I got into Philly area last night and stayed at a motel just off the turnpike. Then this morning, being in the neighborhood more or less, I decided to first drive around the central Montgomery County area where Michelle and I used to live – for the last year I was out here, anyway.
Much to my amazement, I couldn't find my way around! I have always had such a great geographical memory. This was very disconcerting. It took me about 30 minutes of zigzagging and spiraling about Upper Gwynedd / Lansdale to realize we'd lived just off Sumneytown Pike. I subsequently began to recognize some things – the McDonalds at Valley Forge Rd, the huge Merck campus where Michelle worked, downtown Lansdale.
But I've been reflecting on the eerie dearth of clear, coherent memories from this period. I suppose the conventional explanation is that I've "blocked out" this period of my life. And there's possibly some truth to that. I have much clearer memories of the year in Philadelphia (95-96, in the apt on 43rd St) I spent alone, while Michelle was finishing her degree in Minnesota. But what happened, here, in the following two years, with Michelle? Am I able, or ready, to answer that question?
One thing that I know I've had a very hard time admitting to myself: when I dropped out of grad school, after that disasterous fall semester in which I barely passed my Master's exams and received much criticism on the quality of my work from my professors – I nursed, from the very start, the idea that my inability to cope with the pressures of school were "because of" my relationship with Michelle. I felt I'd been forced to make a choice: Michelle, or grad school, but not both. In fact, it was Professor Salessi (whom I respected profoundly) who said, "no puedes tener una vida personal y a la vez lograr en un programa como este. [you can't have a personal life and at the same time succeed in a program such as this one.]"
But what happened that I have only just now realized (not quite as an epiphany, but, well, on reflection, I guess) is that that was the seed of the dissolution of our relationship, because from then on I resented the choice – I felt I'd compromised beyond my will to do so. I'd been un-willed – in a Nietzschean sense. And however much it was the case that the choice was a true choice or was instead one that I'd manufactured to accommodate my own shortcomings and disappointments, regardless, I lost control of my life at that moment.
OK, that's heavy stuff. And more: from that day, I somehow decided that the only way to survive was to be (or to try to become) whatever it was Michelle wanted me to be. And that was impossible – both for her own inconsistencies and for my own limitations. In that ill-fated conversation several weeks before her suicide when she'd asked me if there was any way I'd ever consider getting back together again, and I said to her no, I added, "I've recaptured my destiny. I cannot."
She therefore died in part of a broken heart, and I was the one (or one of the ones) who broke it. But I know better than to blame myself (or not, exclusively, anyhow) – there were all kinds of scars and damage that "caused" her to depart for somewhere else ("to a world where I belong" – her words, in that same time period). Nevertheless, these rolling, amazingly verdant hills of suburban Montgomery and Bucks Counties are crawling with ghosts, and I'll not call this part of my trip a pleasure visit, but rather a moment of remembrance.
I'll move on to remembering the happier times of the east coast, and go into the city today, visit the Penn campus, and then go make my pilgrimage to Manhattan.