Sway of West

Chapter Two-1

Chapter TwoI’ve never been diagnosed as bipolar, and can generally get through the day in a somewhat stabilized state of bleh, but my love-hate relationship with my commute to work might have medical professionals suggesting otherwise. The love part of the relationship is basically me accepting that driving alone to and from work is as close to Me Time as I’ll get, and I’m sure as hell going to take it. The hate part comes into play when I have to share the road with i***t drivers, and those fuckers are everywhere.

Then there’s that wishy-washy part in between the love and hate, the gray area where the numbness is overwhelming and I long to be in a flimsy but semi-debilitating car accident. One where I could enjoy a week off nursing minor internal injuries in the comfort of a hospital and free from the burdens of life.

Wishing for an accident? Really, Rae?

The rest and relaxation combined with waitress service, unlimited TV, and strong medication delights just about every sense I have, except the sexy one. And with the way I’m feeling anymore, it’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.

Rush hour traffic in New Jersey rates among the worst in the country and Route 202 can be quite maddening for your daily commuter, ranking way above average in its ability to give someone asphalt-induced chest palpitations.

But it can also be lovely even, dare I say, breathtaking at times. The road straddles picturesque farm country within the central portion of the state and is loaded with historical red barns, tidy rows of corn, rolling hills for as far as the eye can see, and the pungent, eye-watering stink of cow s**t. Misty morning drives can be soothing and serene, even for those with nerves like mine, so beyond fried they resemble the inside of a charred oven after a self-clean cycle.

Today is one of those gorgeous misty morning drives. It takes a total of six minutes to shift from Hyper-Mom Mode to cool, calm, and collected mom in Drive Mode. The first five of those six minutes are spent on mental and physical re-adjustments. Myles drove the car last night to pick up dinner so every ergonomic seat function needs to be reset back to my liking.

Seriously? I have to reset this dumbass seat again?

How someone could have such a delicate skeletal structure and need to make such minute and specific adjustments when driving a roundtrip total of 14 minutes to pick up Chinese food is a concept that’s beyond my ability to grasp. As an admitted car junkie, he can’t help himself. It’s not physically possible for him to get in a car and just drive, he needs to experience every feature, like a 48 year old sugar junkie in a candy shop.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for superior comfort and getting the most of a driving experience, assuming the drive takes longer than 20 minutes. And since my car doesn’t come equipped with memory seat settings, I find myself re-adjusting this goddamn seat entirely way too often. I just don’t need the incremental menial tasks, there’s not enough gas in my own tank for that kind of nonsense.

Fully adjusted physically, I transfer my focus to the radio. I cruise through the XM channels, stopping at the 80s on 8 station. The synthesized music from this time period is my lifeline and has carried me over countless road miles.

I catch Madonna’s “Express Yourself” near the beginning, throw the volume knob over hard right, and soak in all the fond memories that come with it.

“Don’t go for second best, baby. Put your love to the test.”

Fuck yeah.

It’s a song that immediately rockets me back 30 years to a childhood summer. Back when being a dedicated pool rat was my number one care in the world. My second most important tween-age objective that summer was a massive, go-big-or-go-home friendship bracelet. It used every single embroidery thread I owned, was about 24 knots wide, and easily the biggest bracelet I’d completed in all of my almost 12 years on the planet. I intended on giving it to Johnny Carroll on the first day of school to remind all of the 6th grade girls to back off and that we were still going steady. Life was good. My biggest dilemma was over-chlorinated skin and eyes, and finding the time to put on moisturizing lotion. Other than constantly looking like a sky high alligator with killer greenish-blond, pool water-induced highlights, life was better than I ever imagined it could be.

My inner songstress wakes up from a diva-like slumber and I take the opportunity to roll down the windows and sing way too loud for someone with only an average singing voice, and I don’t give a Garden State flippity f**k who hears me. Traffic is stop and go, and once the song is over my mood deflates a bit. My thoughts drift back to Myles and I instantly get that free-falling feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Ugh. Here comes the familiar feeling of guilt for not being a happier wife and mother. No, wait a sec. This feels a touch angrier. Or maybe it is guilt, guilt sprinkled with aggravation that’s ready to detonate. Yeah, that feels about right. Continue on...

Admittedly, I’m so consumed with doing everything for everyone else that I’ve pretty much stopped putting effort into my marriage. I only have so much energy, patience, love, and flippity f***s to give to get me through each day. I can’t even handle the additional effort it takes to adjust my freaking car seat without getting severely rattled. The exertion required to take care of this family and maintain our lifestyle feels like a goliath black hole with gravitational acceleration so significant, one can only hope for an exaggerated fender-bender to break away from its grasp and take a much needed time out. Adding Fix a Marriage to an ever-growing to-do list would require a more serious accident, a longer hospital stay, and some extended short-term disability.

You could be a little less dramatic, no?

My subconscious, typically the rational one, seems to think there’s still some length left to my proverbial rope. And in this specific case, it would be wrong. To put it simply, I do for others almost every waking minute of the day. In contrast, Myles comes home, sits on the couch, waits to be served dinner, and makes sure the couch cushions are kept at precisely 98.6 degrees for another three hours. I can only imagine the shock and disorder that would follow if I, too, resigned from my household and motherly duties, released the rope entirely, and became a professional couch warmer.

The resentment is palpable, and increasingly debilitating. I’m annoyed with him for what feels like 95% of the time and for no less than 14 separate reasons, and it’s not healthy. Nor am I blameless. My expectations have ratcheted themselves into orbit and I can’t seem to find my chill-the-f**k-out button. Our relationship has certainly taken a backseat to Jess and work, and all of the activities in between that make up life. It’s a helluva lot easier to bicker back and forth or ignore each other, whichever option seems best at the time. And while we’re both guilty of it, I don’t think either one of us is ready to throw in the towel.

Myles and I weren’t always so bitter towards each other. Our story started off like any other, we met online and found happiness like we never knew was possible. It felt like we had struck pure boy-meets-girl gold. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the handsome photo that caught my eye. What reeled me in like a hooked fish was a list of his three favorite things on his profile page. The very first item listed was hopelessly boring (Yawn...), his iPod. At the time, it seemed like 70% of eHarmony’s male customers between the ages of 35 and 45 listed iPod as one of their favorite things. It was grossly overused and not very creative, nor does it tell me a goddamn thing about a potential dating match.

The second favorite item he listed was Situational Awareness, not something you see everyday, but I instantly liked it. I’m acutely aware of my space and actions, and how they impact others, almost to the point of paranoia. I can’t grocery shop on a Saturday for fear of having a panic attack in the produce section. It amazes me that more than half of the weekend shoppers are seemingly able to drive to the store while observing motor vehicle laws, negotiate oncoming traffic, and park their cars without a problem in the store’s parking lot but they simply cannot manage to push a shopping cart down an aisle without royally f*****g up aisle traffic. Food shopping effectively engages the same principles as driving, and I just don’t understand how people can be so absolutely clueless about their physical presence. I didn’t even know this man yet, but I gave him huge bonus points for having Situational Awareness be one of his favorite things.

Last was favorite item number three and easily the most intriguing: Orange juice with lots of pulp. My first reaction was pure disbelief (Who the hell likes pulp?). I didn’t know a single person in my little world within central New Jersey that likes to drink orange juice with pulp. Lots of pulp. But now I’m curious and want to know more. Myles, from Pennington, knowingly put this titillating piece of information out there, along with Situational Awareness. I sensed wit and character depth, a necessary prerequisite for any potential dating candidate, and immediately sent his profile a wink.

Our relationship had officially started with that one wink. We ping-ponged a few direct messages back and forth, one particularly witty message asking how I felt about polar bears and their recent change in migration patterns truly cemented my curiosity about him. As suspected, it turned out a wine buzz fueled the polar bear question and he was just being a wiseass. Nonetheless, it secured the hook in my lip and he proceeded to reel me in... click, click, click. Like two wild and crazy adults, we decided to be reckless and skip the next eHarmony-guided step, the dreaded phone conversation. I knew I’d only f**k it up with nervous tongue-tied nonsense and inaudibles, and told him as much, so we agreed to meet in person instead.

During that first date, it took me all of seven seconds to realize he was a true gentleman, one that showed promised panty-dropping maturity. Maybe it was the black sport coat with the white button down shirt, the amazing smile, or the childhood story about a canoe, a rogue oar, and reviving a frog that was bonked unconscious, but I was smitten after that night. He too, and apparently missed his highway exit by not one, but two exits while driving home.

Our first kiss wasn’t until the third date, a relentless mood-killing cough at the most inopportune moment prohibited it from happening on date number two. Date number three had to be the big kiss otherwise that magic moment loses the all-important magic. The act itself no longer becomes a sexy, physical introduction but rather a task to check off of a list, and it definitely brings the relationship momentum to an almost unsalvageable and grinding halt.

I was taking every precaution to make sure this spark didn’t burn out. To start, I strapped on my coveted multi-colored snakeskin heels and paired them with a classy outfit worthy of an InStyle cover photo shoot. I wasn’t afraid to bring out the big guns to help secure date night success, but bitchass shoes and a fetch outfit weren’t going to do it alone. A recovery plan like this required liquid reinforcement as well, so I stashed an emergency bottle in my handbag, a maneuver I learned in college and was clearly not ready to let go at the ripe age of 35.

In the end, our evening took us through a delightful Italian dinner accompanied by an even better Italian wine. Somewhere between my third and fourth glass of wine I confessed to bringing a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, which Myles found highly amusing. We popped the cork back at his house and spent the next two hours walking around his neighborhood, bubbly in hand, talking about any and everything.