This is much, much more difficult than leaving Kenny. My guilt is so much bigger. Dan is a good person who deserves better than this, better than me, better than my crazy life. I feel terrible for getting him all mixed up in this. At least I gave him an amazing son. Which goes some, but not all, of the way toward assuaging my guilt.

  Although I worry about the long-term consequences of my choice, the truth is, nothing—not even my beautiful baby boy—can stop me from going. I console myself with the knowledge that a person can only make decisions based on the information at hand. And since I believe that everything unfolds perfectly, I trust that if I was supposed to know, right now, in 1999, that Dan is a totally fine husband, I would know it.

  I just wish it didn’t have to end like this.

  PAUL AND I AREN’T the only ones who want to see the hugging guru—there are thousands of people here. We’re at an ashram set on a back road about thirty-five miles from San Francisco. People are milling about everywhere while they wait for their hugs (called “darshan” in Hindi), giving the place the feeling of a Grateful Dead Show, except with meditation
. There are people from every walk of life here, Silicon Valley technocrats, Marin County housewives, San Francisco urban-primitives, devotees clad head to toe in Indian garb, and children—dozens upon dozens of lovely, sparkling children.

  The ashram is set on acres of rolling hills, just exactly as you’d expect. It’s a wonderful place to spend the day. Or it would be if I wasn’t twitching with anxiety. Ever since Paul and I got here, took a seat, and started waiting for our hug, I’ve had this awful sense of foreboding.

  “I’m going to go look at the books for sale,” Paul says.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll be right here.”

  Paul gets up and heads for the area where the vendors have set up stalls with books, jewelry, and clothing for sale, leaving me to sit in the big hall by myself. It’s a very large room, about the size of the sanctuary at Hope Lutheran Church, with many rows of chairs facing forward, where the guru receives her acolytes. If you imagine one of those Renaissance period paintings with Jesus surrounded by a whole mob of people, you’ll get a pretty good idea of the scene. I watch quietly as the guru clutches to her chest each and every person who comes forward to get the hug. It’s pretty amazing. Then she throws a few rose petals on their heads and they’re ushered off the dais as the next person comes forward. On and on. For hours.

  “Are you here for the first time?” the woman next to me says. It takes me a second to realize she’s talking to me. She’s a nice-looking lady in her fifties, the kind who probably drives a late-model Volvo and is still married to her original husband. She’s obviously looking for a little conversation. My forte.

  “Yeah.” I smile. “I’m here with my fiancé. We’re getting married in nine days! I talked him into coming here to get a blessing for our marriage.” The lady smiles at me like that’s a pretty good story, which it is.

  “Oh, how wonderful,” she says. “Congratulations!”