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The fact of the matter is, I married Kristy simply because I was not in love with her.  What a terrible disservice I did her and myself.  But at the time, it seemed like the thing to do. Every time I fell in love, it ended so horribly and caused so much pain; I swore I’d never do it again.

I met Kristy my junior year.  She lived in the same co-op as me.  I was working night cleanup and she came in, made some toast and the very first words that I ever spoke to her were, “I hate people like you!”  She was stoned at the time so the words kind of passed over her head.  What I meant was, she breezed in, made a mess and breezed out with nary a thought to the mess that she created nor the impact it had on the people who had to clean up after her.

My words had the necessary effect, though.  We didn’t speak again until the following summer.  My friend Bill had gotten an apartment with three bedrooms and needed roommates to make it affordable.  Bill always imagined himself a ladies man and figured it would be cool to get female roommates.  Not that he would sleep with them, he was in love with my friend Jane and they were destined to be together.  He just always wanted to be cool.  Chick roommates would do that.

Kristy stayed at Michigan that summer, to take some courses.  She had entered the U of M as a nurse, changed majors in her sophomore year, had earned enough credits to be a Geography major and her father had a fit.  He wanted her to get a nursing degree.  Reluctantly, she succumbed to the pressure and had to take a lot of courses even to graduate a year behind.  As it was, she entered the year before me and didn’t graduate until the year behind me.

When she moved in with Bill, we had no choice but to see each other.  Bill was doing shift work at the Ford Motor Company and I never knew what his schedule was.  I’d go over there but it was a mystery as to whether he was going to be home or not.

Kristy, on the other hand, was always there.  I don’t know why.  I’d say “is Bill here?” and she’d say, “no, he won’t be home til 4 or 6 or 10” I could never tell.

I’d sit around, chatting with her, waiting for Bill to get home.  Slowly I noticed that a) she was very pretty.  She looked just like the Indian princess who said, “you call it corn, we call it maize.” And then there was b) she was fun to talk to and eventually I found myself going over there and not really caring whether Bill was at home.  But the most important thing was while I enjoyed spending time with her, I was not in love with her.  I could go days without seeing her.  It wasn’t a problem.

One day, I asked her out on a date.  There was no way around it.  There was no mistaking it for something else.  It was a date.  Unfortunately, she said yes.  It was all downhill from there.

As we got closer and closer, I missed the warning signs or chose to ignore them.  One time, when we were going to the grocery store together, I offered her the choice of Meier’s Thrifty Acres or Kroger’s.  She screamed at the top of her lungs that she didn’t give a damn; that I should choose.

You always remember the fight; you never remember what the fight was about. The first time we lived together, during one fight, she threw a pen through my ear.  When we had an apartment together, she got so angry at me she jumped through one of my drawers.  Another time, she started tearing up my paperback books.

Her outbursts were so extreme, so far outside my normal experience that I could not comprehend them.  I was in shock.  They didn’t register.

After my senior year, she needed to stay one more year at Michigan to get her nursing degree so I stayed with her and worked full time.  I had planned on going to graduate school, after all, I had to keep up with my brother but one year wouldn’t make a difference.

When the time came to discuss our future, Kristy’s father told her she couldn’t follow me to the ends of the earth, that we had to get married or split up.  This came as a surprise to me.  I had never really thought about getting married.  I didn’t really think it was my fate.  When the topic came up, it was really the first time I ever considered it.  After mulling it over a bit, I explained to Kristy that I could never really marry anybody who wasn’t Jewish.  She was Episcopalian.  She asked me what if she converted?  What a foreign concept!  I didn’t think I could ever do that for somebody else.  The fact that she would do that for me was rather impressive.

After some planning and soul-searching, she took instruction, got a Mikvah and converted to Judaism.  We were married in Joliet’s only synagogue.  The rabbi there saw dollar signs when he heard that Kristy and I were going to be married there.  Kristy’s father was the most successful lawyer in all of Joliet.  They used to tell me that the judges would ask him when he was taking vacation and that was when they’d close the courthouse for their vacations.

Kristy’s father paid for a new Chuppah and all the trappings.  At one point, it occurred to me that I really didn’t want to marry her but by that time, it was too late.  The wedding, the invitations, the guests, the whole thing took on a life of its own and I was not strong enough to put a stop to it.

Kristy’s temper was genetic. They always told me that her grandmother, her father’s mother, was American Indian.  Nobody was sure if her name was Sue and she was Cherokee or her name was Ann and she was Sioux.  Either way, Kristy’s father was famous for his temper.  Legend had it that one time he threw his wife, Kristy’s mother, down the steps.  His sister Cecilia was famous for temper tantrums and histrionics.  In fact, Cecilia committed suicide by accident attempting to manipulate her son into stopping seeing a girl she didn’t approve of.

Whether it was DNA or simply being raised in a family where such outbursts of anger were considered normal, Kristy got it bad which means I got it bad.

As newlyweds, our first year together was the opposite of blissful and things went to hell from there.  She was always yelling at me about something.  She was always ready to show her displeasure by destroying something of mine that I had cared about.

I remember several times during that first year of marriage, just sitting in our living room, late at night, all by myself, just crying and crying asking why I was chosen to feel such pain.  Maybe being in love was the better way.

Eventually, we had a son.  My thinking was that maybe a baby would make her less selfish.  Boy was I wrong!  Still later, we had a daughter.  I have absolutely no clue what I was thinking there.  We separated three times, the last time being for keeps.  We saw many marriage counselors, always the same thing: Lee, you have to be more selfish, Kristy; you have to be less selfish.  She would never attend long enough to consider following their advice.

I spend 19 years with her in all.  During the last six years or so, I told my son that I envied him, that he was “getting out of there” when he went off to college.  I even had the time and date picked out of when I was going to leave.  It was September of 2002, when our daughter went off to college.

It was not a happy marriage.  I am certain that Kristy was mentally disturbed. I think she has a personality disorder called borderline personality.  When I look back, though, I sometimes think that some of it was my fault.  I had denied Kristy the love and intimacy that comes from being in love. While I was faithful and devoted, my acts of service were not recognized by her as an expression of my love.  Maybe she would have been better off with somebody who was in love with her.

When I left her, it was horrible.  Hell hath no fury like a psychopathic woman scorned.  It is now 10 years later and I still battle her on a regular basis over support and college for the children.  It is probably best if you don’t contact her.  However, this record would not be complete if I didn’t mention the woman who was the mother of my children.