Art Pillar: Case Study (Part 2)

Every time she left the house I felt like my chest was caving in. For the first few months after we got married I chalked it up to having drank too much coffee. I would try and read to calm down but every few sentences would send me hurtling into a daydream imagining all kinds betrayal and decadent sin. She became a different person in my dreams. My poor Susan turned into a careless party girl getting her kicks about town without a single thought or concern for her husband waiting at home. I tried convincing myself I was working myself up over nothing. I tried masturbating constantly to calm my nerves but degradation I saw on screen only heightened my worry of what she could be doing while away from me. The fucked up thing Doc, is that it wasn’t solely when she would be out late. These thoughts raced through my head when I knew she was working and probably couldn’t wait to get home to me. I also knew that my visions of her in my dreams were only a manifestation of my own fear. Probably created out of the desires I had for that very same decadent sin and debauchery. I want to feel pure Doc. I want to feel clean. I don’t ever want to look at pornography ever again. I want to look at my wife and feel safe and secure. Loving and loved.
I imagine sometimes what it will be like when I’m an old man and the weight of the world finally takes its toll and I have the nervous breakdown that will go down in history for the craziest outburst ever witnessed. I watch too much news. I read too many books on government conspiracy. I watch daytime talk shows that discuss secret affairs and drug abuse between couples that have been married 25 years, all the while, neither person being aware of the other’s horrific secret life. This is my secret life Doc. She doesn’t know how nuts I am. I ruined previous relationships with this same nonsensical worry and I told myself I wouldn’t do it again. Sure I ask her questions now and again about what time she will be home or what group of friends she will be going out with. Maybe sometimes I’ll slip up and ask if the guys are gay, or if she ever at one time dated any of them. For the most part, she has no idea would kind of mental state I am in when she isn’t right there on the couch with me watching a wholesome Disney movie.
When we first started dating, I knew she was the one for me. She needed me around constantly. I played it cool of course. I tried like all hell not to act like she was immediately my world, my number one priority. What kind of loser feels that for a girl after a couple of dates? But, there she was at my apartment every night. Most of the time we didn’t even have sex. We sat on the couch discussing books and watching movies. I thought, ‘This is the girl for me. No skeletons in the closet and needy enough not to question why I constantly need her around.’ I feel like I’m choking Doc. While I lay here on this couch, waiting to see if she noticed that I left without a note or voicemail, I am wondering what she is doing. Is that not sick? Is that not selfish, I ask you. The worst part, is that I am most worried that days will go by and she doesn’t even attempt to contact me because I hadn’t entered her mind yet. Could I be the only person in the world Doc that cares about people this much? Maybe she doesn’t need me as much as I thought she did. Maybe that is what normal couples are supposed to do. Attend to your own life, happy that this other person shows up every once and a while to say, “Hi, how has your day been?” Well, I can’t do it. I’ll just have to leave her behind to enjoy that casual embrace from some other well-adjusted hunk. Why won’t the aliens pick me up Doc? If all these abductions are truly taking place, why don’t they snatch me up and run tests on me? Perhaps their technology supersedes yours and they can actually do something for me. No offense. Maybe they can give me a shot of pure human apathy and then I’ll be cured. They can set me back down in bed one night, no harm-no foul. Maybe I am from another planet. That’s it. Maybe I have some kind of super-pathos gene that allows me to care for people more than humans are currently capable of at this time in our evolutionary history. Maybe my gene should be intravenously shot into the rest of the human population to get some real progress done around here.
Oh my God, I’m hopeless.