Revulsions and Repercussions

Revulsions and Repercussions

This is Carrie's story and her explanation of what happened to her and John. It is the sequel to Revelations and Revolutions and my conclusion. I wrote it to give the readers the reason why she behaved as she did. I wanted to leave the character of John wondering why because, sadly, in the real world we don't always find closure. It was never my intention to leave my readers in the dark. I give an open invitation to any author who might want to write an alternate version for Carrie.

My name is Carrie Manchester. I'm currently on my third marriage to a wonderful man Keith Farmer. I was lucky to have found him as I slowly climbed out of the mire and mess of my former life, a mess I solely created. I was married to a wonderful man for 26 years. His name was John Livingston. Three years before the end of my marriage to John I began to feel a change in my mood and demeanor. I felt sad, listless, and lost. I blamed it on John and I resented him for it. So, I became short and was often cross with him. As the resentment for John built, I found that I chided and belittled him more and more. During this time, I became nearly despondent. I was constantly unsatisfied with my life. It was about this time that the husband of my closest friend started to show interest in me.

William Kincaid and his wife Joann were our best friends. We socialized and even vacationed together with our children. So, when I hit a nadir, he became my shoulder to cry on. He held me and told me things would get better. The hugs evolved to kissing and from there we started having sex. It became a full-blown affair and that lasted for three years. I slowly developed feelings for Bill but I knew he would never leave Joann. At first, I felt guilty but only because I was betraying my best friend JoJo. I blamed John for forcing me to seek solace in the arms of another.

As the months and years past I grew to loathe John as the source of my pain. The last six months we were married I made his life a living hell. I could not stand to be in the same room as John little alone be intimate with him. Everything he did annoyed me. When he tried and, believe me when I say that he tried, to get me to talk and wanted to help me, I rebuffed and rejected him at every turn. It all came to a head on a fateful Saturday morning. I had planned to meet Bill later that morning before I did the grocery shopping. Before heading out I decided that I had better do some laundry as it had piled up over the past week and we were nearly out of towels. I knew that John had ordered a new washer and dryer set and it was on backorder. Our machine was worn and I also knew that John told me to do more loads with less clothes to not stress the nearly worn-out motor.

I decided that I'd show him and I jammed an entire week's worth of towels into the old washer and started it. When it came time to spin dry the machine couldn't handle the weight and the belt started slipping. Of course, John was right and the machine didn't want to spin with the wet heavy load. I cursed just as John headed for the kitchen to make his breakfast as I no longer cooked for him. So, I screamed, "John why is this damn washer not spinning out correctly! Why didn't you fix the damn thing like you promised?" That prompted him to come to the laundry room. The odor of the burning belt was acrid and filled the air. He lifted the lid and saw what I had done.

"Carrie Ann, I told you, the motor is ready to give out. I asked, no, I pleaded with you to do the laundry more often with smaller loads to lighten the stress on the motor until we got the washer replaced. I've ordered the new state of the art washer/dryer combo you wanted but with the supply chain issues it is going to be another three weeks before they can have a set delivered." He removed about half of the heavy towels and threw them into an empty laundry basket. He then said before he squeezed past me, "Carrie, there is an entire weeks' worth of towels in here! You don't work so what takes up so much of your time that you can't do a load or two a day?"

I was incensed. I went into the kitchen to give him a piece of my mind and discovered he skipped breakfast and headed out to the yard and was cutting the grass. It took me about thirty minutes to get myself ready to meet Bill. I decided to show my anger by spinning my tires and I burned some rubber going down our street. After I met Bill at the motel, I asked him if he was free for the day and he said he was. He told Joann he had an important meeting with some clients. So, I said to hell with the shopping and spent the entire day in bed with Bill. I even allowed him to cum in my mouth, which I had always forbade John to do and take my anal cherry. After I left Bill, I went out to eat and saw a movie. I spent the entire day doing what I had wanted to do or that I told myself that I had wanted but I still felt a sense of foreboding and emptiness.

I was late getting home and when I entered the house, I was surprised to find it very dark and eerily silent. I went to the stairwell thinking that John was sulking upstairs and just before I had the chance to yell for him, I was startled by something that ricocheted off the railing and clanged as it hit and skidded on the hardwood floor. I jumped and fumbled for the light switch and, after several attempts at feeling around for it, I managed to switch them on. I turned to see where the noise came from and I found John sitting in a chair. I screamed, "John what in heavens name..." and then I paused as spied the empty can on the floor where it skidded to a halt after it had careened off the railing. I was livid as I shouted at him, "Did you throw a beer can at me? Are you drunk, you bastard!"

He stared daggers at me but said all too calmly, "Carrie, to answer your questions, no and hell no!" I threw the can near you and at the railing and no I'm not drunk. I've had several hours sitting here as I waited for you, my loving and faithful wife, and spaced my drinks accordingly as I fully intended to remain stone cold sober for our little encounter. Though I'm surprised that you have managed to pull yourself away from your other endeavors to return and grant me an audience this evening. What I'm not surprised by is the fact that you came home full of your virulent, acerbic attitude toward me yet again. Now I have some questions for you!"

I was taken aback. John had never talked to me like this. I wondered, what did he know? Why was he sitting in the dark and why was he talking to me this way. First, he asked me where I had been for the past eight hours and I refused to tell him and said, "It's none of your business!" He continued to press me so I lied and told him I was with our daughter Erin. When he told me that he had been with Erin and Erin had gone to a concert I told him that I went to the concert. He tripped me up when he asked me what bands were playing and I said the first thing that popped into my mind. He continued and told me stop lying and that he knew for a fact that I was cheating on him. He demanded his name.

I refused to tell him. He told me that while I was out that he had packed up and moved out due to my constant barrage of hurtful and disparaging words directed at him. Then he discovered by accident of my affair and that my daughter was the one who witnessed Bill and I entering and exiting a hotel. When I felt I could no longer deflect or lie my way out I ran upstairs into our bedroom and locked the door. John simply left. I cried as I hit the bed. I was angry, frustrated, hurt, and confused. I didn't want a divorce and I didn't want Bill but somehow, I also didn't want John because I firmly believed that he was totally and fully to blame for my unhappiness. I felt so isolated and desperate that I wanted to grab ahold of something to cling to for dear life. I wanted safety and familiarity and so I chose my marriage to be that oasis even if it was only a mirage.

How I felt during the last three years of my marriage to John, especially the last six months of it, is difficult for me to explain. Perhaps it's because I find any attempt to justify or explain it simply unfathomable myself. If I can't believe that I truly did what I did how can I ever explain it to anyone else. My psychiatrist told me that I may never be able to delve deep enough to be certain of what happened as it might be too painful. He made an analogy to jumping barefoot into a barrel with the bottom filled with jagged shards of glass.

I spent a great deal of time and John's money on psychiatric care and in the hands of a very capable psychologist who helped pull me from the abyss. I learned a great deal about what happened to me and why. I'm also taking medications to treat my condition and I'm about as close to a fully functioning person as one can be with depression, even one who is currently on her third marriage in the past five years.

After John and I divorced I couldn't face living alone and once Joann kicked Bill out and divorced him, he wanted to move in with me. I was too screwed up in my mind to realize that he was nothing but a broke parasite looking for a meal ticket. Due to my Catholic upbringing, I demanded that he marry me before he moved into my bed. Yes, I now realize how screwed up that must sound to the well-adjusted mind, given I had been having an affair with him for years, and now divorced, which is against the church's tenets. Even more evidence of how far off track I was. My thinking was convoluted at best. It didn't take me long, however, to discover that he was lower than pond scum.

I tried to help him out financially and I paid for all the household bills and even helped him with his insurance and car payments, all the while he demanded more and more. He wanted me to foot the bill for his child support which I couldn't afford. His answer to that was to demand I sell my home to help him, which I refused to do. After several months I quit trying to help him all together. We were married only fourteen months when he decided to head for greener pastures for himself while abandoning me and his obligations to his kids in one fell swoop. I had to wait a year to file for divorce citing abandonment but honestly, I felt a bit of relief that he was gone and the drain on my assets had stopped.

Here I was, in the span of a year and a half with not one but two failed marriages and despite the relief I felt with Bill's disappearance, I found myself alone, truly alone for the first time in my life. I was despondent and had considered suicide. I even had a full bottle of sleeping pills ready and planned to down them with a bottle of scotch while I listened to some soft jazz. That is when fate intervened and my phone rang. It was my daughter Erin. Our relationship had been somewhat cool since I divorced her father so I was surprised that she wanted to come for a visit and spend the weekend with me. I was ecstatic that she was coming and that maybe I'd have a chance to make things right between us before I departed for the great void. It was that weekend that she gave me a letter from her father. John hoped that I would seek help and he had offered to fund the therapy so that I might be able to find some happiness in my life.

Erin and I had a real girl's weekend. She took me to a day spa, to dinner and a show. We went shopping and had lunch before she left on Sunday and she convinced me to take up John's offer. On Friday I had planned to end my life and by Sunday evening I had decided to accept John's offer and give it a try. After all, the sleeping pills weren't going anywhere. To make a long story short I got myself into an aggressive treatment plan. I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression and after finding a regimen of medications and months of intense psychotherapy I found my way out of the darkness and into the light. For the first time in years, I felt a sense of hope and a desire to live to help plan Erin's wedding and to see my grandchildren grow up. Ironically, I had the man for whom I made life with me a living hell and who I hurt and betrayed to thank for it.

One of the things that I learned in therapy was that I was so deeply depressed and unhappy that I needed something or in my case someone to blame my unhappiness upon. Since John was with me every day and given that I was unhappy with every aspect of my life, aside from Erin, it was convenient to blame John. Thinking him guilty of making my life miserable made me angry. The angrier I got, the more I blamed him and the colder and more distant I became. It didn't take long for the anger and despair that I felt to manifest itself as rage, belittlement, and disrespect toward the person who truly loved me. I was ill and my illness blinded me.

Truthfully, it's not an excuse but the cold hard facts. Unless you've suffered from deep clinical depression it's hard to understand how I felt or how that drove my actions. Even now I can't fathom how I could be so callous, heartless, and cruel to the man I loved. It's even more difficult for me to explain in any reasonable and understandable manner that doesn't sound like a lame excuse, however, I own the fact that whatever the root cause was it was me that wreaked havoc and left a path of pain and destruction in my wake. My only defense is I was lost and wallowed in a sea of self-loathing and pity. I could neither stop myself nor find a way out. The fallout took a toll on all of us. Erin saw her family split apart. John found his wife a shallow and selfish shrew, a virtual stranger with whom life with became unbearable and I lost the love of a kind and decent man and was forced to live with the stigma of betrayal.

I couldn't see what I became as it happened. It was when my psychologist, after months of therapy, finally made me hold up a virtual mirror and had me envision what my reflection looked like during those painfully difficult years. She made me face myself. Only then did I see with clarity who I was and what I became. I was truly astonished and ashamed of myself. It took a lot of time and work to overcome the shame and the deep sense of guilt I felt and to realize that it wasn't really me but the disease that caused me to be that way. I know that it sounds like a crutch or that I'm hiding behind a bunch of psychobabble mumble jumble to explain away my destructive behavior and the toxic environment I created that eventually drove John away. Like I said, it sounds lame to me so how can I explain the truth without sounding lame. That has been my conundrum.

When it happened, I had built up too much anger, resentment and loathing toward my husband and projected so much of the blame for my unhappiness on my husband that I wouldn't or couldn't communicate with John, even when I demanded counseling with Dr. Amanda Fuller. Of course, I continued seeing Bill and that had further driven the nail into my coffin. I couldn't get past the resentment and when push came to shove, I clammed up withdrew deeper inside myself until it was too late to attempt to salvage my marriage if such a chance even existed. When marriage counseling failed, I blamed both John and Dr. Fuller. I married Bill on the rebound, divorced him and had been driven to the brink of suicide before my family intervened and saved me from further self-harm and self-destruction.

While on the road to recovery I knew that I couldn't face John or explain behaviors that I didn't and still don't fully understand. Now that I'm able to function in a relatively clear and lucid fashion my therapist has encouraged me to reach out to John, if not in person, by letter or email. She wanted me to reveal the things I've learned about myself in therapy and try to seek amends rather than outright forgiveness. She told me that since he cared enough to pay for my treatment that he'd most likely understand. I know that my depression was caused by a chemical imbalance in my brain and the medications I've been prescribed have removed the dark cloud that once followed me everywhere, however, as I said, I can't fully comprehend what or why I did what I did and have no words to explain or apologize with that won't sound like some lame excuse.

So, as of today, I still haven't given the one person who most deserved some type of explanation and apology a reason why. I heard through some of my friends from my past life that John moved on with a colleague of Dr. Fuller's, Dr. Becky Hansen, who teaches at the university. I've been told that he is happy once again. It gave me another excuse to not reach out to John. I know I'm a coward and I'm ashamed of myself but I just can't face him and a letter seems so cold and impersonal. I couldn't even face him at Erin's wedding.

I'd would've loved to have danced with him, to have felt his arms around me one last time but I knew I couldn't because the guilt was overwhelming and, in the end, I just couldn't find the words to explain, to answer the question that I believed was foremost on his mind, why. For now, it remains locked away inside though I've promised myself that I'll try to muster up the courage someday. So, I hold our best and most precious memories in my heart and I'm thankful and sad that he is happier without me. Only time will tell if I love him enough to be truly honest with him.

I saw his new wife and she is beautiful and I could tell she's deeply in love with John. I felt a pang of jealousy and a deep sense of regret for what I'd lost. It rang true when the priest asked John who gives this woman in holy matrimony and John, replied, "Her mothers and I do." After eighteen months I had them stop billing John for my treatment and started paying my own way. Yes, I managed to get myself enrolled in some refresher courses at the nearby community college and revamped my resumé and was able to get myself a job as an administrative assistant.

Just when I finally got comfortable and expected to spend the rest of my days alone life threw me another curveball. I met a kind and decent man by the name of Keith Farmer. I was having coffee before another interview and the shop was crowded. A rather handsome man asked me if I'd consider allowing him to share my table. Keith and I hit it off right away and we chatted the whole morning away. I was so enthralled that I missed my interview.

We started dating and after a year married in a small civil ceremony and Erin was my matron of honor. Keith's son Tim was his Dad's best man. I love Keith with all my heart but I can't say he's the greatest love of my life though he will never know it. John will forever hold that distinction. I came to see that deep depression is like the Gorgo Medusa of Greek mythology. One look at the hideousness and you become as paralyzed as those who gazed upon Medusa and were turned to stone.

Fortunately, for me, unlike Greek in mythology, here in the real world you can find help and with hard work be freed from the stone like bonds of sadness and despair and can live a meaningful life. In a perfect world I'd find a way to meaningfully apologize and explain things to John so he could at the very least understand my struggles and that it wasn't intentional just the disease that said such horrible things and did such heinous acts.

My fondest dream is that somewhere down the road perhaps we can become friendly if not actual friends. I hoped that he could eventually see me as someone who was ill and who made mistakes. Not as a monster that ruined his life. While I don't pretend to know his real thoughts regarding me, I believed in my heart and mind that must be the way he felt the day he walked out the door and out of my life and how saw me still.

Thanks to John I did find happiness once again with a new career and a man I adore. I'm waiting patiently for Erin to give me a grandbaby and to hear the pitter patter of little feet across the floor yet again. I plan to spoil her rotten when that day finally comes. I guess you could say I'm still a work in progress though I'd say that for the most part, I'm happy and content. I refuse to dwell on the past and look forward to the future and for me that's a huge step in the right direction.