Alcohol and Drugs Lead to a Meltdown

After a week gone from the house, I was looking forward to coming home. The night before I had negotiated further with Adam. He was drunk. I could tell by the way he slurred his words. I decided to leave because I didn’t think it was fair to have a discussion about our divorce when he probably was going to forget what we would have decided. In my rush to leave, I accidentally forgot my MacBook laptop and was eager to come home and do some freelance work.

Grace, I went to my bedroom and the MacBook was on my desk. I immediately smelled a distinct burnt odor. I closely looked at the back of the computer and thought, “What the fuck?!” Yes, Grace, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My MacBook had melted. I lifted the top monitor on the laptop and saw the melted keyboard. Stunned and shocked, I started to cry. Without a second to lose, I called Adam at work.

“What happened to my computer?”

“What do you mean?” Adam asked.

“My computer is burned,” I said crying. “What did you do? Do you realize what you did? What have I done to you? Why are YOU so angry with me?

“Oh my God, Eve. I swear I thought I was dreaming.”

“What do you mean dreaming?”

“I thought I was dreaming that I microwaved your computer,” he said.

“No, you didn’t dream it. You did it and you are going to buy me a new computer this weekend. Do you hear me?! I can’t fucking believe you did this to me. What were you thinking?”

“I was drinking and remember taking Ambien and I must have been sleep walking,” Adam said.

“You need to stop this now, Adam. I gotta go and take this to the Apple store to see if they can recover the data.”

I hung up and cried hysterically.

Macbook Meltdown

Guiding Lesson: Oh Eve.  I am speechless. What in the world was he thinking?  But then again someone who microwaves his future ex-wife’s laptop could not have been doing too much thinking. I am baffled and don’t know how to even process such an act.

Well, I’ve heard that divorce brings out the worst but no one can really predict what this means unless you go through it. People who are normally rational human beings transform into unidentifiable characters that have grown from the seeds of pain, abuse, betrayal, bitterness, control, jealousy, etc. And the list goes on and on.

Adam obviously could no longer see clearly.  He was so consumed with ego along with other substances that he lost his internal compass and his true identity as a man of integrity before he ever microwaved your Mac.  This act was simply icing on the cake of how distant he had become from his very own soul.  His ego blinded him that he didn’t realize that his soul was surrounded by darkness.

Is this the only path during a divorce?  I am happy to say that you do have a choice. You don’t have to lead by your pain or dark thoughts and emotions.  Please know that the aches, sadness, anger etc. will be very real and will require you to walk through them. For avoiding them will cause them to rise up like monsters that will take over your life and impact others around you and eat you alive. So it is only by the grace of God that allows this darkness be transformed into light where peace, joy, compassion, etc will emerge.  All you need to do is learn to work through this time with integrity, honesty and faithfulness. This will help you avoid knee-jerk reactions, or defensiveness.

I believe the root of the ugliness is because people are allowing their pain to lead in accomplishing their goal of conquering and tearing the other person apart. They no longer see the other as having any self-worth and this can only lead to destruction of the other, hence, the melted laptop which was Adam’s way of doing this. His subconscious became awaken and could not tell reality from dreaming.

Well, Eve, I guess no one is exempt from the ever-present darkness that lingers around us in hopes of swallowing us up if we let it. But there is also light and the darkness cannot conquer for it shines to pierce through it. So I encourage you to put in place some daily routines where you can check in with yourself and make decisions from here where you are awake and present. I’m proud that you faced this crazy situation and asked for what you needed. Keep going. I am here.

Grace