Ordinary People

I’ve thought a great deal recently about the Academy Award winning movie “Ordinary People”. People close to me know it’s on my list of five favorite movies.



For those who haven’t seen the movie (and I won’t give it away) it’s the story of a young man in therapy after a suicide attempt brought on by the accidental drowning death of his older brother. The movie is set against the backdrop of a “perfect” upper middle class family (perfect by all outward appearances) that is slowly self-destructing.


Like the main character in the movie, I’ve spent a good deal of time in therapy following my arrest. Like him, I struggled to understand why, why I did what I did and threw my life, and the life of those I love, into such chaos. Like that young man, I stared into the blackness of the abyss and wondered if it was all worth it. And, like him, I found in an “ah hah” moment (props to you Oprah!) meaning in all this.


Here are a few things I’ve learned. I always believed in love at first sight. I still do. I remember vividly every detail when I first saw my then wife. She took my breath away. I found her to grow more beautiful each year we were together. To me, she always was, and always will be, the most beautiful woman in the world.


But, in this process of understanding me, I’ve seen weaknesses and failings in her that caused me such turmoil that I was willing to risk my own well-being to make her happy. And, I’ve learned happiness is fleeting, and external, and overblown. Joy, on the other hand, that feeling that comes when you know by faith you matter, is internal and permanent.


Shortly after we met, she learned her parents were divorcing. Her father was a serial philanderer; her mother, cold and aloof. She was devastated by the news. I remember the afternoon she came back from visiting her family to learn of the impending divorce. She clung to my neck, crying deeply over the knowledge of her father’s betrayal and her mother’s inertion.


We pressed on with our relationship and married young. She, just nineteen and a college sophomore; me, barely twenty-two and a first year law student.


I was always the jokester, the funny guy, and I could make her laugh. We loved each other and that was enough to keep us happy, so I thought. But it wasn’t. She suffered with an eating disorder; she cried weekly. It was all brought on by the stress she put on herself to be damn perfect and the difficulties she experienced dealing with two self-absorbed parents.


I hung in there through our early years because, well because I loved her. Later, during all the turmoil surrounding my arrest, she wrote me a revisionist version of our early years and said “I just felt the newlywed blues; it was normal”. That she chose to rewrite what we endured, discount what I felt, hurt me deeply.


A few years later, living in our first home, she and I learned we were going to have a baby. I was as happy as a man could be. She glowed. Then, tragically, she suffered a miscarriage on my 36th birthday. The loss of “our baby” devastated her. She wept for months. Whenever we’d go out to eat and she’d see a pregnant woman drinking or smoking she’d get overwhelmed. “Why? I did everything right. I ate right; I exercised. Why?”


How do you answer those questions? How do you love someone enough to get them through the pain?


Her parents’ relationship swirled in and out of our marriage like a gigantic weight tossed in a pool. Her father’s love and support, which she so desperately craved, was repeatedly denied her. Months would go by without any word from her dad. Her mother, hating her status as a mid-forties divorcee sought numerous relationships. She was needy, pathetic, and demanding.


So, I did something stupid, and reckless, and wrong. We were walking one day and she saw a beautiful, brand new, custom built home. “It’s the house I always dreamed of,” she told me. I was a young, struggling lawyer, barely making $18,000 a year. I wanted her to be happy, so I took money from a trust account I managed. I signed a promissory note and used the money for a down payment. She beamed. She got pregnant. We had our first child – a son – healthy and beautiful.


It came crashing down a year later. I didn’t face criminal charges, but I turned myself in to the bar and was disciplined. We stayed together, but she told me “I’m only staying because there’s no place else for the baby and me.”


Devastating words. Yet, somehow we managed to put our life back together. I learned a terrible lesson. I became the guy than never said “No”. My wife, my kids, parents, in-laws, friends, the church – I could make anything happen. First Class travel? Absolutely. Church budget short? I’ll make the donation. I relished being the “good guy”. I never let anyone down.


Problem was, I knew it all was a lie. It ate away at me. I began to get a short fuse, began to drink heavily. My life was crashing in around me and I had no way to stop it. I seriously contemplated suicide, figuring it was better than having to face myself in the mirror. I tried reaching out to my wife, but her view of love, of the craving I had just to have her hold my hand and tell me she loved me, wasn’t there.


Arrested; jailed; publicly humiliated. I suffered for almost a year, signing everything over to my wife, pleading guilty and being sentenced to 30 years. I hit bottom the day I received the divorce papers. That same day, a letter arrived with these words: “I don’t love you anymore. I haven’t loved you for a long time.”


I couldn’t get any lower. Then, I somehow found the faith and the strength to hang on. Like the young man in “Ordinary People”. I refused to drown.


Prison sucks. The loss of the only woman I’ve ever loved, devastating. Separation and alienation from my sons, traumatic. But, I can look myself in the mirror and like what I see. The old me, the hopefully, joyful, kind, and decent me, is back. There really can be good that comes from all this.