The Case Of The Severed Finger

 

Towards the end of our marriage when we both knew it was over my ex started looking around  with no discretion. During the process of separating he had been in an accident at work where he nearly severed his finger from getting it caught in a latch handle on a door. The doctors advised him to just have the finger amputated, but he insisted in keeping it which meant high doses of antibiotics and bandage changes every day. When he came home from the hospital a nurse came out, gave him his shot, then told me I was to provide his care for the next month. This was news to me. I had been packing and storing my possessions and was ready to leave, thinking he was going to get the care he needed by others. I bit my tongue and stayed. We were also in the process of trying to sell the house, so one day as my ex lounged on a recliner as I shook hoping to inject him without killing him, a realtor arrived to assess the house. She was very pretty- tall, stacked and blonde. As she's talking about the house my then still husband is blatantly flirting with her. It was awkward to say the least. She was clearly uncomfortable and I wished she would just leave rather than me explain, "Hey, we're not really together anymore. I'm just playing nurse here." But it was still an asinine move on my ex's part. He was going to be a dick, even as I am sticking around for his stupid finger. Eventually the month ended and I left with great relief. A few months later he had a woman (not the realtor) move in with her brood of six children who all hated him. He trusted her so much he put her in charge of paying the mortgage each month which she failed to do so the house went into foreclosure. She had been stealing from him the whole time. Karma has been a friend in my life and this was one of her best.

Phew, that was a long introduction into the gist of this post which is, sharing details about our past that was icky and horrible. 

Let's discuss Gavin Newsom and his affair with an aide when he was mayor of San Francisco, which happened twenty years ago. Newsom was single. She was not. In fact, Newsom and her husband were supposed friends and worked together. Newsom does not deny the affair but tries to defend it as a mere two second mistake. All this is coming out now since she wrote about it for Vanity Fair, which mentions she was an alcoholic and obviously was having marital issues. My first thought was, "Why are you airing your dirty laundry, lady?" And that's where I was going to go with this until I realized I was doing the exact same thing, writing my experience as I do here in my blog. I don't get paid to write about my past and I usually don't write posts about heading to a beautiful beach and eating noodle salad as my partner and I canoodle and look for seashells on the seashore. I believe people are more interested in the trainwrecks we once were. As mere humans we screw up- a lot, so I suppose seeing someone else falter makes us realize we are fallible. But we also tend to judge and compare our lives against others. Look at how the world reacted to the Coldplay couple. Even people who cheated on their partners pointed fingers. I'm not sure of the psychological reason for why we do this- ask a psychiatrist. 

So, Newsom's past has made me like him a little less, but still believe he's a good guy. I have defended him in the past and have gotten reamed by the LGBTQ community on Bluesky for his stance on children receiving life altering changes, plus aging hippies who believe the homeless should be able to camp out anywhere they desire. 

The tryst happened twenty years ago. He seems to have done well, even possibly being our next president? As for her, she has been sober and healthy and all is well. Maybe that is why we bring up the ugly stuff from our past. We can survive. We can learn and more importantly we can forgive. 

And it's far more interesting than a story about eating noodle salad on the beach.