Memoirs, a Narrative. Part Five

Doug

I have had three relationships in my life. The first ended in divorce. The next two times I had the common sense to kill my partner.

That was a joke, folks. Put down the pitchforks!

But this is about my first big love, Doug.

Although my memories of our relationship aren’t kind and our break-up was fairly brutal, he wasn’t a bad person. I just try to paint him that way in my mind. It certainly couldn’t be me that was bad!

But I was. Years before our break-up he caught me cheating. While I would like to defend myself, I can’t.  I think this is where ‘adultery’ comes in.  Trust me, I never was and never will be an angel.

I was too young and too immature when I entered the relationship with Doug. He was older (although you will note I didn’t add “and more mature”) and I was swept away. We spent six years together:  in Eugene, Coos Bay (technically North Bend), Boise, Seattle, Azusa and Riverside. Nine different residences in six years: doesn’t sound stable to me. And it wasn’t.

The only times in my life that at I ever contemplated suicide were while I was with Doug. Well, that is if you discount my current embrace with Oregon’s Death With Dignity law, which I don’t hold in the same book.

The relationship didn’t work… and obviously, I wasn’t an innocent bystander.