I feel like I'm a shadow of Tipper Gore today... married her high schools sweetheart, and 40 years later, 40 years of the same person, forty years of hurts and betrayals that have festered and consumed a relationship, 40 years of why didn't we cut our losses and just face the aweful truth. Both children of alcoholics, but he would never look at his demons or allow his pain to surface. I did. I went back to school to learn more about what makes me tick, what mental implants create or cause reactions. I use to think he was my savior who saved me from a grim aweful alcoholic home, and never thought to question or ask if his decisions in our life were right or wrong or if I had a say. I remember so well when he asked me.... when did you change? I was such a scared emotionally stunted child when we married. He was my rock and my world no different than being a toddler that thought parents are gods... until you start asking questions or things don't equal up to what pedogodgy they wanted us to believe. Leaving us with babysitters to party and drink, telling us we couldn't afford clothes, but they looked like the Kennedy's.... it wasn't long before my high school sweet heart started sounding a bit like he didn't really have all the answers, but what he decided and what he wanted was the way it was going to be. I didn't question. I think I know why men didn't want women to get educations or vote a century ago... it makes you look at the world, analyze, seek truth, and that might undermine authority in the home, in the marketplace, in the world. We've come far as women, so why are there so many physically and emotionally battered women? I have not been a prize either raped just months before our wedding, the beginning of one resentment harbored for years, the virgin taken from him. Then education ignited seeking of self or was it seeking of self that sought education? I don't know, but I know my world changed. I discovered I wasn't the retarded (educationally challenged) child of my youth, but it took reaching my 40th birthday to get there, to find out my parents were insane to let schools system document and replicate through each grade an IQ of someone who could not learn much less feed themself, yet not an arguement from them. I was 25 when I discovered that I was dyslexic and capable of learning, just a different way. I became a voracious reader, seeker but the perfectionist of the dyslexic was already a fierce survivor and competitor. If I couldn't be competent in school, I could do anything I watched being done hands on to perfection. That's how a teacher discovered my learning disablity and gave me a failed test orally. The beginning of mastering class and homework and grades. I graduated at 40 magna cum... and started loosing the man I married. He started treating my like I watched him treat his mother. No wonder she was always angry and frustrated with him. He never called her, never sent a card, she *****ed if he did, so he didn't call, write or visit. Occasionally we'd travel back home for a reunion, and she snubbed him, so the cycle intensified, until she was nearly 90 and in a rest home and fell and we were called to come home. He agreed with his siblings, morphine overdose. Of course there is more to that, but I know that she was trying to tell them that she did not want them to let her die because she had stipulated no tubes in her living will. Not one sibling was a college grad, it was no tubes, that's what she wants... at her age lets make it easy... morphine.... it took her 28 or more minutes to drown in her own fluids. It took me one day after to sucumb to the worst fear and depression since my hysterecomy.... and pills looked so easy. Then I was in a hospital forced to repent within the very pages of my studies.....psychiatric care.... and a wake up call to who was this man I married? He already makes decisions whether I disagreed or not, what if I were in her state? I found out. I left him after that, after a month of outpatient group gave me the insight that no one is worth giving up your life or independence for, certainly not your life. But, like a battered woman, he was charming and so like the boy I remembered after I had my own apartment and could say yes or no if I wanted to. The years are both emotional and physical, I started slapping his face, he'd thown me to the ground and hold me down until I hyperventilated or screamed myself into hysterical crying. If I screamed or cried as a child, the outcome was the same, and I married it. It was all fine if I was quiet and dutiful, as a child, and as a wife, but if I individuated, questioned, even acted out, it was fair game for punishment... disipline was not factored in catholic schools or homes, punishment was the yardstick, as became the mirror of my marriage. But I saw it all go up in flames this memorial day weekend. In my youth, the boat was our safe haven where the grownups got drunk and we somehow kept outselves from drowning unattended. I was a girl, not allowed to sail, or take the wheel, or even the handle of a 15 hp dory outboard moter. So, I bought my own boat, a nice boat, a cabin cruiser, and who knew a dyslexic would remember every move, every manuver she watched for years. Twin engines.... I was finally the captain of my world. Men would get up from their seats, guard their hulls or pilings convinced I was going to nail that sucker into their boat or dock or gas tanks. I piloted alone, no mate, no crew, my dog at my right side, first mate on my helm.... some women, more satisfying their husbands, would utter, nice job captain. Often a guest would answer, your the captain, we go where you want, you say who gets a fender or a line and port or starboard we bring her in. This weekend, the man who should have my back, my first mate, my mate.... growled and snarled, "you think you are the boss, controlling me,,,, no he never wanted to learn how to handle the boat, so funny how men call them single screw or twin screws... just seems funny to me.... but I watched him, the man who refused to take boat safety, or respect why there is a captain at all on a vessel. It was like watching our marriage play out... a marriage works when captain, first mate and crew (children) work together, have each others back, the captain and first mate interchangable, equal if not agreeable to the direction, safety of vessel and crew above all else. He would not lift a finger to grab a line or secure a fender, he just spewed at me and drank his beer, then another, and another. Once back at home port, the anger swelled in me so great that I decked him right in the jaw the first nasty control freak remark out of his mouth. He called me a ****. I word more despicable than any other language that I can even see clear to say much less type. 40 years flashed before me, no surprises, nothing that wasn't written on the wall time and time again, just a finality that felt as empty as childlessness, as empty as the words "love you too, let me call you in the morning, it's late.... " after not hearing from him all day... empty like the promises to go on vacation but always finding a project that had to be done that was more important than re-connecting, rejuvinating, remaking what couple's let fall between the cracks. Cracks become major foundation issues, and then the dam breaks.... and ours did. So if you are reading and wondering how four decades could just end.... really ask yourself how well or not you may or may not watched the signs, tied to shore up what was beginning to crumble. Abuse is abuse no matter who does the bidding. I slugged him. Mortal wound. He called me the unfathomable. Moral wound. We let our marriage die. We are both to blame. I'm nearly disabled, 59; how will I live, work, where do I go after the courts dissove our marriage? Will I ever know mature unconditional love? Am I even lovable. Some old sailor might think where did god keep you all these years is in my heart one second and bag lady the next. George Clooney and his up in the air speeches about back packs and less is best.... No, Tipper has nothing to worry about but has the same amount of memories to wade through and let go of, money and children and grandchildren to keep her feeling wanted and needed.... I have to learn to captain my own boat, myself, alone, no wheel, no rudder, no mates, no crew. I hope there is a wind in my life, in my future. I see a bit clearer from the last deep unrelenting depression. I know to combine pills and lots of alcohol like the celebrity's have done if I can't see my way out... I hope there is out, and there really is a whole new world... or am I naive, life really is a grim tale for woman over 40.... oh what I'd give to have come to this end at 40....