{"id":54,"date":"2013-01-22T15:25:24","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T21:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=54"},"modified":"2013-02-10T15:30:16","modified_gmt":"2013-02-10T21:30:16","slug":"ch-1-b-high-hopes-and-stumbles","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=54","title":{"rendered":"ch. 1b    High Hopes and Stumbles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ch. 1a    Greetings from Another Century\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=32\">&lt;\u00a0 previous\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 <a title=\"ch. 1.c  Transitions\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=60\">next&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Prefer to Listen?\u00a0 Click here:<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"mp3jWrap_0\" class=\"mjp-s-wrapper s-graphic unsel-mjp  verdana-mjp\" style=\"font-size:14px;\"><span id=\"playpause_wrap_mp3j_0\" class=\"wrap_inline_mp3j\" style=\"font-weight:700;\"><span class=\"gfxbutton_mp3j play-mjp\" id=\"playpause_mp3j_0\" style=\"font-size:14px;\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span>&nbsp;<span class=\"group_wrap\"><span class=\"bars_mp3j\"><span class=\"loadB_mp3j\" id=\"load_mp3j_0\"><\/span><span class=\"posbarB_mp3j\" id=\"posbar_mp3j_0\"><\/span><\/span><span class=\"T_mp3j\" id=\"T_mp3j_0\" style=\"font-size:14px;\">1. Chapter-1-b<\/span><span class=\"indi_mp3j\" style=\"font-size:9.8px;\" id=\"statusMI_0\"><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div><span class=\"s-nosolution\" id=\"mp3j_nosolution_0\" style=\"display:none;\"><\/span><script>\nMP3jPLAYLISTS.inline_0 = [\n\t{ name: \"1. Chapter-1-b\", formats: [\"mp3\"], mp3: \"aHR0cHM6Ly9oYW5pbGl2ZXMuY29tL3dwLWNvbnRlbnQvdXBsb2Fkcy9IUy1OZXctY2gtMS1iLm1wMw==\", counterpart:\"\", artist: \"\", image: \"\", imgurl: \"\" }\n];\n<\/script>\n\n<script>MP3jPLAYERS[0] = { list: MP3jPLAYLISTS.inline_0, tr:0, type:'single', lstate:'', loop:false, play_txt:'&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;', pause_txt:'&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;', pp_title:'', autoplay:false, download:false, vol:100, height:'' };<\/script>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-286\" alt=\"photo\" src=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo4-150x173.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"173\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo4-150x173.jpg 150w, https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo4-258x300.jpg 258w, https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo4.jpg 407w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>I\u2019d met Dale in college.\u00a0 He was a friend of a friend, and one good-looking dude. \u00a0I never assumed he would notice me.\u00a0 He was so cool, and he always seemed to have some blond sorority-type babe on his arm.<\/p>\n<p>But then there was that one time, at some drunken bash; Dale and I had found ourselves off in a corner, and we stood, then sat, for a long, long time, talking about all kinds of things, kind of leaning into each other, even a little smooch or two, until some girl \u2013 obviously his neglected date \u2013 showed up and he stood up and left me with a guileless, guilt-free grin; left me to slink home alone, not sure whether to feel hyped and hopeful, or rejected and used.\u00a0 We never did more than grin and wave at each other after that, but the Dale Effect lingered.<\/p>\n<p>So, a few years after graduation, I was passing through Denver on a work trip, and found myself at another party, some of the old CU crowd who hadn\u2019t quite given up their college drinking habits.<\/p>\n<p>And there\u2019s Dale big as life, better looking than ever.\u00a0 I\u2019d heard he\u2019d eked his way through law school and the bar exam, joined his dad\u2019s firm in Denver, and was doing great.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know how it happened.\u00a0 Was there something different about me?\u00a0 Maybe I was more confident.\u00a0 I\u2019d certainly learned to hold my own in legislative battles (mostly lost, but still\u2026) that we\u2019d fought all across the country.\u00a0 Dale greeted me, took a second look, I swear, like a farmer deciding this crop was ready for harvest.\u00a0 He was suddenly into me.\u00a0 And it was pretty heady stuff.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know if it was Dale I fell in love with so much as it was the image I had of me with him.\u00a0 Everyone I knew was wildly jealous.\u00a0 Including my mother.\u00a0 I know they were all thinking he was out of my league.\u00a0 My parents both seemed half shocked when I told them we were engaged.\u00a0 They were relieved when I resigned my job, which they\u2019d been ever so politely supportive about, but obviously hated.\u00a0 Mom was so happy I\u2019d \u201ccome to my senses\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 I assured myself I\u2019d get involved with the local Denver activists, just as soon as we got settled.<\/p>\n<p>Things didn\u2019t quite work out that way.\u00a0 We married, got a little house in Cherry Creek.\u00a0 Dale went to work every day, and I somehow found my own days full of errands and shopping and house work.\u00a0 First, we remodeled the house, and coordinating that took most of my time.\u00a0 Then there were social engagements, ones we had to go to, ones we had to host in return, all of which required the right clothes, the right table settings, the right guest lists.\u00a0 Dale and his family ran in the best crowds.<\/p>\n<p>And yeah, it was exciting for a while.\u00a0 Dale was making good money and playing house was fun.<\/p>\n<p>Except that somehow, it just began to go down hill.<\/p>\n<p>I made a few feeble attempts to get involved with the work I\u2019d done before, the work I\u2019d been called to, but whenever I mentioned doing something, like volunteering at the women\u2019s shelter again, Dale somehow had so many other things that needed taking care of, little details of our lives that he needed me to handle, needed me to be a good partner and support him in his career ambitions.\u00a0 Plenty of time for my little hobbies, he assured me, just not right now.\u00a0 Right now, we needed to get ahead in our social circle, to make the right impressions on the right people.\u00a0 Right now, I needed to find a better dress for the firm\u2019s annual gala, and plan another dinner party, and make sure it was better than the one we\u2019d just been to.<\/p>\n<p>The thing is, my viewpoint was that there\u2019s a lot of crap in the world, and whether we served chicken or beef was just not a major deal.\u00a0 The difference between chicken and beef was a major deal for Dale.\u00a0 Everything, it was turning out, was a major deal to him.<\/p>\n<p>Every damn thing I did.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have time to do much of anything around the house, but when he came home, he had a running commentary on everything I\u2019d done.\u00a0 On how I looked and what I needed to do for myself. \u00a0\u00a0He was always so charming and helpful in his advice, always so absolutely certain in his opinions.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019d think all that attention might be a good thing; a good thing that he was paying me so much attention.\u00a0 Then again, you wouldn\u2019t think he\u2019d have left for a weeklong business trip the day after I got home from having that major surgery, either.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back, I suppose that was the turning point.\u00a0 From there it was a pretty swift progression (I\u2019ll spare the details) from criticism to verbal abuse to \u2013 yeah, wait for it \u2013 a couple of shoves and slaps.<\/p>\n<p>Me. \u00a0Gone from champion of women\u2019s rights to victim of domestic abuse.\u00a0 How the hell did I here?<\/p>\n<p>I felt like shit.<\/p>\n<p>And even worse, I realized how arrogant I\u2019d been in the past, thinking things like this could never happen to me.\u00a0 Looking at other women and secretly wondering why they\u2019d stood for that kind of treatment.<\/p>\n<p>This went on for what felt like eons too long, but finally, with the help of a therapist I\u2019d started seeing secretly, things came to a sudden and unexpected head one night, the way Life has a way of doing, kicking you out of neutral when you least expect it.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s Dale, sitting at the dinner table, dropping his fork to his plate, spattering spaghetti sauce on the placemat, pushing the plate away, and pronouncing the pasta overdone \u2013 again \u2013 and asking \u2013 again \u2013 why I did these things?\u00a0 Was I just trying to make him mad?\u00a0 Was I incapable of being a decent and responsive wife?<\/p>\n<p>And there I am, all of a sudden shaking so badly I could barely shove my chair back, barely stand up.\u00a0 But I did.\u00a0 I did.<\/p>\n<p>I couldn\u2019t even trust myself to speak.\u00a0 I wanted to shout, \u201cfuck you, Dale,\u201d but I was terrified that my voice wouldn\u2019t be strong enough to convince him I was serious this time.\u00a0 Done this time.<\/p>\n<p>So I didn\u2019t say anything, not out loud, anyway.\u00a0 That was probably best, probably what gave me the cover I needed.\u00a0 He shouted after me as I stalked back to the bedroom, how I was being childish, how I couldn\u2019t handle constructive criticism, how if I loved him\u2026<\/p>\n<p>I most certainly didn\u2019t love him.\u00a0 That realization was slapping me in the face as I silently scrambled around, pulling out the first container I could put my hands on, a backpack that didn\u2019t meet Dale\u2019s idea of sophisticated luggage.\u00a0 I shoved whatever I could lay my hands on, cramming underwear and my journals inside; on second thought, grabbing a another duffel bag I filled with God knows what.\u00a0 I was hardly thinking.<\/p>\n<p>The remodel had included a door from our bedroom onto the back deck.\u00a0 I tiptoed, terrified, out the door, lugging my bags across the deck, edging open the side garage door.<\/p>\n<p>By the time I saw Dale \u2013 for the last time \u2013 silhouetted in the open kitchen door, shouting some obscenities that were muted by my closed car windows, I was revving the BMW backward into the alley, obliterating our neighbor\u2019s trash can in the process; a wild spray of gravel marking my exit from hell.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In only a few years, I\u2019d felt myself getting cut off from my old friends.\u00a0 At first, there was just so much to keep me busy in Dale\u2019s social and professional world.\u00a0 As time went on, I just didn\u2019t want anyone I knew to find out how bad things had gotten.<\/p>\n<p>Now I felt so ashamed, I couldn\u2019t possibly face the old friends, didn\u2019t want to admit my failure.\u00a0 I hunkered down in a faceless motel on the Boulder turnpike, and spent several days crying, cursing, soul searching.\u00a0 I carried on long and what seemed like very one-sided conversations with someone I thought of as God, an entity that hadn\u2019t seemed particularly interested in me for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>I did make one call, to Marissa, one of the few childhood friends I\u2019d kept up with.\u00a0 I had no idea why I called her.\u00a0 It just felt like she might understand, and I kind of found my fingers punching the number in of their own accord.\u00a0 Marissa was in San Francisco, married to a Unitarian minister, of all things, with a couple of kids.\u00a0 Come out, she said, instantly, emphatically. You can help out with the kids for a few weeks.\u00a0 We\u2019ll put out feelers for jobs.\u00a0 Get away from there.<\/p>\n<p>Bless her heart.\u00a0 I thought it was a bad idea, crashing on a family like that, but she was right about one thing; I had to get free of Colorado, had to clear my head.\u00a0 Not to mention that I was so mired in self-doubt and self-pity at the moment, it apparently required someone else\u2019s momentum to get me moving.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes the unseen hand happens to be the only one that\u2019s reaching out to you.<\/p>\n<p>So, I got in my car, drove to Denver International Airport, bought a ticket and called Dale, to leave him a message as to where I\u2019d left the BMW in the airport parking lot.\u00a0 His problem.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t stand the thought of having anything that connected me to him.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and he would be hearing from my lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ch. 1a    Greetings from Another Century\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=32\">&lt;\u00a0 previous<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 <a title=\"ch. 1.c  Transitions\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=60\">next&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &lt;\u00a0 previous\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 next&gt; &nbsp; Prefer to Listen?\u00a0 Click &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=54\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-54","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}