She's a wonderful woman with a troubled past. Her mother conducted serial affairs--which eventually "broke" her father and caused a divorce. The mother continued dating lots of men--never remarrying--and focused virtually all of her attention on her man du jour. My OW was the oldest of 3 kids. The sister was the middle and the youngest a brother. When my OW was growing up, her siblings looked to her to "mother" them. My OW made decisions about whether the youngers could go to parties, etc. My OW's mom was terrible with money--spending whatever the family had on superficial things. The family had nice clothes, but no heat at their home in the winter. My OW's first love was a boy who used to tease her. As they aged, they became friends. Eventually, he used to come over after school and hold my OW in a bed so she could sleep despite terrible anxiety over her parents' divorce. I know it sounds suspicious, but supposedly, they were never sexually intimate. Eventually, he declared that he never loved her; that he only viewed her as a sister. My OW helped him get a girlfriend. Then he began lying to my OW. She ended the friendship. She went into a deep depression that precluded her from dating again for a decade. At 16 years old, she had a fight with her mom over the mom's poor money allocation. The mother threw my OW out of the home. My OW grabbed a trash bag, threw clothes into it, and stormed out the door, riding a bus to another European country to join her father. He was a bouncer (and an alcoholic) who lived in a 16' x 16' room. She had to sleep on the floor. In this new country, she became involved in drama and student government. At one point, she spent a year on secondary school at sea and learned to sail. She graduated from secondary school as valedictorian and class president, having won a regional award for acting in a school drama. She dreamed of university and wanted to study journalism or anthropology. She applied, but then her father died of a ruptured brain aneurysm. She had to return to her home country. She took odd jobs for several years. At one point, while urban exploring with a friend, a stairway she was using collapsed. She broke both legs badly and had to be in a wheelchair for a year. During that time, she was involved in a 2nd romance. His mom was rude to her. My OW taught him to clean and shop and cook--and then, after she became wheelchair bound--he dumped her, saying that he didn't want to hold her back.
She still can't walk well. A surgery could fix her ambulation, but she can't afford the time off from work. Her mother said she would help my OW through a surgery, but never did. My friend wound up taking a job at an odd business: a bakery that also served coffee, cold platters, and dealt in real estate. She eventually learned to do every job there--and got tasked to do them all.
However, she was still officially titled as an "office worker"— even though she placed orders for the bakery, baked, prepared, platters, prepared, scheduling, ran payroll, made fancy coffee, and showed and maintained properties. Her employers, a husband and wife team, would regularly verbally assault their staff and would not give raises despite increasing responsibilities and absurdly long work hours. my OW learned English simply by interacting with people who entered her place of business. it would be a stretch to call her natively fluent, but she was very intelligible, even on advanced topics. She was also intellectually, curious and a free thinker. At one point, she had designs on becoming a nun. Then she decided to leave Chrisitanity entirely because she thought the Church wasn’t sufficiently compassionate. At one point, my OW engaged in political advocacy for a year, marching and supportive a cause that my OW understood to be vitally important. I share that impression, even though I am on completely the opposite side of the political spectrum from her. Still, we could disagree totally agreeably, and end a conversation with real respect for the other person’s perspective, even while not necessarily coming any closer in terms of the positions held. again, intellectually curious, but with little money to spare, she paid to take one university class per term toward a business degree—so she could be paid better.
Meanwhile, her younger sister became a bartender, and her younger brother became essentially a bum. He is physically and mentally capable to work, but he chooses not to, and has gone intermittently homeless over the years. my OW used to send a significant part of her paycheck back to him to cover his expenses because he was, and always will be, her brother.
One day, when one of my OW‘s new employees announced that she had been kicked out of her boyfriend‘s apartment and had no place to live, my OW managed to find the woman extra work hours to increase her pay and literally shared half of her own bed with this young woman—not out of sexual appetite, but out of compassion to keep another human being safe until the employee could get her feet underneath her.
My OW did not have money enough to live on her own after her various expenses, and so she lived with several flatmates. She had only a single room to herself, although with what I understand was a nice common space. Because my OW so like to care for people and had insomnia herself, she used to make fancy meals for her flatmates. She even packed lunches for them every day. Her flatmates used to sometimes call her mom, even though they were roughly the same age.
I think, for the moment, I need to plan to stop here. In terms of telling you more about my OW.
What I am gonna try to tell you now is why any of the crap ahead of this matters.
I could tell you many many more stories about my OW. how I find her occasional English foibles endearing. How funny she is. How deeply she knew me. How she could guess where my heart stood with hardly a hint because we knew each other that well. How my friend had enough struggles in life that no one could fault her for being a criminal, and yet, she was this compassionate soul. Brilliant. Wonderful. Always thinking of others. Never thinking of herself. I still believe that she officially declared our friendship over because she felt that that’s what I needed and that’s what my wife needed. From little hints over the time I knew her, I believe she cried for herself when she sent her final letter to me. Quite frequently, my OW used to wear a smile through her pain so others would feel at-ease. like my wife, my friend saw who I am deep down. They saw the parts of me that have caused me deep shame, and they saw the upside of them. Unlike my wife, my friend appreciated who I was to the end.
My OW is such a caring soul that she deserves for someone to care for her. And it breaks my heart that, at the end of our friendship, I don’t know that she had such a person. Across an ocean, there’s only just so much I can do for her. When she is sick, I can’t make her a cup of tea with honey in it. But someone that good deserves care. And I can’t forgive myself not to be looking after her.
As a last thought, I need to share with you that my order is a good person, but she’s not a model. I would never want to demean her in any way, and I feel a bit absurd, even mentioning this, but I can’t help but think that many affairs may take place because someone is just so overwhelmingly handsome or beautiful. The only part of my OW that was truly… truly WOWZA!!! beautiful was her soul.
Without loving me, romantically, she made me believe I could be loved again, and whether I ever get to talk with her again or not, I stand forever in her debt for that.
All I want from her is friendship and the ability to show her a little care. And I’m sorry if my W can’t handle that— but that’s not too much to ask.
[This message edited by Unconventional at 10:15 PM, Wednesday, October 14th]
