Dead Beat: One-sided reflections on divorce, losing a daughter, and letting go
For about three months in 2016 I slept on a mattress that was on top of a mattress that was on top of a mattress. This creative arrangement came with the room. To make it look a bit more presentable, I covered the bottom two mattresses with a black blanket that I picked up at Ikea on the second of two trips I made out there across a two-week span. On both of those trips I’d broken down sobbing--sitting in the parking lot in my car, and then later inside the store, wandering among neat showcase rooms assembled to suggest that life could be better if one were only better organized.
The second trip happened 26 days after I’d last seen my daughter. It would be another week still before I’d figure out her mom had secretly sent her back to Michigan with her grandma. And that she was never coming back. That I’d never see her again.
I should say this wasn’t my “real” daughter, but rather my step-daughter, though that’s not how I thought of her. I last saw her the night before the girl’s fifth birthday. I’d lied to her, said I’d be gone for a week, that I was going to stay at a friend’s house. The last part was true. The first part was a question mark more than a lie. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I just knew I couldn’t put up with her mom anymore.
When I put her to sleep that night she made me promise that I’d wait until she woke up the next morning before leaving. She wanted to say bye-bye. I’d planned to wait, but my soon-to-be ex-wife kicked me out early in the morning while I was eating a hardboiled egg. Then I was just in my car alone, sitting in a giant parking lot and sobbing. This was a different parking lot than the one before. I’d cry in a lot of parking lots that spring and summer and fall. I texted my brother who told me that someday things would get better, but that it wouldn’t be today.
My only plan was to make it over to a friend’s house who’d promised me a room. But I couldn’t show up there until the evening. I had one big bag full of clothes and a small bag for my computer and that was it. I’d taken a few days off work, so I had nowhere to go for the next 10 hours. Nothing was open yet and the sky was just beginning to lighten. It was cloudy, casting a gloom over the city. This is common in San Diego in the spring, though I didn’t know that then. The three of us had moved out there together in January. Just five months later, here we were.
I’d see my step-daughter one last time, I guess. In the parking lot of In’N’Out in Mission Valley, an area of town that’s really just parking lots interrupted by strip malls. I was in my car eating, wondering what in the hell I would do next with my life. That’s when I saw my soon-to-be ex-wife and her mom queue up for the drive through in the distance. I could just barely see Angie in her car seat waving her arms around, joking and singing.
I wanted to drive over and call the whole thing off, beg my soon-to-be ex-wife to forgive me for walking out. To please just let me come home. Maybe we could forget the whole thing and start over. Maybe she’d change. Maybe she’d finally see things from my perspective.
Instead, I drove back to the semi-converted garage bedroom I was staying in. There was a mini fridge and an air conditioner in the room. The only real trouble was having to go into the main house to use the bathroom or kitchen, though I never used the kitchen and cut down on trips to the bathroom by pissing in the yard after dark.
The other people in the house included my friend’s brother and wife and their newborn daughter, plus my friend’s cousin. My friend's cousin was just out of college and spent most of her time smoking pot and playing video games while lying on the bed in her room. She invited me in to play with her a couple of times. I declined the invitations and tried to avoid her. One afternoon I came back during the day and she was lying in the backyard outside my door, sunbathing in a bikini. How’s it going, I asked. I’m taking it minute by minute, she said.
I didn’t know what to make of that so I just went into the garage, ate a few slices of lunch meat from the mini fridge and laid down for a while. I couldn’t figure out how I could possibly go on living without seeing my step-daughter. This thought burned in the background like a porch light you forget to turn off during the day. Then it would suddenly swerve into sharp focus, more like a big rig humming over the lane divider.
An EMT I’d hung out with five years back had told me after a few beers that the best way to do it is by overdosing on heroin. I’ve seen it done this way, he said. It’s clean and painless. It just slows down your whole system, you fall asleep. And then you stop breathing.
I didn’t have the energy to figure that out. I had a bottle of melatonin on hand and I wondered what would happen if I took the whole bottle and walked into the ocean at night. It was a dumb idea and I knew it. I thought about talking to my therapist but I was too worried she’d have me committed. Aren’t they legally required to intervene if they perceive that someone’s a danger to themselves or others? I wasn’t sure how that worked.
But the garage room wasn’t the room with the triple mattress stack. I stayed in the garage room for three weeks. I tried to move out after two weeks and get a room at an airbnb in order to be less of a burden to my friend. But my bedroom at the airbnb had been right by the living room and I’d been kept awake by other guests sitting up at night talking. Then in the morning I’d discovered that a trail of ants had found the honey jar I kept in my backpack. It was too much for me and after just one night I had to return to the garage for another week.
Eventually I did find a cheap but agreeable room. I put up curtains in the dumbest way possible using a hammer and nails. I bought a blanket to cover two of the three mattresses so they almost looked like a respectable platform. I fell asleep every night sobbing. I would dream about playing with Angie. About hugging her and lying beside her as she fell asleep at night. That had been our nighttime routine. I’d lie on the floor beside her bed and reach my hand up. She’d grip her entire palm around my thumb and chatter on until she dozed off.
I lived with two girls in that house. There were cracks across the walls and ceiling and the main woman kept the back door by her bedroom wide open all night so her decrepit little dog could go in and out. There was only one bathroom, which could get tricky. If my roommate across the hall and I ran our space heaters at the same time it would trip a fuse. But overall it was priced well below market and the roommates were very hands off. So I felt free. The property management company conducted no maintenance and were planning to demolish the house in six months, though none of us knew that yet.
After work I would sit out front and read to occupy my time. I no longer knew what to do with myself or remembered what I enjoyed. I’d left it all behind for three years in order to keep an impossible relationship skittering forward and to bootstrap myself into fatherhood.
It was while living in this busted house I learned from my own mom that my daughter-in-law had been secretly sent back home to Michigan. My mom had known it was going to happen for a week and didn’t tell me, which was probably the worst part of the whole situation. And by the time she did tell me, Angie had already been gone a week.
The thing about a five year-old is you can’t contact them if the parents and grandparents don’t want you to. She didn’t have a phone or an email address or social media. I came to realize that I was not actually her real father, I wasn’t even a legal guardian. I’d done the unthinkable and walked out of my marriage, her family was done with me.
I started sending cards. I’d write her name really big on the front of the envelope. My hope was that maybe she’d recognize her name somehow. And then what? I knew it was ridiculous. She couldn’t even read. I just didn’t know what else to do.
I tried emailing my soon-to-be ex-wife and found no sympathy there. I tried emailing my soon-to-be ex-wife’s mom and she never responded. I didn’t dare email her dad. So I tried with the cards. Before long my soon-to-be ex-wife’s father threatened legal trouble. Then that was that.
I would eventually have to let go of any hope I’d ever see her again, just out of sheer survival. Holding onto hope was like criss-crossing an exacto knife across my abdomen. I had to let it drop. But I really couldn’t, not for years. I can’t explain it, but you probably know what I’m talking about.
There’s obviously more to this story than what I’ve written here. This is just a snapshot of one moment from one perspective. I’m a victim here only in the sense that everyone involved is a victim, meaning we all suffered. We all did things that made us all suffer.
The only truly innocent victim is the five year-old. She was perhaps young enough that she won’t remember me raising her for three years, putting her to bed at night or cooking her mac and cheese and chicken nuggets. That she won’t remember me leaving, never to return. My hope now is that she won’t remember me at all. The saddest thing I’ve ever hoped for.
Unrelated poem: “In the Manner of a Disgraced Athlete”.