This is the post where I fill in the blanks……..
A long time ago (thirty years to be exact) a very young and very naive virgin Ivonne met a very charming and charismatic entertainer who would sweep her of her feet. Her mother being the old-fashioned Latina mother that she was objected to her daughter dating and being involved with this young man, who was an up and coming junior magician of the world-famous Hollywood Magic Caste.
My mother’s objections were voiced and they were loud. At the time I was going to U.C.L.A. and my mother also worked there. My mother and I would go to U.C.L.A. together because I did not know how to drive yet. We would drop my sister off at school first. During the time that I was dating this young man my mother would take the opportunity on the morning drive to lay into me, since I was pretty much a prisoner in the car and could not get away from her. These scenes always ended the same, with my mother crying at the thought that I might possible be having sex at the age of 18, which would then cause my sister to also start crying. Now does this sound like it was fun? No it wasn’t but it would color later events in my relationship.
Yes, we did have sex. My mother crying was not going to stop me in that arena.
But what it did do was that when he asked me to move in with him my first reaction was oh God–how would I get to school and what would my mother say. So, my response was no. I quickly changed my mind and was waiting for him to ask again but as you know from my previous post that did not happen. Instead he left me for another woman a mere two weeks later. I have lived with that regret all of my life—a black shadow on my heart.
It took me two years to get over him and by this I mean that the daily crying had stopped. But we have mutual friends and through these friends (can you imagine a life without the internet or facebook to keep tab of your friends—the dinosaur age, huh) I always knew what was going on in his life.
I knew when he moved to Europe. I knew when he had broken up with the other woman and I knew when he had gotten married and had a daughter. All of this information courtesy of our mutual friends in the magic world.
He was always there in the shadows of my memories to such an extent that when I found out he was in town performing at the Hollywood Magic Castle I dragged my then husband to the show. Of course, I didn’t tell my husband who we were going to see until we got there and were in a public space. I knew he wouldn’t cause a scene in public and I certainly wasn’t going to show up empty-handed after what he had done to me. Oh no, I wanted to show up looking hot and with my husband who was 7 years younger than me.
Fast Forward to three years his name (Jay Scott Berry) came up in therapy because I was looking at issues that I blamed my mother for. And his was a big one. I always felt that if she hadn’t acted so darn friggin crazy and would have been supportive of me I would have said yes to him. I mean if he had proposed marriage I would have said yes but I was still kind of Catholic in those days.
By this point in time the internet and google had been invented. So, I did what any reasonable woman does and I googled him and I found his web-site, www.jayscottberry.com , and I had an e-mail address. It took a few weeks of building up courage before I was able to e-mail him.
He remembered me and we sent a few emails back and forth. At this point in time I was divorced but he was divorced and remarried and living in another country with a wife and a young child trying for another one. I was also doing the ivf at this time so most of our conversations had to do with fertility.
After a while the emails stopped. At some point he friended me on facebook.
It was last May after I had graduated that I started to notice his spiritually inclined posts on face book. After having spent five years doing religious studies where you take apart and deconstruct religion I was lost and not sure if there was a spiritual path for me. His posts reminded me that there was. Well one like after another like–posting to conversations etc…I found that I was falling in love with this man all over again.
Last Dec he contacts me to ask me to work with him as his personal manager in music. It took me about a week to contemplate the offer. Not because I couldn’t do the job–I had the skill set needed but more so because I knew I was still in love with him.
I said yes and we commenced to work with each other via skype. We communicated almost daily for a month and he was flying out for business. I was nervous not knowing how I would feel being with him in person. But the old feelings and the magic were still there even after 30 years. Within a couple of hours of being together we were confessing to each other that we both still had feelings for one another. He was proposing a physical relationship and I was asking what about your wife? His response was that he was in love with his wife and wasn’t planning on leaving her and that as long as a physical relationship with me didn’t interfere with our ability to work together (meaning his career) or his marriage it was all ok with him. He told me that he did not take a vow of monogamy when he got married. I told him that it was implied in the marriage vows. He told me to think about it and not answer right away.
As I am writing this I have to wonder why in hell didn’t I just run in the opposite direction. What was I thinking?
Well I wasn’t thinking I was feeling with the heart of an abandoned 18 year old young girl.
The energy between us was “intoxicating” –his word. After a week of working together in person it wasn’t something we could control or that we even wanted to control. When I am with this man all logic–all common sense goes out the door. I just wanted to be with him.
And yes, I got the standard “my wife doesn’t understand me”—”we don’t sleep in the same bed”–and yes I bought into it hook, line and sinker.
But when he wasn’t around and the power he had over me was not present I struggled with my conscience and my integrity.
A month later was another business trip that I would go on with him.
We were supposed to be doing a show in Malaysia combining Music and Magic. It really would have been a great show had it gone off but the promoter cancelled the show the day before the artists were to arrive. It was at this point that the business fell apart in a big way and the relationship became collateral damage.
I went from leaving him at the airport crying to three days later he is not even speaking to me and getting a notice that we were also no longer working together.
I was abandoned yet again by this man. And yes, I am sure that there are those of you out there who are probably thinking it serves me right. And maybe you are right. But what I do know is that you haven’t lived in my heart like this man has for the past 30 years. And I really thought that he was my soul mate.
Given that my father always cheated on my mother I too have been judgmental of others. What I have since learned is that one, we don’t always know the whole story and two the heart often plays a bigger part in our lives than our logical mind.
Am I proud of what I have done? No, I am not. But that does not make the hurt in my heart go away any faster.
I can only pray to meet the man who deserves to be loved by me and the one that I deserve to be loved by.
The other thing that I have learned is that I can not live or love a man under some other woman’s shadow.
If you can’t put on your facebook status : In a relationship with Ivonne, then we shouldn’t be in a relationship at all……..
Related articles
- Breaking the Addiction to the Affair (recoveringwayward.wordpress.com)
- Do we really care about marriage? (crunchyinalabama.com)
- Marriage is Forever! (deaconjohn1987.wordpress.com)
