Getting to Know My Fiancée

October 1979 - Brighton, Massachusetts

I'd graduated from Boston University School for the Arts a year previously and was living in Brighton, MA in an apartment with two roommates. They were my best friends from childhood - one working and the other studying at Emerson College, where she had met the man who would become her husband. I was working at the local Star Market - a large grocery store not far from my house. It paid the rent, and allowed me time to draw, which was my passion in those days.

My roommates and I decided to have a Halloween Party with a Wizard the Oz theme - fully costumed of course. My dog Misty and I were Dorothy and Toto. I was quite shy in those days and don't remember being particularly focused on boyfriends at the time. I'd dated the same guy through much of college, until he'd been diagnosed with Lymphoma and took a semester off. We were very close, really more like best friends. Even after college, when he moved to California, we still talked a lot. Meanwhile, I was being asked out by guys all the time. I hated it because I didn't know how to say no, or that I wasn't interested, and invariably got caught up in situations that I didn't want to be in. Looking back, I wonder if the reason I couldn't turn guys away was because I had an innate need to be wanted and loved.

There were a lot of guests at our Halloween party, including one tall, dark-haired, handsome guy that my Emerson roommate had invited. She and her boyfriend were friends with him, having met in the theatre department where they were all studying. I thought he was interesting and he was pretty cute in the kilt he was wearing as a costume. So we started seeing each other.

In early January, just a couple of months after meeting him, we drove up to Bar Harbor, Maine for a getaway for a few days. Much of Bar Harbor, being a summer tourist destination, was closed down since it was deep winter, but we found that Cranberry Lodge, part of the Asticou Inn, was open and had a room available. It was really quite romantic. The woman who ran the lodge also cooked dinners, which we ate in a warm and cozy kitchen with a couple of other guests. While we were there, he asked me to marry him. I had no idea what he even meant....what was marriage, what did it mean? My parents' marriage was not, from my point of view, something to aspire to. I was so young and naive. All I could think of was that all those guys who kept asking me out would not do so anymore if I had a ring on my finger. It wasn't that I didn't want a boyfriend, I just disliked being pestered. And secondly, I really wanted "my own" family, with children. So I said yes.

I called my college boyfriend and told him that we were going to get married. He warned me that I had not spent enough time getting to know my fiancee, but I did not listen to him. We were married in May of 1980, less that a year after we met.

What ensued was the most difficult 10 years of my life, and I didn't know how to tell anyone what I was going through. It turned out that my husband had an undiagnosed bipolar disorder. I vividly remember the first time that he went into a severe depression. He sat by the window in our living room for several days, not moving, not eating, not sleeping. I thought it was my fault and didn't know what to do. It was just months after we were married. We shared a common bond of being survivors. He came from an extremely dysfunctional family, and I was dealing with unresolved issues from being adopted. A very volatile relationship eventually emerged.

My son was born three years after we married. I was so excited...my own baby, my own flesh and blood. He was the only person in my life that I knew of that was actually related to me. Unfortunately, our marriage went south very quickly thereafter because my husband was so jealous of the time I spent with our baby.

I'm not going to recount the entire story, other than to say my son was the only thing that kept me sane during those years. At one point I was in such emotional pain that I remember thinking that my heart and soul were encased in rock which was being held to my body by a very fine thread. I was terrified that it was going to break. My son was the only reason that it didn't. I knew that I had to be strong for him.

After my husband's second suicide attempt, I took my son, then 7, and left. My friends came with their mini-vans and we took what we could and moved it to an apartment a couple of miles away. My friends brought me their spare furniture - a bed, kitchen table and chairs, and a couch. That first night in my new apartment, I finally slept for the first time in years. I was safe.

Besides being young and somewhat naive, I yearned for "my own" family, a direct consequence of being adopted. A couple of years before I left my husband, I finally had the courage to tell my mom what was happening in my marriage. My mom and dad were shocked at first, but then incredibly supportive. I waited for so long to talk with my mom because I was embarrassed. I felt like divorce was something that good girls simply did not do. And there was the underlying fear that if I did something bad, I'd be rejected once again.

Dad, Mom and Kate - May 1980