Lynn and I Split

The following year, we went to visit Lynn’s dad, brother, and sister in Alexandria, VA. We went down on a long weekend (I was working swingshifts and had longer weekends at roughly 6 week intervals. We drove down, and she wanted to stay for a week or two (she ‘needed’ a vacation). So I came back home so as not to miss any work (we still had bills to pay, so I couldn’t not work). When she informed me that she was ready, I went back and picked her and our children up. On the trip home, she informed me that she wanted a divorce. Needless to say, I was surprised. Yes, we were having a few problems, but nothing that I would have considered irreconcilable. Although, from Ian’s birth on, she was never even remotely affectionate with me, except for once during our ‘separation’… said she wanted to be sure of her decision… So much for the intimate bond that my delivering our babies was supposed to produce. So, five years of compromise pretty much down the drain.

It turns out, as I found out years later, that she, with guidance and support from Michelle C. and a few others in the Way hierarchy, had been planning to help her cut ties with me for months, if not years, as they considered me… what was it?… Oh yea, ‘devilish’, because I was more interested in Judo, Yoga, and meditation than I was in going to ‘twig meetings’ and ‘witnessing’ (their term for proselytizing).

The following week or month (I don’t remember exactly. The whole episode was so bizarre – at least for me – that it felt like a long nightmare trudge through quicksand), I took her, Kristen, and Ian to the bus station in Cleveland and sent them on their way back to Alexandria. Why? Because that’s what Lynn insisted on.

During that time, as she was getting herself and the kids ready to go back, she informed me that she wanted to try to get back together with an old boyfriend, Bill, something or other, with whom she was still deeply in love. Apparently, they’d been a couple before her dad sent her to live with her Uncle Jim (she never did explain why her dad sent her). But that ‘deep love’ apparently didn’t work out, so she hooked up with Larry G., someone she met while MC-ing and performing at an open mic in the DC area (at least that’s what I surmised from my long distance, Ohio-lense). She even had me perform there once when I came out to see Kristen and Ian. I think that was the time I brought them back to Oberlin for a visit that lasted most of the summer.

To be Continued

–LE