The Train to Herndon

I had a dream years ago--I can't say if it's five years or ten years or longer. The reason I remember it is that the morning after having it, I immediately wrote it down--something I rarely do. But it had been so vivid, a grainy grey screenplay that ran through my night.

Last night, I understood it for the first time.

In the dream, I am an older woman (or, older than I was then--so, probably the age I am now). I was in a train station, old and echoey, regal and faintly European. I was rushing to catch a train to a town called Herndon. (I don't know if such a place exists.) I was leaving something in a hurry. I was anxious.

As my train was boarding and I began to hurry my way toward the track, I was confronted by a man--out of nowhere, my husband. Though being a dream, he was a husband out of Central Casting. I felt caught, guilty. There we stood, his hand on my arm, my name reverberating through the smoky train track in the echo of the station. He said only one word: "Why?"

I knew magically that I was leaving him--trying to do it quickly and quietly--because he had been cheating on me with another woman for years and years. (None of this is true in real life, to my knowledge.)

In the dream I began to cry. I said, "I'm sorry. I have simply tolerated too much." I remember being filled with grief and a shocking sense of failure.

In years of thinking about the train to Herndon, I could never understand why my husband was the one who was angry and accusatory, and I guilty and apologetic. If he was cheating on me, why was I the one running away?

Fast forward a decade, or half a decade -- as I said, I can't recall exactly when I dreamt it.

Last night, sitting together on the train up to our country house, my husband got into an argument with a man in our car. The man was talking too loudly on his cell phone with a friend about the best places locally to buy doughnuts--describing in vivid detail specifically which doughnuts to buy from which venues. (I am not making this up.) My husband asked him to lower his voice, angry words were exhanged.

In full disclosure, the argument was approximately the eight trillionth argument I have sat through on a train in the company of this man now my husband. They erupt when he is anxious, or angry, or hurting, or lonely, or sad, or really any time he is feeling something that he doesn't want to express.

For some reason, during last night's incident, I put my hand on his leg -- something I have never done before for fear of him turning and shouting at me -- and begged him, quietly, to stop. He was berating a stranger who had stopped fighting back. Now my husband was the weird guy on the train everyone was rolling their eyes at.

He couldn't hear me, intent on his scolding, and continued it for another half a minute.

After he'd stopped, I sat quietly in my seat for as long as I could -- about three minutes. I pretended to read a magazine, and that it wasn't visible that my heart was leaping in my chest, rhythmically.

Finally I gave up, stood up, gathered my things. I asked my husband to please let me pass; I was going to sit in the next car. At first he demanded--quietly, calmly--that I explain my departure. Finally, knowing that I would not hesitate much longer to exact public embarassment upon him, he let me by.

I rearranged myself in the next car, which was better air conditioned anyway. Nyah. As I settled in for the short remainder of the journey to our beautiful home, I began to cry.

Then I remembered the train to Herndon.

Finally, it made sense.

Truth: For almost twelve years this man I love has been behaving badly -- childishly, selfishly, hurting me.

Truth: I know it, I know that he knows it, and still it continues.

I have tolerated too much.

What would have happened if, the first time it happened, on whatever train or in whatever airport or restaurant or hotel it first became noticeable, I had looked at him with the horror I felt, picked up my bags and walked away?

Would he have followed? Immediately? Sheepishly, days later? Ever?

What would I have done then?

Whatever the answers, I am where I am. Somehow I made little decisions all along the way that got me here. I believe this is the point of the the train to Herndon. That we as humans are somehow built to go with the flow, to turn with the tide so the ride is easy, maybe a little thrilling, but smooth. We are built to forget that at some point we may have to turn and face the opposite direction. That when we do, everything that was so easy going in one way will be infinitely harder, going in the other.

Hitting "Send"

I went and did it.

I wrote an email to someone I'm interested in, and have been thinking too much about. The content was flirtatious, but the message was clear: I'd like to see you. Before I could rethink it or reword it or decide to sleep on it for a night or a week, I hit "send".

Just like that.

So simple, you're thinking. You like him, send him an email. You're confident and you have a full life and your existence hardly hinges on his reply, right? Simple.

Not so simple.

I'm married; so is he. Not to each other. "Do you want to hear the biggest rationalization in the world?," a friend asked me when I told her. Of course I did. "You have a good life, but something is missing from it that your husband isn't going to give you. Why should you have to live without it?"

Aha. So now I've been living without it. What's "it"? It's not love -- my husband loves me. I love him. But as anyone over roughly the age of 24 knows, love isn't the cake. At best, it's the icing--it's sweet and delicious, but love is not what holds it all together.

So then, what is "it"? Sex? I don't live without sex. It's true: You can't expect to feel the same brand of excitement with someone you've been sleeping with for 12 years that you fantasize feeling with someone you barely know. It's not even fair to compare the two. My crush has never even seen me without mascara on, much less in the throes of anxiety or an unrestrained PMS malestrom. Isn't that supposed to be part of what makes sex better? The intimacy, the shared experience of life? That's why people stay in monogamous relationships, right?

I need to meet those people. I'd like to hear their definition of "it".

Is "it" excitement? The not-knowing part? Not knowing what he's thinking, or going to do, or what he feels or doesn't feel, or what he wants or doesn't want. In the language of a marriage, that mystery falls away. It has to--unless you both have borderline personality disorder, it's just no way to live. But is that excitement, or simply anxiety? How do you know the difference?

I don't know that I do know the difference. As it is, I hit "send".

He Is Asleep and I Am Awake

For me, since becoming a couple with the man who became my husband--so for the last almost-12 years--this has been the most precious part of any weekend: Saturday and Sunday mornings, when he is asleep and I am awake.

He is a sleeper-later, and I am an early-upper. This creates a couple of delicious hours before yoga class (or before surfing, in warm weather) on Saturday and Sunday mornings for me to just be, and imagine the day stretching ahead. Most often -- not always, but most often -- I do this with childlike glee.

I try on outfits. I sing, often dance. I warm up my yoga practice. I check emails and write my friends. I re-fall in love with favorite pairs of shoes that I never wear and swear to incorporate them into my new day-to-day. I reconnect with myself and get ready for a new week, let go of the old week, feel it all run through and out of me.

This is where it becomes less dreamy.

Sometimes I think, What would it be like if it was like this all the time? If he was never actually here, if it was always quiiiiiiiet, maybe soft music playing and light streaming through the windows?

I would get lonely, I tell myself.

So, lonely, I think back. You've been lonely before; there's no reason to assume that part of life isn't going to be experiencing loneliness. You wear it and discard it. No?

But there are so many things, I think. Things you could never explain to another person. The experience of a shared past. Being around someone who deeply understands you and knows where you're coming from and forgives you for it. Mostly. You would miss all of this.

It's true. I would miss it all.

I won't see sleeping husband very much today -- we'll glide in and out of each other's day, passing for a shower or one of us having lunch, me always on my way to meet this or that friend for this or that. We'll have dinner together tonight, have a quiet Sunday night. Get ready for a long week, when we'll work hard and sleep less and get all of our anxieties triggered in one way or another, and eventually find ourselves back here, next weekend. When he is asleep and I am awake.