WEBVTT - Too Busy to Die 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:07.680 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:11.200 turned down the hallway where the bedrooms are located. Peter, 0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:14.280 I call again, Peter. I'm coming down the hall to 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.560 your bedroom. Okay. His bedroom is at the end of 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.880 the hallway. Its door faces me and it's open, but 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:23.239 I can't see anything except a corner of the bed 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.760 and a cluttered night table. I walked past my son's 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.440 bedroom with its one orange wall and ikea bed, past 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:34.159 Anna's old bedroom, one wall painted deep pink. I am 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.440 nearly at his door and start calling his name again 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:41.960 in earnest Peter, Peter. I can see into the room. 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:43.800 The covers on the bed are drawn back, and I 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:46.720 can see the crumpled white sheets. There are a few 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:49.320 tissues in the bed with spots of blood on them. 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.760 I'm starting to shake badly as I walk into the bedroom. 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:54.960 Peter isn't in the bed, so I turned towards the 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:59.360 master bath. Then I see him lying face up on 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:05.679 the floor between the bathroom and the bedroom. That's Eileen 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:09.920 Zimmerman reading from her book Smacked, a memoir of white 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:14.560 collar ambition, addiction, and tragedy. Eileen is now pursuing a 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.720 social work degree She's the mother of two young adults 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.280 and lives in New York City. But when this story unfolds, 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:25.160 Eileen as a journalist wife and an ex wife of 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:29.080 a high powered attorney, raising her teenage kids in San Diego. 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.480 They live a lovely life, a privileged life, a life 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:38.119 that doesn't end sordidly on a bathroom floor, because money 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:50.200 and worldly success inoculates us from such things, don't they. 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:55.360 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:57.960 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:05.000 and the secrets we keep from our selves. I met 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.520 Peter when I was looking for a job. I was 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:11.239 twenty three years old. I had a job at CBS 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.280 News as an administrative assistant. I had worked my way 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.040 up from receptionist, and I got laid off in the 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:21.079 late eighties, and so I couldn't afford my apartment near 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.080 Rutger's where I just graduated, and so I moved home 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:26.240 to be with my mother and my sisters, which was 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.360 like living in an insane asylum. It was crazy. But 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.000 I had to find a job. So I was looking 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:35.200 in the Sunday New York Times and saw an ad 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:38.959 for a recruiter in New York named Peter at Adam Personnel, 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.040 So I made an appointment to see him, and that's 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:44.920 how I met him. I walked in and he was 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:46.840 the counselor I was supposed to meet, and he was 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.040 really young and very very sweet, and we wound up 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.560 talking for a really long time during the interview quote unquote, 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:56.080 mostly about stuff we like to do. He had just 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:58.440 graduated from Cornell and so we had a lot to 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:00.919 chat about. And then he said, I'll you know, I'll 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.919 call you with some interviews and things. And I wanted 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.320 to do writing, but I got sent out only for 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:10.440 secretarial jobs because typing fast seemed to be my most 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:13.840 marketable skill at that point. And um, from there we 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:17.120 became friends. He wound up quitting Adam Personnel and he 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:19.919 went back to school to be a chemist. I wound 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:21.720 up with a job at a law firm as a 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.160 legal assistant, which I got through a friend of Peter's, 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:26.120 and we just stayed friends for a few years. I 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:28.800 moved to Philly to work at a really small arts magazine, 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:31.839 and then one time I went up to Ithaco, where 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:34.080 he was living in New York State, to see his 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:37.360 band play and everything changed. I suddenly I was like, well, 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:41.640 maybe he could be a boyfriend. And it started was 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:45.200 that because you were seeing him like a different side 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:47.880 of him by seeing him as a musician. He was 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:50.000 always kind of dorky and I always felt like, oh, 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:53.560 we don't have any chemistry, and um, he was super 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:56.680 science e but nice. He was very interested in philosophy 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.760 of science then and Carl Sagan was his you know, 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.960 euro and Darwin and so he was a really interesting 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:05.280 guy to talk to. But I just didn't think of 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:08.720 him as that attractive. But then you know, he's in 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:12.920 this on this like homemade stage and it's of State, 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:15.680 New York, and there's all these people, you know, on 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:18.640 a hillside listening to the band, and he had long hair, 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:21.719 and I noticed everybody else was staying in him, and 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.360 I thought, oh, you know, maybe he's kind of cute. 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.680 And he was really nice. And so it's one of 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.560 those things where suddenly something changed and I started to 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:33.200 see him in a totally different lay. And then once 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:36.000 that happened, I really felt for him. So it took 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.760 two years. Do you think he had been biding his time? 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:41.720 Like he liked you? He did he made it very 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:43.560 clear that he wanted to go out with me, and 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:45.400 I just kept saying, like, I don't feel that way 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:48.320 about you. So I was dating some other people, you know, 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:51.880 nobody great, he was dating a few people. I kept thinking, 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:53.680 he's always just going to be my friend. He's just 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:56.200 a friend. I think they call it friend zoning now. 0:04:56.680 --> 0:04:58.919 And then that changed, and I think so he was 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.000 sort of waiting. I think he was a very tenacious 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.520 person and believed he would get what he wanted. So 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:07.200 he did. He just sort of hung in there. What 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:09.520 was his instrument, by the way in the band, bass guitar. 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:12.039 And he couldn't read music. He taught himself by ear 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:15.440 to listen and just copy, and he learned tabs, how 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:19.839 to read tabs. Yeah, so he's pretty good. Eileen and 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.960 Peter date for a couple of years. They move in together, 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:27.640 get married. Peter gets his master's degree in chemistry and 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.480 begins working at a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey. Eileen 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.960 is features editor at the Baltimore City Paper. They live 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:39.160 in Philly, which is in the middle sort of. After 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.240 a few more years, they followed Peter's work to San Diego, 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:45.200 where he gets a job at a very promising startup. 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:49.400 Peter's job was as a bench chemist, which means that 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:51.480 he sits with a group of other bench chemists at 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:54.479 a lab table creating compounds that will be used in 0:05:54.560 --> 0:06:00.479 experiments designed by pH d s. Peter's ambitious, restless. He 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:02.480 doesn't want to spend the rest of his life inhaling 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:07.120 chemicals and not even designing the experiments. At this point, 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:11.240 as he sees it, he has two choices go back 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.360 to school to get his pH d, which would take 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:17.320 upwards of six years, or go to law school. So 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:20.440 they moved back east to New Hampshire this time, and 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:24.000 it's during the law school years that things slowly, inexorably 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:28.080 begin to change. I didn't realize it at the time, 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:31.679 but Peter also was tired of not having enough money. 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:34.840 We always struggled. His family was really poor. My family 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.320 had a ton of financial insecurity when we are growing up. 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.919 My dad worked two jobs and we all worked. I 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.560 cleaned houses at twelve. We were, you know, not destitute, 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.640 but we were kind of poor in a genteel way. 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:50.560 So um, he was sick of it, and he said, 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:52.359 let me go to law school and I'll make some 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:56.160 money for all this education, and I was nervous, but 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.640 I was excited for something new. We thought about starting 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.000 a family only then I was about twenty nine and 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.800 decided to put it off. Things did start to change, 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:08.840 although I think partially it was due to law school, 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.640 and I think partially it was Peter and I just 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.520 either being in love, didn't see it or didn't want 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.440 to see it. And then it became more clear. So 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:21.800 he always, for instance, liked to trip. He loved acid 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:24.080 and everything. And I'm not a big drug person. I 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:26.400 just I think I'm too anxious. I don't want to 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:28.640 be inside my head that long. Yeah, you know, but 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:31.000 he he did. He liked to get high, and he 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:33.480 hung out in Ithaca. Um. I don't know if any 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:35.560 of your listeners know what Cornell is liking up there. 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.280 It's kind of a very crunchy hippie. And now he 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:40.680 was back in school, and so it was like grades 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.000 and partying, and you know, people took no dose, which 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:46.200 was a stimulant to stay up all night, or coffee 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:51.600 or um, some coke, some smoking, cannabis, and a lot 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:55.200 of drinking, a lot of hard drinking. It seems that 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:58.560 odds in a way. All that ambition combined with the 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.640 hard partying. But this is the way Peter blows off steam. 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:05.240 He's very driven in law school. He's going to be 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:08.560 number one editor of the Law Review, and he is 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:13.000 all the while burning the candle at both ends. What 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:19.160 changed was he prioritized the work of law school over 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:22.240 everything else, over our relationship, over being present in any 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.679 way with our respective families. And when we had our daughter, 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:27.960 it was the beginning of his third year. And I 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:31.000 even remember we had an argument in the hospital the 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:34.160 night she was born because there were these kind of 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:37.280 pullout chairs the size of twin beds in the hospital. 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:39.920 It was Brigham and Women's in Boston, and he was 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:41.840 complaining that he wasn't going to get a good enough 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:43.960 to night's sleep because he had midterms the next day. 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:46.360 And I was thinking, I just pushed a human being 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.600 out of my body, and I'm kind of freaked out too, 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:53.360 And he had invited friends of his from Boston to 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.440 come and they brought beer and stuff to the hospital room. 0:08:56.480 --> 0:09:00.160 And I was exhausted, and I wasn't a kid, I 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.200 was thirty three, and I was freaking out that I 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:05.120 was being woken up every two hours like I had 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.120 I was trying to adjust to this whole new paradigm, 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:10.719 and he just wanted to like celebrate and hand out 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.440 cigars and party. And then we went back to New 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.240 Hampshire the next day and I had said, let's get 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:19.280 your mom or someone to come and help for the 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.360 first week, and he said, no, this is our thing. 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.360 We're going to do it ourselves in our way. And 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:27.640 I just remember walking into the dark apartment with my 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.800 daughter and she started crying, and I was thinking, it's 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:32.720 going to be the middle of winter here in New Hampshire. 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:35.280 All of the friends here are his. I mean, I 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.520 knew the law school widows. They called them the ones 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.120 that are left behind by law school, but it was 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:43.560 really his world. We were there for him, and I 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:47.440 felt so lonely and scared, and I had some postpartum depression. 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:50.640 But he didn't want us to lean on anyone else, 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:52.520 and so we had to do it ourselves, which meant 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:55.600 me because he went back to school. And I don't 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:59.840 think he ever really prioritized our family again, our kids, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.240 and I think he loved them, but what always came 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.640 first was him. Was you know, he was going to 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:07.880 be the best, and he would justify it by saying, 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:11.200 I'm doing this for the family. When you went back 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.600 and read your journals, did you have any consciousness of 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:17.280 that or any awareness of that at that time? Do 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:19.880 you think what I noticed in the journals was the 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:23.319 beginning of this kind of pathological relationship he had with money. 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:26.400 Eventually it became the thing he used to have power 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:29.880 over people and to show love. So, you know, if 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:31.720 if I was doing what I was supposed to do, 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:33.720 you know, he'd buy me a computer. But if not, 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:35.680 he would remind me who paid the mortgage. So there 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.640 was always this push pull between that. But I wrote 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:40.800 in my journal that I guess we'd had some argument 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.600 or some discussion about being tired. We were both really tired, 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:46.800 and he pointed out everything in our little apartment that 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:50.040 he had paid for because I was actually earning more 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:52.760 money because he was working a bunch of part time 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.840 jobs and going to school and I was working full time, 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:58.280 and our benefits were through that. And I wrote in 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:00.440 my journal, I said, I don't know why he has 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.280 to do that, Why he has to stake claim to everything. 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:06.240 I don't care. And I kept thinking, well, maybe after 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:08.320 law school this will go away. Maybe when we have 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:10.880 more money, he won't feel but it never and he 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:13.840 always felt like his money was his money. And he 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.320 wanted me to understand I had nothing to do with 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:19.199 earning it, that being there at law school with him 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.520 did not mean I had any hand in his degree 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:26.400 or his success. It was the beginning of prioritizing his 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.839 earnings and his career and kind of himself over everything else. 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:33.119 And at the time I just thought it was anxiety 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:38.200 or just our poverty being in law school. So Peter 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:40.960 graduates law school at the top of his class. He 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.320 and Eileen and their eight month old daughter moved back 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.120 to San Diego, where he again has a job waiting 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.560 as a first year associate and a law firm. Now 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:53.839 Eileen thinks life is going to get easier, no more 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:58.200 all nighters. He'll be home and it's the exact same thing, 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.720 only he's more depressed. One night, my daughter was like, 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:05.640 I don't know, fourteen months old, maybe not even and 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.520 I woke up and Peter wasn't home. I could tell 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:10.560 he'd never come home. So I was panicked, and we 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.160 had those flip phones then, so I call him and 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:15.920 he picks up and he says, no, I just slept 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.400 under my desk because I have a brief to this morning. 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.520 And he got home and we had this big discussion, 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:23.840 and I knew he was fried from like thirty two 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.200 hours of being awake, but I just said, I don't 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:28.560 get it. I said, I thought this ended at law school, 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:31.480 these all nighters. You know, you're an adult man now 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.599 with the family. And he was incredulous. He was just 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.000 kind of like, what are you an idiot? This is 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:39.400 the way it is. It's going to be like this, 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.000 you know, until I make partner, which wasn't gonna be 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.960 for ten years. And that's the way it was, you know, 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:46.800 And he was just like, you better get used to it. 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:49.520 This is why it's going to be. He started hanging 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:53.240 out with a bunch of younger attorneys that smoked a 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.000 lot of pot, and the pot was much stronger than 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:57.600 we had done in high school, and he hadn't really 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:00.120 smoked since then. And one night he called me and 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:02.360 he said, I can't even come home and he was vomiting. 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:05.600 He's like, I'm like hallucinating, like so he stayed, but 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:08.320 he hung out with them a lot, and he would say, like, oh, 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:10.320 after work, we went out for drinks and I started 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.000 to think, then he's getting high with them, but I 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.920 thought it's pot you know. I would say to him, like, 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:18.320 are you smoking. He'd be like a little bit, but 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:20.760 you know, that's the beginning of the lying. And so 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:23.120 I think that was when he started to think this 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:25.080 is a way of coping. This kind of feels good. 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:29.160 And I think it escalated from there. Not that cannabis 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.200 is a gateway drug necessarily, but I think then when 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:34.680 we split up, I mean, he may have been doing 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.600 coke and stimulants said he could inhale or adderall, but 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.080 I wouldn't have known. I wasn't sophisticated enough. But he 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.560 was always tired when he came home. So if he 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:46.680 did them during the day, he crashed when he got home. 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:52.000 Peter's working more and more and more hours. You have 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:54.280 your second child. We have we decided to have a 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:58.600 second child, and Peter's the whole thing was, you know, like, 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.320 now I'm a fourth year associate, so in a couple 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:02.960 of more years, I'm going to be up for partner. 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.640 And I kept thinking, okay, all right, well we got 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:07.599 through law school and so all of a sudden I 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:10.920 readjusted and I thought, oh, okay, So being an associates horrible. 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:13.319 But in six or seven years he's going to be 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:17.439 a senior associate. He'll be having underlings to delegate workout too, 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:19.400 and then he'll be a partner, and then we can 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:21.400 be like all the other guys, by the way, who 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:23.800 were all divorced two or three times by then, right. 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:26.360 I mean, his direct boss at his first firm was 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:30.160 in his late sixties and he was dying his hair blonde, 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:31.840 and I was on his third wife. So he was 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.080 a grandfather and the father of grammar school aged children, 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.920 and this was not uncommon, you know, but I thought 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:40.400 that wouldn't be us um, And so that's what happens 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:41.880 is you kind of decide, okay. So we had the 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:44.440 second child, and we moved. We bought our first home 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:47.720 we had been renting near San Diego State University, very 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.760 kind of middle class, upper middle class community with good schools, 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:56.080 and Peter just absented himself from family life. There was 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:58.920 a time where San Diego is famous for zoo and 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:00.720 in the summer they have the night time zoo. So 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:02.440 I brought the kids to the zoo at night, which 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:04.160 is very thrilling for a child to be in the 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:07.160 zoo after dark, and we were coming back from some 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:09.640 show we saw there and there was a full moon 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:11.400 and our shadows were in front of us. And my 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:14.400 daughter was seven and she was skipping and she said, look, mommy, 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:17.800 there we are. We're almost a whole family. And we 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:20.520 got home and Peter's in his office in the garage, 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:22.360 and I don't know what he was doing in the 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:24.880 garage for six hours while we were walking around the zoo, 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.960 but you know, he should have been with us. So 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:32.000 Eileen is increasingly unhappy in her marriage. But she's grown 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:36.160 so accustomed to a life filled with goal posts. You know, 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:40.640 if we just do this, accomplish that spent these years 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:44.360 paying our dues, if we do these things, will eventually 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:49.040 be happy. She can't imagine leaving Peter. She grew up 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:51.880 in an atmosphere of scarcity, and she's afraid of going 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:56.200 back there. Peter represents security to her. She's put her 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.320 career at a far distant second to his. What can 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:04.520 she do? Do you think that that kind of allowed 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:10.680 you to adjust to what was not a happy situation, 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:12.920 sort of like a frog in boiling water, where you know, 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:14.680 you put the frog in the pot and you turn 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.240 the heat on the frog never really realizes that the 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.360 frog is boiling until the frog is boiled. That is 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.240 a perfect and I and I won't even let myself 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:26.480 off the hook that much. I do think there was 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.160 a feeling that, you know, I was a freelance writer 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:31.960 working part time because Peter could not parent. He was 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:34.040 busy and exhausted, so he did what he could, but 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:36.320 it was not much, and I knew that that was 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.000 the deal kind of, so I did feel like if 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:42.000 I were to leave him, it would be back to scarcity. 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.680 I mean, he earned all the money pretty much. I 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:47.040 think at that point I was probably earning as a 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:49.000 freelance writer, and I was also writing for the New 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:51.600 York Times. I was probably making thirty five dollars a year, 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:54.120 so you know, like in Buffalo, New York or Cleveland, 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:56.680 maybe I could make it. Not in San Diego, where 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:58.960 gas was, you know, four dollars ago, and it was 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:01.680 just not possible. And knew it, and he knew it. 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.159 Was it something you entertained. I thought about leaving in 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.359 law school when things were like that. I just always 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:12.240 felt like, and I think this is on me, but 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.320 I think I was raised in my family to believe 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:17.600 that I didn't really have a lot of value. I 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:18.920 have a scene in the book where I tell my 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:21.440 dad I'm getting engaged, that we're getting married, and when 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:23.080 Peter goes to the bathroom, my dad looks at me 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.439 and says, don't blow it. And it was clear I 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.520 was the lucky one. I believed it. I believed he 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:30.320 was right. When I was little, he used to say, Oh, 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.000 it's a good thing you're smart, because you're not pretty. 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:38.360 Jewish families they're so great, all families really. I mean 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.960 those like sort of internalized messages, they can be so damaging, 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.760 so because they become the stories that we tell ourselves 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.280 that have absolutely no correlation to the truth. You know, 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:51.600 you're sitting here with me in this room, and you 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:55.040 know you're you're this beautiful woman, and like, I just 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.320 you know, you just think, like you internalize a message 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:00.520 like that, and then it becomes kind of your reality 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.040 in a certain Even as you say that, I'm thinking, no, no, 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:05.679 I'm not, like, You're right, It's it just took a 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:07.480 few words, you know. And my dad did a lot 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:09.480 of that ground. He'd call it hey stoop, like a 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:12.359 nickname for stupid, because I had trouble with math, and 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:14.840 so I always thought I'm not good at numbers, and 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:19.360 Peters so and he was so smart. He was a really, 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:21.880 really and probably one of the smartest people I've ever known, 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:25.320 super intelligent about everything, and so you start to feel 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:29.160 like maybe you are lucky. And I felt really afraid. 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.240 I felt really afraid to leave. And part of that 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:33.479 was like, who's going to be with me. I'm in 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:35.800 my forties, and am I going to really leave? He's 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.119 making half a million dollars a year and I make forty. 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:42.399 I was terrified. And you know, sometimes the misery you 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:45.320 know is better than the misery you don't, So I 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:51.919 think that's what I did. So what was the last straw? 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:55.159 The last row was Peters started having a relationship with 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.240 someone else. But I had told him many times. I said, 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:00.560 we need to go to counseling, and we did, but 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:02.520 he didn't show up half the time because of work. 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:04.440 He would say, I can't make it. We have a meeting, 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:07.359 So of course it didn't work. And I remember one 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.120 time saying to him, if things don't change somehow, then 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.040 I'm going to leave when our son graduates from high school. 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.040 And he said to me, if you leave me before 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:19.840 they are grown up, I will never see the kids 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:22.800 because I work so much. And I remember thinking, Okay, 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:24.600 I'm going to have to stick it out until my 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.040 youngest can drive, and then he can go see Peter 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:30.439 whenever he wants another, another goal post another. I was like, 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:32.440 five more. I just gotta make it five more years. 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:34.399 And I thought, well, then when we split everything, at 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.320 least there'll be more money for me. And then Peter 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:39.959 had an affair and it ended a year later, and 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:43.080 I begged him to stay. I was terrified of him leaving, 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:45.800 and he his idea was that I would allow him 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.600 to have this relationship and still be married. And that's 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:52.000 when I thought, you know what, I'm really unhappy he 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.720 wants out. Let's have this. So we did. We stayed 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:57.679 married for a while, we stayed connected physically for a while. 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:04.360 It was hard, but eventually we did get divorced. We'll 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:13.159 be back in a moment. Peter moved out in two 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:17.159 thousand nine into a one bedroom apartment a mile and 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:19.760 a half from the office. It seems not to have 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:22.879 occurred to him that this meant his kids would have 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.359 nowhere to stay, so then he moved again to a 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:30.359