It doesn’t happen overnight, it happens by degrees. It starts small, but before I knew it, I was jumping through hoops to try and prevent the bomb from exploding and still the bomb exploded. Something that was not a problem yesterday was suddenly the most excruciating problem today and then suddenly a day, a week or a month later it was not, it was something else. Over the years I dropped all the personal pursuits I enjoyed, I was far too busy placating Mary. Why? Why is more complicated. I grew up with a strong sense of family. Mam and dad rode out all the tough times together. They were indivisible, we could all try and get around them but it rarely worked and even when it did it was never big stuff. Whatever chance we, the kids, had of dividing them no one else stood a chance. That’s how I thought it should work. I was a rebellious teen, if it was dangerous, stupid and against the rules, I was bound to be in the middle of it. Despite this, I still felt valued by my family and I in turn value my children. I am committed to being a dad. I love it. At the very core of why is the most basic of reasons, I loved Mary and I wanted Mary to love me. I trusted her when she said she did.
So I scrubbed the shower doors clean. It hadn’t yet dawned on me that I was scrubbing because Mary saw me as dirty and infectious. In February we had booked our flights to Spain for the last two weeks in July. In February I was relatively ok by June I was a shadow. I weighed a little less than nine stone. I was skinny like I had never been before. Clothes didn’t fit me anymore. I needed something to wear on holidays. I went to a shopping mall a few miles away. I didn’t get out much partly because I was too sick and tired and partly because I was embarrassed by how I looked. I picked up a few t-shirts and knee length shorts. It wasn’t easy to find a twenty eight inch waist in men’s clothes, I ended up getting shorts in a teenagers section.
I saw the holidays as a chance for Mary and I to get close again. I was confused by the way she was acting toward me. I thought some of it was because of the way I looked. I was sure that Iris’ constant presence was a major influence. I desperately wanted Mary to be nicer to me.
The flight over was uneventful. Mary was still as terse as ever but the kid’s excitement was contagious. They loved it all, they couldn’t wait to get into the pool. I’m sure neither of them had slept much the night before.
The journey had exhausted me. I was really struggling to stay going. When we got to the apartment, I put the bags down and went to sit on the balcony. Mary followed me out and sat down. She immediately accused me of having an affair. I was dumbstruck.
“Why are you saying this to me?” I asked.
“I saw a message on your mobile”. For as long as I can remember Mary has checked my mobile phone, my mail and computer. If I complained then she was convinced that I was hiding something, so I didn’t complain anymore. It was a no win situation.
“Someone asked you to go for coffee”.
I had no idea what she was talking about. I hadn’t gone for coffee or anything else with anybody and I hadn’t seen any messages asking me anywhere. Mary often decided that I was cheating on her for no apparent reason. When I tried to say that she had no reason to do so she always used the same rational. If she couldn’t find any evidence that I was cheating, that was her proof that I was hiding something. Before I got sick Mary knew where I was every minute of every day. It wasn’t difficult. If I wasn’t at work, I was with her. I hadn’t gone any where without her in over a decade. Work was a kilometre away from home and I was never late home. Since I became ill it was home or hospital. That didn’t stop the accusations.
“When?”
“Two weeks ago”.
“And what, why didn’t you say it to me then?”
“I wanted to see how it developed”.
“And what did?” I was exasperated.
“Nothing” she answered.
“So why are you attacking me?”
Mary didn’t give me a reason. For the next hour she berated me. The kids stayed in the living room watching the television. Nothing I tried to say made a difference. I’d been on interferon for eight months. I looked terrible and felt worse. I didn’t have the mental capacity to defend myself against what she was accusing me of. I knew what she was saying wasn’t true.
For the first time I really realised that Mary was deliberately lying. It wasn’t just a suspicious streak. She was doing all that she could to hate me, she didn’t want to get closer, she wanted to be further apart. She had waited until I was totally isolated in Spain where there was no one else to see and then she set out to abuse me unmercifully. This was the first hour of the first day and it only got worse after that.
Mary fired hate at me every waking moment. It came off her in waves. By the tenth day I was utterly beaten down. Mary’s younger sister was due to arrive the next day. I literally got down on my knees and begged Mary to stop hurting me. She seemed, no not seemed, she actually took pleasure in emotionally torturing me.
The last night of the holidays we went out for something to eat with Mary’s sister and the children. For months I’d been vomiting after I ate. Some times it stopped quickly other times it lasted for hours. It was always accompanied with gut wrenching cramps. Eating out made it worse, I think it was the fear of being ill in front of others especially Mary. I didn’t want to be sick that night. It was a posh restaurant and I was very anxious so I decided to have only soup. It was the safest thing on the menu. Mary and her sister were drinking wine. I stuck to water, I hadn’t had a beer since the previous holiday twelve months earlier. As soon as I swallowed one spoonful of soup the gut wrenching started. I broke out in a cold sweat.
“I have to go” I told Mary.
She sighed disapprovingly.
“You go with him” she ordered Leah and went back to her wine.
The restaurant was very good and a taxi turned up instantly. It was only five minutes drive to the apartment. I fought the entire journey not to vomit in the taxi as cramps bent me double in the seat. As soon as we got into the apartment I was violently ill. I was ill all that night and the next morning. I retched on an empty stomach hour after hour. I lay on the floor beside the toilet bowl wishing, hoping, wanting it to stop. There was no way I could fly home. I could have gone to a Spanish hospital but I didn’t speak the language and I didn’t want to be stuck there. That and I didn’t have travel insurance, I couldn’t get it.
“You can’t be sick” Mary was standing over me. Her fists were clenched, her face red with anger as she spat the words at me.
“I’ll have to take care of the kids on my own” she roared at me.
Mary and the kids were gone. Her sister was still there and I was in the bedroom alone. I had a small bin lined with a plastic bag in my hands. I stayed there retching and retching until I eventually passed out from exhaustion. When I awoke the nausea wasn’t gone but it had receded to a point where I could overcome it. I picked up the small bin and was about to take the liner out and dump it when I noticed that it had already been changed. I guessed that Mary’s sister had changed it. I was overcome with gratitude, in the previous twelve months, Mary had never done anything like that for me.
For the rest of that morning I sat on the balcony and sipped from a bottle of water. Muscles in my chest and abdomen ached from the previous days heaving. My flight had been rescheduled for that evening. I dared not eat anything. When the time came a taxi arrived and took me the forty five minute journey to the airport. I kept the window rolled down as the driver chatted away. This time there was no delay, I boarded the aeroplane and took a seat right at the front opposite the toilets. A couple of times during the flight I thought I was going to start vomiting again but I fought it down. I’d bumped into a guy in Malaga Airport, Gerry. We had worked together for years before I became ill. Although he was sitting elsewhere on the plane, it gave me comfort that if I did start to get sick again at least there was someone who knew what was wrong with me. I feared that I looked like some strung out junkie. When we touched down in Dublin I was more than relieved. I