Chapter 41: Divorce

Shortly after I returned to Florida, my wife and I came to the realization, through a series of long emails and tearful Skype calls, that we’d rushed in, eloped like young fools, and that through time and distance, we’d grown too far apart. There was no way we could reconcile, go back to how it was back in South Beach. She didn’t want to live in America, anymore, and I didn’t want to live in Austria. It was brutal, splitting up, deciding to divorce, but it was for the best. And it was amicable, at least at first...

I’d gifted her the cash I’d saved working in Austria, nearly $8,000, a TON of money for me at the time, to help her start off when she was discharged from the hospital, especially since her parents had decided to kick her out of their house and force her to pay for her own apartment.

However, once she left the hospital, she immediately had breast augmentation surgery, spending almost all the money I’d transferred her. Then she demanded I return to Austria, file and pay for divorce proceedings there, which would have cost several thousand dollars.

That wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t get the time off work, and I’d already filed for divorce in America. The pressing problem for her was she’d been attempting to claim state benefits, welfare, in Austria, because she was having trouble finding work, and since her parents also didn’t want her to work at their company any longer.

She could have used the money I gave her to start up, see her through a couple months of job searching, job retraining, or pay for the divorce proceedings there. But no, she’d decided to buy a big pair of fake tits. Fake tits that looked strange on her slender frame, anyway, made her look like a chicken.

I didn’t have much sympathy for her, because she’d wasted the cash, in my opinion. And things turned ugly. She sent me a series of castigating, threatening emails, naked pictures of her fake tits, and told me sordid tales of her sexual exploits. That she’d been getting gangbanged. Had also been gangraped and had been sleeping with countless men. I’m not sure how much of that was true, but it wasn’t pleasant to hear. Those weren’t pleasant emails to read.

Thinking back to high school, to Jessica, what an asshole I’d been to her, I didn’t want to be that guy again. And I held my tongue. I was a gentleman. I didn’t resort to shit-slinging. I simply ignored her emails. I also ignored the letters I got, in German, from an Austrian court, saying she was suing me, for various superfluous causes, the letters demanding me to show up to court hearings halfway across the world.

(During the process of the divorce, I drank heavily and again returned to listening to heavy metal, 80s metal, in particular. Those songs, soothing me, alleviating my pain. Music is such sonic power, such a time machine. Those old metal songs from Motley Crue, Guns N’ Roses, Poison, took me away to happier places, simpler times... )