Memoir Books
The Naked Mistress
A memoir of a woman resurrected — Chapter THREE
The Naked Mistress is an ordinary life turned extraordinarily out of control. It’s about the lies we believe and the truths we ignore. And the danger of abandoning ourselves.
(Chapters One and Two at the bottom of this post)
Chapter Three, The Shift:
I have spent twenty-two years traveling toward my Naked Mistress. The collision of my former self and current soul unable to escape one another in the mirror. I have built a life I dearly wanted to hold onto for my boys, Ralph, and me.
There is relief in knowing I can wipe the gum from my shoe and liberate the jam from the jar. But there is a history.
I find my best friend when I am nineteen years old.
He is the guy I meet circa 1982. A young girl from the Washington, D.C. suburbs stumbles across a guy from suburban Philadelphia. We cross paths in Scranton, Pennsylvania. A place if not for the television show, The Office, most could not envision. A hearty, coal mining town with blocks anchored by bars, funeral parlors, and a rich history showcased at its Lackawanna Station.
This is the town where I will meet the love of my life.
A guy I initially ignore.
He tenaciously convinces me he deserves another look. A few months later, I push through the apartment door and declare, “I am going to marry that guy!”
My Pennsylvania and Jersey girl roommates respond with audible gasps, laughter, and a few northern euphemisms.
They remind me I once wanted nothing to do with him.
I squeal with delight at their accuracy and the craziness of it all. But it is true. What my eyes hadn’t initially seen, my heart revels in. He is the guy I can’t live without.
Today he is the guy I can’t live with.
Something has to change.
We are not the same people. The young couple who had walked the cold streets of Scranton snuggled together. We’ve grown up and supposedly become wiser.
We’ve allowed our hearts to become separate and individual.
I was never your typical girl.
I didn’t dream of white gowns and weddings. I was smarter than most. I knew what marriage could and couldn’t be. I was a child whose dad left when she was just five years old.
I was in no hurry to get married.
While other girls were racing toward the altar…
I was crawling away from it.
Ralph knew this about me, but he wanted to get married. So one day in 1987 he gave me an ultimatum. Either I get engaged to him or he would move on.
What was a girl to do?
Give into her fears and let him walk away?
Or overcome deeply painful childhood memories? And trust she would never feel that five-year-old’s pain again. The agony of watching a man she loved walk out the door?
Young, gallant Ralph was ready and willing to overcome my objections.
He was a great salesman.
He reassured my fears and brought me around to his way of thinking.
Marriage it seemed could be a safe place to reside. The permanence of love was enjoyed by many married couples and I, too, could live this dream. Or so it seemed.
Now, circa 2010 I sit in a marriage counselor’s office by myself.
It seems another man I love…would walk out the door.
It is a cruel oxymoron to be in marriage counseling for one.
I was the girl who shared her most terrifying fear with her fiancé. Now he was nowhere to be found. There was zero empathy for the girl who had lost a large part of her family years before. There was no memory of the promises and reassurance that he would never let her experience that pain again.
No, I sat alone.
Ralph went to counseling months earlier. I’d been hopeful during that time. Sadly, once the mirror was turned in his direction he decided it wasn’t for him. Too much history to discover and more blame than he was willing to assign himself. The man willing to go to counseling disappeared.
Some couples stay in therapy and get help.
Others divorce.
And then there are the ones like us…………..stuck.
Somewhere down deep was a bruise on my otherwise hearty heart. I call it a bruise, not a scar because I’d barely noticed it all of these years. But now it hurt.
It hurt like that little girl whose family landscape changed.
I had many truths to face.
One is my fear of losing Ralph forever. Now sitting alone, I realize he’d already made that decision for me. Ralph had directed me towards this journey because he had not chosen love. He had prioritized himself and his pain which left me by myself.
The same path my dad had chosen.
I envy the imperfect marriage.
The married people who fight. But who down deep own a pulse, a vein that runs throughout their relationship pumping blood to one another’s hearts.
I look at my marriage counselor.
“I will do anything to save my marriage, anything,” I say. “Just tell me what I should do?”
“Stop trying so hard,” he says.
He’s trying to counsel the pleaser, fixer, and rescuer. He’s telling me I need to surrender these roles. They aren’t working. They are taking me down. But I am comfortable in these shoes.
They are well-worn.
How did this happen?
Our marriage had seemed the best combination of madly in love and best friends. It was our unique journey through life. The story of Colleen and Ralph and of all the wonderful things we would live, love, see and create.
Once I got over my fear of vows, I was thrilled.
I wasn’t just excited, I was ecstatic, over the moon.
There was so much to prepare me for the first part of our journey. It was mentioned, celebrated, and anticipated. There were mentions everywhere of engagement parties, announcements, and rings. There were celebrations, the church, the dress, the cake, and the reception.
A steel band serenades us on our cruise ship honeymoon.
I write a postcard to my mom.
“I LOVE being married!”
Signed with my new moniker. She’s as thrilled as I am. I find it posted on her refrigerator door when we return home and visit her. Silly me for being afraid of this thing called marriage.
There are new houses and babies. I discover even more joy. No one tells me of the second journey in marriage. My husband and I launch into it quite unaware.
The dictionary states one definition of “journey” as “A long journey to a foreign or distant place.”
It is Ironic. I am now certainly in a foreign AND distant place in my marriage. It was the deeper, more complicated journey of marriage that no one seems to mention, no one seems to celebrate, no one seems to anticipate.
It is the extension of marriage that we resist.
It keeps us stuck at “Alice’s” fork in the road.
It’s not exciting like the engagement, pretty like the ring, moving like the ceremony, or fun like the reception. It’s tough, it’s complex, and it’s not like the day that joined our union. It’s the actual love, work, and beauty of the union put to the test.
It is the day turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into years that are meant to mold our marriage. Not unlike the day, turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into years that were meant to mold us as individuals.
It is the extension of two turned to one.
And Ralph resists the walk and the work.
He resists what the mature part of marriage demands. My husband is not going to grow with me. And this is where I find myself stuck. If only Ralph were willing to listen to the marriage counselor.
If he could admit the imperfections each of us carries.
Ralph and I could confront, struggle and grow.
Instead, I am on my own.
I know this begins my ‘journey of one’ while inhabiting a ‘journey of two.’
This is my story.
I write from my heart. I write from a place that makes sense to me. I walk this journey ahead of some, behind others, and beside many. I am a woman who has traveled to a relationship I no longer recognize and have achieved seemingly impossible unhappiness.
It’s unhappiness that is leading toward a second journey.
A journey that I initially resisted. I am a girl whose perspective has shifted. I am finally spotting my North Star. How can I miss it? I find myself staring at my naked self and frankly, it’s not that pretty.
It’s no longer the shape of a sassy and sexy newlywed.
- Below you will find Chapters One and Two of The Naked Mistress, A memoir of a woman resurrected.
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