Before Divorce, There was Marriage

I can’t really write a blog and expect to develop a readership unless my readers are at least somewhat acquainted with my back story. As a vice presidential candidate once asked, Who am I? Why am I here?

Stories have to start somewhere, and this one we’ll pick up in the middle. I met Sabina, my Ex, at a nursing home. My dad was terminally ill with cancer. She was his nurse. My sister tells me the night after I first met Sabina, I called my sister and told her I was going to marry our dad’s nurse. She laughed. “Sure you are, Lex, Your 30-years-old, never married, never even close, and how many women have you dated?”

Mea culpa. My sister was right. Me settle down? Never.

But I did.

With Sabina.


Quick note on my Ex. Her name was not Sabina. But she did look like Meg Ryan. I would contend more attractive. Sabina is the character from another one of my favorite movies. I couldn't name my Ex Meg. It just wouldn't work.

The relationship was my first introduction to “crack.” I will use this term a lot on these pages. But I’m not referencing the drug. I’m referencing the effect. I’ve never done drugs of any kind except for alcohol and caffeine. What I mean by “crack,” then, is a high so powerful and addictive that you can’t wait to get some more. You need it. You crave it. You are its bitch.

This is how it was with my Ex. I took her to Jamaica before we got married. When my brother saw a picture of us there, he said “you two look like you are on crack.” The feeling between us was mutual. The high lasted about 6 years. Then we moved to Alabama.

Sabina and I had always talked about moving somewhere else, and an opportunity came up through work to move away from the snow and cold of the Frozen Tundra. So we took it. I was teaching legal research at law schools. I remember one day before a mock trial, I overheard the student attorneys chit chatting. All of them female. Let’s just say it was a conversation unlike any I had heard before, and I’d been hanging out with women since I was 15. Southern women, as much as I love them, have their own way of conversing.

This was my first “uh oh.”

My wife never participated in conversations like these.

Cultural shock? Cultural implosion is more like it. Although this was only eight years into the marriage, and we were married for 19, Alabama was the beginning of the end. Sabina found herself in a bad way very quickly. Drinking, lying, deception, and manipulation, only some of which came to light years later. But I understood. The bottom line was she needed to go home. We needed to go home.

So I quit my job, took a two-level demotion and a $30,000 pay cut to return home, where hopefully she could get her “happy” back on. Never happened. Things just got worse in the Frozen Tundra, and kept getting worse until finally I just had to step away and get myself healthy. I went on a spiritual quest that continues to this day. The marriage? Never really recovered. Eventually, we went our separate ways. In the middle, we had two beautiful children. Funny how something beautiful can come from something so messed up.

So there it is.

My back story.