Who Is To Blame?

 

Just before leaving Cape Town, I finally received an email from Alia. It is really sad to read her message now, but back then, more than that, it was very disappointing. She sounded really sad. She was writing to ask me for money. It was very disappointing to see that I was going through a real nightmare, and, yet, the only time she could find to think of me was to ask for money. Although she was apologizing for writing for a reason like that, it certainly did not do it for me. I think it is relevant that she did not even try to fake some interest for me, by asking me how I was. It seems to me that, even if all what she cared about was the money, it had only been smart to express some interest for my well-being. But, obviously, she was not thinking very clearly. My analysis back in Cape Town, however, would not go that deep either. I just hated that money would now get in the way of trying to find some healing for our marriage. If I could save my marriage, sending her money; I would certainly to so. However, on the other hand,if I needed money in order to be able to save our marriage, then it was equally clear to me, our marriage was not worth saving. With all the problems I had, the last thing I wanted to talk about was money. I thought I would put the question to slowly cook on low heat on the back of my mind, and so allow myself some days to ponder the whole matter. I finally reached the conclusion, that I should tell Alia I believe we should not allow money to get in the way now. Upon my arrival to Spain I had been told I needed to have eye surgery and that was going to be costly.

"Hello,

I'm sorry to be writing you like this.

I am writing to ask for some help with the credit card bill.  It is going to be almost $1000.00 due on the 20th and 22nd.

If you can help.  Thank you.

Alia"

In all honesty, there were a couple of questions I really wanted to have clarified before I would be ready to send any more money. Indeed, Alia was asking for about $1000, so that she could pay off her credit card balance due on the 22nd of March. However, I could remember very well that, as a matter of ffact, irony of all ironies, it had needed to be the very evening before disappearing to go visit Gary and subsequently breaking up with me, because she was sick of dragging me around the supermarkets, that Alia had taken care of transferring $2000 from my banck account to hers, in order to pay those very same bills. Moreover, the bill due February 22nd was only about $1000; however, that evening of February 18th she told me she would transfer $2000, so that we would not need to worry anymore about the March bill. But now she was asking for those additional $1000 again? I immediately guessed and started fearing that she had used the xtra $1000 she had transferred in Cape Town to pay the March installment of her student loans. That..., I really did not think I was ready to continue supporting her with; particularly if she was going to leave me because she was sick of dragging me around the supermarkets. It was equally easy to guess that she was also asking for the money of her airticket from Cape Town back to Montana. That, she did not have any concern to state openly. I just could not get how on Earth she could ever think it was at all reasonable that I would pay for her flight back home, after she had left me in Cape Town, because she was sick of dragging me around the supermarkets. Clearly it was the same kind of weird reasoning she had already exhibited in Cape Town, when she complained that I did not know how to treat a person that is not doing well. I guess that all was coming from Robyn's old doctrine, whereby we all had to respond to her daughter's wrath with love, hugs and kisses.     

When I first met Alia I thought it was truly remarkable that she immediately admitted that she was always full of shit. It turned out there was a catch though: those words effectively shifted the burden to me. Now that I knew that Alia was crazy, it was my duty and responsibility to be understanding  whenever Alia would lose control; I would have to weather the storm and take her abuse the best I could. Deep inside Alia was aware that her wrath would unavoidably, little by little, fancy by fancy take its toll and hurt my love for her; but, in her immature, conscious thinking, she refused to acknowledge it.

Unfortunately, it is never a good strategy to deny the reality. Alia was going to receive the bill for her wishful thinking at the worst possible time: if there was a time where we needed my blind understanding, this was it. However, at this point, I was not ready to just do anything to save our marriage. Under the present circumstances it was too humiliating, certainly more than what I could take, to submit to her demands for money. I really thought  I first needed some answers to some important questions. I obviously wanted to know what had happened with those extra $1000 Alia had transferred in February. But, most of all, I was hoping to get some insight on what were Alia's feelings and what she wanted to do with our marriage. Needless to say, that was going to require quite some time to find out.

Unfortunately, Alia was not at all satisfied with my suggestion to put off any decision or discussion about money. She was really very stressed about money. She simply could not see it from anywhere but her very own perspective: she needed help, she was certain I could help her and, consequently, found it extremely mean that I would put her in such dire situation. The monetary issue was indeed a very clear representative of how far apart we were. On one hand, I could not believe that, after all what Alia had hurt me, she show absolutely no concern for me, but instead expected me to care for her and demanded that I helped her. On the other hand, Alia felt it was extremely mean that I would observe her in such deep pain and still refuse to give her a hand. It had certainly been easy to predict that money was going to finish tearing us apart. Now, much to my surprise and disappointment, Alia had actually taken on the offensive. Indeed, I had seen Alia leaving Cape Town, after she had broken my heart in pieces; but was hoping and expecting her to be eventually back with an apology. It is really remarkable for how long I kept waiting for Alia to say something like she was sorry for what she had done to me. An apology, however, I was not going to hear.  

Alia rejected putting off any discussion about money and instead insisted and argued that I should help her with her bills. Before I go on with how selfish and hypocrite Alia was, however, I may want to consider that her conduct was in fact probably not that difficult to understand: Alia was in fact probably feeling even worse than me. Furthermore, Alia remembered very well all what I had told her and how deeply my words had hurt her that Sunday afternoon on the beach, right after she had decided to brake-up with me. True probably the main reason why my words had hurt her so deeply was because she knew there was quite some truth in them and, after all, were only to confirm what she had deep inside always thought of herself. It was also pointless to argue that all what I had done was to express my complaint and dispondency for the really unfair treatment I was receveing: so many times she had protested because she felt she was not good enough for me, and now I was being dumped because she had concluded that I was not good enough for her. Ironically, the issue was no longer the many times that Alia had been an asshole to me; rather, she had turned the table around and now the whole problem was that I had dared to point out those many times she had been an asshole. But we still need to consider that Alia had felt so bad that she wanted to die; to the extend that she thought of commiting suicide. It is therefore not very logical to expect that she had started to elaborate on a meticulous reasoning on what was exactly each other's responsibilities in our marriage's failure and the deep pain she was feeling.     

Her March 20th 2016 response then went by what she felt more immediate to her, and she, consequently, definitely did not fall shy of reproaching me for what she considered my arrogant personality; never able to admit any wrong doing nor any responsibility on our marriage's failure. In contrast, she was putting herself as an example of somebody who is ready to admit mistakes and feel the deepest remorse for them. Alia went as far as reminding me about her attempt of suicide. Alia had always had a strong feeling of guilt for all those times that she hurt our marriage, whereas I would never admit any wrongdoing. SHe got, however, greatly impressed the day after her attempt of suicide, when she saw me in tears, expressing remorse for my part in one of our fights. She really needed that, considering that her own feeling of guilt had led her to try to take her life. It was then very disappointing to realize, that I had fallen back to my self-commiseration, when I replied complaining that she had only thought of me in order to ask for money.

Nevertheless, it is quite striking how different is my perception of her email message if I read it now, compared to when I first read it back in 2016. All along I have been complaining that, after all what Alia did to me in Cape Town, she never even apologized for it. However, in all fairness, I need to say that Alia's criticism of my lack of humility, remarkably, also included something very similar (actually probably more valuable) to an apology. As a matter of fact, ALia went as far as to clearly state and openly admit that she "had played a huge part in starting an exacerbating our fights" and she had been "an asshole to me for the best of times". The whole point of apologizing is to admit some wrongdoing. These days is so common to hear public figures offer this kind of fake, dishonest apologies: "I acted according to my best intentions, but if anybody felt offended by what I did, I would like to apologize". Certainly, a statement like that is anything but an apology; but only speaks for the hypocracy of the speaker. Namely, what is the use of an apology, if it does not come with a clear commitment that the wrongdoing  will not be repeated ever again? Now, it is impossible to make any commitment not to repeat some wrongdoing, if no wrongdoing is admitted in the first place. In striking contrast, however, Alia was admitting many big mistakes all throughout our marriage. So, why whas that not enough for me then? I guess the problem was that the wrongdoing that Alia was admitting, as big and remarkable as it may have been, did not matter to me anymore, and, therefore, did not really do anything for me at all. Indeed, the mistakes that Alia was recognizing referred to the early years of our marriage. They were therefore long gone and I could only take pride that we had been able to overcome them. I certainly did not need an apology for them anymore. Rather, the pain that I was feeling was because of what had happened in Cape Town. But Alia did not want to talk about that. If at all, she was actually blaming me for her attempt of suicide, because of all what I had said to her that Sunday afternoon on the beach.

In all honesty, however, it seems to me that my real problem with Alia's apology was not that it was not addressing the actual, relevant issues. I do not think that my analysis back then went that deep. Rather, it seems to me that what I was missing was an expression of regret. It is certainly remarkable to be able to admit mistakes; but it is still a step further to say you are sorry for them. I guess I really needed some deeply-felt "I am sorry". If I think about it now, however, this is where it gets really sad for me; because, fact of the mattar is that Alia eventually did say, with tears in her eyes: "I am sorry I hurt you". So, at this point, it is more than reasonable to ask, if that was still not enough for me, what the hell did I need then? If I think about it now, my position back then is simply unforgivable, and I can only struggle trying to remember all what was said and all what was going through my mind at that time. I guess the only explanations that I am able to scratch off are that Alia did say she was sorry , but she only did so after she had made many other conflicting statements. Then, taking everything together, her words of regret, as sincere as they definitely were, sounded to me more like a sad goodbye. I think the most I could make of her words was something like: "I am sorry I killed our love". If that was the case, as remarkable as her apology was, it did not leave any hope to our love. So, I guess what I really needed was some true "I love you". Still, as I was fairly aware that Alia could simply not give me something like that, I kept waiting for her to show some desire, or at least some interest, to work things out and try to revive our love. 

However, as odd as it may sound, I think Alia was also needing me to show some love for her. Alia had definitely fallen in love with Gary, but she knew by now very well that he was completely fake. Alia needs a lot of love; but love, as much as she could wish for it, she was very well aware she was not going to receive from Gary. There is a reason why Alia thought of killing herself. Importantly, she did not resolve on that route after realizing that Gary was fake; but after speaking with me and reaching the conclusion that I could not love her anymore. Given that Gary did not really love her, she still needed my love. As a matter of fact, my tears after learning that she had tried to take her life, disproved her conclusion of the day before: it turned out I still loved her! Those were such wonderful news that she instinctively reacted kissing me passionately, like we had not kissed in years. However, that was clearly only a mirage; because since then I havd gone back to pointing fingers at her. Moreover, she had just now asked me for a bit of help and I had refused.

The really sad state of affairs then found us both stuck in each own's camp, waiting for the other to come over to say" "I love you". We clearly kept asking the wrong question: we both continued elaborating on what the other would need to do in order to save our love, and never found time to think what each of us could do to keep our loved-one's love. I wonder who was the genius who came up with the brillian idea that a society made up of self-centered individuals, who are totally convinced the world circles around them, will ever have any chance to succeed.

The sad truth was the flame of love was not burning anymore. However, it is even much more heartbreaking to think that there were enormous hot coals from where it had been realy easy to bring our love back to flames. Yet, Alia was still in such pain, tormented and mortified by the remorse of her responsibility in blowing off our love, that she could not even endure to acknowledge the wonderful memories of our marriage, so let alone trying to revive them. On the other hand, I was so hurt that I was not able to find the energies to reignite our love. After all, clearly it had been Alia, who had blew it all off and it was therefore her responsibility now to do the work to bring it back to life. If I did it for her, that was probably only going to spoil her and prime her to repeat it in the future, or so I thought. To make a long story short: we both remained sitting and waiting in each own's camp and allowed the coals of our love to slowly cool off and fade away.

Now I cannot say enough how much I regret that I was not able to help Alia more. I am so very sorry that I was not able to figure out how to save our love. I know there was little, if anything at all, that I could have done, and I definitely would not agree that I deserve the blame for our marriage's failure; but, at the end of the day, it still stands that our relationship died, and that is all what matters. It is fairly clear to me that our marriage's failure could be mostly explained by how Alia slowly started believing that she was indeed as awesome as everybody across Africa was telling her; until Gary finally convinced her that I was not good enough for her. However the question of who takes most of the blame is always the wrong question to ask. It is certainly more useful to ask: "What can I do to help solve the problem?" It is not even like I think I did a poor job; undoubtedly it was a really complicated dilemma the one I faced, and I am not sure (particularly considering the kind of feedback and adviced I received), that anybody else had done any better. However, that does not comfort me, since everything I did was not good enough and ultimately failed.

When I first met Alia in February 2010, she immediately got convinced that she had stroke gold; she was really thrilled with the "magnificent matrimony" that she had got for herself. I guess we call it 'love'. I guess love is this kind of foolish state of mind, where we just cannot help to be totally convinced that our life without that very special person is going to be a complete misery. Now, I know very well that I am not perfect and, obviously, it was then a matter of time that Alia was going to figure that out. However, as much as I am not perfect, I still always thought I was good enough that I could make a positive contribution to Alia's life. I really  thought I knew how to help Alia in her most essential hope to be happy. Without a doubt, no other woman has believed in me like Alia did. In all fairness to other women, it was probably often my fault that they did not go as far as Alia. With time I have come to realize that there were women throughout my life, who got attracted to me and loved me; but I was so clueless, that I never figured it out and was therefore never able to correspond their signs of affection. Alia, however, did not need me to be really insightful. Alia knew what she wanted, was ready to fight for it and fought fiercely indeed; because she believed in me. It took me a month to figure it out, but, eventually, I figured it out. By the time that Alia met Gary, she was already well aware of the fact that I was not perfect. Then Gary convinced her that I was not good enough for her. However, just some weeks earlier we had arrived to Cape Town completely euphoric; so very proud of our accomplishment. We were so very happy; as happy as anybody can be. We were on top of the world; nothing could ever stop us. Our love was strong; there was no challenge too big for us. Gary then gave me the opportunity to prove that Alia's initial certainty was right: (regardless of my disability), I was her superhero and I would always know how to accomplish anything.

Unfortunately, put to the challenge, I failed. As smart as we may have ever thought I was, I was not able to figure out how to save our love, and I am so very sorry for it. Clearly, I made too many mistakes. I kept thinking this was something that we both had to solve together. I failed to understand that Alia was down and it was all up to me. I did not realize that Alia needed my help. I am so very sorry that I failed her when she most needed me: when she most needed my love and understanding, I, instead, hurt and utterly destroyed her with my resentful words. I refused to remember how fragile she was and chose to ignore that my bitterness was going to break her heart. It kills me to think that Bunny had always believed that Monkey would always eventually rise to save the day for Monkey and Bunny; but I ultimately failed. Once Alia had broken down, she needed my help to bring us back together; but, instead, I constantly left her alone in the hands of those who have always hated our love the most. She then slowly slipped away until I finally lost her, and with that I lost what mattered most to me; my biggest accomplishment, the love of my life, the person I wanted to share my life with: Alia.

Perhaps, I think too much about it; perhaps we were fighting a losing battle. We had too many enemies. Perhaps, it was better that I focused on minimizing the loss. Perhaps, it was better to retreat, regroup and consolidate my position. We will never know.

If my message had disappointed Alia, her reply did not satisfy me either. As remarkable as her humble words in the second half of her message were, her strong beginning was nothing like what I was hoping to hear and ruined any opportunity to bring us any closer. Again I wisely decided to allow myself some days to cool off, swollow my anger and look for the most reconciliatory words that I could find. The argument then seemed to de-escalate for a moment. Alia now even appeared to be finally interested in talking. Although, I, always trying my best at reading between lines, thought I could perceive something wrong: somehow her interest did not feel entirely genuine. However, Alia insisted; so we decided to talk over Skype. 

The conversation was a total disaster. I had agreed to talk hoping that Alia would have something new to say, because, I had adviced her, I did not. I so remained there passive, allowing Alia to lead the conversation, waiting for her to say something new. I was obviously hoping to hear some apology or explanation for what she had done in Cape Town. However, I was definitely not going to get anything like that. From the very beginning, Alia sounded really strange; the tone of her voice was cold and severe; it certainly did not transpire any simpathy nor empathy for me. I was disappointed; this was not looking well. At best, Alia struggled trying to find questions to ask. It was those questions that she had prepared in advance, however, which were the most unsettling to me. Now she insisted trying to find out where exactly I had left the "Landy". I did not understand anything at all. She had left, she was back in Montana and the Land Rover had remained in Cape Town. She was not going to be back in Cape Town, was she?? So what?, was she going to try to get the Land Rover back?, was she really thinking about trying to take it back from me? I guess she did!! But how?, and, most of all, why? It was crazy!! As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the call, I had asked her about some problems I had been having over the last several days attempting to access her Facebook profile. Stupid me I was very confused, because I could not understand why I would not be able to access her Facebook page. She was quick to clarify: the explanation could not be any easier than she had simply unfriended me...! It turned out "it really bothered" her some picture of me and the Land Rover, that I had posted on my Facebook upon my arrival back from Cape Town. I find it striking that the mere thought that I could keep her Landy really bother the shit out of her, to the point that she unfriended me. That was such a bad symptom: if we cut all connections and did not communicate, how were we going to reconcile? As I continued with my evasive answers to her inquiries about the location of the car, she finally ran out of patience and complained: if I did not want to tell her where I had left the car, I should just say so. I then argued that it was pointless to tell her the location of the car, since she would not know the place anyway (nor would she be able to look it up either). But my explanation still did not satisfy her and she remained upset.

Many months later, Gary would tell me that, during those months of Spring 2016, Alia kept calling him, bugging him, spending endless hours on Skype, elaborating on all these "bullshit" plans of returning to Cape Town, working as a mechanic for Gary, getting the South African residency, etc. Now you could tell that Gary would take pleasure and revel himself explaining how Alia could not stop thinking of him; to the extent that he finally had to tell her to back off. Whether the story was true or it was just Gary bragging about his conquest, it is hard to say; but, probably, there is a bit of both. In any case, all the evidence supports that Alia held on to the thought of returning to Cape Town. As a matter of fact, even Gary kept exhibiting a suspicious interest to find out the location of the Land Rover. I have long thought why on Earth did Alia get obsessed with the Land Rover. Alia would soon blame Africa for our marriage's death. Eventually she would go as far as to argue that she never really wanted to travel through Africa and she had wished to return much earlier; but I kept pushing to continue further and further. If she had ever really felt that way, it would have only made sense that she would have come to hate anything that reminded her about her horrible journey across Africa. Yet, she became obsessed with the Land Rover and kept thinking about every possible way to get it back. It seems to me that it was the association that Alia became to establish between the Land Rover and all the love and admiration she receeved everytime she came close to the vehicle, that led her to develop such obsession. Unavoidably, Alia slowly but surely associated the Land Rover with a strong and reliable source of the kind of admiration and affection that she has always so very much sought and needed. Indeed, in Africa she only had to slide underneath the car and immediately everybody would fall in awe and admiration for her. The men would melt in love, adoration and praise at the sight of her working on that monster vehicle. It may sound overstated, but in Africa literally crowds of 30-40 people would gather and circle around the car to watch her work on it. I think at some point it became intoxicating to her. Now, it is quite a paradox to entertain the thought that, if the Land Rover played a central role in all the course of events leading to our marriage's failure, it may eventually also become a key factor to help me happily resolve one day the whole drama altogether.  

Since Alia was clearly not making any progress, she eventually got frustrated to the extend that she decided to put aside any dissimulation and go straight for her real motive for the call. As she said, we had "some business to get done" and she could not waste the whole day chatting over minutiae. Alia needed me to send her money, so that she could pay off her bills. Alia had explained it turned out it was difficult to find a job, because it had already been three years since the last time she worked. The way she said it, it sounded like she was blaming me for that too. However, I could very well remember the very night at Gary's workshop that she told me she was going to move in with him. I pointed out the repercussions of her immature and reckless actions and asked, for example, what was she going to do with her student loans. I had not forgotten her cold answer, whereby her student loans were not my problem and I should not worry about them. So now I thought I needed to remind her of her own words. After all, I had had to hear so many times that she had been raised to be a strong woman, who did not need my patronage and I better do not try to crush. I therefore attempted to argue that I did not understand, if she was a strong woman, why did she only think of me in order to put together that money. It seemed to me she could have also asked her parents, who have always shown so much love for her and have always so strongly advocated for her financial independence. Actually, it was not the first time that we talked about that question. I have never quite understood why Alia has always been so sympathetic with her mother's excuse to never ever help her daughter with a single penny, even for the most noble or worthy cause: "Robyn has shit of money." This time, however, Alia's reaction was far more heated; this time she got really furious and immediately started screaming at me. I tried to calm her down, but she was completely mad and out of control. As she kept cursing at me, I insisted she stopped screaming. I do not think, however, she could even hear anything I was trying to say. I started warning her that, if she kept screaming, I would need to hang up. I repeated my warning a couple of more times, but it was hopeless; she was totally out of control. I so finally disconnected the call.

Immediately after the call disconnected, Alia tried to start it again. It was, however, clear to me, it was not going to be a good idea to answer; Alia needed to cool off. The phone then kept ringing, but I would not answer it. It is so sad to think about it now; Alia clearly was not well and she needed help; but I do not think there was anything at that time that I could do for her. Eventually the phone would stop ringing; but Alia then would try again, and the phone would so continue ringing for a while longer. With every ring I could feel her childish begging for me to answer the call and send her money; but I knew that was not really going to help her. Alia has always been like a 5-yer-old child: unsufferable and adorable at the same time. If she wanted something, she would not know how to accept 'No' as an answer and would become a total bitch; but the tinies word of disapproval would break her heart and hurt her to the deepest of her soul. Then you start feeling even worse than her and forever hate yourself for not having conceded to her fancy. Alia tried a couple of more times, until she finally gave up. She then thought to send me a text message, where she could release and give vent to all her wrath.

[1:07:18 PM] Alia Floren: Fuck you Javier.  I'm a strong woman.  Asshole.  You have money.  I'm gonna fucking screw you.  I didn't want it to go this way, but you'll get yours.

[1:12:47 PM] Alia Floren: The credit card is not all my responsibility.  You are a jerk for treating me like it is.

Shortly after she sent me a somewhat more tempered email message. She was however "raising the stakes" if she had earlier been willing to settle for a lump payment of around $1000, now she was raising her demands to $11000.   

"Javier,

I do not want to fight.  I do not want to go to court.  I only want two things from you: to pay this credit card, and the 10,000 dollars that you promised for my loans.  That was a gift, and if you take that back, you are worse than I thought.  

I will do whatever I can to get this done and get your stuff to you, but I just want those two things.  

I won't even bother with the Landy.  I am of the strong opinion that I deserve that car.  That car belongs to me way more than to you.  It means more to me than it ever could to you.  

But I will let it go.

I just want this card payed off and to get my gift.

That is all.

It's not that hard.  You are just being vengeful.

Alia"

Anybody who knows me a little (and Alia certainly knew me quite a bit), would not have any doubt that I would never give in to such a challenge. If Alia had been in her right mind, she would have known that challenged with such an all-or-nothing bet, it would always be nothing. But Alia was definitely not thinking clearly; she was being carried away by her feelings. 

Nevertheless, I cannot say I was surprised by the new turn she had taken: fact of the matter is she had already given me an advance notice of it in her March 20th email:

"I want to say that many people have told me I should sew for alimony. I don't want that. I do not want to fight with you Javier. I know I called the shots when I chose to leave, but I want us to try and finish this peacefully.  I ask little of you. I know you can help me with a few bills. It is frustrating that you would hold me in such a tight place." 

If I had ever wondered what role Robyn was going to play, ...wonder no more; now I knew the answer. I certainly have no doubt that Robyn was part of the "people" who was suggesting to seek for alimony, because, in reality, Alia would only listen to her. I mean: for example, I am sure that, given how much he hated me, Daniel had also given her that advice; but without Robyn's agreement, Alia would have never listened to it.

Sometimes I hear that I am too harsh on Robyn; but just the advice to start a fight over money, speaks for itself. That advice alone, is already enough; it is so very disturbing.. Robyn knew that Alia had tried to commit suicide in Cape Town. Robyn knew that I loved and have always loved Alia. Robyn absolutely knew that Alia loved me. Yet, her advice to her daughter is to start a fight over money with her husband. So, you want me to believe, that it is just a coincidence that Robyn finally chose this very time to put an end to her life-long parenting policy to never try to interfere with her daughter's decisions, and determined that Alia now really needed some enlightment and guidance from her mother to find the most tempestuous way out of her marriage? Yeah, right... This is definitely not about me. I obviously had never expected Robyn to care a damn for me. But I find it outrageous that she would not care at all for her own daughter's wellbeing. I am sorry, call me evil-minded if you want; but if you see your daughter coming out from an attempt of suicide and you believe that the best that she should do next is to start a fight over money against her husband, either you do not care a thing for your daughter or ...you do not care a thing for your daughter. She may have hated me as much as she needed, she may have thought that I was not good enough for Alia; but for the sake of your own daughter's wellbeing, right after she comes out from an attempt of suicide, you do not send her out for a fight over money against her husband. For Goodness sake, your daughter just tried to take her life and you see that she is losing the little balance she had left, because she cannot pay off her bills. Well, it is about time that, for once in your life you think of cutting down your expenses in marijuana, so that you can finally chip in some money and help alleviate her stress. But no, never ever. Robyn will always be short to tell her daughter "love you, love you" thousand times a day, but, when it came to help her with Alia's student loans, she never had a single penny.    

I have wonder and still to the day keep wondering, what on Earth brought Alia to pay the March installment of her student loans. Up until then, with the $2000 she had transferred to herself the evening before breaking up with me, she had enough money to pay the credit card balance due on March 20-22. Given that she had dumped me, at least until we would reach some reconciliation, she did not have any form of income. It therefore would have only made sense to defer payments on her student loans, so as to avoid depleting the funs she needed to remain able to pay off her credit card. But instead, just about a week after returning from Cape Town, she used that money to pay her student loans. Then, still one week later she wrote me asking to send her money for the credit card. There was only one more week left for the due date, and I was buried in problems in Cape Town. Yet, from Alia's reaction to my hesitant response, it can only be concluded that she was pretty confident that I would promptly satisfy her request. But, how could she have been so certain?!! She had left me in Cape Town screaming at me to figure things out by myself. Since then she had not expressed a single word of care, regret, apology; not even reconciliation. 

I can only think of two possible explanations. The first being that Alia still perceived us as a married couple, and, one way or another, we would find the way to stay together. But that does not agree with anything that followed. Perhaps she just went mad and completely changed her mind after reading my hesitant answer. I just do not see, however, what was so terribly wrong about my  response to elicit such a radical shift (that in turn takes me to the second explanation). Moreover, Alia wrote her reply within hours after my initial message; yet, she pointed out she had already had discussions with her relatives on the terms of our divorce and how she should seek for alimony. In that sense, another alternative is that Alia assumed that I was so desperate, that I would be ready to do anything, just to hold on to her (this, however, takes me again to the second hypothesis). So, finally, the second explanation is that Alia simply was not thinking what she was doing. Sometimes I have thought that maybe it had been Robyn who suggested to Alia to pay her student loans, in order to cleverly sow the seeds of the conflict that would chain-react and destroy all hopes of reconciliation between us. But, now, you can really call me evil-minded. The truth is that Alia always felt a sacred obligation to her student loanss. Hence, it is not that surprising that she went ahead meeting that responsibility without further consideration. Now, what really troubles my mind is that both explanations actually may not be mutually exclusive. I mean: it is quite possible that Alia was indeed not thinking much. It seems easy to me to imagine that, during those first days after returning from Cape Town, she was just trying to recover from the shock; like any patient would want to rest after surgery or some trauma. All what she could remember is that we were married. So, when the time came to pay her bills, it was only natural to ask her husband for help. However, that is when I screwed it and told her I was not so sure I wanted to help her. That is when she remembered that, she was married; but her husband was this kind of jerk who did not love her. It is then really frightening for me to think that my decision to condition any further financial support, until I see some sign that she had any intention to reconcile, may have actually unplugged our marriage's life support.     

Nevertheless, it definitely did not take a rocket scientist to realize that the argument over money would finish shreding us each other to pieces, and put the last nail on our marriage's coffin. Alia was not going to be able to get over it. She does not know to accept 'No' as an answer (thanks Robyn!). On the other hand, I did not think that even at this very critical time I should break my commitment to never surrender to Alia's childish outburst of dyrannic demands. Furthermore, after all what she had hurt me, I was not going to allow her to even take on the offensive. After all what she had done, I was not going to tolerate being bullied. 

I thought again it would be best to allow both of us some time to cool off; but I was certainly going to reply. I had a lot to say and I was definitely not going to let her have the last word. She was really not making any sense. When I replied with my own list of grievances to her initial request for money, she argued that she understood that I might be having a bad time; but so was she. She recognized that she had "left me in an incredibly shitty situation with the car there in Cape Town"; but she "needed to leave for her own good"; she "needed to think of herself". She pointed out that she had "thought about the crap I had to deal with"; but she also had a lot of things to think of for herself. She understood that I "needed to help myself"; she was just "doing the same thing". In summary, her very odd way to persuade me to help her, was to first reconize that we both had our own problems and it was therefore reasonable that we both look for ourselves and focus on each own struggles; but she then somehow still argued that I should actually put off working on my problems and start instead by helping her.

Alia double standards were so grotesque that it gave me way to take on the offensive. She was giving me so much hell for the food I had paid with her credit card. I had only made a couple of runs to the supermarket after she had left, and (with South Africa in the deepest financial crisis and the South African Rand in record minimums) it could not have amounted for more than $50. It was sad to think that, back in Cape Town, she had insisted that I take her credit card, because she realized that I was going to need it and felt for me. It seems that back then she still felt we were together. But now it turned out she regretted that decision and was taking all that back. So, now she expected me to pay her back for the food I had bought in my last two weeks in Cape Town? But what about all her food in Cape Town that I had already taken care of? Fact of the matter is that I had paid for Alia's food since the first day we met, back in February 2010. She was busy with school, so I would first go buy groceries, and then cook for her. She was making some income; I was not, since I was traveling. Yet, she never thought of offering any money for the food; neither did I ever ask. I could not believe that Alia would start pointing fingers at me because of money. I had spent thousands of dollars on her student loans. Adding insult to injury, now she was even reminding me of some promise to pay $10,000 more towards her student loans. But she did not seem to remember anything of what she swore to me under oath before a judge on our wedding day. Quite frankly, I would not have transferred any money to her student loans, if it had not been because she had become my wife, or if I had known that she was going to leave me a few years later with those loans conveniently paid.      

Oddily enough, Alia did not see any of that. It turns out my reasoning never went through her mind. Instead, she completely ignored it and kept bitching about my vengeful response and attitude to anybody she had the chance to speak with. She would forever remain genuinely convinced that she absolutely deserved that I send her the money she was demanding. This is so much so that, still one year later she would even write my mother and repeat that point to her as well, like there was a chance that my mother would see it her way.      

However, probably more confusing and unsettling was the account she was starting to form about our relationship. I found it really awkward that she thought she needed to explain to me that she was "not just some person 'around' me". It had been her who had left me. Moreover, she was also admitting to have fallen out of love; whereas there had not been a single minute where I had not done anything but to try to save our marriage. I wonder if she was not really aware of it. Given the kind of distorted reasoning that she was following those days, I would not be surprised if she had assumed and taken my hesitation to send her money, as an out-right declaration of divorce. Now, if I did not understand the point, the argument that she was following to support it, was certainly worse; as she was reducing our relationship to a mere overlapping of two people in time and space. Indeed, she argued that she had been "a person I spent years with and who went many places with me". It really kills me to think that after all the love, special moments and emotions we shared together, all of a sudden she denies all of it. It is heartbreaking to realize that all those beautiful memories had been altogether wiped out of her mind.

It reminded me of some song that became very popular in the spring of 2012: "Somebody that I used to know". I remember I first became aware of the song, when we stayed with Miha and Anja in Cerknica (Slovenia). Anja had got the song stuck in her head and could not stop singing it. As Alia had always felt to be cursed and has feared that, as a result, our marriage may also be doomed, the song appeared to remind us that the curse was there, looming over our heads. The song seemed to suggest that, as close as Alia and I were, perhaps, one day there would be absolutely nothing; but we would be to each other just "somebody that we used to know". Of course that was all stupid, because such a fate was, in our case, simply impossible. Not only did Alia and I love each other dearly, but, even if our love was ever to die, we had so many memories together, we had shared so many beautiful moments and emotions, that, unavoidably, we would always be to each other a very special person. For example, if I hear about Paris, unavoidably I automatically start thinking about the amazing time Alia and I had with Marco in his 10 square meters Parisian apartment in August 2011.   . OK, so, perhaps, eventually something terrible could happen between us; like I may one day betray her or she may one day betray me, and then we would forever split apart. But, you know, sooner or later, time heals everything, and there would always be something there to remind us of each other. Then, one day, perhaps already in our seventies or eighties, we would for once get together again, and remember all those good, old times and laugh and cry about all what we shared and what eventually separated us. That would be the time where we would finally be able to put aside everything and play the most lovely game of all: "remember when we...?" Alia, do you remember when we were in Paris and we stayed in that 10 square meter apartment with that fantastic Italian guy?

Nevertheless, that Spring of 2012, as we continued traveling across the Balkans, the "Somebody that I used to know song" kept being played over and over again on the radio. As impossible and unreal as the thought was, everytime I heard the song, unavoidably it echoed in my mind the premonition of our curse. I never said anything to Alia about it. She had already been long tormented by those kind of superstitious and macabre fears, that it had been disastrous to add to them, by sharing my own concerns with her. But, as rational and sensible as I have always been, everytime I heard that song I could not help to feel the foreboding of our marriage's death and dread that one day the song may become true for us. As impossible and unreal as I knew it was, the mere thought that one day the very last memory of our love may be wiped out of the face of the planet, was really frightening. 

Oh my God, now I cannot hold up the tears as I confirm that the worst of my nightmares have become real to its final extent. Alia does not remember anything of what we were and what we shared, and I am prohibited from ever see her or talk with her again. There is absolutely nothing left of what we were and Alia is now just somebody that I used to know. If Alia had died, it had been horrible. However, rather than physically, Alia has been killed spiritually. Alia did not just lose all her memories, but her mind was erased, emptied and reprogrammed with somebody else's priorities in order to become other people's toy. I believe it is difficult to think of any most heartbreaking experience than the decay of a patient of dementia or Alzheimer's: how she is slowly but surely stripped off all aspects of her personality, until she becomes a stranger in her own body. However, a patient of dementia is generally an older person, who journeyed through her life pursuing her dreams, was already able to harvest the fruits of her energies and efforts, and, as a result, most likely has loved-ones to care for her wellbeing. In contrast, for example, in old Haitian folklore beliefs, a bokor would have been able to reanimate some person's corps, take full possession of her mind, install its will on its victim  and so turn her into its puppet and slave. However, those tales belong more to the realm of popular horror imagination. I take relief trusting that the people now in control of Alia care for her enough, that they do not want to cause her any harm. However, I think the love they have for her is not much different than what they would feel for a beloved pet. If Alia has been infantilized into a 5-year-old child, is not to help her achieve her dreams; but to fulfill the pet's parents' needs.

Alia and I joined our souls to walk our lives together. We loved each other, we shared the same dreams and determined we would pursue them together: two had become one. We were not Alia and Javier anymore; we were now a family. It was just a matter of time that children would come, and they were going to be our future. When Alia perished, a fundamental part of myself died with her. My life was severed right through the middle. My life lost all its sense. My dreams were shattered right as they were starting to blossom. I understand that for a mother nothing compares to her child; however, for a man, his wife is front and center. Nowadays, women are perfectly able to perform any task traditionally attributed to men, exactly as skillfully as their male counterparts. However, men are still incapable of doing all what women do. Men, for example cannot have children. Perhaps for that reason men have an enormous emotional dependency of their wives. For instance, if a mother is ever faced with the dilemma to either save her child's or her husband's life; she will not hesitate. However, a father will rarely be able to resolve such a quandary: he will not be able to overcome losing his wife.

     

I cannot even take some relief thinking Alia is resting in peace, looking after me from Heaven, waiting for me to reunite with her. Rather, she hates me. It was not enough to tear Alia off from me; she was captured and subdued to become sick evil's most vicious and bloodthirsty soldier. I cannot imagine any worse long-lasting torture: As I was kept immobilized, I was forced to watched how my wife was being taken apart, poisoned and turned into a psycho ready to kill me. It is easy to see how it feels: think who is the person that matters the most in your life. Perhaps your kid, or maybe your wife? Now, imagine how it would be if they would prohibit you from ever seeing or talking with that beloved person again. Well..., that is what they have done to me. Actually, what they have done to me is even worse; because it is not only that they have torn Alia away from me, but I am even being glared and pointed at by the judges; stigmatized as if I had abused Alia all throughout our marriage, while, on the other side of the country, Alia is ill and in need of help; believing she is Alice in Wonderland, playing 5-year-old child for her parents' amusement, at the same time that she keeps cursing every single minute she spent with me. I know my statements that Alia is ill, are generally heard with great skepticism; if not plain indiference. But, whether or not Alia is consciously aware that her allegations of abuse are false, it can only be concluded that she is mentally ill. If Alia truly thinks that I abused her, she has definitely lost contact with reality and is obviously ill. Now, if, on the other hand, she is consciously aware of her false allegations of abuse, but simply decided to come up with them to hurt me or whatever other reason, then she is as unhinged as a psycho-killer may be. It is just that women very rarely take the route of murder; but that does not mean that they may eventually be as hateful and feel the same sick desires to hurt those they came to loathe. It is terrifying to consider that, when it comes to women, nowadays it is actually the system that does the killing for them: In all honesty, I had preferred they had just killed me, rather than shattering my life, as they have. Alia meant everything to me; she was the center of my world. I would lie if I say that they went as far as blinding me; but the Hell they turned my life into was so devastating on me that I became blind, so that I would be reminded each and every minute, one day after another, of all what had happened. Why? ...why have they done this to me? 

It seems like back in the spring of 2016, Alia started a process to slowly rewrite our story. I could see the first signs of it in her March 20th email message, where she provided a very awkward account of our marriage's collapse. According to it, our relationship had been slowly but steadily decaying throughout our marriage. Then, during our journey across Africa, everything fell apart. In fact, some weeks later, during the only few minutes of intimate conversation we were able to have that spring, Alia did try to excuse herself arguing that "Africa had been too much stress for her. Very early in our relationship Alia had warned me that she was not completely mentally sound and was prone to lose balance fairly easily. It was therefore crucial that she would not be subject to stressful situations. The implication then was clear that by going to Africa we had overlooked that threat and played our cards too agressively. However, I really did not think that it was reasonable to blame Africa for our marriage's failure and I so told Alia. I understand that stress is the first assumption everybody makes: travels are frequently stressful and that is a common cause of relationship break-downs. In Africa we were constantly harassed by police, military and other government officials. Mechanics and other merchants would never miss a chance to try to rip us off. Our shity Land Rover brakes were an endless headache. There is no question that during our trip across Africa we run into stressful situations and had some arguments. However, also part of the problem was that I needed to keep a very strict discipline in order to avoid hurting Alia. She definitely had a really romantic and idealistic image of love and expected nothing less than passionate adoration and devotion in a relationship.

For example, I remember an argument we had for some rather silly reason on our first day in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We had just crossed the Congo River and were finally on the Southern side of it. That morning we had finished traversing the most terrible road in Africa: the only land crossing between the two Congos. Ironically, just as we were about to reach the end of the road, at the most innocent spot, our rear, right flange finally gave up and broke. 

Crossing the Congo River just before sunset, after such a hard day, was certainly a very romantic experience that made us feel we were living the adventures of Out of Africa. I remember us standing on that untrustworthy barge, facing the sun, holding each other, the sweet breeze brushing our hairs. We finally had a moment to enjoy some peace and reflect on what we had accomplished. The days before had been very stressful: We had been running over the last couple of weeks trying to make it to the Republic of Congo before our visas' expiration. Then, all of a sudden, we found ourselves in the midst of the raids and political unrest in Brazzaville, and were harly able to escape from there. 

Finally on the southern bank of the Congo River, just before dark, we were driving for one more hour, looking for a place where to set camp for the night. Alia was always worried about getting dehydrated and would constantly ask me to get her some water from the cooler. Normally I would do so without a fuzz; but I was tired, it had been a long day and, this time, I remember I was a bit rude in my reply. I told her first we needed to clean all the "shit" we had spread all over the front seat. Alia felt hurt, she did not understand nor appreciate my mean remark, got upset and started yelling. Oh well, we screamed at each other. I regret I hurt Alia, she was certainly right to argue that she did not deserved to be bitched at like that, and I wish I had avoided my rude reply. But I am clearly not perfect, nobody is, and arguments are unevitably part of any relationship. Or, who has otherwise seen a young couple, who is in close contact 24/7/365, that does never have any quarrels? Quite frankly, everybody who knows me has always agreed that actually I generally do a pretty good job staying calm and keeping a good temper. Alia definitely was not that disciplined controlling her emotions.   

As a matter of fact, that was another big part of the problem: Alia dreamed of a perfect relationship, she knew we both shared equal responsibility working together for it, and she was aware that she was not doing that well meeting her part of the job. That is why, when she tried to explain the reasons for our break-up in her March 20th message, she argued that our relationship was scarred from the dark stories in our past and she could see "there was no going back or forgetting". Now, contrary to any logical reasoning, she was actually not talking about feeling hurt by me and not being able to forget (in fact, more than one month had already passed since she broke up with me and she had not yet been able to come up with her own list of grievances). Quite the opposite, she was referring to the scars she knew all those fights that "she had started and exarcerbated" had left upon my love for her. For all our marriage she had hoped and thought that I would be able to get over them and forget them; but that Sunday afternoon on the beach in Cape Town, she realized I had not and there was no going back from them. That is why she had decided to "destitute herself", so that "she could start from scratch". In summary, Alia's reasoning had started with her initial explanation in Cape Town, whereby she was leaving me because she was sick of dragging me around the supermarkets, and finished arguing that she had broken-up with me, because she had stopped loving me as she realized that I would never be able to get over all the times she had hurt me.

It would have been sad, if it had then all been just an issue of miscommunication; but it was really more complicated than that. In fact, I never gave up on Alia, fooled by her irrational narrative. Instead, it was actually Alia who very badly needed to believe her own story. Indeed, Alia's distorted and twisted account reflected only her very own forced perception, but did not bear any resemblance with reality; not only have I always been willing to leave behind the fights of our early marriage, but I was now also ready to forgive Alia for her betrayal with Gary. I am totally sincere about my willingness to leave everything behind and move on. I may be a rare species, not many people seem to agree with me, but I am of the strong opinion that it is stupid to give up a wonderful relationship of six years, because of a minute of boneheadedness. Come on!, Alia and I, we had a beautiful relationship; we were buddies! And you think that I should let all that die, just because she foolishly bites into fucking asshole Gary's trap? I was supposed to be there for her an her worst times, was not I? Or it was only for the good times? What kind of love is that?

Unfortunately, Alia had very good reasons to have a completely different perception on my readiness to leave everything behind: if I had shown so much resentment that afternoon on the beach, even before she had told me about her love affaire with Gary, once I would learn about it, I was not going to be able to love her anymore; at least as much as she needed me. However, regardless of her denial, back in Cape Town I was actually pretty sure that she had a crash on Gary, and my rebuke on that beach was nothing but the result of the most understandable bitterness I felt for being told that I was not good enough for Alia, after I had received for so long so much grief from her, because she thought that she was not good enough for me. Unfortunately, with barely any communication between us, it was basically impossible that we would ever be able to understand each other's perspective. In fact, it is important to consider that so far Alia had not said (and she would never say) a single word about Gary. As Alia admitted at the beginning of her March 20th email message: "it is so much more than being sick of dragging you around the supermarkets." The critical question is then, why did Alia keep denying that the real reason why she had left me, was because she had fallen in love with Gary? Furthermore, why did she instead chose to start coming up with a series of ever-changing, far more hurtful and mean explanations, that only made her look selfish, or were simply incredible and absurd? The answer to this question has always been very clear to me: it really killed her to think that, as she had always feared, she would finally screw up and utterly fail in the most crucial of her dreams: to build a big, lovely family. 

I believe it was to Ali in Kinshasa, whose endless flattering she had to finally cut off by humbly and sadly clarifying: "I always end up screwing up." It seems to me that, as much as Robyn may have thought that her constant compliments and praising to her daughter would support and strengthen her, it actually only added to the pressure she felt, as she came to always fear that eventually she would fail to be up to the expectations and end up disappointing those whose love she needed so much. We spent as much as two weeks with Ali in Kinshasa, as we struggled resolving the impossible Angolan visa sudoku (special thanks here to the Spanish ambassador Javier Hergueta!). We were really fortunate that Ali had so much time for us and was so eager to help. He was really impressed with Alia, and kept complimenting her for her cooking, courage, mechanical skills, etc.; as she really seemed to be an endless well of talent.. Alia had to finally cut him off and clarify that she was really not that good: she always ends up screwing up. Ali was left completely confused and could not understand anything; but I had heard that before.

Gary may have hurt Alia's pride and she may have felt utterly stupid for allowing him to fool her. But, fact of the matter is that, Alia has never really thought she was as smart as Robyn had always proclaimed; so it could not have hurt her that much that Gary had so proved it. You do not try to take your life because somebody makes you look stupid. There definitely must have been something more than that. There is no question that Alia was feeling really depressed in the spring of 2016; when we spoke in late April she told me that she had been prescribed some serotonin, as she was having again suicidal thoughts. Later I would learn that she had been diagnosed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Alia was feeling horrible because she had shattered her most supreme dream of building a beautiful family. She knew (or at least so she thought) that "there was no going back nor forgetting". That is why she told me: "you must hate me?" She was honestly sorry that she had hurt me. If she did not care for her marriage anymore, why did she care about my feelings? Those words simply do not fit with her account that our marriage was falling apart anyway. It turns out Alia had a bipolar explanation of why our love had died. On one hand there was the very painful truth that she had slaughtered our marriage, because she had fallen for Gary. But, on the opposite side she was creating and slowly trying to elaborate some other more accommodating account. Alia was very well aware of the truth; but she needed to deny it, since it was to hurtful. She then started to build another reality, which would be more suitable. I could see it is a very understandable reaction for anybody who shatters something really paramount in her life. Imagine, for example, that you have a truly precious, 500-year-old Ming-dinasty Chinese vase. However, one day, in a reckless move you accidentally knock it off and it breaks in one thousand pieces. What do you do? Do you try to glue all the pieces back together? But it is never going to be the same, so now you start tormenting yourself and crying over the spilled milk for the rest of your life. Otherwise you can also start convincing yourself that the freaking thingg was actually just ugly as hell and you have always hated it; because it was a continuous headache and fear that one day you may break the extremely expensive, but otherwise totally useless piece of shit, and it was therefore making your life a misery. So, good that you finally got rid of it! In the same way, Alia's argument, whereby our relationship was scarred from the dark stories in our past, and she had just come to conclude there was no going back, but it was only getting worse, was nothing but some parallel reality that Alia had just started to fabricate, because it helped her to find some relieve from the pain. Alia and I, we both knew all what had happened in Africa, so the whole point for her to tell me her new, more accommodating side of the story was only to convince herself of it. On my end, I was perfectly aware that it was not making any sense.

 

As with the argument about money, Alia wanted to only see it her way, so it was completely hopeless to try to reason. If I tried to point out all the contradictions in her account, she would just ignore them, as if they had never gone through her mind. Like a politician who is caught in all her contradictions, she would never address any question or issue, as if they had never existed. Alia's argument that Africa became too much stress, it kept getting worse and she had already given up on us a couple of months before arriving to Cape Town, made absolutely no sense. The truth is that we had arrived to Cape Town thrilled with what we had done and feeling that we were just beginning, because the best was still ahead. I remember that, after almost one week enjoying our drive slowly down the South African Diamond Coast, the very day we made it to Cape Town we met a Frenchman, who spoke us about the wonders of the "Mother City". He knew we would love it; perhaps we would fall in love with it. He presage that we would stay six months in Cape Town. Alia found the man ridiculous: how on Earth were we going to spend six freaking months in Cape Town? It was stupid, we had so much to do and see in the rest of South Africa and up the Eastern African coast: we could not wait for it! But then we entered the city and got indeed captivated. We went to the movies. We went to Robben Island to see Mandela's prison camp. We hiked Table Mountain and Lion's Head. We enjoyed going shopping taking advantage of our big US dollars to buy great stuff at low South African prices. We had already been almost two weeks in Cape Town and we were feeling like we could not get enough. We still had not gone to Good Hope Cape, we also wanted to visit Cederberg, we had come to conclude that Cape Town was our best bet to get our rooftop tent and get the Land Rover all fixed up; but that needed time. Then Gary gave us the chance to stay longer and we did not think it twice: we were so happy that now we could fully enjoy the city without having to worry about time. I remember one evening at Gary's workshop, I was writing on my computer and Alia was cooking some food, when, all of a sudden Alia said to me, how excited she was about our travels ahead: with the new car freezer and the rooftop tent, we were going to have so much fun traveling across all Eastern Africa. It is really sad to think that shortly afterwards everything blew up and none of it ever came to happen. Just remembering the blast we had in Etosha, leaves no doubt how awesome it had been and all what we lost. It is so much so that Alia never felt that Africa had become too much stress for her, that she told the Backberg's that she would be eager to go to Pakistan.        

As clear as it was to me that Alia had entered in total denial, I also knew that it was going to be hopeless to try to reason with her: she was simply not going to listen to me. It was going to be, however, my own turn to feel the cold loneliness that everybody faces the day that injustice finally comes for you, but nobody has the courage to step out the door and stand up for you; rather, everybody just looks out the window to watch behind the curtain. Under normal circumstances, I could have relied on Alia's parents to give her good advice. But, when it came down to Robyn and Daniel, I knew that was simply not going to happen. Instead they were recommending to start a legal battle to get as much money as possible... Everybody else was certainly more inclined to help; but it was really frustrating trying to explain that Alia was in denial. As cautious as everybody was not to hurt my feelings, there was a general consensus that the one in denial was probably me. No matter what, whoever tries to argue that the whole world just went crazy, will unavoidably soon face that the whole world comes together to the conclusion that the guy standing alone is actually the crazy one who everybody else needs to worry about. None of our friends had seen us for the last several months that we had been in Africa, so nobody found anything particularly strange about Alia having simply lost her love for me during that time. Rather, there were some concerns that I would not want to accept it. Those who were closer to me would not even understand why would I ever bother with Alia anymore, after what she had done to me. On the other hand, those who knew Alia better just did not feel comfortable getting in between. I was again confronted with the same old docma (though this time not from Robyn): Alia seemed an intelligent woman, she should know what she was doing, so I should accept her decision. It was and still to this day is driving me crazy: it was so disappointing that nobody cared. So, then, if what the woman wants is to take her life, we should all also respect her decision? It was breaking my heart to see our love crumbling down and find myself helpless to stop it. Even worse, I was being told I should not try to do anything about it; I just had to sit down and watch, while Alia was slowly fading away from the world of the living. I tried to explain, they did not understand: this was not the usual case, this was different. Alia had even tried to commit suicide. But they clarified: they did understand, break-ups are always difficult, but I needed to be strong and move on.

It was hopeless. It was like trying to convince Ronald Reagan to vote democrat, or convince Barak Obama to vote republican. Who has not gone through a break-up? I was the one who had been with Alia 24/7 in Africa, but we all always go by what we can relate to. Not too long ago I had a discussion with my father: I was trying to explain what had happened in Africa. However, he disagree. He could remember the case of an old friend. One day, all of a sudden his girlfriend told him that she was going to leave him. He did not understand: he had not done anything wrong, he was the same man; he was as sweet and loving as the first day. My father then pointed out that I needed to consider there are times where there is simply no reasonable explanation. But, beyond whatever the commonalities, I did not see what were the implications from my father's friend's story into mine. I mean: why things going in a certain way for my father's friend implied the same should be also true for my case. I really hope that, for example, the police does not use this kind of logic to resolve crimes. Anyway, at least this time it was a real story. I could remember some other discussion, many years ago, where my father resorted on a movie to provide evidence in support of his point. Indeed, these days it seems more and more frequent to use something we have watched in a movie to explain an event that has happened in the reality. As a matter of fact, if we watch a specific phenomenon in the movies, it quickly becomes the most natural and plausible explanation for any related event we later observe in the real world. That is when we say: "Ah... yeah! that is like in this movie I watched!" Unfortunately, our brains are unable to unconsciously discriminate between what we only watched in a movie and what we have actually observed in the real world. But movies are fiction and fiction is anything but reality. Consequently, we should not use whatever we watch in a movie to bolster a specific account of some real event. Yet, unavoidably (unconsciously) we still do. This is certainly very unsettling, as it sets the path for how to manipulate everybody's views and, ultimately brainwash everybody's minds. The brain is the closest thing to a spounge: we are all subject to be made to believe whatever, whenever, about whatever. I hope Big Brother is not reading this; but I guess that is a lost battle. Of course, Big Brother has long known this fact and has put this science in practice for ages. There is, for example, certainly a reason why one day so much money was channeled to produce so many movies depicting white cowboys as courageous, yet  civilized, heroes; whereas the indigenous people were nothing but a whole bunch of savages. The examples are endless. In a world where technology has empowered media to such strong presence in our lives, it is really worrisome how easily we forget how vulnerable our brains are, if not that we altogether stupidly believe that it is only those dummies out there who get manipulated, but the smart people (of course like ourselves; that is, you and me) is immune. It was not long ago that it was common to perceive and understand as outlandish anything that happened in the movies, and it was only foolish for anybody to trust, that any lesson derived out of some movie could actually be applied to real life. Yet, today we all feel confident sitting down in front of a TV set to learn from some series all the details and specifics on any given subject. Many years ago someone stole twenty bucks from my wallet at a hostel. Since I had some pretty good insight of who it had been, I got the idea of taking the wallet to the police and ask them to extract some fingerprints. The officer smiled amused at my naivety and gently explained to me they do not really work like that in the real world; but it is only in the movies where the police is always looking for fingerprints to resolve any crime. I still remember how much I used to enjoy watching L.A. Law; it was such a good show. I even think I was able to learn from it, if only a little bit, how to argue and make a case (although probably also becoming a little bit of an hypocrite along the process). Yet, eventually I would wake up to the rough reality that the legal system is in actuality so much different than what the show depicted. Indeed, anybody who has had anything stolen or who has otherwise had any close experience with the police or the judicial system, knows well that the images depicted in the movies do not even start resembling the crude and biting reality. Neither can we expect to learn from the movies on the actual guts, secret codes and all the dirty play really going on in the worlds of politics or journalism. Yes, the adults keep telling fairy tales to the children, so that they never think of ever leaving Disneyland. At least I can take relief from the fact that my father did not think of explaining to me how the legal system works, based on what he had learned from some movie. I can see myself banging my head against the wall, as he would have insisted that court cases' outcomes are not in any way conditioned by the respective fees charged by each of the parties' attorneys; but judges always objectively listen to the witnesses' testimonies, rigorously review the evidence, and strictly and evenly apply the law accordingly. Years later his son will become blind and when he goes - as instructed - one day, guided by his blind cane, to his old ex-wife's house to retrieve his belongings, he will have an order of protection issued against him for stalking his ex from outside the property. Still, nothing and nobody will ever be able to shift my father one inch away from his conviction that, as described on TV, the leagal system is fair and equal for everybody. Now, who am I to say? As a matter of fact, conveniently enough, when it comes to high profile cases covered by the Media, he may even be correct. The Verneer Theory of human nature and civilization requires in its foundation some mechanism, whereby it may be possible to mollify and manipulate the citizens' minds, in order to put them to work jointly in one (good or bad) single, desired direction. Undoubtedly, the power to invert the people's perception of reality more than fulfills this premise: if you never go out and have any interaction with dogs, but only hear from them in the news; you will end up believing that, indeed, it is only men who bite dogs and never the other way around. Now, take your pick: On one hand, one swallow does not make a summer; but in the news. While, on the opposite end, the news' story of one man's death is a tragedy, but the death of millions is a statistic.

     

Well, regardless of how many movies or what news my father had watched or how many heart-broken old friends he had, I knew far better than him what exactly had happened during all those months that Alia and I were in Africa. Contrary to what Alia was saying, our trip only got better once we entered Angola. We were literally leaving behind most of the nuisances during the previous months. More than anything, I regret that we could not spend as much time as we had desired and could not be more relaxed in Western Africa, because we had to run to get to Nigeria or to the Republic of Congo, before our stupid visas' deadlines. In Angola we were still harassed by the police and had some struggles getting gas, car parts and certain foods; but we were not tied up on time anymore and had free range: if a place looked cool and we felt like going, we would just do it. Then, when we made it to Namibia and later South Africa, we out-right had a blast. It was like a dream come true. We had everything anybody could possibly ask in life. We were young, free and had all the resources we needed to do whatever we felt like: time, money, love, health... Sometimes I have thought that perhaps it was all that splendor and abundance which actually caused our collapse. I wonder if Alia started feeling that she was actually the star of the band and I was not quite contributing that much. Once in Namibia, she did not need me anymore  to fight the corrupt police officers off, or to argue with the government officials to get our visas. Whereas her skills driving us around and taking care of the car were still indispensable. Maybe it was the time to start considering if I was good enough for her. I have little doubt that Gary exploited that rationale to split us apart. Beyond what may have been Alia's perception of me during the later months of our journey, I can remember a couple of episodes in those days, where she was quite arrogant and even abusive towards some people, who were actually trying to help us.

Now, one thing is that Alia let success get into her head; something completely different is that our relationship was scarred from the fights in our past and was falling apart as a result. I have thought so many times about those days; all what we did, all what we lived, and I can only see them as, undoubtedly, some of the happiest days in our lives. I do remember our dinners, our conversations, our jokes, our laughters, our plans for the following days, our dreams for the future, our evenings together, cooking food, chatting, getting ready to go to bed, cuddling as we were slowly falling asleep... Yes, I also do remember the couple of arguments we had during the three weeks we were in Namibia, because life is never perfect and we all always find something to be unhappy about. But that does not negate the other 99% of wonderful time. As a matter of fact, that crucial argument we had that evening in Iona National Park, happened because Alia wanted me to join her and be with her. We had had an initial flare of anger, because Alia forgot to shut the car's back door before moving it to our camp spot for the night. I was sitting outside and screamed to Alia to alert her about the door. Alia got upset with me because she hates to be screamed at and she had not needed me to tell her about the back door, since she had noticed immediately. Then, I got upset with Alia because I also hate to be screamed at. Oh well, it had been a long day and the bees had set our nerves on edge; but the argument was just silly and we really had to get over it. So, I decided to walk away for a moment to release my anger and cool off. Alia, on the other hand, moved on right away and started getting ready to cook dinner. However, she immediately began calling for me to come join her. I had not yet calmed down completely, so I thought to ignore her calls. So, Alia went out for me to ask me to come with her. Alia had long got over our argument and was looking forward for a romantic evening together in the desert enjoying a nice dinner under the stars. It then can only be obvious to me that Alia is in denial, when she now says that by the time we reached Angola she could only feel annoyance whenever she looked at me; because, clearly, as far as that night in Souther Angola, she certainly enjoyed my company. Now, you may say that it is me who is in denial and I need to accept that Alia had a change of heart; but I can only tell you that you have no idea of what happened in Africa.

Some days later we crossed over to Namibia and we went straight to Etosha NP, where we found a dream come true. After Etosha, our next stop was the Skeleton Coast. Alia had read about it during those months in Madrid preparing our journey, and was really excited about that visit. I remember our camp at the gate of the park. Alia could not wait for the next day to go out explore and discover all those shipwrecks, wondering what were the stories behind those remains and what may have been the fates of those men. Alia felt like a 7-year old again, when she would venture out into the Montanan wilderness and play: exploring the mountain, climbing trees, building forts with grandpa Don... When Alia met me she told me she was hoping I could be her playmate; because playing like a 7-year old child is what she loved the most. So, now, we were getting ready to live our little adventure in the Namibian Skeleton Coast.       

Indeed we had our little adventure, but not as we had expected it; because, as we were driving up the road, the left rear wheel came off and soon it was bouncing and rolling its way off the road into the desert. It was hilarious to suddenly see this crazy wheel racing us on our left. At first I actually could not make any sense of what was going on: why Alia had all of a sudden jumped off and started running off the road. Only when I saw Alia laughing, walking back with the rebellious wheel, I was finally able to understand; although I still needed Alia to help me putting the pieces together. Fortunately, shortly after a car stopped and Whity and his wife popped out with help. They were a very nice couple. They had recently bought a heavy duty jack and were eager to put it to the test. It actually did not work though, so they were happy to find out before they may have run into a real emergency. Nevertheless, this was Namibia, where the latest stuff is readily available (particularly if it comes to adventure gear), and Whity was fully equipped. He pulled out another, older heavy-duty jack he had, and soon we were back on the road. I think Alia got a bit disappointed that we really did not find any shipwrecks; we would have to wait until South Africa for that. However, she cheered up again later in the afternoon, as we started our way back South, when we stop at a sign, which had become unrecognizable under the sand. Alia could not stop laughing to discover Whity had written his name on the sand covering the sign.

Now that we had realized all what Namibia was capable of, we could not wait to go to the next hardware store and fully sack it to the ground! We had met Vanya through CouchSurfing and he had invited us to stay with him and his brothers Quentillian and Chris some days in Walvis Bay. We were therefore going to have plenty of opportunities to get everything we had been so desperately wishing for during the last several months. We were feeling like children in a toy store. We also enjoyed to have some days to relax with Vanya and his brothers. We really had a great time with them. Alia delighted them with some of our food, while I taught them some good Spanish football. Quentillian was a great Javier Mascherano fan and he would probably say that it was the other way around; but let's not argue about it now.   

After Walvis Bay, the next stop that Alia had picked up for us were the dunes of Sossusvle. There is where we were going to celebrate Christmas. After eating up our 2-liters ice cream we retired back to our campsite and I proposed that we put on our Santa's wool hats and start singing Christmas carols; but Alia thought I was getting too ridiculous. In Sossusvle we were warned that our tires were not very well suited for the sandy road to the dunes and we better lower their pressure, or we may end up getting stuck. They obviously did not know that Robert, our Land Rover beast, was empowered with a tractor engine, and was therefore going to cruise all the way through, without breaking a sweat. We went for a little hike and took pictures of the many ostriches around. We then returned to the car to fix ourselves some lunch. For the afternoon Alia had planned to climb some dune; but we had forgotten this was Africa and no theme park. The dune proved to be something more than what we could chew. It was exhausting to walk on the sand and the strong gusts up on the dune made it even harder. Eventually we concluded that it did not make much sense to persevere and it was better to give up.

Our last, but not least, stop in Namibia was breathtaking Fish Canyon. I will never understand how it is possible that, if you go to Arizona, they tell you that Grand Canyon is the largest canyon in the world or sort of. However, in Mexico, if you visit the Sierra Tarahumara, they clarify that the Cupper Canyon is actually about 3-4 times the size of Grand Canyon. Yet, in Namibia they are still able to argue that Fish Canyon is somehow the biggest or longest canyons of all. Well, regardless of the exact size (which is anyway rather difficult to comprehend) and rank in the list of largest canyons, Fish Canyon is certainly a wonder of Nature. Upon our arrival, we found parked on the campground an impressive, giant Bremach truck with a Swiss license plate. Alia got immediately excited and fascinated; enthusiastic to learn about the amazing story of that fellow adventurer. Fortunately, the Bremach was conspicuous enough that was impossible for us to miss, when the next day it pulled in into the park's visitor's center parking lot. Alex was indeed a Swiss fello who was traveling across Southern Africa with his cute stow-away puppy Cyndi. He had shipped his truck from Switzerland all the way to Walvis Bay and was now planning to spend the next months exploring Southern Africa; although he did not seem to have a fixed plan of where to go. Rather, for the time being, he appeared to be more occupied trying to keep Cyndi save and avoid having her confiscated based on some disease-control regulations. Hilariously, we still randomly ran into Alex a couple of more times over the next several weeks: first, on the morning of New Year's Eve, driving down the South African Diamond Coast. We camped that night together to celebrate the arrival of the new year. Although Alex, as a good Swissman, retired for bed long before midnight. We continued traveling together for the next day. Then we parted ways. It was so truly amazing to run into him again one month later on the streets of Cape Town, near Gary's workshop. I remember I told Alex about Gary and recommended he talks to Gary about some possible repairs to his Bremach. Alex insightfully never quite considered my advice. I wish, however, he had. Actually, I truly regret he did not. Alex was a really nice guy. I remember him telling me goodbye in Cape Town, that Saturday afternoon that we were going to spend the weekend at Gary and Monica's place. Alex looked me in the eyes, gave me a firm handshake and wholeheartedly wished me well. It was like he knew what was about to happen to me. He definitely had been of great support two weeks later, when Alia collapsed to Gary's spell.

We left Fish Canyon Visitor's Center to drive to an overlook. After enjoying the views, on our way back to where we had parked Robert, we noticed a couple of really spectacular South African overlanding vehicles. Fully equipped with their giant lights, rooftop tents and spare wheels, they looked armed to the teeth, ready to go back to war and take Angola. Now, funny enough, Davide was equally amazed and fascinated with our Land Rover as we were with his monster vehicle. Clearly he had noticed Robert's Spanish license plate and was wondering what the heck that thing was doing there and how it had come all the way down to Namibia. So, when we crossed each other's ways, Alia was certain to bring up the issue. We then spent the following 10 minutes talking about each other's cars and our journey across Africa. When I say 'we', however, I actually mean Alia and Davide; because Alia was so excited that she did not give me any chance to do anything more than to nod. It is really frustrating to think that Alia is now saying that our trip was an ordeal and everything fell apart during those months; but, back then, she was so happy and could not stop bragging and talking everybody's ears off about the wonders of our journey. In fact, since Davide lived in Cape Town and we were heading that way, Alia made sure to take note of Davide's contact info, and hopefully we could meet up down there and spend more time talking about our adventures. Because, as a matter of fact, Davide's travel buddies were already back from the overlook and were waiting for him to stop chatting and get going. Davide had got so absorbed talking with Alia that he had forgotten he was there to see the overlook. After all, he was going to have more time to talk with us, because, hilariously enough, we were also going to randomly run into him a couple of weeks later at Cape Town's waterfront. That turned out to be a real hit, since that was the time we got to meet Simon, Jill and Michael Backberg's son. As a matter of fact, as we were slowly making our way through Namibia into South Africa, we kept gathering contact information of Capetonians, who we were hoping to meet upon finally arriving to the Mother City. Back in Swakopmund Alia had met Beate. While I was inside the mechanic shop paying, Alia and Beate got to talk outside all about our journey. Again, Beate had noticed Robert's Spanish license plate and could not resist asking. When I went outside, Alia was really excited. She introduced me to Beate and told me she had written her info down and hopefully we could meet her again down there. Indeed, one month later, as soon as we made it to Cape Town, we contacted Beate. We then met her and her son in Stellenbosch, during those wonderful first days in the city. We enjoyed listening to them and learn about how things are now going in South Africa. Those days the country was in the midst of a financial crisis and everybody seemed to be upset with at-the-time President Zuma. More than that, it turned out that beyond the façade of freedom and civil rights, the racial tensions were only growing worse and the country was becoming more and more divided. Alia, however, took the leading voice to tell them all about us and our adventures. We definitely had endless stories to tell. We really had a great time, but it went by so quickly that we resolved to meet again, perhaps when we were to resume our trip and get on our way to the Garden Route, towards the Eastern Cape. Needless to say, that never came to happen, since eventually we got stuck in Gary's workshop and everything blew up.

Fish Canyon was our last major stop in Namibia and from there we were planning to go directly to South Africa. However, Namibia still had one last jewel to kiss us goodbye with. Once we reached the Orange River separating Namibia from South Africa, we turned to the right to follow the Northern bank westwards. We did not want to enter South Africa on the main road, but through another border crossing, which leads to a natural park that lies along the coast. As we were driving westwards alongside the watercurrent and started looking for a place where to set camp for the night, we found the most lovely and wonderful Garden of Eden by some backwaters on the edge of the river. Imagine a paradise beach all for yourself and your love. Not a single noise to disturb the peace; only the sounds of nature. An endless feeling of tranquility, harmony and beauty all around you. The transparent waters peacefully flowing between the rolling hills under the blue sky. Alia and I had this Garden of Eden all for ourselves; but could still enjoy all the conveniences of modern life and civilization. We had our Land Rover with us, with all the freedom and power that gave us. We had everything we could wish for: safe and comfortable sleeping quaters in the back of the car, fresh food and cold drinks, all the equipment to cook a nice dinner under the moon of the night. We then slowly fell asleep, to rise the next morning for one last swim in the fresh waters before leaving Namibia for good; ahead laid South Africa.

At the end of the day, as it turns out, if Alia is not in denial, then we can only conclude, that it is me who is in total denial. If I think about it now, I wonder why we did not stay longer at our little paradise by the Orange River. The answer, however, is not as difficult as it may seem: as lovely and wonderful as it was, it was not really so much different from any other day. Fact of the matter is that our days back then were all basically like that. Obviously some days were better than others; but overall we were having a wonderful time. Therefore, as marvelus as it was, when we left Orange River, we really had no reason to believe that, in a few days, we were going to have again a blast somewhere else. Consequently, if I say that our life was a dream come true and those were about the most wonderful days in our lives, while ALia insists it was rather a nightmare; we can only conclude that either I am in denial or Alia is in denial. But, clearly, one of us is strictly not in contact with reality. If I could only bring Alex, Davide or Beate forward and have them explain what they saw... Certainly, it is always possible to argue that, just because I had a terrific time, that does not mean that Alia felt exactly the same way too. However, it was not just my perception. As we went across Africa, we met many people, and they all got truly inspired by us. In fact, I can remember many people along our travels, who eventually explained that getting to know us had given them the opportunity to discover, that true love really exist. I remember those words from Vito, in Matera, Southern Italy. Another example of that was Souleymane. Souleymane helped us during our stay in Bamako (Republic of Mali). Those were the days that we were struggling to keep the car together; but found that in Bamako mechanics normally use a string to stop a leak in the wheel cylinders. We kept crossing the city from one end to another looking for some stupid rubber cap, only to learn that, actually, our best bet was yet some other place. With what she continued learning from the mechanics, Alia kept doing her best first attempting to jerry-rig some repair, then again trying out some other fix; but, over and over again, after waiting several hours for the glue to dry, we were only going to discover that some wheel cylinder was still leaking. Souleymane had nothing to offer to us, other than his friendship. He did not have a nice house, comfortable accommodations, influential friends nor good resources to offer. Souleymane did not even have a fridge or WiFi; he only had plenty of time for us and the most sincere desire to get to know and learn from us. Undoubtedly, Souleymane's friendship (together with many others') was the most lovely present we received in Africa. Though not perfectly, I have always done my best trying to write some note to the people we met along our travels; if only to attempt to express my gratitude. When Souleymane learned about our break -up, he did not only get shocked, but also utterly disappointed:        

"Hello my friend it took me soooo long before requesting to what l read it was soo hard because until now am not managing to belive it,l couldn't say anything l was suprised and very desanpointed,but let me just tell you something,know that everything happen for a good reason,am so sorry my friend,please where are you Now ??? If someone told me that was possible l would have said no but now l know that everything is possible in this world,please my friend never give up !!!"

Certainly, we did not always spend enough time at a given place, that had allowed anybody to learn everything about us. But, just in Africa, for example, we stayed many days with Jed in Abidjan, Tyler in Antua or Ali in Kinshasa, and they all got inspired by us. I remember Jed even had the chance to witness a time where Alia and I were not quite happy with each other. Yet, that only allowed him to confirm that we were humans and did not make him change how he felt about us. As a matter of fact, just because you get angry at somebody every now and then, that does not mean that you may still be able to love that person. For example, without a doubt, the period of our relationship where we had the bitterest of our arguments, the most frequently, was the first two years of our marriage. Yet, nobody would be able to reasonably argue that Alia did not love me during that time. Furthermore, I can think of very specific periods of time, where Alia got fairly often really mad at me, and, yet, she was still undoubtedly in love with me. Just during our belated honeymoon in the Mayan Riviera, we had quite several arguments, but that certainly did not mean that Alia did not passionately loved mee; rather, she was going through a lot of stress and anxiety. THe same could be said (though perhaps at a lower scale) of the following months we spent backpacking across Central America. Later, during our travels across Europe, probably the most difficult times were the weeks following our arrival to Sicily. During that period, Alia, again and again, kept getting really mad at me. It was not, however, that I did anything wrong that caused Alia to stop loving me. More like the opposite, on our first night in Messina, I received noticed that, after more than one year and a half working for it, our green card application had finally overcome all obstacles and was going to be approved upon my final interview at the U.S.-embassy. Paradoxically, such terrific news unchained in Alia's mind a torrent of emotions, which transformed what had initially been a blast of happiness and enthusiasm, into pure, unbearable anxiety; deriving in an uncontrollable rush and need to immediately go back to Montana. That is, right now!! But we were in Sicily, and we had got there with this car, which we had bought for this very journey, and we had hoped to still be able to enjoy it for the next several months to visit Eastern Europe, Turky and whatever other cool places we had time to reach. It then seemed to me rather crazy to just abandon the car right now, plunge into the sea and swim our way back to Spain and take a flight from there back to Montana. I thought it was instead far more sensible to just drive our way back to Northern Italy and, once there, we could decide if we really wanted to turn West towards Spain and Montana, or we preferred to continue East and grab on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel by car across Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Turkey, etc. Yet, though Alia had still needed to wait six months before she could return to school in the fall, she needed to immediately return to Montana, and she was going to be a total bitch to me until I conceded to her wishes and she would get her way. Yes, it turns out women also have their very own way to abuse their men and enforce their will and desires. Many women, including Alia herself, have admitted that to me. They know very well that not all women (as cute and adorable as they may look) are necessarily little angels that come from Heaven. Like men, there are some wonderful women and some 'not-so-wonderful- women. Then, there are also those, I guess the vast majority, who are generally sweet and kind; but, every now and then, if plan A just does not work, eventually, when the time comes, may decide to resort on plan B and become mean until the guy finally concedes to her wishes. As a matter of fact, I have come to believe that it is the most goodlooking women who tend to be more mean and selfish; it is just that men go ga-ga for them. Again, women know that way better than men. What is then really puzzling is to what extend men are totally oblivious to the understanding that women also have of the male gender and its 'dickheadedness'. As deep as we have it engrained in our minds, it really seems that the old scheme, whereby people can be classified between good or bad persons, is way too simplistic and does not explain the reality well at all. This is certainly a field where the old Greek philosophers became really obsolete. There was no understanding of the brain in Ancient Greece, and they could not even start imagining what are the forces actually driving our behaviors and actions. Without a doubt, after centuries of science, we definitely can do better. At this point, I think it is safe to accept that we all - men and women - do our level best to achieve whatever we want. Obviously, it is only smart to avoid conflict, if there is a good way to reach our ends. However, we will become more inclined to resort on some more ruthless means, if we feel confident we will come out victorious and will suffer ourselves little loss along the process. There is, for instance, a reason why old men calm down as they aged and become weaker.

Alia was a very emotional person and you could tell when she was happy and when she was not-so-happy. Alia was not into faking: you could tell when she loved you and when she was mad at you. If so many people got inspired by us and came to believe so strongly that we loved each other, it was not because Alia kept pretending her love for me. Nobody can fool everybody all the time, and ALia was certainly no exception; she never even tried. Why would Alia have wanted to fake her love or happyness? For what purpose? Obviously, if she had ever got mad at me when we were among other people, she would not have wanted to make a number an openly exhibit her anger; but all-the-way pretend to love me? Even less can I imagine how anybody may even be able to fake happiness 24/7.

Now, I am however ready to believe that Alia may have at some point lied to herself. Alia had a very romantic and idealistic view of life and was  always striving for nothing but perfection. She kept fantasizing with an ideal life, where we passionately loved each other, we would have many beautiful, intelligent children, we both would have wonderful jobs, etc. She used to ask me: why cannot I have it all? That had been the subject of the biggest confrontation Alia had held with her adopted father during her childhood. As Alia would put it, Daniel enjoyed tormenting her singing The Rolling Stones' "You can't always get what you want". But Alia had come out victorious from that stand-off: Robyn had ruled and her veredict left no doubts; Daniel was to shut up, because her daughter was definitely entitled to everything. Unfortunately, life is never quite perfect. It is then, however, not unlikely that  at some point she may have wanted to refuse to accept that our relationship was not that perfect anymore; that she did not love me so passionately anymore. When Alia first met me she thought that she had stroke gold; she saw me as her superhero. But I am clearly not perfect and it did not take Alia that long to figure it out. That had been a disappointment, that she may have not wanted to accept. Furthermore, an essential feature of human nature is that we are never satisfied with what we have and are constantly striving to improve. That was certainly true for an ambitious person like Alia. Yet, this endless pursuit for advance, is generally also a source of frustration. It is therefore reasonable to try to keep our expectations under control and learn to reconcile ourselves with our past accomplishments. Under these circumstances, I am ready to give some (but not complete) credibility to Alia's statement, whereby by the time we reached Angola, she could only feel annoyance, when she looked at me. After all, I am aware that in Namibia and South Africa my language skills and courage fighting corrupt officers were not so important anymore. I certainly do not see it ridiculous, that there may have been times where she may have looked at me and had not been able to see a superhero anymore; but something more like a frog. I think we all to some extent experience this kind of mixed feelings in our relationships (as well as pretty much all other aspects of our lives). Our good demon wants us to view our partner like a superhero; but our bad demon keeps insisting he is just a frog. At the end of the day, particularly if there is no other better option and we are stuck with him, life is just easier if we go by what the good demon argues.   

However, for the very same logic, if Alia finally allowed her bad demon to rise to power and go ahead chopping the frog's head off, once she had reached a point of no return, it was only natural that she would not want to go back to her good demon's position. I may have told her that I still loved her and I wanted to work things out; but it was reasonable for her to believe that I was never going to be able to love her again, as much as she needed (particularly once I would finally find out that she had betrayed me with Gary). Consequently, what was the point in tormenting and mortifying herself for stabbing our love to death? Rather, it was more convenient to stick to her bad demon and convince herself that our love was already dead anyway, and she was indeed better of without me. The way I saw it, it was hopeless to try to negotiate with Alia's bad demon. Like I had done all those many times that Alia had got mad at me for some stupid reason, I thought I should be patient. Sooner rather than later the disastrous effects of her bad demon's despotic rule would reveal themselves and Alia would wake up to understand that, I was not quite a frog and life was just better when we were together. But I failed to realize that Alia had lost her judgement, she was no longer thinking or acting logically and she was therefore never going to be able to wake up. Rather, she would slowly get submerged and sink in a magma of lies and manipulations. In summary, I failed to understand that once a person has been sedated and started the slide down, she is no longer in control of herself, and will no longer be able to wake herself up.                

Probably the best witness that our relationship was not at all crumbling down was Gary himself. Indeed, if we were such an engrossing and enticing challenge for Gary is because (in his own words) we were solid. Clearly, if he had thought that our relationship was falling apart, he had not seen any challenge in breaking us apart. Fact of the matter is that Gary had no real interest in Alia and his conspiracy to conquer her was undoubtedly going to be time-consuming, absorb his attention and take up quite some of his resources. Then, if there was no real challenge, why bother?

It is also very revealing that in the love letter that Alia wrote to Gary in the weeks prior to her surrender, she explains that she needs to keep her love for him secret and argues they will soon have to take on separate paths in their lives. Now, if our relationship was dead and love was 

not holding us together anymore, why did she need to maintain her love for Gary secret? Otherwise, if love was not keeping us together, but something else (financial stability or whatever other reasons), then why her final surrender changed her initial resolution to continue dragging on with our marriage? In other words, how can we explain that those whatever other reasons, which were still keeping us together, all of a sudden, stopped holding immediately after her love for Gary became irresistible? Given that Gary was repudiating her and a relationship with him was not an option, if, let us say, financial stability had been holding us together, then there was no reason to break up our marriage and stop enjoying said financial stability. 

My point is that we were together, because there was indeed love between us. However, when Alia helplessly fell in love with Gary, that obviously eclipsed or altogether killed the love she felt for me. Then and only then, since she did not love me anymore and she did not even think I was ever going to be able to forgive her, there was no point in continuing our marriage.

Alia was feeling horrible and her pain had something to do with the end of our love. Contrary to waht everybody (including Alia) was saying, there had been love between us, at least until Alia fell in love with Gary. Alia had not broken up with me just because she had had a change of heart; but because some other reasons. However, Alia was not being able to accept this basic fact and instead was trying to find some relieve to her pain in the argument, that she had simply fallen out of love with me. As a matter of fact, if it is true that, once we reached Angola, Alia could not feel anything but annoyance, everytime she looked at me, then why is it that she did not stop crying the evening she told me, that she was going to leave me because she was sick of dragging me around the supermarkets? Or, why did she start fuming the next evening, when I told her that she did not need to cook dinner for me? Or, why did she (still a couple of days later) break down in tears, when I insisted that she did not need to help me go get groceries from the supermarket? In other words, if it is true that, once we reached Angola, Alia could not feel anything but annoyance, everytime she looked at me, then why did she break down in tears or (at least) felt utterly disappointed, whenever she was confronted with any evidence that there was no love or trust between us anymore?  

In Alia's March 20th 2016 email message, she explained to me that she "had needed to leave Cape Town for her own good". Now, I wonder why was that? If Alia had broken up with me just because she had fallen out of love, then what was the problem with Cape Town? Furthermore, what was driving her crazy in Cape Town? Well, in order to answer these questions, I think it is first important to note a couple of basic facts:

- 1) Alia had had a trauma:

The fact that Alia had had a trauma admits little argument, given that she went as far as thinking of taking her life. Moreover, it turns out that shortly after arriving back in Montana, she was diagnosed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. So, once it has been established that Alia had had a trauma, the next natural question to be asked will be: what caused her said trauma?

2) - Alia was going crazy and she was aware that she was going crazy:

Indeed, if Alia admitted that she needed to leave Cape Town for her own good, that shows that she was aware that not everything was quite right with her. Now, if she had reached such realization, then it is probably because before she had concluded that some of her actions had not been well thought. Furthermore, she was afraid that if she stayed longer in Cape Town, matters may get even worse. 

  

In any case, it seems pretty straightforward to answer the question above of what was driving Alia crazy in Cape Town: that surely cannot have been anything else but Gary. So, at this point, it may actually be more useful to ask: what caused her trauma and what is that she had done, that had led her to realize that she was going crazy? For the life of me, it seems to me that "blowing up her marriage"is the only reasonable answer to this compound question. I understand it is also possible to argue that "falling in love with Gary" may have also been perceived by Alia as the symptom that she was going crazy. However, that alone had not explained her trauma. It is also important to keep in mind, that Alia has never been able to accept that she fell in love with Gary, so she could not have identified such a symptom, if she was denying the sympton in the first place. Indeed, it all points in the direction that Alia was not just talking, but she did believe in her account.

if Alia was making the case to me, that she had left me because she had simply fallen out of love with me; it is because she had first convinced herself of such corrupt arguments. If she did not care for me anymore, then there was no need to lie to me. I knew perfectly well what had happened and was very well aware that her account did not bear any resemblence with reality; she was not going to convince me. Rather, she was just trying to convince herself. Consequently, if, perhaps, at first she did not fully believe in all what she kept repeating, by the end of the process she had certainly embraced all of it.

All this leads me to point out, that whatever the exact answers to all of these questions, what is clear is that Alia herself was certainly not doing any of this rationalization. It becomes impossible to make any kind of rational analysis of her conduct, because she was not following any kind of logic. If it is not that her arguments were not making sense altogether, then, at least, we would need to agree that they were contradicting one to another. During the couple of Skype calls we held in the Spring of 2016 (right after returning from Cape Town), when I tried to explain to Alia how I was feeling, she replied to me: "Do not think this is easy for me either." Now, we can argue what exactly "this" was referring to. But it is very clear to me that Alia was referring to our break-up, not to her heartbreak over Gary (to begin with because, again, she never ever admitted to me having fallen in love with Gary). So, she was insisting that she had fallen out of love with me; but at the same time, she admitted it was heartbreaking for her to see the flame of our love had burned out. 

I have regretted so many times certain slips and have thought about what should I have done instead in order to be able to save our marriage or, at least, avoid such a terrible outcome. Yet, after a certain point, I do not believe there was much I could have done by myself anymore; but I needed other people to help us. 

In that sense, I think my biggest frustration throughout all these times is that nobody has ever been able to comprehend that Alia was not in good mental health and therefore was not able to act rationally. For some really frustrating reason, over and over again, everybody kept refusing to understand that Alia had broken down mentally and therefore it was not possible to analyze her actions, as having been taken by a mentally-healthy person. Throughout the last years, I have had many people analyzing with me Alia's conduct, trying to explain to me why Alia left me and what is that I should do. However, they kept considering what would have lead them to act in a similar fashion as Alia. Yet, they constantly failed to accept that, if Alia was not in her right mind, it is not possible to establish comparisons between the logic that a mentally-healthy person had followed and Alia's hasty and reckless behavior.

At the end of the day, regardless of whatever analysis we want to make and how we want to interpret Alia's conduct, the undeniable fact that admits no argument is that Alia was heartbroken and feeling really very sad. If I may have had any problem trying to figure it out, it became all so clear when I saw her post on Facebook, desperately asking for somebody, whoever, to come make her company:

"God, I really need somebody come join me hang out with me at my father's cabin in Rock Creek"  

She wrote this post on her Facebook for anybody to see. She was feeling so lonely, she felt so desperate about it, that she did not care at all who would come to make her company: anybody would be good. God knows what kind of an idiot could show up, but she did not care anyway: anything better than being alone. Just a few weeks later she posted another announcement. If, perhaps, not as dramatic, it was equally saddening. She was letting everybody know that she would be leaving town in a few weeks, around mid-May. So, if anybody wanted to meet her before her departure, she would love to see anybody at some coffee shop, where she normally hang out those days. Again, she was feeling very lonely and she appreciated anybody's company.

It reminded me of some really sad image from Alia's early childhood she had depicted to me a couple of years earlier. After all, it turned out Alia had spent endless hours alone when she was little. That certainly came to a surprise to me, since Alia had always said that her childhood had been so wonderful, she had been the first grandchild in the family and, therefore, everybody's center of attention. Robyn had also been such a good mother and had spent so much time reading books to her and playing with her. That was all true; Alia insisted on those statements. But, despite it all, she still had to spend endless hours alone. She would, for example, come back from school and sit the whole afternoon at home, waiting for Robyn to return, watching cartoons while she had a gigantic bowl of cereals. Then, to make her point clear, she explained to me, I would never be able to imagine, the many hours she spent as a little girl sitting in front of Tia's classroom, waiting for her best friend to come out and play with her. As she sat there, every now and then somebody would pass by, note her and check on her: "Hey Luey! are you OK? what are you doing sitting there?", "nothing, just waiting for Tia to come out and play with me." Tia was 1 - 2 years older than Alia and, as children often do, apparently she liked to pretend she did not care much for her immature admirer. Yet, Alia knew better. Alia now remembered with shiney eyes and a big, proud smile in her face, that one day Tia's mother had revealed to her, she could be sure she was undoubtedly Tia's best friend. Those words lighted up little-Alia's heart:Tia loved her too and they were best friends. She was now ready to go again the next day to sit and wait once more for a couple of hours for her friend to come out of class and play with her.

Still, the really sad image of little Alia patiently waiting for hours for her friend to come out of class and play with her, would keep coming back to my mind all since Alia depicted it to me, and everytime it did, it unavoidably broke my heart. I really wanted to hug her and squeeze her tightly; tell her how sorry I felt that she did not have anybody to play with her, and promise her that I would always love to be with her and be up for any adventure with her. Alia could count on me for the most loyal playmate for life.

Alia shared with me those memories from her childhood sometime in 2013 - 2014, when we were back in Montana after our journey around Europe. I could therefore already easily imagine how painful it must have felt for little Alia to forever wait for somebody to come make her company. I had already witnessed in the summer of 2010 and the fall of 2012, how much Alia suffers whenever left alone. I had come to realize that Alia, like most women, is very affectionate, needs a lot of love and withers very quickly, whenever she remains alone for an extended time. If Alia had been on the verge of a break-down in the summer of 2010 and the fall of 2012, when her lonesome situation had only been temporary, it was easy to imagine the pain she was going through now, that she had blown everything up. As a matter of fact, she had again suicidal thoughts during those months of Spring 2016. Reading her Facebook post from the other side of the planet it had not been hard for me to guess it: this time Alia had broken down all the way through.

It was killing me to see Alia so sad and be completely unable to do anything about it. Alia's sorrow felt to me particularly even more so heartbreaking, since, until just now, I could have taken privilege and delight in being able to cheer Alia's heart up and bring her back into zeal and splendor. I could remember so very well all those many times that she would beg me: "Never take your love off me". If she would ever feel down, she would come to me and ask: "Can I have a hug?" Without wasting a word, I would open my arms eager to welcome and warm her up. The image of her rolling into a ball and crawling into my arms is today still sharp and bright in my eyes. 

It was breaking my heart to realize that all that was gone and none of it was lighting anymore. The cruel reality was that now Alia did not want anything from me anymore; well, nothing other than cold money. All what I could do for her is to try to have somebody go comfort her. So, I wrote Alia's best friends to ask them to talk to her and give her some company. However, if Alia did not appreciate anything from me anymore, nothing means nothing, and she would later scold me for sending her friends to look after her.

I was able to have Bry and Lea talk to Alia. Bry is one of Alia's old friends from childhood and she had been hanging out with Alia in the weeks prior to my contact. I think Lea was, however, only able to speak with Alia over the phone. Alia knew Lea from her job at the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) in 2013

Message Exchange with Bry (one of Alia's best friends)

04/15/2016 10:02AM

Hi Bry, I need your help. Everything blew up. All of a sudden Alia had a crisis in Cape Town and flew back to Montana. Probably you know, she is not doing well at all. I think she feels very lonely. She really needs a friend; somebody she can talk to. Please, go hang out and talk to her if you can. I am really worried about her. I really wish I could help her, but it is impossible. She hates me now; I think she became bipolar. I was hoping I could speak with you to explain better. Can I call you on your phone or through Skype? Javier

Hey man! I'm sorry about the misfortune. I've been hanging with Alia a bit and probably should more. We could talk later, I'm at work now, but I too am worried for my friend. I was also worried about you because I wasn't sure what exactly had happened to you besides getting stranded on a strange continent. I'm glad you are still kicking!

Thank you Bry. Talk to you soon, just let me know when it is a good time for you. I have a very flexible schedule. Take care

04/15/2016 1:13PM

No problem. Yeah, I'll get at you on Monday or Tuesday most likely. You also take care"

Message Exchange with Lea (one of Alia's best friends)

"04/15/2016 9:47AM

Hi Lea, Thank you for replying. Everything blew up. All of a sudden Alia had a crisis in Cape Town and flew back to Montana. She is not doing well at all. I think she feels very lonely. She really needs a friend; somebody she can talk to. Please, go talk to her if you can. I am really worried about her. I really wish I could help her, but it is impossible. She hates me now; I think she became bipolar. I was hoping I could speak with you to explain better. Can I call you on your phone or through Skype? Javier

04/20/2016 1:13PM

Hi Javi,

Sorry for the late reply. I got some bad news about my mom last week and haven't been feeling like talking. I talked to Alia she seemed like she was doing ok last week. I'm not sure what's going on with her. I'll try  to figure out my Skype account if you want to talk. I hope you're doing ok. I don't think Alia hates you I think she's just struggling with some things. Life just gets complicated sometimes..."

It seems like Bry was more worried about Alia than Lea; I think Lea did not find the situation so abnormal. Unfortunately, I was actually never able to speak with Bry. I was, however, finally able to get hold of Lea several months later and talk with her for a while. Lea explained that during her call with Alia, she sounded rather "mixed-up". She did not think, however, that Alia hated me. Apparently, Alia's chief complaint was money; she seemed pretty disturbed about that. Obviously it is usually hard to decide where exactly to draw the line between hate and anger. Sometimes it is even difficult to draw a line between love and hate. Nevertheless, Lea's remark that Alia seemed mixed-up coincided with my own views; it is just that, in my more abrupt English, I had rather phrased it as "messed-up". In any case, everybody could notice Alia's "internal struggles" between the stron contradicting feelings that were running through her mind. On one hand she was really distressed over her marriage's failure; but, on the other hand, she was feeling very angry because I would "refuse to help" her with her bills. It all seems that both streams of feelings were very strong. I have always found it really striking, but have never been able to understand, why Alia was so outraged about my hesitation to send her money; from my point of view, it shows, at a minimum, to what extent she became unbalanced. I am ready to see that she may have hated and strongly disagreed with my response, but I do not think she could have been surprised by it. Given that she had utterly humiliated me (by first leaving me because she was sick of dragging me around the supermarkets, then moving in with her lover, while I was left to rot in the filthy workshop, and, finally, leaving me stranded, with a broken-down car, in freaking violent Cape Town), she had not shown any sign of any interest to reconcile, and she had already transferred to herself an amount arguably very similar to what she was missing; I simply cannot see how my response may have come at all unexpected to her. Even if one had considered that I was morally obligated to send her the money and I was just "being vengeful", given all the above, I do not think it may have come to anybody's surprise that I would be vengeful. Furthermore, it was not even like I had out right declined her request, but I had only put off a decision; I therefore do not understand why such an outrage. The way I see it, Alia's indignation over money was not just unreasonable, but it was rather crazy.

From Javier's April 18th 2016 email message to Alia:

"Alia, you said "you know you left me in an incredibly shitty situation with the car there in Cape Town. You needed to leave for your own good". I understand you needed to get out of all that stress and find some peace back home. But then as soon as you arrive back home, the first thing your "loved ones" have to say is you should start a legal battle. You say: "You tore me apart on that beach" and go as far as blaming me for your own attempt of suicide. But your "loved ones" think a legal battle would be a very pleasing experience and insist that is your best move. I guess your loved ones care about money more than about your own sanity. Or maybe they would just love to watch us tear eachother to shreds and burn our marriage to ashes. I would say, probably both...

Thankfully you seem to have a clearer mind and say you do not want to finish our marriage with a fight in court. But, then, your first contact with me is to start a fight over money. If you were so concerned about money and, despite your need for peace, you were ready to go through the stress required to get it, you could have thought about keeping the mess under control before leaving Cape Town. Just with a fraction of what I will have to pay for the Carnet, we have had money to take care of your airticket. I am not saying you should have stayed longer in Cape Town; what I am saying is that if you need peace, there are better things to do than starting a fight over money. The bottom line, Alia, is that we both have enough very big problems to care about, to also start a fight over money. Your problem, Alia, is not money. Your problem is you are alone."

More importantly, if Alia was feeling so very sad and lonely, it was not understandable, that she would consume herself over money. I just could only conclude that Alia had lost her judgement and was completely unbalanced. For me it was truly heartbreaking to witness that Alia was feeling so very lonely, to the extent that she made a desperate public announcement asking just anybody to come give her some company; but she could only think to fight with the person who had done the most for her over the previous several years. It was not understandable that she would very much appreciate anybody's company; except for mine. In my reply to her fiery message threatening me with the most severe reprisals if I did not concede to her monetary demands, I made the point that her problem was not money; rather, what she needed was a friend. However, she would not even want to hear from me, although I had shown to be her best friend for the last several years. Furthermore, if I was no longer her friend, it was not even because I had been mean or hurt her in any way; but just because she had decided that she was too good for me.

From Javier's April 18th 2016 email message to Alia:

"There is a lot I am dying to reply, but I cannot afford to do it now. However, I just cannot finish without addressing one last thing: it is not true that I said: "you figure it out", in response to your demand for money. Moreover, I have never said such thing. You, however, cannot say the same. As a matter of fact, It is ironic, those were your exact last words: "you figure it out yourself!!", that you screamed at me from Gary's car, as you took off with him, to leave Cape Town the next morning. Those, Alia, were your goodbye words to me in Africa.

Alia, you have the most obscene double standards ever seen. You have no regard to say and do, to other people, whatever you feel like and is most convenient to you. However, you find totally intolerable and get outraged when somebody does or says the exact same thing to you. In Cape Town you felt strong and saw me as a burden, to the point that when you looked down at me you could not feel anything but annoyance. But, now, all of a sudden, you do not feel so strong anymore and re-discover, as useless as you thought and said I am, I may still be of some use to you. However, you find it intolerable and get totally out of control should I ever reply with your very own same words: "I know you need to help yourself; I am doing the same thing". "You may be having a bad time, but so am I". "That doesn't mean I haven't thought about the crap you have to deal with, but I have a lot of things to think of for myself now". Alia, when I was little, my mother taught me something I really wish your parents had also bothered to teach you: "do not do or say to other people, what you do not want to be done or said to yourself". Alia, it is not your fault your parents never bothered to teach you or enforce that. As I have said to you thousand times, you are a victim of their negligence. The same way that Dani will have to pay for his parents negligence (did you know the lock is back?) and Andrés is a victim of María Jesús selfishness.

As a matter of fact, it is not only not true I have never said: "You figure it out", but I actually said the opposite. On Saturday February 20th, the day after you disappeared to go to Gary's house and later determined to slaughter of our marriage,  you informed me you were going to stay with Gary. I was just not able to believe what I was hearing and asked you if you had thought what you were doing. I asked you if you had a plan. Obviously, I did not think you had. I was clearly worried about what would happen to you and certainly did not carelessly think "you would figure it out". That was however your response. Moreover, you screamed at me, that was not my problem, so I did not have a say about it. I guess now you want it to be my problem. You may remember I mentioned you were acting like so many times we have talked about Robyn, carelessly getting rid of people and jobs. You replied you were Robyn's daughter, so it should not be to anybody's surprise that you act like her.

Furthermore, the next day, in Table View, I insisted it was my problem. I argued you were my wife, I cared for you, I had put a lot of energies in our relationship and I was seeing you about to dive off a cliff and I did not want that to happen and nobody could expect me to just watch and not do anything to stop it.

I need to admit, however, my worries were not about money. My worries were about how you would ever achieve your dreams of forming a family. I am sure you will find a job. I know it is difficult. Alia, I have been there before and I actually know about that much more than you, because it was, it is and it will be much more difficult for me to find a job than for you. I have no doubt, sooner or later, and it will be sooner rather than later, you will find a job and will get back on track money-wise. But what I doubt the most is that you will ever be able to get out of the golden cage your parents have been building for you since you were little, that you will ever be able to achieve your dream of forming a family and be happy.

What you need, Alia, is not money, what you need is a good friend and a lot of love. It is really very sad you are looking for love and friendship from everywhere and everyone except for the only one person who has always been there to give you all what you need. Moreover, for that one person you only have plans of war and hate."

Alia's striking answer was that I had not always been such a good friend; there had been many times where I would be just a few feet away, but she still could not have felt lonelier. Somehow I could not help to think she may have taken that argument from somebody else. She was clearly making reference to 2013 and 2014, when we lived at her family's house in Missoula. I worked particularly hard during 2014, trying to save enough money for our journey across Africa. However, she did not leave me then. Rather, she dumped me after the very intense year in Africa, where we just could not have spent more time together. Alia altogether dismissed my point and insisted that her main problem was indeed financial. Furthermore, she argued that if I did not want to help with it, then I did not care for her. So, I should stop pretending I do.

In summary, I found myself check-mate'd with my hands tied. I could only conclude there was nothing I could do to save our love. Alia did not believe I loved and cared for her: she only wanted me to send her money and, if I did not, then she did not have anything to hear from me. Yet, it was clear to me that money would only reinforce the internal forces that were distroying her from inside. On the other hand, everybody who knew us, and therefore may have been able to help, thought I should understand Alia had stopped loving me and I had to let her go.

Nobody seemed to have time to consider that, perhaps, our marriage's death was not only an undesirable and saddening conclusion, but it was also not inevitable. However, I, definitely, just could not see it any other way: just one month earlier we were kissing passionately! It was breaking my heart to see Alia sliding down the cliff. Alia simply could not hear me and I was not being able to have anybody tell her to just look up to me and grab the hand that I was extending towards her. I was dying to be again the friend she so very much needed. I just wanted to wrap her in my arms, hug her and enjoy again the opportunity to warm her heart. Why would not anybody care?

I need to admit, however, in the spring of 2016 the bright images of Africa were still very crisp and I was still too much in shock, that, for a long time, I could not imagine that Alia was not going to wake up sooner or later. After all, this was not the first time that Alia had lost it; it had happened many times and she had always soon figure it out and come back. That was however the problem, this time it was taking way too long. This time was different. This time Alia even sounded like a different person. I still wanted to think that the memories of our love were too strong that sooner or later they would make their way into Alia's heart. Several months later, In the fall of 2016, my good friend Patti asked me if I had ever consider the possibility that Alia may actually never come back. I paused for a second, but the mere thought of it actually was too terrifying that I could not really handle entertaining that possibility in any kind of depth. I only manage to respond that I did not know; it would be really difficult. As a matter of fact, why torment myself with that spectre, if there was no need for it. As usual, I guessed I would deal with it when the time came. But, there were no reasons for matters to go that far. Ours was the most beautiful love story ever and nobody in her right mind would want to see it die. Furthermore, I was going to do everything necessary to keep it alive and bring it back to its most beautiful days. However, mine was something more than just wishful thinking. I thought I knew what was the problem and I had a plan. I understood nobody had ever seen anybody coming out successfully, resolving a crisis of that sort; but you simply do not tell a disabled person that something is impossible or just cannot be done. I may be severely visually impaired, but I have many other very significant skills. You may not know how to sort out a crisis of this kind; but I do. In summary, it was clear to me that Alia needed help and I was going to fight for her, the same way that she had fought for me. 

My April 18th 2016 response was able to calm the monetary conflict with Alia down. After all what Alia had done to me and how much she had hurt me, I was not ready to let her to even take on the offensive. I guess my message then succeded in that Alia somehow became less belligerent after reading it. Now, I am not quite sure what exactly caused such change. Probably my bold arguments were behind her later sheepish reply; but, perhaps, not for the reasons I had expected. She explained that she did not want to fight . In anger and frustration she thought she would want to go that way; but she realy did not. However, what really stroke me, and actually bother me a little, was that she did not acknowledge any merit to the arguments I was meaning and feeling so deeply. Rather, her only concern seemed to be that, contrary to what she had initially screamed, it would actually be me who would crush and screw her over, but only because I would be better able to pay more powerful legal advice. Regardless of the apathy or seeming plain disdain towards my arguments, what I find really mind-troubling is to what extent we have absorbed and accepted that the judicial system resolves legal cases based on the money you put on the table and not based on the actual facts, or - at least - the relative merits of the litigant parties' cases. Nobody seems to have any doubt that if you get involved in a court case and you care to have any possitive outcome, you really need to hire a lawyer. Fact of the matter is that the very same argument receives completely different consideration by the courts, depending on whether it was made by a regular, pro-se (self-represented) individual or an 'important' lawyer. Yet, that is so very wrong! Now we get so very outraged by medieval indulgences, whereby the church used to put Heaven for sale. Well, our very democratic western governments' practice to put justice for sale is much worse than medieval indulgances. After all indulgences were voluntary and required a significant degree of foolishness from the victim to believe that he could obtain eternal life for some money. However, justice for sale is damn real: you better empty your bank account if you do not want to be ripped off and be shreded to pieces by the "Honorable" judges. You tell me; I learned it the hard way. Yet, on the other hand, some other guy may be a criminal, but, if he has a lot of money, he will be able to get a more favorable verdict; to the point that he may be able to get away with his crime. What is that?! How did we come to accept such a scam from our fake-democratic regimes? The worst part is not the scam itself, what is most mind-troublingg, is that we came to absorb and accept it. What happened to us? How did they manage to put us to sleep?    

   

Whatever the reasons that led Alia to backed down from her demands, it certainly helped improve the communication between us: hopefully, money would not be an obstacle anymore. In practical terms it had an immediate benefit, because in Spain I had just been asked to provide some documentation on my spouse's income over the previous year. Alia obviously had not had any income in Spain ever in her life, so, in reality, there was nothing to report; however, among the requirements, if Alia was absent and I was going to present the paperwork on her behalf, I needed to come and show her Spanish residency card. Now, this is the ID card which Alia cherish so much, she had been longing for so many years and she had so enthusiastically gone pick up the very day we left Madrid for Africa. Needless to say the card was now in Montana with her, and I was not too hopeful that Alia would have any interest to send it to Spain. For one thing, those days I really did not feel like asking her any favor. Her response, however, stroke me quite a bit. She actually did not mind to help; but she really did not want to see the precious card go. She was ready to send the physical card to Spain, as long as I promised that I would then send it back; however, she wondered if a copy would do, in which case she would very much prefer to just email me a scan. I told her that I would try with a copy, and eventually I was able to sort out the issue that way. However, I could not help to note how much the card still meant to Alia. I mean; so far all the hints she had provided indicated that she had no intention to come back with me or to Spain. Consequently, it seemed difficult to find a logical reason why she would still keep such attachment to the card and feel so strongly about holding on to it. On a wider perspective it was not surprising at all: Alia had always taken marriage very seriously and, undoubtedly, it had always meant very much to her. Not only needed she that I register the marriage in Spain; but she also insisted I registered it in Switzerland, even if there was really no practical purpose in doing so. I remember how happy she was the day that we finally received, three years after our wedding, our Spanish 'libro de familia' (the Spanish equivalent to the marriage certificate, though perhaps somewhat more significant since it comprises the whole family, and that was even more meaningful and important to Alia). I remember how she hugged the little booklet, like it were a baby. But that was then, and this was now; and now Alia did not care anything for her marriage anymore, did she?

It then added further to my surprise that she asked me to send her a copy of our Africa pictures. She had been able to save the pictures of the second half of our journey; but was missing the pictures of the first months, in Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali... Despite what she may have said (and, even more so, what she will say later), there is no doubt that our journey across Africa has a very special place in Alia's heart.

By that time I had also decided to try to come back to the U.S.. However, I was planning on going to the New York area, in order to be able to visit some ophthalmologists. My chances to find good specialists were certainly higher in the Northeast than in Montana. It seemed clear to me that, eventually, I would continue to Montana, to try to talk things over with Alia; but I thought I would play by ear to choose the right moment to do so.

For now my biggest concern was to save my green card; I had been more than one year outside the U.S. and Immigration was going to need me to explain some good reasons why that had happened, or they could revoke my green card. A few months earlier, back in South Africa, I was not that worried about it, because, with Alia on my side, it would not have made any sense that they would do anything like that. However, now that the unimaginable had happened and Alia had left me, I was not so sure anymore. Consequently, I did some research to find out what is exactly that Immigration would need to hear. It turned out it basically boiled down to whether I had ever had any intend to abandon my residency. Apparently, they would look for signs like, if I kept some business in the U.S. (e.g. if I had any open, active bank account), if I continued receiving mail at my U.S. address, or )whether I had kept my belongings at my U.S. home or I had already shipped them overseas. Fortunately, all those factors played in my favor, because, as a matter of fact, I had never intended to abandon my residency. In addition, given that my eye-pressure had been found to be very high and I had been advised to undergo surgery, I was also going to explain that I had been having medical problems. However, I was still going to want to have some documents to prove all that. In other words, I was going to need Alia's help again. I was actually not quite sure how Alia was going to respond to this new request, since, to begin with, it was probably going to require more work from her. As a matter of fact, it took her quite a while to reply; it seemed like she was thinking about it. However, when she finally did, she clarified that she was going to do her best to help. I was rather impressed, but later would come to think that her generosity was not that sincere; but she was hoping it would eventually 'pay off' and get her some return. Given what she would tell me one month later, it is fairly clear to me that she offered all her help, caculating that I would then correspond paying off her bills.

Regardless of whatever disappointment that may have caused me, I rather regret to what extend Alia was out of sync with my feelings. Indeed, if Alia was ready to compromise honesty, in order to get her bills paid off; I wish she had rather fake some love or some interest to reconcile, because that had ended up being much more beneficial to both of us. Fact of the matter is that, whether it was reasonable or not, it never even stroke my mind to transfer her $1000 - $2000, just because she was sending me some old mail or bank statements. However, I had been more than likely to help her with the bills, if I have got some insight that it would warm back up the feelings between us. Moreover, regardless of whether her initial sign of affection may have been fake, I do think it had very likely restarted a positive feedback loop. I do think there would have been quite a chance that my help would have touched Alia enough to reignite her heart again.    

    

Undoubtedly, my biggest disappointment all those weeks were her lack of interest to reconcile. That is why, when she told me she was sorry she had hurt me, and she expressed her concerns that "I must hate her", my focus went to clarify that I certainly did not hate her, but what I regreted the most was that we would not do anything, not even try, to talk things over and attempt to resolve whatever problems there could be between us. For me it was as impenetrable as heartbreaking to witness that we have lived this deep and truly beautiful relationship and we would simply not even lift a finger to try to save it; but would rather just let it die altogether. Needless to say, when I say: "we", I was obviously thinking: "she", because what hurt me the most was that Alia simply would not care at all.        

However, Alia addressed all those grievances clarifying: "Don't think this is easy for me either"; which, for a clarification, could not have been worse, because it only added to my puzzlement. Indeed, the first thought that comes to my mind is: "If it is not easy for you either, then why do you do it?" This question further accumulates to the already endless list of opportunities that I let pass by; because I, always so concerned not to say anything that may infuriate Alia, never got to pose such dilemma to her.

The question, however, certainly deserves quite some consideration. Undeniably Alia was not doing well and her facebook posts already talked for themselves. Alia had also told me that she had been having suicidal thoughts again and her therapist had prescribed her some pills because she was low on serotonin. I was certainly not surprised to hear that she was very depressed and was having suicidal thoughts again. Actually, I was rather tearing my hair out in frustration thinking why on Earth Alia had not even spare a minute wondering why she was depressed. I understand one possible answer to the question may be, that she was low on serotonin. However, that would equal to looking at the wise man's finger, when he is pointing at the moon. Clearly, the issue would have then been, why was she low on serotonin? I just cannot help to be certain, that Alia's low levels of serotonin were the physical materialization of Alia's brain being really unhappy, about her consciousness recent decisions and how it had been steering her life lately. It was then so very unfortunate that Alia would refuse to accept this reality, but instead prefered to continue ignoring it and persevere in her journey into darkness.

Probably, rather than tearing my hair out, it had served a better purpose if I would have pose the question directly to Alia. However, once more, rather than challenge and corner her with agressive remarks, I thought it would be better to agitate her mind out of her defeatedness and hopelessness, pointing out the incongruity of her thoughts with subtle, incisive questions. Back in Cape Town, on that infamous night where Alia told me that she was going to move in with Gary, I already tried to appeal to some higher judgement, in order to bring her back to her senses. In that occasion I asked her what plan she had and what path did she envision her life would follow from then on. However, back in Cape Town, Alia obviously did not have any plan and was only being carried away by her thrill for Gary. She therefore disregarded my inquire telling me that her life was no longer my problem. But now that she had left Gary on the other side of the planet and, hopefully, come to realize that he had been a complete flop, I thought it would be a good time to pose the question again; although, this time, I would circumvent a little. This time I wanted to ask her, where is that she was hoping to see her life in ten years. It seemed to me that the following ten years, those that would take her from her mid-twenties to her mid-thirties, were going to be really crucial in her life; it is the time where dreams need to start crystalizing into accomplishments.

Alia's shocking reply was that over the following ten years, she was hoping to complete a solo motorcycle tour around the U.S. and join the Peace Corps. I had heard about her dream of a motorcycle tour long before. I remember she wrote about that on Facebook to a friend in the summer of 2010, so I was not that surprised about that; but, knowing Alia, I did not think she was going to enjoy spending so much time alone. It is the kind of idea that sounds really cool; but, if you ever get to do it, you soon realize that it is not quite your cup of tea. As a matter of fact, after spending two months all by herself in the summer of 2010, and then again in the fall of 2012,Alia had come herself to conclude that she really did not endure being alone that well. She had so told me that we would need to think more carefully before we decide again to stay separated for an extended time.

I was therefore more bewildered to hear again about the Peace Corps. She had told me, just some months earlier, that she was not that sure about the Peace Corps anymore; she would definitely need to figure out how to bring me with her; "otherwise, screw it!" In fact, it felt like Alia had gone back in time to 2010, before the day I first met her. It seemed like the memories of the six previous years that we were married had been wiped out from her mind. It then did not really come up to any surprise, but I could have actually expected, to hear her, two-and-a-half years later (in November 2018), testify to Judge Townsend that she was so traumatized, that she had blocked most of her memories of those years and could hardly remember anything that happened during our marriage. It had been a long time that Alia had not been making any sense, and had been exhibiting signs that she was not doing well mentally. The caveat here is that she attributed her trauma to some (alleged) abuse by me, and the statement so gave her a nice cover-up in her false allegations; however, just because the allegations of abuse were false, that does not mean that she also lied about the context that so conveniently framed said allegations. In fact, if those memories were actually wiped out, then she would not have been able to remember what trauma really caused the loss of all those recollections in the first place. In other words, I think it is quite possible that Alia may be so messed up, as to actually be under the believe that those false allegations of abuse are true. In that sense, what really looks wrong to me, is the judge, who takes as absolute truth some baseless allegations of abuse from a person who admits to be barely able to remember anything. Moreover, nobody in her right mind would ever come up with false allegations of abuse, knowing that she had previously left (as Alia had) overwhelming evidence proving said allegations perjury. 

I would still need to wait, however, a couple of years before I could hear Alia allege suffering memory problems. For the time being, it would just continue striking me how strange Alia sounded. Indeed, it felt like Alia was a different person. It was not only that she did not care for me anymore; rather, soon she would start to very slowly change some really basic habbits in her life. For example, she will cut all contact with people, who she really liked very much; but now saw too close to me. Even less understandable, she will change the kind of music she would normally listen to, or the kind of food she used to enjoy. In general, it seemed like she was trying to remove from her life everything that could remind her of me.

It may not be that uncommon that she turned her back on all of her ex-spouse-s friends, but none of them ever had a single word of criticism against her. Furthermore, she had a really good relationship with some of my friends. While it may be understandable that she eventually became hostile against my mother, I find it really odd that she broke all contact with my olf friend Dim. She was actually very fond of him, as they both shared very similar personalities. They are both this kind of Peter Pan characters, with the same tastes and likes for cartoons, games and all that children universe. Hence, there was no reason why they would not want to keep their friendship. In 2017, one year after our break-up, Alia wrote Dim suspecting that I had not stopped bitching about her to him; however, I had not even got to tell him that we were no longer together. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that Alia even lost contact with her very own, old friends; particularly those who got to know me and eventually developed some friendship with me as well.

Somewhat even more striking is that Alia also modified the kind of music she liked to listen to, or the food she enjoyed eating. For example, I found it particularly weird that, all of a sudden, she renegated from paella. Without a doubt, paella was one of her favorite meals; to the extend that she chose that our wedding party would circle around cooking a big paella. But now, for some strange reason, she does not even want to hear about paella. When she eventually filed for divorced and proposed her Marital Property Settlement Agreement, she made a stand to keep all of my old kitchenware, but still included a specific note that I should take the paella pan with me.

It may seem irrelevant, but something that has always intrigued me is how she abandoned her Skype account. She opened her Skype account just a few days after our wedding, as I was leaving towards Mexico, to help us stay connected while I was gone trying to fix my immigration paperwork. We then used it everytime we were apart, which, in reality, was only in the summer of 2010 and a couple of months in early Fall 2012. Skype also became very helpful, especially for Alia, during our travels across Central America, Europe and Africa, to stay in touch with family and friends back home. The last time we used Skype was, obviously, in the spring of 2016, after Alia left me in Cape Town. Apparently, in the summer of 2016, while she was working in Alaska, she learned about Facebook Messenger and, since then on, she completely forgot about Skype. There would not be anything abnormal in any of that, if it were not because, when she wanted to speak with me some months later, she could only think to try to call me through Facebook Messenger, and, as it became impossible (since I did not have at the time Facebook Messenger) it only occured to her to send me an invite to install Messenger. For some weird reason, she could not remember that we both had Skype accounts and she had even been able to see when I was online and, therefore, reachable. Furthermore, it is doubtful that her miss was purely accidental, since she repeated it again some days later; for the life of her, she just could not remember it.        

Nevertheless, probably the most obvious symptom of Alia's memory gaps, is her absolute inability to even roughly situate in time some rather prominent events. When Alia went to request her order of protection, she had all the time in the world to figure out the approximate date of the incidents she was going to list. It is totally reasonable not to recall the approximate date of a fight; like it is usually very difficult to remember, for example, the time of the year (perhaps not even the exact year) that you purchased your last car. However, there are some unique events in life, which you should be able to figure out when did they happen; for example, when did you graduate from college? or when did you make that memorable trip to Europe? In that sense, I just cannot help to see something wrong about Alia not being able to recall where in Africa we spent Christmas or New Year's Eve during our journey. OK, while it is still possible that she may have just preferred to lie about that, it is even more difficult to understand, why she would not be able to figure out, whether we visited Monaco during our first journey across Europe (when we went North, from Spain all the way to the Artic Circle), or during our second journey (when we went West, from Spain all the way to Turkey). It does not even take a rocket scientist to just guess it, does it? It really feels like there was somebody there dictating to her what to write down on the order of protection request form, including the approximate dates of the incidents she was listing.        

The final blow then came when Alia told me that she had accepted a summer job in Alaska and she would start there at the beginning of July. The description Alia provided about it was really glooming. Apparently, she would be working extended hours (12 - 14 hours) a day, and she would hardly have one day off per week. Reading her message really made me feel sorry for her. It really sounded horrible. I could not understand how she accepted to put herself through something like that. I mean, she had thought of taking her life two months earlier. She was still having suicidal thoughts. She had been diagnosed Post-Traumatic-Stress. She was feeling very depressed and lonely. And now she decides to go to Alaska, where she is going to be all alone, working from sunrise to sunset for minimum wage. I just could not understand what was she thinking. Alia told me that, for once, she finally wanted to do something for herself; because, until now, all what she had been doing, during all the previous years, had not been for her. I did not get it; I did not know what she was talking about. It turned out, now, all what she had been doing over the previous six years?, it had only been for me. It felt like Alia was on a different planet. She kept insisting that our trip across Africa had been too much of an ordeal and our relationship had been long falling apart. I was useless and I have been taking advantage of her all this time; but she had finally opened her eyes to it and, at this time, she did not think she could still say that she loved me. I wanted to scream: Dude!! you just fell in love with that asshole in Cape Town; figure it out! Indeed, Alia was not attentive to her own deeper feelings; rather she only wanted to convince herself of whatever she felt was going to relieve the pain in her heart. Her problem was not that she had stabbed her love to death and was, therefore, feeling lonely; so that now she needed a friend to give her good, sincere love. Rather, if she was depressed, it was because she had this enormous financial obligation tormenting her mind. For so long she had put somebody else's priorities and ambitions first, and had sacrificed and left aside her own needs and dreams. She had been drained out of all energies and she needed to recuperate: it was time she started looking for herself.

If I ever tried to argue any of that, she stopped me immediately: "Do not think you can tell me what is best for me." I was rather shocked to hear that: I had never had any interest in controlling her life; but even more so now that she had left me, whatever she did was no longer my problem. At that point I was certainly not going to beg her to come back with me. I was hurt and felt humiliated. I was perfectly aware that I was not useless and I had never taken advantage of her; but, if she needed to find that out the hard way, she was totally free to choose the most painful manner to crash against reality and wake up.      

     

Yet the problem was not Alia's actual statement; but what stood behind it. Indeed, I had heard that kind of complaint before and I knew where it was coming from. Alia was not at all concerned that I may try to tell her what is best for her; but she was only repeating an argument she had heard somewhere else. Alia was simply repeating something that Robyn had told her. Alia told me several times throughout our marriage that, her parents (always puzzled by how her daughter had become so fascinated with a jerk like myself) had always argued and complained to her that she was being manipulated by me. As intelligent and mature as they had always proclaimed her daughter to be, it turned out that I had taken advantage of my older age to captivate her and make of her a puppet, that would dance to all my music. If she temporarly left college in 2010 to go traveling with me, it was because I had manipulated her. If she did not care that much for the Peace Corps anymore, it was because I had talked her out of it. If she did not keep the same kind of intimate relationship with her mother, it was because I had conspired against it. Consequently, it all sounded so very familiar to hear again, that everything she had been doing all those previous years had been for me, but now she finally wanted to persue her own dream to join the Peace Corps, and I should not try to tell her what is best for her. Except that now Alia herself was serving as the loudspeaker for those complaints.   

Indeed, when Alia told me that I should not think I can tell her what is best for her, the first thought that came to my mind was: No, I should not tell you what is best for you, because, for that purpose, you already have your parents; they definitely know what is best for you and, consequently, they are here to tell you what to do. Clearly, the thief believes everybody steals. In this particular case: the pot called the kettle black. Suddenly I remembered Alia's tears in Prague, her disappointments everytime she spoke from New Zealand with Robyn, the wings and the children books she got from her mother, and all those Thanksgiving parties where her parents were constantly begging her to play 5-year-old child for them some more. I could not believe that those who had made out of her own daughter a fun item of personal property, were now lecturing on freedom and independence. It was so easy to stress and insist how important your daughter's education was, but then look away towards her asshole husband when the student-loans bills came. Yes your daughter's wellbeing has always been paramount to you, but now that she just tried to commit suicide, has been diagnosed PTSD, is still having suicidal thoughts, and is feeling deeply depressed and lonely, you send her to Alaska, to work from sunrise to sunset for minimum wage, because her credit card is her responsibility as a grown-up woman, and it would send her the wrong message, if you were ever to scrape some bucks from your pocket to bail her out. You thought she needed your wise and experienced advise in order to be able to define a powerful and intelligent divorce strategy; but now that she leaves all depressed for Alaska, hoping to make some money that would allow her to pay her bills, you switch back to the notion, whereby she is an intelligent, grown-up woman, who always knows what she is doing, and therefore you should never try to dissuade her.

Over the previous weeks it had slowly become clear to me, that, at some point, I was going to need to go to Montana in order to talk things over with Alia. If the mountain was not coming to Mohammed, then Mohammed would need to go to the mountain. I had thought, however, that I would remain observant and carefully choose the right timing for our meeting, base on how events unfold. But Alia's decision to go to Alaska beginning of July, set a deadline to my plan; so I had to get things moving. Nevertheless, Alia was not exhibiting signs of any progress; hence it looked like I would need to become more proactive anyway. I therefore told her that I was considering going to Montana after my eye-doctor visits in the East Coast. My point was that I believed it would be good if we could talk in a relaxed setting, and discuss our thoughts and feelings. Alia explained that I could come, if I so wanted; she was not going to stop me, but I had to be aware that her decision to go to Alaska was firm and nothing that I could say to her was going to change it. It really stroke me that Alia just assumed that the main reason why I wanted to talk to her, was to dissuade her from going to Alaska. I do not even think talking her out of Alaska was among the reasons why I was considering to travel to Montana to speak with her (let alone the main reason). Nevertheless, Alia was making it very clear that she had absolutely no interest in talking about our relationship; so the whole idea was obviously hopeless and without a purpose. Consequently, I altogether cancelled the plan for the time being; clearly I was going to need to wait for some game-changing event or Alia finally figure things out. However, time prove my strategy to be completely wrong. I guess it had never been clear what kind of event could have ever changed the decaying dynamics of our relationship for the better. On the other hand, Alia was never going to wake up; because it was not that she had fallen asleep, but she had been put to sleep. Clearly, not only was Alia not going to re-emerge; but those who had put her to sleep and were now in control of her, were going to make sure that from here on she would only sink even deeper in oblivion.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear to me that I should have gone to speak with Alia; but I would have needed to bring with me an enormous amount of love and understanding. In other words, while now I know that I should have gone and made my best effort to talk things over with her, if I had traveled to Montana in 2016, I am pretty sure that it had failed, since I would not have been able to give Alia all the love and understanding she needed. When we kissed passionately after Alia's attempt of suicide in Cape Town, Alia kept repeating: "We would talk We would talk". Since then I have been tormented by the fact that more than two months had passed, and we still had not talked. Even worse, there was no prospect or whatsoever that we would be able to hold any kind of deep conversation anytime soon. How were we going to save our relationship if we would not communicate; not even by just looking into each other's eyes? It was really distressing for me to witness that our love was dying and we were not even trying to do anything about it. For goodness sake!, we had a wonderful relationship for six years, we truly loved each other and one day we suddenly say goodbye and part ways; never to talk or see each other ever again. There was no doubt in my mind that we needed to talk. It would have always been good if we had ever been able to get our feelings out, clarify wrong assumptions, and understand what were each other's grievances, regrets, needs, feelings and wishes. I wanted to look Alia in the eyes and tell her that I loved her, I cared for her and I was ready to forgive her. It breaks my heart to think that I have never been allowed to do so.

Today the courts prohibit me any attempt to communicate with Alia. So, it turned out I missed in 2016 my opportunity to speak with Alia. Yet, I still know it would have been to no avail; because, by the time I had reached my third point, everything would have fallen apart. Indeed, in late-Spring 2016, Alia was not Alia anymore, but she had already got started in her metamorphosis. In late Spring 2016, Alia was nowhere to be found; she had departed,   and was already deep in her journey to what eventually would become total sick evil. Back then, any suggestion that there was anything that she had to be forgiven for, was going to trigger an unbearable outrage.

If only I had ever been a tiny bit less careful. Yes, I always thought I was proceeding all so scientifically and rationally, thinking every step along the process, always very carefully looking for the exact right words to say, the perfect decisions to take. Yet, now it is all so very clear to me that I should had grabbed the bull by the horns and directly accused her of cheating on me. I had always known that the slightest word of criticism would utterly hurt Alia; consequently, I needed to be extremely careful and, unless strictly necessary, avoid saying anything, which could be negatively perceived; let alone if it was even incorrect. I was pretty sure that Alia felt a strong attraction for Gary and that had been a crucial factor in her decision to break up. But there was no proof of it, so it really seemed to me that to make such an accusation against her, was likely to be perceived as a mean attack. I was dead wrong though: when I conceded to mute my own conviction of what had been the true reasons why Alia had blown up our marriage, I allowed Alia's denial process to grow unopposed in her mind, until eventually it was able to establish itself firmly enough, that it became hopeless to argue against. Alia kept insisting on her own account, whereby the fights in our past had scarred our marriage and there was no forgetting; but, as much as I knew that all that was total bullshit, I feared that it would hurt her more than what she could endure, to clarify that the real reason why she had left me was that she had stupidly fallen in love with that South African asshole. Hence, I remained there silent, as if I would not have anything to say in opposition; but would be ready to concede her point. It was only two years later, when I discovered Alia's love letter to Gary, that I finally felt justified to reproach her for her betrayal and deception. But at that time it only sounded pathetic; it was way too late, the gap between Alia and I had become unsurmountable and she could not care less about anything I had to say. Alia was now definitely on a different planet, too far away to be able to perceive any communication from me.

It is then so very disappointing, it all seems like it just pays off to be rude and inconsiderate, rather than sweet and understanding. I am pretty sure that any other man had immediately got mad at Alia and had scolded her for cheating on him and, it turns out, that had worked better. Eventually, it drew me to reflect on Alia's words at the beginning of our relationship, when she asked me to never forget about my mother and the mistakes my father made in his marriage: I had told Alia how, upon my mother's arrival to Spain, my father had taken advantage of his wife's weak position to gain a dominating role in the relationship; but, by doing so, had lost his wife's love. I now observed in dismay how unfair and cruel life can be: despite all his mistakes, my father never lost my mother; yet, as sweet and understanding as I always tried to be to Alia, I still ended up losing her. It seems we just need to accept the old rule, whereby you should never take your boot from your enemy's throat. It is just that for me it is very disappointing to submit to the notion that I should perceive my wife as my enemy; it defeats the whole purpose of marriage. It somehow reminds me to the dilemma Louis XVI faced with the French Revolution. All historians agreed he was not a tyrant; but his main flaw was that he was weak, undecisive and would constantly fail to follow through having his decisions enforced. That is alright, if it were not because his enemies fed him to the guillotine precisely under the accusation that he was a tyrant. It turns out, whichever way he had taken, regardless of whether he had removed his boot from his enemies' throats or not, the guy was doomed to have his head chopped off.

Yet, I do not think my mistake was that I refused to understand that I needed to subjugate Alia in order to keep her; that had been self-defeating anyway and it had never been good enough for me; if King Salomon had offered me half of the baby, I would have never taken it. Rather, I was never able to fully grasp the gigantic opposition we faced from Alia's parents. They really hated our relationship. From the very day they learned about our plans to marry, they were determined to wreck our marriage, and wreck it they did. I really do not know what is that I could have done to avoid it. Alia felt a very strong attachment to her mother and she also very much loved Daniel. I am not sure it would have made matters worse, if I had tried to separate her from them. But, certainly, Alia's emotional stability would have suffered from such separation. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that no flattering or fawning would have dissuade or distract them from their objective. It seems to me, if at all, they may have used their empowered position to intensify their conspiracy and further undermine our love. For some reason that I will never be able to understand, Daniel's hostility was particularly virulent. Robyn was certainly far subtler , but also deadlier. Still, it would not be fair to say that Robyn had an overt negative opinion of me. Rather, I think she kept mixed, even contradicting, feelings towards me. Indeed, I do believe she was able to recognize quite some good qualities in me; but, undoubtedly, some other aspects of my personality drove her mad. She probably found I was rather presumptuous: during Alia's cousin's wedding party, as I dared to comment on Robyn's passion for coffee, she spat out to me, that I was so patronizing. However, I am fairly certain that none of that was ever relevant; but the real deal-breaker for Robyn was my refusal to express or fake affection towards her  and, most of all, her belief that I was turning Alia against her. Yet, I never conspire against Robyn, as it would not have served any purpose; but I could have been sure it was going to backfire very badly. I did, however, point out to Alia the many ways that I thought her mother's parenting had hurt and was going to hurt her; but, I do believe I had good reasons to do so. First of all, there was no doubt in my mind, that Robyn's parenting had a pernicious effect on our relationship and I needed to find a way to undo it. Additionally, horror of horrors, Alia was set to apply the same recipes to our children, and I really did not want that to happen. Still, at the end of the day, the relationship with Robyn was generally courteous: in several occasions she did not mind to express her sincere approval for how I had managed a certain situation; but that would not keep her from scolding me whenever I did not speak or act to her liking; particularly if it involved Alia; in Robyn's mind, mother and daughter were one, and I better did not say or do anything that could challenge it. Similarly, she did not feel embarrassed to repeat, again and again, how much she loved me; at the same time that she made it blatantly clear that she would be sure to stab me in the back, should she ever conclude she would gain any benefit by doing so.

Daniel, in comparison, was never able to disguise his utmost contempt for me. I certainly got it all wrong with him. While it became pretty quickly clear to me that the relationship with Robyn was going to be complicated, I kept foolishly thinking that I would get very well along with Daniel. I would just never get that he simply hated my existence. Soon after I met Alia, I learned some facts about Robyn that raised big questions about her. I particularly resented Robyn's parenting: but, in contrast, I thought I could appreciate Daniel's efforts to keep Alia on the right track. While Robyn would never hesitate to give up to any of her daughter's demands, before risking any conflict; Daniel would get in trouble himself, struggling to keep Alia from getting out of control. Both Robyn and Daniel had done drugs since their early youths. Daniel even did some rather heavy drugs. However, when Alia became a teenager and started doing drugs herself, Daniel stopped altogether. He would later explain he wanted to offer Alia one adult figure clean of any drugs. Robyn, in contrast, thought she could use drugs to further bind her daughter to her. I could not help to believe that Robyn had been very ungrateful and unfair to him: after 10 years doing his best to contribute to the household and Alia's education and wellbeing, he was kicked out completely empty-handed. I thought I sympathized with him and was ready to advocate for him. Yet, Daniel always remained aloof to all my advances. Perhaps there were some logical reasons behind his hostility; but it all appear really visceral to me. On our very first encounter, I already got an excellent sample of all what was going to come. It was early May of 2010 and Alia and I were on those perfect first weeks together. Daniel was coming back after some holidays in England with his mother and her partner John; so we went to pick him up from the airport. That day I had prepared one of my favorite recipes: eggplants stuffed with ground meat, tomato sauce and bechamel, and melted Emmentaler cheese on top. I did not think Daniel had had anything for dinner, so he must have been hungry. I therefore offered him some of the eggplant, but he rejected without hesitation. Alia had also made some rice pudding or dessert; so, when he was about to leave, we double-checked if perhaps he wanted some of the pudding. But he just wanted to take off. Alia had already told me that Daniel used to torment her singing Pink Floyd's "How can you have any pudding if you did not eat your meat?", whenever she asked for some dessert after she had skipped the main course. It then so rose as such an hilariously glorious opportunity to offer him my complicity, that I could not refrain to jokingly point out to him: obviously, how was he going to have any pudding if he had not eaten his meat? Daniel, however, shook his head vehemently making clear he did not appreciate my joke.       

 

There could have been many reasons why Daniel have reacted like that, so I did not give it much significance. He, however, would not leave any room for speculation the next time. We had driven out to his cabin to deliver the big news: We were going to marry! After having some lunch, as we were sitting around the dining table, Alia began to speak. Daniel reacted calmly to the news, but, immediately, had many, many questions. For the next several minutes Alia sat there patiently enduring his father's inquisition. I remember the look in her eyes were that of a little girl who had to explain her misbehavior and listen to her father's subsequent rebuke. In all honesty, however, Daniel never lost his grip, but remain calm throughout his scrutiny. More unsettling was what happen after we left. It even stroke Robyn that Daniel picked up the phone to call her as soon as we were out the door. Apparently he was very stressed and kept repeating Robyn should do something to stop our wedding. It was so odd that Robyn could not resist to comment on it to Alia. Daniel knew I had had problems with Immigration and he suspected that the wedding was only a trick of mine to obtain a green card. He therefore insisted Alia should just call it an engagement. He would, however, never be able to understand that, in reality, it was actually Alia who needed the assurance of marriage. Daniel was indeed freaking out and kept insisting to Robyn she should stop it. Apparently, Robyn told him she could not stop the wedding. Both, Alia and I noted that, if Daniel's reaction was unsettling, Robyn's response was not quite allaying either. We would have hoped that she had disagree with Daniel, but she actually seemed to share his position; it was just that she was powerless.

The matter had him climbing the walls for the next days up to the wedding. He went crazy trying to come up with any idea to derail it. He called anybody he could think of may help dissuade Alia. However, other than verbally assaulting me before and after the ceremony, there was, obviously, not much that he could do. As Alia used to say, it was really sad that he could just not share our happiness.

Alia's perception of Daniel's reaction to our wedding was definitely worse than mine though: Alia loved her adopted father and for her it was bery disturbing and hurtful; whereas for me it was just basically ridiculous; I would be gone very soon anyway. I need to admit, however, unfortunately time prove Alia right. There were indeed very good and powerful reasons to worry: Alia's parents had pledged to wreck our marriage.

I had to leave Montana one week after our wedding; thus, for the next few months, Alia's parents did not need to bear with me. They should however been able to see that Alia was having a really bad time. She was feeling very lonely and became so depressed that, eventually, we decided to book her a ticket to Cancun, and celebrate a 1-week belated honeymoon in the Mayan Riviera. But one week was obviously not going to solve the underlying problem and, upon her return to Missoula, she collapsed. She could not do it anymore and finally concluded it was best to take a leave from school and go join me in my travels through Mexico. Daniel's worst nightmares had suddenly materialized. Remembering her wedding, Alia knew what was coming; thus, when she met Daniel, she thought she would do it in a public space, so that Daniel would need to exercise some self-control. Yet, according to Alia, Daniel still made a terrible scene. As her emails show, Alia got really traumatized by it and kept having horrific nightmares over it for the next couple of years. Alia needed the people around her to love her dearly. As she explained, she would always do everything possible to please them, as she very much needed their approval. It then hurt her very deeply that Daniel would not trust her. In his eyes, Alia was throwing her life off the cliff. From his experience he knew better that, if Alia dropped out of school, she would never come back to it. It was driving him crazy that Alia would not see, that I was taking advantage of her and was ruining her life. Clearly Daniel thought he was older, had greater experience and was therefore wiser and better able to realize what Alia could not. I certainly do not find anything unusual in such reasoning; however, I will always resent that Alia's parents only applied it arbitrarily, whenever it suited them best, even if that involved compromising Alia's wellbeing. For example, I remember Daniel commenting on Alia's use of drugs during her late childhood, laughing about it, disregarding any reason why anybody could have worried about it: "we never worried about it, because we knew that you knew what you were doing ...ha, ha, ha, ...of course, you knew what you were doing ...ha, ha, ha." Still to this day I get mad thinking about it: it turned out that when Alia started doing drugs at the age of 11, Alia's parents were not concerned about it, because they were sure Alia was smart and she always knew what she was doing; yet, when she married me at the age of 21, she was too young and naive to be able to know what she was doing. Still, my biggest objection with Daniel's fierce reaction is his absolute refusal to accept the very basic fact that Alia simply could not do it alone in Missoula anymore. Indeed, there was never a choice between staying in school or coming traveling with me; rather, Alia was breaking down and she would not have made it one whole year longer alone in Missoula. I mean, I wonder what exactly is that Daniel expected Alia to do, remain one whole year totally depressed at home? As critic as I have always been against Robyn, I still need to concede that even she was able to see it. I do not think that if Robyn never tried to deter Alia from leaving Montana, it was because she believed to be powerless about it, but because she realized that any other option would have failed. Yet, whatever logic Daniel was using, he remained completely aloof to all of that.    

 

In all honesty, however, I need to confess, that back then I did not care much about Daniel's virulent opposition, because I was sure that time would certainly prove him wrong and when the veredict finally came our position would become even stronger. And came the veredict, it did. Two years later, after traveling all over Central America and Europe and having visited about 43 countries, Alia indeed returned triumphant to Montana, ready to enroll back in school, for her last year of her forestry degree. It then came quite a bit as a shock to witness during our hunting trip to the Lammer's ranch in November 2012, how Daniel kep bragging to his friends about all her daughters' adventures and the 43 countries she had visited. Eventually, I could not hold it anymore and had to point out that, as a matter of fact,  Alia had completed all those travels despite and against his fierce opposition. Daniel was only able to shrug his shoulders and produce some silly giggle in response. The point, however, had been made and I really believed that now it was the beginning of a new time. I thought I could understand Daniel's opposition two years earlier, as a father's natural reaction to see her daughter drop out of school and run away with some stranger she had just met. But, two years later, I had proven that I loved Alia, I cared for her and I had brought her back safe, sound and happy; Alia had traveled across 43 countries, had gained a lot of experience and was even now back in school. I was sure that, sooner rather than later, Daniel would be able to see and get to appreciate all what I had done and would continue doing for Alia. ...Boy, ...was I wrong.

During the next couple of years in Montana, he tried to be polite, but he could hardly hide his contempt for me. For example, I remember how excited he was after he learned that Spain had been kicked out from Brazil 2014 Football World Cup. We went to Rock Creek a few days later to visit him, and he could not wait to rub my face over it. All of a sudden, he had become so interested in soccer and was really curious and eager to hear my reflections on Spain's humiliation. Clearly, he was not aware that Spain's national soccer team has a long reputation of underachievements and I was kind of used to it. It speaks, however, that, sadly, Daniel could not help to celebrate any news which he perceived were bad for me. I needed to accept that he simply did not like me.

I will never know if it happened coincidentally or it had anything to do with our Africa travel plans, but in the months leading to our departure, Daniel became less and less concerned about hiding his hate for me, but would let it show more agressively. Until then I had remained foolishly confident that he would eventually warm up to me; but I receive my wake-up call in early Fall 2014. That morning Daniel stopped by our house for some quick errand. He was chatting casually with Alia until he thought to mention that he had noticed Alia had placed his speakers outside. He wanted to make clear he did not mind; but, given that his speakers were better than Robyn's (which Alia was keeping inside), it made better sense to switch placements. For some reason Alia got really upset at this remark. In fact, she became so infuriated that he left the livingroom and childishly ran to the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Daniel was stunned, he raised his hands in disbelief, he did not mean to say anything to offend her in any way, it was just that it made more sense to keep the higher-quality speakers inside and leave the lower-quality speakers outside. But it was not my understanding what he wanted, so he rushed towards the bedroom door hoping to appease Alia. It was very clear to me that Daniel had not done anything wrong, but Alia was just being stupidly childish. I really did not want Daniel to succumb to his daughter's manipulation and start begging her for her forgiveness; Alia was a grown-up woman and she really needed to outgrow those kind of tantrums. So, I tried to stopped him, arguing that he had not done anything wrong; but, in fact, if there was anything that I would criticize... Here Daniel indeed stopped dead in his tracks, turned around towards me and started screaming at me. He was mad, how did I dare to criticize him, he had not done anything wrong. Most definitely there was nothing wrong in anything that he had said, but what I was trying to point out was that Alia would continue having tantrums, as long as her parents kept submitting to them by begging for her forgiveness. Thus, if there was anything that I would criticize, it was the kind of parenting Alia had received. However, Daniel had not allowed me to finish and still would not let me clarify. He was totally out of his mind. He was coming for me and I had to step back to keep a safe distance. I continued my escape from Daniel's wrath until I was eventually outside. But then he moved quickly around me trying to corner me against the wall: he wanted a fight! It is here tragicomic to consider what should at this stage have gone through Alia's mind, as she suddenly found herself completely forgotten in the bedroom. She had expected her father to come running after her, rubbin his fingers down the shut-up door, as he kept begging her for clemency. As a matter of fact, at first that is what seemed it was going to happen; but now there was total silence behind the door, the corridor was actually completely clear, and, oddily enough, all what she could hear were some screams coming from outside the house. In fact, Daniel was puffing up before me, as he explicitly challenged me to a fight. I could not get what was wrong with that man; the guy was nuts, he wanted to have a fight with his son-in-law! That is when Alia finally interceded and took him away. Obviously, it was best that Alia dealt with him; so, while she talked to him and tried to calm him down, I went back inside. After a while Daniel came back to apologize. As he stretched his hand to me, he explained, rather enigmatically, that his attitude against me really did not have anything to do with who I was. Although his words left me quite intrigued, it seemed to me I better do not ask him what he meant, and leave him with his hand stretched out in the meantime. I therefore accepted his apologies and shook  his hand; at the same time that I took the chance, now that he had relaxed, to explain what I had tried to say before, but he had never allowed me to finish. I had never meant to criticize anything he had said that morning; but, precisely for that reason, I wished they had never run to spoil Alia every time she had a tantrum. Daniel actually agreed with me, but pointed out that had been Robyn's command. I was kind enough to tell him that I believed that had been the case.

Yet, If I ever thought that Daniel was going to appreciate my token of understanding and complicity, I could not have been more wrong: Daniel was on a quest against me and nothing was going to change it. At least, at this time, I was starting to get a clue: Daniel puffing up before me made it clear that I would have to walk on egg shells. What I still could not figure out however, is that it was only building up and it was about to reach its climax. But before that would happen, we celebrated Thanksgiving in Rock Creek with Alia's parents. Yeah, I am a jerk and I never did anything to win Alia's parents over; but, despite their own hostility against me, I never gave any problem to Alia to go spend as much time as she wanted with her parents. I actually believe I deserved quite some credit for that, because those events developed as some rather exasperating re-enactments of Alia's childhood Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. Alia's parents are definitely a severe case of empty-nest syndrom and have never been able to overcome the trauma that Alia grew up and is no longer a child. They were therefore always looking for any opportunity to revive those wonderful moments of her daughter's childhood, finding any excuse to constantly ask Alia if she remembered what she used to say, what she used to do, what she used to watch, what she used to play with... in those kind of situation when she was little; and then insist that she play 5-year-old child for them, just one more time again. It went through my mind several times that it was getting too much and I should reprimand them for infantilizing Alia to such a degrading level; but I was walking on egg shells and I did not want to be the party pooper. Thus, instead we continued into the evening with Alia watching one more time "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" (while the rest faked some interest) and playing Monopoly. Daniel was really happy about the Monopoly part, because he scored a crushing victory.

However, I do not like to lose, and over the next weeks I kept thinking what had been wrong with my strategy: perhaps, we would play Monopoly again soon enough. Unfortunately, we did and I had the chance to put my conclusions to the test. Indeed, after they all had so much fun on Thanksgiving, they decided to repeat the experience for Christmas. Thus, Robyn, Alia and I drove again out to Daniel's cabin in Rock Creek to celebrate the holiday in Alia's childhood's old tradition. After we exchange gifts, we sad down again in the evening for another Monopoly game. This time, however, with my revised strategy, the outcome would not be the same. After the typical uncertain beginnings, my finances started to flourish, at the same time that Daniel's were going downhill. We had been playing for a couple of hours, when I was clearly dominating the game, and Daniel finally reached the conclusion that he would need to make a last-ditch effort, in order to avoid my victory. He therefore announced his decision to sell all his properties to his daughter. This came to quite a bit of a surprise, since Alia had not yet made any offer nor even expressed any interest to buy. As a matter of fact, Alia did not have that much money available, and I should also be interested in acquiring those properties. It therefore seemed reasonable to start some auction to determine how Daniel's properties would be sold. Since Alia had been directly invited by Daniel, she was the first to make a bid. Hers, however, was not anything that I could not afford and, on the other hand, I would gain a very powerful position if I obtained those properties; so I made sure to make a much more generous offer to Daniel. He, however, remained set to sell to his daughter. I foolishly asked him how much I would need to raise my bid, in order for him to accept it; but he made it blatant that he simply would not sell to me, but, in fact, he would just give them away to Alia and, subsequently, quit the game. Regretedly, everybody, obviously except for me, welcomed Daniel's resolution. Alia was thrilled to receive all those properties for free, as perhaps that could still allow her to win. Robyn was very happy as well to see her daughter get such a boost. With that I was left all alone in my corner, completely baffled and aggravated. I could not believe that Daniel would show his disgust for me so openly, and nobody would find anything wrong about it. I guess I was particularly disappointed with Alia, as she seemed to care more about winning the game, than to see her husband humiliated. The way I saw it, we should not turn a silly Monopoly game into a mean battle between me and the Floren-Minelli family. That was, however, exactly how Daniel felt it. Robyn also pointed out I should not expect anything else. Alia, on the other hand, was starting to hesitate and realize that Monopoly was, after all, not that important. There was no doubt in my mind that what they were doing was not cool and I was not ready to continue giving in to. I therefore argued that we should reach a decision whether we wanted to play fairly or not: but if it was going to be all against me, then I was not interested. Here Daniel burst in ire, he got off the table and began screaming and cursing at me: he was goint to do whatever the f*** he wanted. Who the f*** was I to tell him what to do or how he should play? At this point I was done with his bullshit and I was ready to confront and reply to his assault. I wanted to tell him he had been a jerk from day 1. Over the previous five years I have been dying to remind him about all the grief he gave us, because he was convinced that I was marrying Alia in order to get a green card, yet, despite having unequivocally been proven wrong, he would not relent, but kept attacking our marriage and remained unable to accept our love. Obviously, that only infuriated Daniel even more, but words, he did not have. Instead, he asked me to come outside with him and have a fight. I knew well I was not going to get into that, Neither was Alia going to allow anything of that sort to happen; rather she was already taking Daniel out the door. It did not require much brain to understand that it would be better to let Alia deal again with his father while I waited inside. This time, however, the experience would be far more perturbing and hurtful for Alia than a couple of months earlier. This time Daniel would not be talked out of a fight. I presume Alia walked with Daniel towards the road and away from the cabin, so that the screams could not be heard. Probably, Alia was also worried that her father would eventually lose his head altogether and may try to get back into the house and attack me. The argument between Alia and her father was indeed absolutely horrible; despite how far they were, I could still hear them screaming at each other. Daniel kept insisting she should break up with me. But Alia repeated she was most definitely not going to do anything like that, simply because she loved me. The argument continued for quite a while; I can only imagine how painful and traumatizing it should have been for Alia and how much she must have suffered.. Even Robyn was horrified at Daniel's conduct. When he started to calm down, I could hear her say to him with tears in her eyes: "you are so wrong... you are so wrong..." Daniel, still rather perturbed, disregarded her remark not understanding how she would not agree with him; but also aware that this was not the time to begin another argument. To me, however, it was not very clear to what extend she strictly disagreed with him, or only believed that his actions did not help his cause. Robyn definitely never had any words for me. As the situation started to calm down, we began to get ready to leave and go back to Missoula; needless to say, there was no way, nobody could conceive that we would stay there for a single more hour. As I went to the car to bring some bags, Daniel saw me and called my name, hoping to be able to speak with me. However, at last, I was not interested; at last, I had nothing to speak with or hear from him; I was done with him. I so ignore him and went right back inside. In fact, I would never have another word with Daniel ever again. I did not do, however, a good job keeping my commitment to avoid any contact with him: for our farewell party, I did tell Alia I did not think it was a good idea that he would come to the party; but I then agreed that she would drive out to Rock Creek with Robyn to hang out for one last time and say goodbye to her father. Likewise, on the day of our departure, as we were waiting for our flight at the boarding gate, I insisted to Alia that she call Daniel and tell him goodbye; after all, he was her father or so did she perceive him. Nevertheless, Christmas 2014 would remain the last time I saw or spoke with Daniel. When we had everything packed up and were finally ready to leave, the three of us (Robyn, Alia and I) went to the car and completely depressed took off for our late-night, winter drive back to Missoula. I can only imagine how happy Daniel must have felt when Alia returned from South Africa one year later, saying that she did not love me anymore, but she now loved some other man. What Daniel had not been able to destroy on Christmas 2014, Gary did for him in February 2016.  

I will never be able to understand ...why? ...why? It will forever continue hurting me. What the hell made Alia's parents think, that they had the right to destroy our marriage. The question is obviously rhetoric, because the question is in itself wrong; nobody has any right to destroy a marriage. I am totally able to understand (although not necessarily agree with), that a parent may oppose, even fiercely, his or her young kid's relationship or wedding with some asshole or bitch. Young people often get carried away by their emotions, they are also more easily fooled by more experienced persons, and it is therefore natural for a parent to protect his or her child and to do everything possible to keep it from ruining its life. I am the first to admit that Alia went very quickly into talking about marriage. That does not mean, however, that she did not scrutinize from top to bottom the deepest details of my personality before going ahead. Neither do I think that we would have been better able to discern whether our  relationship was going to succeed or not, if we had postponed our wedding some months. There is, on the other hand, little doubt that it helped decisively to our marriage's success, the fact that we married before my departure. Most importantly, we did not choose our circumstances, and, in the situation that we found ourselves, we really did not have any other reasonable option. Nevertheless, I am still ready to understand that Alia's parents may have felt that she was not acting quite judiciously or she was simply taking too many risks, and they, therefore, concluded that they should intervene and oppose the wedding. However, what is absolutely unacceptable is that, after several years had passed and we had firmly settled in a stable stage, where we were happy and we truly loved each other, Alia's parents would continue conspiring and looking for ways to kill our marriage. I cannot conceive what kind of sick or evil mind sees her daughter happily married, and is only able to think of her marriage's and happiness' death.

We were happy. We were Monkey and Bunny, we were two children that just wanted to play together. We were little buddies exploring and resolving the labyrinth of life together. We never hurt anybody; we just wanted to be happy. I know it sounds idealistic and naive; but we were told we should shoot for the stars. As a matter of fact, we had made it. We had reached the sky. Our travels together across Central America, Europe and Africa were an incredible achievement. Our Africa journey was a blast. We had deciphered the secrets of happiness. Our life was a dream come true. There was nothing more in life that we could have reasonably asked for; we were on top of the world. It only takes a mere look at Robyn's messages as we were traveling across Angola, Namibia and South Africa, to see how well she knew of and allegedly shared our joy. Yet, when one month later Gary offered our marriage ready for slaughter, she did not hesitate. It is an irony that what Alia's parents had not been able to kill during six years, Gary did for them in one month: the end of our love. 

Why could they not accept our happiness? Why did they hated our love so much? Why did they have to kill it? Why did they tell us to dream, if they then impose the dream's script?Why do they encourage us to dream, if they are then going to ruthlessly punish us for not following their directions to the letter? Why does the system always, always, always... support the powerful and the evil against those who simply choose to live peacefully and happily? Why do they shuckle us up, as they keep preaching about freedom? Why did everybody abandoned us to our fate? How come nobody ever came to help; but instead preferred to foolishly watch amused, while they waited in line for their own turn to be taken apart? What is so wrong about choosing love and happiness over money? Why do they hate happy people so much? Why did they have to kill our love? Why did they shattered our lives?  

   

In mid-May 2016, I finally flew back to the U.S.. I was obviously concern about my green card. I believed that under normal circumstances I should be fine: If the spirit of the law circled around the question of whether I had ever intended to abandon my residency, then the law was on my side. It was however really stressful to understand that such an important issue in my life would be in the hands of some other unknown person, and there was no guarantee on which way it would go. Certainly, the last thing I needed was to have a revoked green card added to my big pile of problems.

Fortunately, I was able to make it through Immigration without any major incident. I still had to go through secondary inspection; but that was a given. I do not think I can remember when was the last time that I was spared of secondary inspection and was accepted right away. Yet, in all fairness I need to admit that, as much hell and troubles as Immigration has given me in the past, once I received the green card, they have always been very understanding and gentle. Without a doubt, that was now the case: my prolonged absence from the U.S. obviously raised a red flag; but they soon realized I had strong and convincing documentation showing I had never intended to abandon my residency. Hence, after a little delay, I was outside with my green card still in my pocket.        

      

  The next day I called Alia to tell her that I was back in the country and I had not had any problem with my green card. Alia said to be glad, but the tone of her voice revealed that she did not care much. I tried to establish some conversation with her, but, again, she really sounded rather disengaged; she really did not seem interested in talking with me. I therefore soon concluded that there was no point in trying to insist, but I should wrap up. However, as it felt to me that it may pass quite some time before we get to talk again, there was one last thing that I thought was important enough, that I should not miss the chance to say before hanging up. I was very well aware that, at that time, she did not feel there was any reason why she should apologize for. However, I was equally convinced that, sooner or later, she would come to realize the mistake she had made, and would have to take responsibility for it. I thought it was important I let her know that, whenever that day came, I would be there to help her: I was going to do my best to make it as less traumatizing as possible to take responsibility for her mistake. However, as I was still speaking, even before I could finish, I could already hear Alia on the other side of the line agasping in disgust, completely scandalized by my suggestion that there may be something that she may eventually want to apologize for. She got so outraged that she was not able to gather enough energies to keep her composure and produce any response; but instead just hung up not managing to utter any more words.

As a matter of fact, time prove me wrong, because Alia would never again find any opportunity to entertain the thought of offering an apology or anything similar. Rather, Alia was moving in the opposite direction: if one month earlier she had told me that she was sorry she had hurt me; she would henceforth begin pointing fingers at me, until she would end up accusing me of abuse.

Unfortunately, the only prediction that came to be was my first one. Indeed, after that call in May 2016, we did not manage to hold any kind of peaceful conversation ever again. Moreover, one year and a half would need to pass before we get to talk again, and when it happened, ALia was already outright hostile against me. Undoubtedly, not even the worst of my predictions had been able to forebode such a dramatic degeneration.

A few days after my arrival back in the country, I thought I could finally ask Alia to send me my monocular. Since I was little, I had always had some kind of monocular to help me look at objects at mid or far distances. Throughout my life, before my cornea became completely opacified in 2017, a good monocular was crucial for me, as it was the only way I would be able to read signs, see traffic lights or recognize any kind of object which I could not approach up to a close distance. In Missoula, I had received a really good monocular from the state's Blind and Low Vision Services. However, since it was a really delicate piece of lens craftsmanship, I had given up on the idea to take it with me to Africa. If any water had got into the instrument, it would have ruined its very sharp optics, and I knew it would be a matter of time that a downpour would catch us in Africa; hence it was an ill-fated choice to bring it with me. Furthermore, I had gone to Africa with Alia, thus I could always rely on her to help me read signs (or, at least, so I thought...). But now I was all on my own, and, as I was in the East Coast in a completely unfamiliar environment, I needed my monocular really badly. Before leaving Spain, I had not wanted to ask Alia to send it overseas, as I did not feel comfortable having it crossing the Atlantic Ocean; but now that it was a mere domestic shipment, it seemed much safer.                     

Alia wrote back explaining she would send the monocular; but she did not have money to pay for shipping. She therefore suggested that I transfer her the money. I could not help to think how stingy she was, that she would reject to spend a few bucks, but would prefer to go through the trouble of asking for a bank transfer. I looked up how much it was going to be and it did not exceed $7; clearly, nobody could reasonably argue to lack such a small amount of money and to be unable to take care of an expense that insignificant. . Years later, while reviewing the emails we exchanged during those weeks of Spring 2016, I noticed that, a few weeks earlier, when I asked Alia to look for our 2015 tax return, she told me that she could not access it, because her laptop was dead and she did not have money to buy a new battery. Clearly, those days it was a recurring theme for her to point out to me that she did not have money. Anyway, I just transferred her the $7 for shipping and subsequently emailed her the address, where she could send the monocular.            

   

It was then with great surprise that I saw the next day Alia's response completely furious about my flimsy $7 transfer. It turned out Alia was expecting me to take now the opportunity to transfer her the $1000-$1500 she had been asking for over the previous months, to pay off her credit card bill. Alia could not believe that after how much she had gone all out OF her way to help me, I would insist to refuse having a gesture of appreciation. But she would not stop there. Now she had her list of grievances finally ready. Now she was going to tell me how much I had taken advantage of her, how much she had sacrificed for me and how much she had suffered:  It turned out I was plain useless. It seems like I never really loved her, but only thought of her to use her as my servant and chauffeur. I had wanted to visit all these places, but since I cannot drive (because I do not see), I had used her to drive me around. I was cold and had never been attentive of her feelings: for example, she had shared with me the pain she felt, because she could sense that she really did not have friends; but my cold anser had only been that friends do not exist. She complained that I had disregarded her emotions, arguing she was only trying to manipulate me.

Alia's message was extremely hurtful. I think it is the kind of words that any disabled person always fears will have to hear one day. In fact, if you fear it, it is because, one way or another, you have already felt that stab before, so you are only left with the hope that it will not happen again or, at least, it will not come from the closest person in your life: that special soul, who means the world to you and you trust the most. 

Yet, necessarily, it was going to happen. The writing was clearly on the wall and I had seen it. I signed off my fate when, back in Cape Town, I accepted Alia's help to take me to the supermarket. What was I thinking?!! Just four  days  earlier Alia had told me that she was going to leave me precisely because she was sick of dragging me around the supermarkets. Who cared if she had begged me, with tears in her eyes, to please let her help me take me to the supermarket? Whatever with her if she had got mad two days earlier, because I had told her that she did not need to cook dinner for me! I have never felt cursed for having a disability; but there are certainly times where it really sucks to be disabled: no matter what you do, you will be dead wrong. Those times you really hate your disability and how easy it becomes for just about any jerk out there to hurt you to the deepest of the soul.

I often hear the complaint, whereby disabled people, for some silly pride or something, seem to have a problem asking for (sometimes even just accepting), the help they undoubtedly need. However, we obviously see it from a completely different perspective. Indeed, unfortunately disabled people require a lot of help and constantly need to ask somebody for assistance.  . We, therefore, unfortunately, have a lot of experience with that kind of situations and know fairly well how it usually goes. It is definitely true that the eagerness to help is a basic essence of human nature; we all love to help other people in need. Yet, it is also true that we eventually get worn out; sooner or later we start having some questions that, perhaps, the guy requires more assistance than what it is in our hands to provide, or he is starting to take advantage of or simply using us. The point here is not to make a judgement of whether or when this is right or wrong. Rather, as a disabled person you just know that, sooner or later, your helper  will run into those kind of questions; and, when that happens, it is rather unpleasing. Consequently, you just try to avoid it as much as possible. Of course, the whole matter is really complex. In some cases it is reasonable to think there is some pride involved; but it is also true that a disable person knows that it is only natural that it may take several attempts, before you become adept at resolving a task; so you need to persevere (take it from a disabled person with a Ph.D. in Brain Research; there are just three secrets for success: 1 - perseverance, 2 - perseverance and 3 - perseverance. Indeed, perseverance is the secret and key to everything). The general rule is that you try to depend on other people as little as possible. The fear is not only to eventually be dismissed. if you keep relying on others to do things for you, it is just a matter of time that they will eventually rub on your face all the help they have provided to you. For me the most obvious and recurring example of this has always been my strict inability to drive and, consequently, my persistent dependency on other people to give me rides. The relationship and balance of power between a passenger and his driver is very similar to what goes on between a guest and his host (particularly if it is for an extended stay): you always need to be very careful not to do or say anything that may displease or all the way annoy your host. It is so usually a bad idea to contradict him or her, regardless of how wrong 'the boss' may be. Not too long ago, during an argument with my brother-in-law, he alleged that, as many as 30 years ago, when I was still a teenage student in Madrid, my sister would drive me to school everyday. Fact of the matter is that, back then, my sister already had a full-time job as a flight attendant. Hence, even if she had very much wanted to help me with that, she would not have been able to drive me everyday to school. Still, it is truly remarkable how my brother-in-law would dig 30 years in the past trying to find something to rub over my face.

Similarly, on her pleadings for my Human Rights complaint hearing, the Montana Supreme Court attorney defending the Office of the Court Administrator's Self-Help Family Law Center, brought up everything she could think of (true or false) to argue all the help they had provided to me and how ungrateful I was that I had still filed a complaint against them. In fact, on as many as three different days in November and December 2018, I had gone to the Self-Help Center at the Missoula Justice Courthouse, asking for somebody to assist me writing down my answers on some legal forms. Unfortunately, Vincent (the staff member at the time), as friendly and kind as he was, he believed that he was not allowed to do it, since it could constitute legal advice. However, it turned out, not only there was nothing in the law against it; but, pursuant to ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), they had the legal obligation to provide those kinds of 'reasonable accommodations'. indeed, when Vincent finally found out about the procedure he had to follow, he was happy to help me. Hence, on the very day my dissolution Response was due (December 11th 2018), he spent 1-2 hours with me finishing filling out my form. However, as unfortunate as Vincent's misjudgement during the previous weeks may have been, it really screwed me over; so I filed a Human Rights complaint, explaining I had been denied the kind of reasonable disability accommodations which ADA entitles me to. Now, this happened at the Missoula Justice Courthouse, at the Self-Help Center dependent of the Montana Office of the Court Administrator, and you tell these "very honorable" judicial 'fine-farts' that they have made a mistake, which happens to be against the law... So, they started arguing that they had actually gone completely out of their way to help me: they had helped me over several days, patiently assisting me with my forms for hours on each day, often going beyond closing time... But I was this ungrateful jerk, who would use this desk in the office to take naps, would leave all my shit there during the lunch hour and would demand free legal advice from the staff. But, when they told me that they were not allowed to give legal advice, I got mad and filed this Human Rights complaint. It was then so hilarious when, on the very day of the complaint's hearing at the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH), they noticed that my dissolution Response (although it appeared oficially filed on December 21st 2018) had been signed by me, notarized by the Clerk Of Courts and submitted on the due date of December 11th 2018. That is, after December 11th 2018 it was over. Consequently, no assistance had been provided after that date. But they had also previously admitted that they only started assisting me on December 11, so that leaves December 11th as the only day where they helped me. In other words, all those stories that they had been rubbing over my face, whereby they had assisted me on several days, for hours each day, often going beyond closing time, turned out to be false! Still, you do not tell these "very honorable" judicial 'fine-farts' that they have made a mistake, which happens to be against the law. Consequently, in another all-so-typical, good old judicial rip-off, making use of their very sharp analytical and critical eye, OAH and the Montana Human Rights Commission concluded that there had been no wrong doing; because the Self-Help Center's witnesses' testimonies were really convincing (Vincent definitely seemed a very nice young fellow and the Hearing Officer could not imagine that he may have not wanted to help his friend), whereas I appeared angry and vengeful, and had just not been persuasive...

Nevertheless, it has always been clear to me, that people love to help and they will do it as much as they can. This is so much so, that I have had many times people thank me for allowing them to help me. And, although this is ultimately wrong (because giving me a hand is no privilege anybody should thank me for), I can still very well understand why they say so: it made them feel good to have the chance to help somebody. However, none of the above speaks against the fact that it is still important to be careful not to ask for too much help from somebody over a prolonged period. Unavoidably, you are somehow contracting some debt with that person, and if you ever say or do something that is not particularly nice, he will easily feel betrayed; it turns out, after all, you do not quite appreciate all what was done for you. 

Now, this becomes really tricky when it comes to the relationship with your wife. There were many times where Alia expressed her disappointment and complaint, that I would not fully trust her and seek her help. She loved me and she truly wanted to help me. Of course she also wanted me to love her; but if I kept skirting around the hand she was offering, that meant somehow I did not fully trust her and, therefore, my love was not as complete as she needed. That left me in a rather complicated position: As much as I understood Alia's feelings, I knew that the reasoning was not correct, but there was no good way to rebut it. I could have explained it and she would have been able to understand it; however, it had been complex enough, that it would not have really changed the way she felt. Consequently, I limited myself to argue that I was actually able and had my own system to do almost everything by myself, and, though it may not be obvious to other people's eyes, I really believed it worked better for me if I followed the system I had developed and refined over the years, than if, all of a sudden, did it using somebody else's assistance. For example, if Alia expressed her disappointment because I would not want to take her hand to guide me through a hike after dark, I would explain that I really thought it would work better for me to keep both of my hands free, so that I could better use them to find my way; I had my own system to do it. Alia understood it; but she still wished I would just take her help.

Now, needless to say, as much as I may hate it, there are still certain tasks or problems which there is simply no way I am able to perform or resolve all by myself. The most recurring and obvious of these is driving. When we traveled across Mexico and Central America in the fall of 2010, we backpacked resorting on buses and sometimes even hitch-hiked to go from one place to another. Then, when we went to Spain, we eventually started traveling around Southern Spain and Portugal following the same approach. However, in Southwestern Europe hitch-hiking simply does not work and the Portuguese bus system is not that good; we, therefore, frequently found ourselves very limited in the places that we could visit. So, as we got into plans about spending the next year traveling all over Europe, I had the idea to buy a second-hand car, to turn things easier on us and make the whole experience more enjoyable. Obviously, all driving would be on Alia; I was just not going to be able to help with that. The basic fact did not require much explanation, but it was not a problem: Alia made it clear that she did not mind to drive; in fact, she liked driving. On the other hand, if I had otherwised refused to go along with the idea of traveling by car, just because I would not be the driver; I am pretty sure that Alia's parents would have been quick to protest that I was keeping us from the convenience and comfort that a car would provide, just because I could not see Alia in a position of power. However, all things said, that was really never a problem between Alia and me. Although, every now and then, there were a few times where Alia eventually gave herself some airs for her good and hard work driving, she also insisted that she actually enjoyed it.                            

It was so that it really hurt me when, all of a sudden, she started pointing fingers at me, accusing me of having been using her as my servant and chauffeur. On top of hating myself for having accepted back in Cape Town her help taking me to the supermarket, I could also still remember all those times where she complained, that I would not trust her enough to accept her help, and I had to struggle to find some good explanation to placate and comfort her. I could not believe she could be so mean. Fact of the matter is, that all of my life I have always been extraordinarily jealous of my independence and freedom, and, already as a child, I have never wanted to depend on anybody for anything. Both of my parents left their homes very early in their lives, and they were of the opinion that it had helped them mature. They agreed it would help their teenage kids to build their character to spend a couple of months away from home. However, while they insisted to my older sisters that it was for their own good to make that effort; given my disability, they considered I required tighter protection. Consequently, when it came to me, they determined I should stay at home with them under their watch. But, the reasoning whereby it would help me build my character to stay some time away from home, still made a lot of sense to me. Hence, I told my parents I did not want to miss out on that experience. My mother then talked to my teacher in school and they found me a host family in Switzerland. I must have been barely 13 years old when I spent some wonderful summer time with the lovely Hiltebrand family in Schaffhausen. Years later, after I finished my undergraduate degree, I kept applying for student research grants abroad, which would give me the opportunity to live all by myself in a different country. My perseverance led me to be awarded a grant to pursue a doctoral degree in the U.S.. However, at that time, after much struggling, I had finally been able to get a really good job at AT&T Bell Labs in Madrid. My father adviced me, I should not give up the security and stability of my job at AT&T, but I wanted to fly away and pursue my dreams; and fly I did. Certainly, living in Los Angeles outside of my parents protection and care became quite a challenge: suddenly I no longer had my mother cook and serve that wonderful, diverse, healthy, home-made food anymore. Similarly, I had to do my laundry, shopping, dishes, cleaning, etc. But there was not really any reason why I could not do any of that by myself. During the first weeks in Los Angeles, I kept going to the many cafeterias and fast food places in and around campus, but I soon got tired. The food was simply no match to my mother's. I therefore resolved to pick up the phone and ask my mother for some cooking instructions, tips and a number of her recipes. After all I had always wanted to learn to cook my own food. I always considered that it would constitute an asset to acquire such a skill. I remember both Raghav and Charles, my roommates at the time, were really impressed waching how much effort I would put in all of my cooking projects. Indeed, at first it was just subsistence cooking, but soon I became more ambitious and started trying with more sophisticated dishes like shepherd's pie, stuffed eggplant or paella. I wanted to eat good and I wanted to get good at it. It slowly became a distraction from all the stress at school. Whenever I had again some time (after an exam or turning in a homework assignment), I locked myself in the kitchen and spent the entire afternoon preparing some dish. I did not even like to take shortcuts buying pre-made ingredients like dough or tomato sauce, since the home-made stuff is generally much better and healthier. As Raghav spent the afternoon watching Saturday's football game, he would incredulously look towards me, completely fascinated with the amazing food that surely I was fixing for myself. He would then finally say: "I want my share". At first I was not sure what he meant. His Indian accent and my limited English skills made me think he was looking for "his chair", so I would ignore him. But he would insist and finally make it clear that he wanted a bite of my food. Given how much work I was putting on it, it sure needed to be delicious. In comparison, he would always only fix something quick for himself and it would therefore never be anything special. I did not mind to share with him some of my food; but, after I had spent so much time on it, I did not want to see half of the end result of my work disappear in his mouth, without any other compensation. So, I would tell him that I would give him some of my food; but, then, I also would want some of his. Raghav did not understand why I would have any interest on his food; but he did not have any problem sharing it with me. The guy was smart though; he had some little trick up his sleeve, whereby I would not like his food and would soon lose any interest in it anyway: since he was Indian, he would add a lot of spice and it would be freaking hot. However, eventually I would also develop my own secret weapon: since he was Hindu, he did not eat meat.

Like I would see years later in Alia, the underlying force was my desire and ambition to grow: I wanted to become a stronger and better person. Following Descartes' approach, if there was anything that was clear to me, it was that I felt a deep aspiration to be loved; particularly by a girl: it is the most natural drive. I was not born with a dream or desire to earn a ph.D., become an astronaut, one day buy the most amazing car or climb Mt. Everest (obviously, I had no clue of any of that at the time of my birth). If I had a dream, it was to one day win over the love of a woman. However, I had never had a stable relationship with any girlfriend. Like any other teenager, I thought of hundred different ways that I might improve my looks and, therefore, become more attractive. But, I always believed that my visual disability was a serious handicap in order to win the interest of a woman. I have come to understand that women also very much care about physical appearance and, particularly in their teenage years, they feel a deep need to be passionately loved by their man; but, then, they soon realize that" "all men are the same" and become disenchanted. In any case, I have always thought that women are more sensible or pragmatic, when it comes to choosing a male partner. For example, right or wrong, I believe, for a woman, her man's ability to provide for her security and financial stability is generally more of a factor than for a man. Consequently, it was only reasonable that my disability would be a concern for any girl; whether I liked it or not, I would better reckon with that handicap. It so had always been very clear to me, that, if my point of view was that my wife would have to serve me and provide for my needs, I would never have any chance to keep the interest of any woman. It only made sense to me that, if I wanted to win over the love of a woman, I would better focus on what is that I could do for her to be happy, than what is that she could do for me to be happy.

Fact of the matter is that Alia proved my reasoning correct. She always said that one of the main reasons why she fell in love with me was my ability to take care of myself and how that lead her to conclude that I would be able to help her achieve her dreams. For example, in her statements to Immigration, she explained that cooking together is how we fell in love. All things said, however, we never really cooked much together. I would rather say, Alia enjoyed watching me fix dinner and, most of all, loved to have me fixed dinner for her. But, if we ever worked together, she would soon get frustrated with my perfectionism. In all honesty, there are good reasons for anybody to get frustrated with my perfectionism. In fact, the problem was not really the high level of detail of my work, as she would certainly appreciate that I did not mind to put as much effort as needed, in order to accomplish the best and most tasty result possible; but it became impractical to assume the amount of time that it took me to finish anything. It was easy to know what was the time that I had started, but it was impossible to figure out when I would be done. Very often Alia's usual dinner time arrived, and I was still halfways through. That was not a problem for me, since I was used to my Spanish late-night schedule; but Alia would be starving. She would then grab some food for herself. In addition, Alia herself enjoyed, as she would say it, "to cook for us". During the months we stayed in Spain with my family in 2011, Alia liked to watch my mother or my sister, as they prepared some recipe which was new to her. Alia loved to learn new skills and cooking was one of her favorites. In fact, as we then spent more than a year traveling all over Europe, we had an excellent opportunity to discover many fascinating international dishes. Alia prepared a whole Excel file with all those recipes and, when she finally returned home, she could not wait to get her hands on them and try them out. During her first weeks back in Missoula, she would enjoy cooking and show off her new skills to Robyn and whoever would want to render her some visit. Then, when I finally arrived back in November, she loved to cook for us. Still, during 2013, as Alia was busy with her last semester in college and later her work at the BLM, while I was struggling to find some job, I did a fair amount of the cooking. However, in 2014, when I told Alia that I had been awarded my first AI freelance project and the money I was going to be paid for it, she indicated that I should focus on it and make that money. Alia explained she did not want to go back to her BLM job of the year before; there was too much drama. She was really enjoying the work as a seamstress that she had begun on her own a few months earlier. She still had a limited workload; but that was OK, since it would allow her to take care of the house chores, while I focus on making money for our Africa journey. Fortunately or unfortunately, over the following months I became increasingly successful, but also busier, with more and more projects, which offer a higher pay, but also shrank my free time to a minimum. During that time Alia basically did all the cooking. If she says now that I used her as my servant, this is what she is talking about; this is where it comes from. In reality, however, it was never an issue. Alia never minded to cook for us for two big reasons: On one hand, Alia's problem was not that she was busy and fixing dinner kept her from taking care of more pressing matters. On the other hand, Alia really enjoyed cooking.

Indeed, Alia was also able, little by little, to increase the amount of work that she was getting; but she always kept it at a reasonable level, since she never even wanted to get really stressed about it. The purpose was never to make a lot of money, but to enjoy it. In fact, she had started sewing custom wedding dresses, but brides are not easy to deal with; let alone to please. So, after a few projects, she shifted her attention towards other ideas; it was less profitable, but also less stressful. With our journey in mind, she built quite some outdoor gear that we would later use in Africa. She sewed a couple of sleeping bags, a tent and several lightweight rain jackets. The outdoor gear market is obviously extremely competetive, but the silnylon rain shells were an original enough concept, that we were able to successfully put them for sale on eBay, together with the stuff sacks that we had already been selling over the previous months. It, however, took some time before they would pick up, so Alia looked around for more ideas to stay busy with. She then got really creative: she started sewing some really cute, little toy figures; but our favorites were definitely "The Friends". "the Friends" were some very cool, little pillows, which made also for some adorable stuffed animals. For each of many different animals (monkey, bear, elephant, rabbit, tiger, etc.), Alia sewed several of these "Friends". We therefore ended up with a real crowd of "Friends". As lovely as each of them was, since it was completely unrealistic to give a unique name to each of them, we decided to collectively call them "Friends". Moreover, they referred to Alia as their Creator, since she had brought them to life. Alia, therefore, was supposed to love each of them; but it was then so sad that she had to go sell them. After all, that had been the purpose in the first place. In fact, during the summer, Alia would go to the farmer's market in town to sell her art, and then come back home in the afternoon missing some of our friends. That is when, in order to console ourselves and warm back our hearts, we would start singing Queen's "Friends would be friends" song. There was no reason to be sad for our missing friends; because they would always be our friends and they would be now lighting up the spirit of a happy child.

Alia never complained about it, but if I think about it now, I do not believe those days at the market were really an enjoyable experience for her. I was one day with her at some special fair at the Missoula Fort. Actually, that was probably the worst occasion: We spent there the entire day; but she was not able to sell anything at all. I do not think, however, that the disappointment she certainly must have felt, could be explained money-wise. It seems to me that what must have been really disheartening for her is the total unbalance between the amount of energies and enthusiasm that she put, an the little appreciation she received. Alia had indeed spent many hours building her art; she had done so enthusiastically. She then got everything ready for the market and sat there, watching people pass by, for some more hours. Yet, from the outcome, it had been easy for anybody to conclude that nobody care much about it. In reality it was not quite so. The children absolutely loved her art; but they would obviously not have the money to buy any of it. They would stand there completely enamored and fascinated with Alia's cuties, staring at them, begging for them with their eyes. They would then point their finger to their favorite of all and look towards their parents, hoping to get their attention and have them concede the little fancy. But, understandably, the parents could not just buy everything that the kid wanted. There was a lot of very cute stuff at the market, and the kid probably had already fallen in love with many other toys around. Mom could only buy a few, at the most; so the poor child had to choose. It was then only natural that many times it would finally fell for some other toy from somebody else. Much more than the money, I know that just the sight of the little child sadly walking away, giving up on Alia's lovely  cutie, must have felt like a pinch in her heart. I am sure that, if the kid really liked it, Alia had just loved to give it away, just to see a smile on the child's face. Although she knew she was not supposed to do something like that, she still could not resist doing it every now and then.

If I think about it now, it is amazing and admirable how hard Alia tried to stay motivated those months of 2014, how much energies she put to succeed in her marriage; because the truth is that she was bored. She was anxious to go to Africa, but I kept putting it off. She was probably also a bit frustrated at me, at least, at times. She did not want to express it openly, because she loved me and I think she also understood I was working hard and I was doing it for us; but, unavoidably, she was not having a good time. Somehow, similar thoughts were going through my mind: I was not having a particularly good time either, spending so many hours in front of the computer; but, at least, I was finding comfort believing that, with my good work, I was sowing the seeds of a splendorous near future. Alia's discontent only really surfaced months later, shortly before finally leaving Montana for Africa. We had gone for a walk around town. It was cold and the streets were covered in snow. We were surrounded by the quiet and beautiful scenery of the all-so-typical little, sleepy Montanan town in the middle of white winter. The fresh air of the late morning felt good on our skins and spirited our souls. Alia was really excited; she could not believe it was true: we were finally leaving for Africa! But, yes indeed, we even had already booked our flights. It was actually difficult to imagine that we would soon exchange all that white, ice-cold landscape, for the warm sands of Africa. I am pretty sure there must have been times where she had feared that it would never quite happen; that I would keep setting it back, forever making up excuses; until she would finally give it up or I would one day come out saying we should just knock it off altogether. But she had trusted us; all along she had been strong and remained faithful, and she had triumphed. Now she could feel happy and take pride for her efforts making it through the previous months. We both had good reasons to feel proud for the good work done. Everything tastes so much better, if it required a big effort to accomplish. Still, Alia rightfully thought that now it was a good time to note that those had not been enjoyable days for her, she regretted that we had not shared more time and play more together, and she really hoped that we avoid making a habbit of it in the future. I told her that I totally agreed with her. I shared her feelings: the previous months had not been enjoyable times for me either, as they had been dominated by a strong unbalance between work and leisure, and I have always defended the life principle that we work to live, rather than to live to work. Yet, if I had renounce to this basic philosophy, it had only been temporarily, as I thought I should grasp the opportunity, so that we can then live our journey to the fullest. After all, if we had not played much together over the last months, we would nothing but play for the following many months. I wanted her to rest assured that I had not changed my views about life, and I really would not like the last months to become a constant for the rest of it, after we return  from Africa and settle down. My ideals were the same they had always been and I continue dreaming with building a family, having many happy children and enjoying our lives together to the fullest.

We had indeed many beautiful dreams. The future laid ahead and we were ready to work as hard as needed to accomplish them. It had never been easy for us. From the very beginning, it seemed like all odds were against us: Alia's parents, my eyes, Immigration... But we had each other, we believed in each other and we fought for our love. We had made it, we touched the sky. It then makes me cry to think that we were ultimately defeated and everything ended up crashing down. It is so sad, it reminds me to Arthur Hiller's 1970 movie: "Love Story", or Bobby Goldsboro's 1968 song: "Honey"; if it only had been that bad. It is easy to see how my life has been shattered, but it went much worse for Alia. It breaks my heart to think that after all what she fought for me, she finally succumbed and I was not able to help her. After all what she had fought for her dreams, she finally ended up being captured, subdued and turned into a 30-year old zombie child for her sick mother's amusement. Dejectedly, Alia's dreams will never become a reality. It is heartbreaking when life brings us down to a tragic end. It is, however, much worse if another individual turns out to stand behind such an evil plan. Finally, it is terrifying to accept that the system actually decides to support it, execute it and certify it.

I did not know for a long time, but a couple of years ago my mother told me that Alia had written to her a letter in Fall 2014. In that letter Alia shared with my mother the struggles and stress she was going through in 2014, as she anxiously waited for me to once and forever wrap up and get ready to leave. As a matter of fact, Alia was apologizing to my mother for our failure to leave the U.S. on a timely manner. Alia expressed her embarrassment, as everybody was expecting us to depart the previous December, but one year had passed and we were still home. She pointed out how it seemed like I always struggle getting things ready. Those months she kept trying hard to fill her days doing some work around the house; but it was difficult. She then pointingly commented on how it turns out life is not always perfect: on the surface she was happy, but she was rather stressed inside. Yet, she told my mother not to worry for her: In reality, she was happy with me in Montana; but she was frustrated and wanted to leave.

"Hola Maria,

Que tal estas? Espero que estas feliz y todo esta bien en Zubiri. Aqui estan unas fotos para ti. Espero que te gusta. Lo siento, pero todavia no sabemos cuando salir por Europa. Me siento muy mal porque estamos en EEUU todavia. Tengo mucho estres porque estoy esperando para Javier a ser listo. Estoy esperando por muchisimo tiempo... Creo es simpre dificil para Javier ha terminar con las preparaciones. Es un año desde que nos pensamos que dejaremos. La verdad es que estoy bastante avergonzado. Muchisima gente piensa que salimos el ultimo diciembre, pero no.

Yo intento con fuerza ha llenar mis días con trabajar de casa, pero es difícil. Al final la vida no está siempre perfecta. Estoy feliz en él superficie, pero internamente estoy bastante estrésada. No te preocupes para mi. La verdad que estoy feliz con Javi aqui. Solamente estoy frustrado y quiero salir.

Un abrazo y un beso

Ser buena

Alia"

Indeed, what Alia explained in that letter to my mother, coincides with what I could observe during those months in Montana with her. Friends and family kept asking her when were we finally going to leave and she was embarrassed to find herself unable to give an answer. But Alia's main problem was that she had too much time in her hands and I was not offering enough help filling it. Certainly it was not that we stopped doing things together. In fact, as I told Alia in my very long email of 2017, we actually did a lot of stuff together:

"We enjoyed truly wonderful nights watching the most beautiful movies (Cinema Paradisso, 1 Franco 14 Pesetas, Al Sur de Granada, Bienvenido Mr. Marshall, Lawrence of Arabia, JFK, etc.). Alia, do you remember you weeping with "A Beautiful Life"? I understand we did not watched as much TV as you had wanted; but I really do not enjoy watching TV that much. Instead we did, Alia, a lot of fun stuff and enjoyed truly beautiful times together: we went winter-camping in Bass Lake. We spent the whole 4th of July weekend in Glacier. We went camping and hiking several other times. We went to Alberta and a couple of other times to Flathead Valley. We went to the water park and the labyrinth. I joined you at that street market you participated hoping to sell some 'friends' (although finally they all ended up coming back home with Creator). We went jogging together numerous times, as we also often went for a walk. We went to teach the chicks how to drink and, later, helped building the chicken coop. Then, we went many, many times to the cabin and checked on 'the Geralds'. We went tobogganing multiple times as well. We went to the fair both years. We went hunting to the Lammers, we went rafting with Wakimoto, we went huckleberry picking, We went to Cameron's wedding. Each year we went to cut our own christmas tree. Then you also took me to see the christmas lights. We were the stars at the 'Dia de los Muertos' parade with your civil-war gown and my torero costume. The next year we championed again with the Don Quijote and Sancho Panza costumes you had so skillfully made. We also  stargazed with Andrejka. We hosted on CouchSurfing and had friends over many, many times We also went to many birthday parties."  

Actually, I believe what Alia missed was just a little time together every night. I guess in a couple's life there are these little activities that you normally do on a daily basis; like, for example, watching TV or some movie for a couple of hours. However, I am not quite interested in TV and I really did not care that much for the kind of children's movies which Alia enjoyed. All things said, Alia loved any kind of movies. Alia, adorable like a child, had a truly vivid imagination and felt a passion for stories. She loved watching stories, listening to stories and reading stories; so, in that sense, it was never going to be an issue to find something that she would enjoy. After all, probably the main point was just to share some time together and cuddle.     

I think the main problem was that I kept dragging my feet. We watched movies, we went jogging and for walks together many times; but Alia always needed to ask for it. Alia kept hoping that we would establish some kind of routine, whereby we would, for example, go for a walk, at least, every weekend, and for a little jog on a daily basis; but, although that definitely was not much to ask for and I would actually enjoy doing so, she then always needed to drag me away from my desk and out of the house. Indeed, I kept procastinating and making excuses, so, naturally, Alia slowly grew disenchanted. After all, the actual point was not the activity itself, but just to share some little time together. Consequently, if I continued acting as it was a sacrifice, and it always felt to her like a concession; it should not come to a surprise to me that it was going to kill all the joy and magic of the moment, which was the whole point and what she was actually looking for in the first place.    

Well, the best that I can say in my defense is that the sin bore its own punishment, and I was well aware of it. Indeed, if I kept dragging my feet to share more time with Alia, it certainly was not because I thought that I was not going to enjoy it or because my work felt more interesting; but just because I wanted, perhaps obsessively, to make progress on my work. Time management has, in fact, always been a fundamental problem in my life. I have long believed that, since it always takes me so much more time to perform and complete any task, I end up obsessed trying to use every little minute around the clock, to progress a bit further in my principal job for the day. Given that I had lived aloned for most of my adult life, that normally only meant to scrape some time from my hobbies. However, once I was living with Alia, it meant to take it from the time I would otherwise share with her.

I certainly regret it, since Alia was really a person enjoyable to be with. Alia was an intelligent person and had a very pleasant conversation. She was able to both, listen and offer insightful and thoughtful remarks. Furthermore, Alia and I actually shared many interests. I guess due to my visual impairment, I have never quite found much fun in the typical 'go out and party- kind of entertainment. Instead, I have always preferred to play; like performing some outdooer activity or play some game. I am afraid I have always been rather childish in that sense; because, otherwise, my classmates' main form of entertainment was to go out to a bar or disco, and hope to pick up a girl. I was certainly interested in the 'finding a girl to be with' part. But, given my visual impairment, the prospect of standing completely lost in a very dark and noisy place for several hours, seemed rather absurd to me. The incredibly loud music would never allow me to hear anything anybody was say (assuming, in such a context, anybody would ever try to say something meaningful). Worst of all, I would never be able to even distinguish anybody around me; let alone try to find an attractive girl to start flirting with... I actually attempted it several times; but it was just not the thing for me. I would rather much prefer to play some game with some friends at some home; if only my classmates would ever care for that kind of childish stuff.

It then was a true stroke of luck that the one girl who eventually would fall in love with me at first sight, turned out to be as playful as Alia. Indeed, Alia loved games. Like a dream come true, she would never grow tired of playing games. She was actually really competitive and hated to lose, to the point that she would make up new rules, so that she could win. However, I guess the same can be said about me. We definitely always had a great time. It is therefore unforgivable that I did not avail myself of my good luck to the fullest.

Without a doubt, however, the biggest blessing was her love. It never really matter what exactly we did together; Alia's love and desire to be with me is what made the moment magical. We all love to be loved, especially by that one person that we love. It was true that Alia needed a lot of love; but she also had a lot of love to give. Alia was equally as loving as she was lovable; she would certainly take all the love that you could give her, but she would also give you all the love that you could take. If only to feel her love for me, that is why it was so enjoyable to be close to her.         

If I think about it, I would say that the most beautiful memories of our times together were the days where she would read some book for us. Our first book was Richard Adam's "Watership Down": a lovely story about the adventures of a group of rabitts in search of a new home. Alia had read this book when she was little, and she totally loved it. When she fell in love with me in early 2010, her first desire was to share it with me. I will also forever remember the afternoons in Madrid in Spring 2011, where we would sit at my sister's apartment's spacious terrace and she would read "The Hobbit" for us over some coffee. It was again Alia who came up with the idea. In comparison with the quick and light American lunch, the custom in Spain is to have a strong, hearty mid-day lunch, composed of an entree, a second, main course and a dessert. Afterwards, good, old Spanish tradition recommends to take some time to relax and digest during "sobremesa". Here is where you will enjoy some conversation with your party, while you have some coffee or tea. Another option is to take a quick , refreshing nap (the all so famous good, old "siesta"). Unfortunately, the stresses and hectic schedules of modern life have ruined these wonderful habbits; however, since Alia and I were in Spring 2011 in anything but a work schedule, she suggested we enjoy "sobremesa" reading The Hobbit, while we had some coffee. That so naturally became our little, delightful habbit for the early afternoons. It was one of those routines Alia wanted to establish to prevent our love from winding down. I think it was probably the most lovely routine I have ever had in my life. In fact, Alia told me several times she hoped to continue that custom the day we have children. She would love to unite the entire family around a table and read some book for all of us on a regular basis. She would then inquisitorially fixate her eyes on me to make sure I will stay on board and be part of it. I would respond to her challenge explaining that I actually liked the idea very much and assured her that I would be happy to participate. I was absolutely sincere; I really believe it was an excellent idea. I think that holding that kind of covens would help keep the family united and maintain the communication among all of us strong and fluent. It seems to me that the trust a child feels for its parents is very important, particularly during early teenage years, to keep it strong against bad, external influences. But, dejectedly, neither Alia nor I will ever form any such big family and there will never again be any more lovely reading hours for Alia and me. After 'The Hobbit' we started reading 'The Lord Of The Rings', but we never quite got near finishing it. Now I wish we had shared more time together and I had been able to enjoy those magical moments some more. Just a few days before breaking up with me, I found Alia very busy reading some book Gary had given her. All of a sudden, she was no longer interested in sharing it with me. I immediately realized something was very wrong. Indeed, the moment she stopped caring to read for us, marked the end of her love. I cannot express with words how much I regret I will never again live those wonderful times. Needless to say, the magic was not in the books themselves, but in Alia's love. I kept thinking I had my whole life to enjoy it; so there was no need to try to gulp it all down all at once. I believed, reasonably enough, there were several other issues I also needed to take care of and required my time as well. I guess if we had never come across Gary I would have all along been right, and I would now be lecturing and elaborating on my judicious and insightful reasoning. However, since we did come across Gary, I was dead wrong and I will forever regret that I did not squeeze all the juice out of the good times while they lasted.

      

Indeed, if I had known that I was about to lose Alia, I would most definitely have made sure to enjoy those wonderful, last moments to the fullest. However, the truth is that there is no way that I could have reasonably suspected that our love was about to end. In May 2016 Alia started arguing some hint of complaint that I had neglected her during the period of 2013 and 2014 that we were in Montana. Later, in early 2017, she finally listed it as one of many reasons why she had left me. I just cannot see any way to give any credibility to any such claim. For one thing, it does not make any sense that she had needed to wait to fall in love with Gary to realize that she had been neglected two years earlier. As a matter of fact, even after falling in love with Gary, it still took her several months to reach such conclusion. I think there is a difference between being bored and being depressed, and, while it was my own perception during 2014, that she kept trying hard to stay busy, I do not believe anybody got the impression that she was depressed. In fact, that is not even what she complained about in her letter to my mother. As the letter shows, she felt quite some confidence with my mother; to the extent that she did not fall shy from critisizing me. Yet, she does not make any mention of any depression; but complains instead about being stressed and frustrated. I guess my conduct in 2014 was in accordance to what I have always believed: I have always prioritize what I thought was best in the long turn. I have therefore always been ready to sacrifice having some fun today, if I reckoned that would allow a bigger reward in the long run. Obviously, if Alia had been on the verge of a break down, it would not have made any sense to ignore her and remain stuck thinking about the future. But the worst that I can say about those months is that Alia was watching a lot of series. In that sense, cooking actually became a good entertainment. Every evening, when she started feeling hungry, she would come to the kitchen with her laptop and begin fixing dinner, as she continued watching some show. Cooking was therefore never any kind of chore that she did unwillingly or kept her from doing anything more appealing. Still, there were times where Alia got frustrated and decided to ask me to help with something and, for example, fix some salad for us. I need to admit, I never understood what was the logic behind such a request. It has always appeared to me that, if she was bored and she complained that I was always busy with work and never allowed enough time for us, it would have been a much better use of my little spare time to, for example, go for a walk together, than fixing a salad for dinner. The reasons for my discontent were then only confirmed, when just some weeks before our departure Alia got the idea to start training Robyn's cat, Jackie. Soon she was researching online on cat training techniques, buying stuff to build hurdles and shooting videos of her cat training sessions with Jackie. Then, at the same time that she was complaining that I was a workaholic and she was spending hours training cats, she felt that she needed to have me fix salads, because it was not reasonable that she did all the work. It, however, never quite seemed to me a good idea to argue about it; so I remained shut up and just took care of the salad, whenever she so requested.     

My reasoning became even more obvious during the months we stay in Madrid in the spring of 2015. In Madrid Alia really struggle to find something to be occupied with. She, for example, could not do her sewing anymore, which is what had filled most of her days in the previous months in Montana. So she got the idea to start knitting, but there was not going to be much use for Wool clothes in Africa.  So, following her natural drive to be of help and contribute, she ended up focusing on cooking. Cooking then became, even more than in Montana during the months before, Alia’s main form of entertainment in Madrid. Taking advantage of all the time she had available, Alia enjoyed coming up with culinary projects, trying out new recipes or practicing old ones, hoping to become a real pro on them. As a matter of fact, it had been quite a while that Alia had started voicing an idea, that had been going through her mind for a long time already. It turns out, over the previous few years the thought of one day opening a restaurant had been slowly evolving in her head. Since the very beginning, our relationship had circled quite a bit around food. Cooking played a major part on how Alia fell in love with me. I believe to remember that the only real gift from Alia's side for our very modest wedding was a gift card for The Silk Road restaurant. Alia loved the place: we chose a selection of samples of several different dishes and we loved all of them. The Silk Road featured a whole array of dishes from all over the world, which were renewed on a periodic basis. The idea eventually fitted very nicely with all the travels we had done throughout our marriage. We had learned and gathered such an amazing collection of truly fascinating recipes from all around the globe,that Alia started slowly developing the idea that, hopefully, one day we could open a restaurant where we would put all that knowledge into practice and offer all those exquisite dishes. Alia felt a passion for learning from different cultures and anything that would allow her to acquire new knowledge and grow. She even really enjoyed going grocery shopping to Madrid’s ubiquitous small old-world-style food markets: carniceria, pescaderia, panaderia, etc. This is so much so that she even shot a video, where she proudly explained to all her Montanan friends and relatives how grocery shopping is done in the old world.

At the end of the day, Alia’s aspiration was to find a way to contribute. However, Alia’s limited Spanish proficiency constrained her ability to help with most of the issues we had to resolve in Madrid: navigating the Spanish bureaucracy to get our Africa vaccinations, applying for Alia’s Spanish residency, inquire about car parts, etc. Unfortunately, I then ended up swamped with all those tasks, while Alia had a lot of free time in her hands. She therefore reacted taking over anything else she could help with; where food was the most obvious of them. Breakfast, for example, had always been each own’s responsibility, while we were in Montana. Alia liked her American breakfast with eggs, bacon and coffee, whereas I preferred a whole assortment of fruits. My problem was that it took me every day a minimum of two hours to fix my morning fruit festival… Consequently, if I ever got up in Madrid and made any attempt to begin preparing my breakfast, Alia complained she wanted to do that for us; she insisted she would serve our breakfast. That would save me two hours, which I could then employ to make some progress with my assigned chores; while Alia, otherwise, did not have much else to do for the day.  In fact, during the months we were in Madrid, Alia spent endless hours on Facebook, watching shows, randomly surfing the internet, etc. I remember seeing her sitting the entire afternoon in the living room in front of her computer, with the earphones on, doing God knows what. It is very sad to think about: she must have felt really bored. I was concerned for her. I knew I should not allow much time to pass without doing something together. However, if I have to say everything, in all honesty I would need to admit that I also felt at times a bit frustrated: I was so busy and she was barely doing anything. It began to appear to me that her Spanish was good enough, that she could do something more. My bad demon was particularly monotonous about it. But, on the other hand, my good demon did not quite understand what was the point to now start bitching about Alia. She had more than proven endless times that she was a hardworking person. If she was now doing less work, other times would come where she would do more. Fortunately, I never said anything to Alia, because, indeed, it did not make any sense. All what I ever did was to tell her that I thought she would actually be better able to explain to the car-parts store, what exact parts we needed for our Land Rover; her Spanish language limitations would not be any impediment for that purpose.  Alia then so started helping with that task. It was a good idea, since the Land Rover parts specialist, Chris, turned out to be a Brit! 

It would, however, become quite an irony when one year later Alia would complained, that she had to do everything and I never offered any help; but I had only used her as my servant and my chauffeur. At that time, I made sure to remind her that, just one year earlier, it had been the other way around: I had to work on everything and she was barely doing anything. In fact, she had been so bored, that she had started training Robyn's cat, looking for ways to fill her time. Yet, she had been still asking me to fix the salad; at the same time that she was complaining that I was workaholic.

The whole argument, however, was fake: Alia was in love with Gary and that was everything that matter to her. She was just talking in the most typical adolescent fashion: they say whatever, for as long as necessary, until Mom gives up and they get their way.

But, as much as Alia’s reproach, whereby I had used her as my chauffeur and servant, had hurt me, what really caught flames in my mind was what was building up into her next main complaint: I had neglected her and never quite loved her enough. She had been depressed and when she told me, I discarded her, arguing she was only looking for attention. A manipulative lie like that was much more than what I could take. Now I was mad. Alia had never ever told me that she was depressed and I had never discarded her like that. What Alia had shared with me quite a few times was her lament, whereby she felt she did not have any friends. I had never known how to answer to that or what was what she expected me to say in response. It had always seemed to me there was no good answer to such a cry. On the other hand, however, if I had ever wanted to hurt her; undoubtedly, now I had a very obvious and effective way to do it: if she did not have any friends, either there was something wrong with her or there was something wrong with everybody else. Since the hypothesis that there was something wrong with everybody was difficult to sustain, the conclusion would become straightforward: there was something wrong with her. However, I had never wanted to hurt Alia. So I had finally given her the best answer I could think of: ‘true friends’ do not really exist or nobody really has ‘true friends’. I believed it was a really good answer, since it took the blame away from Alia, while it was still sincere. I was actually quite proud of it; but she never found it satisfactory; it was so cold and cynical.

Now, Alia’s lack of true friends was not her only cry. She also used to tell me she “hated herself”. For that one I definitely did not think there was any kind of response. Actually,  I did not know what is that she expected me to reply her with. In a way, it reminded me to something my father used to say when we were children: without much reason he would start bitching about life, complaining about this awful world and how he would be glad to commit suicide. As a matter of fact, he had told us how, as a little child, whenever he felt like going to the movies, he would approach his grandma and let her know that he was feeling very depressed and was having suicidal thoughts. His grandma would then freak out, try to comfort him and give him some pocket money to go watch some movie and spirit up. My father would also tell us how he thought he had always been such a failure; considering the criticism he had heard about himself, he had to conclude he had been a bad father, a bad husband, a bad brother, a bad son, etc. Now, as Alia kept explaining to me how much she hated herself, eventually I gave way to voice my inability to understand what was her point to constantly remind me of her self-loathing feelings. I really did not know what was what she expected me to say in response, and I really did not seem able to find any meaningful words, which could be satisfactory to her or comfort her in any way. Alia had been very disappointed with my insensitive response; she was just trying to get some understanding. However, from my point of view, even if she had genuinely felt that she was just looking for some simpathy, it seemed to me there was also, albeit perhaps unconsciously, a manipulative component in her words.        

Alia had learned from Robyn that she only needed to be a bitch in order to accomplish anything. However, she was able to realize that acting following such a scheme, was slowly hurting the relationship with the person from whom she was snatching those concessions; in the case of her marriage, that person was obviously me. Given that Alia was a very affectionate woman, she did not want that to happen. She enjoyed the spoils of war; but she feared the resentment said war was going to produce. I had wished that Alia's understanding of the undesired, hefty price tag her fancies were now actually coming with, would have dissuade her from resorting on such kind of schemes. However, Alia was also an ambitious girl and wanted it all. She wanted to have her cake and eat it. It was then very suiting to set her consciousness to look away and convince herself that she could not help it; but, as much as she hated it, it was like some evil force was driving her to act as a bitch. For Goethe's Faust it should have been less painful to think that the Devil had just so taken control over his sould, than to remember that he had actually agreed to sell it. The table had so suddenly been turned around on me. Not only it was no longer reasonable that I would express my grievance for the wrath I was being subjected to; but I was also expected to show my understanding and do my best to comfort Alia from her self-loathing feelings.

Alia had never ever told me that she was depressed. The closest she might have been from that was to say she did not have friends and she hated herself. Neither had I ever disregarded her cries for help spitting out she was just looking for attention. Throughout our marriage there had been many times, where Alia had hurt me. But, only a couple of months earlier she had taken it just a step further by stabbing me right in the heart. Yet, since I had refused to her demands to send her money, now it had all been my fault and Alia was pointing fingers at me. Now I was mad: I had had enough, now I was done with all that BS. Three months earlier, during our last discussion on the beach of Cape Town, I had utterly destroyed Alia with my words, even though I really tried hard not to. This time, however, I was ready to tell her all what I thought about her, regardless of how much it could hurt her. This time I might as well point out that, if she did not have friends, perhaps it was because there was something wrong about her.

Now I was ready to activate the nuclear option; I was ready to blow it all up.

I frantically went to search for an internet connection, so that I could call Alia over Skype. This time it was, however, Alia who refused the call. I tried a couple of times, but she did not want to answer. I did not understand why she would refuse to pick up the call. Then, she sent me a message: now she thought it was not a good time to talk. She could remember what had happened the last time she had spoken out of anger and she regretted she had not allowed herself some time to cool off. Alia's response left me totally confused; I did not know how to take it. I was not sure if she was feeling agitated and was concerned to come out again too strong and say something she would later regret, or she was instead suggesting that I allow myself some time to cool off, before speaking out of anger. 

Whatever the case, we did not talk; something I am today actually quite grateful for, since what I was planning on saying had certainly been very hurtful and I would have soon regretted it. Furthermore, it would have been very shortsighted, as it would not have done any good to anybody; I mean, neither to me nor to Alia. After all, deep inside, I knew well that all of Alia's bitchin was coming out of anger. I certainly knew well all what Alia really thought on those topics and where all her bitching was coming from. As much as her words may have hurt me, it was going to be really sad and very stupid to get into a fight with Alia, trying hard to inflict as much pain as possible on her, if all what she had said, had only been an echo of something she had heard from somewhere else. Indeed, after six years with Alia, I knew very well all what Alia really thought about traveling and to what extent she really believed that I was a slacker or an insensitive asshole. During the previous six years, Alia had found time to make it very clear exactly what she thought about the Peace Corps and to what extent she really hated to cook or actually enjoyed it. It really did not take a rocket scientist to realize that, if Alia had all of a sudden changed her views on all those questions, it was because somebody had steered her in that direction. Nobody flips her perceptions of so many topics overnight without some external influence. I knew I was not the first person Alia had been poisoned against: Don, Gail, Alia's uncle Scott and Alia's father, among others, had met that fate before me. As a matter of fact, some wind had already been blowing in that direction for a long time. I had heard before from somebody else Alia's new positions on traveling, the Peace Corps and Alia's various other dreams. Alia had publicly explained how New Zealand created in her a deep desire to travel, and how she wished we would one day open a restaurant. Obviously something had happened that, all of a sudden, it had stopped to be idiotic to ask her to put aside time for travel, and the Peace Corps were no longer some silly, childhood dream that she had outgrown, but some wish she felt deep in her heart and could not conceive her life without. All of a sudden, she had finally embraced Robyn's docma and was 'spreading the gospel', which had so painfully felt five years earlier, that Christmas evening in Prague. Now Alia believed in her heart that I "had put her through all those travels" and she had to give up on all her dreams for me. If that was, however, Robyn's docma, I was then going to regret, it was only going to make matters worse, to pull the trigger at Alia. I was therefore grateful, that, for once that I had allowed anger to take control over the better part of me, Alia had risen to save the day for us. Still, in all honesty, I have to admit that, I was so furious that, unfortunately, I was not able to refrain from replying to her message arguing that, if she did not have friends, perhaps it was because there was something wrong about her.

    

That was the last of it. So it was that our relationship finally reached its sad end. After that we never talked again; we would only have a couple of very brief, meaningless arguments, where we only had time to exchange some reproaches before Alia would hang up. Earlier than all that, I would still write her a few extended letters, where I did my very best to find some common ground between us. I went every length of effort to express my feelings, while still acknowledging hers. I would finally even spend 4 extra months in Cape Town (and become blind along the process), to write her the most beautiful and sincere letter possible; but it was to no avail: Alia did not want - or so it seemed - to hear a word from me. If she ever read those letters, they, all the same, never crossed her mind.

For some reason people who never met us knew better what was that Alia really wanted, what was best for her and what was that I had to do. For some reason I have always been glared at inquisitorially and most disapprovingly, if I ever allowed to transpire the slightest hint, that I kept any interest in trying to talk things over with Alia. For some reason, I have been forbidden of ever trying to make any contact with my wife. For all these years I have been told over and over again, that I must understand and accept that Alia does not love me and does not want to be with me anymore; If only they had not been totally incapable of understanding that I accepted Alia's decision from the very first moment she told me at Gary's workshop; and that is why I - regretably, may I say - immediately walked away. After all, it was pretty obvious that Alia did not love me anymore.    

I conceive LOVE, in all capitals, as the state of foolishness, where one is totally convinced, that one's life will be undoubtedly an absolute misery without that one very special person. Of course Alia is nowhere there anymore, it is a very long time that she left that state behind and will never be back there; since she by now knows me well enough to have a good grasp that I am not perfect nor anywhere near there. On the other hand, lower case 'love' is the belief that one's life will be better with that other person. I was the one there, I was able to see it with my own eyes and I therefore know for a fact and much better than anybody else, that Alia and I were happy and loved each other well until we arrived to Cape Town inJanuary 2016; then everything blew up.

There is all indication that by the time we checked in at Gary's, it had already become very clear to Alia that I was not perfect. Yet, if by any chance it had not, undoubtedly, during that month at Gary's workshop, she most definitely did figure that much out. Still, there is no need or purpose why she would want to wipe me out of her memory.

In fact, if Alia tried to take her life, it does not take much to see that not everything was well with her. I think it was so reasonable that I believed that 

I could help her feel a little better about herself.

I do not know why it is that I have been denied any hint of attempt at bringing some healing to our relationship.

Not only do I understand that Alia does no  longer want to share her life with me; but, if that is the case, I am very well known to have too much of self-esteem, that, I would myself very much prefer to be with someone who cares and appreciates me. In fact, it would be years before I would even make any attempt at stepping a foot in Montana, but instead chose to stay nowhere closer to her than the East Coast. That does not mean, however, that we cannot be in peace with our memories together. The fact that Alia freaks out at any hint of help from me and, even more so, needs to hate me with every fiber of her being, is definitely not a good symptom. If Alia would reject any help from me, I had tried to have somebody go speak with her and made her some company; but nobody had any interest nor was ready to give her anywhere near as much attention as she needed. 

It breaks my heart to hear everybody tell me that I must accept what Alia wants to do with her life, at the same time that they acknowledge that what Alia wants is to put an end to her life.

How shall we respect what she wants, if she wants to put an end to her life.

As much as they say they care and love her to bits, I just do not see how anybody could expect me to take their advice at face value, if nobody would ever be able to trust that Alia's wellbeing is front-and-center of their thoughts and concerns.

Alia used to say that she and her mother were best friends. But, at the same time, she also said that she did not have friends. Alia, you were right all along, I am so very sorry that nobody cared for you. Walk away Renée Anabel Lee. I say that Alia broke down, but, no, I misunderstood; in reality those who said to love her the most broke her down.

No, in reality, Alia did not break down; rather, they broke her down.

I have always been told that I need to understand and accept that Alia does not love me anymore. They, however, are incapable of understanding that I realized and accepted such reality from the very first moment. 

Imagine one day your daughter would not want to see or talk to you ever again. You must have wronged her really badly, you must have hurt her very deeply, for something like that to happen. And even then, something must have gone really wrong in her mind, in order for her to behave that way. But you know for a fact that you have not done anything bad to her. So, you know now how I feel.  

I did not know then, but eventually I would come to learn, that it was over. Probably because I was born with a severe disability, before I can even remember, I embraced the conviction that you never ever give up; particularly when it comes to something your whole life depends upon. Fact of the matter is you will never be able to know if something is impossible. You can only try, but even then - if you fail -, there is no way to know whether the failure was because you did not try well enough or it was simply hopeless. You can only keep trying, because the moment you give up, the argument whether it was impossible or not becomes moot: the moment you surrender, defeat falls upon you, and that is all what matters. You can only keep trying, until you see that it really does not make sense anymore.    

Indeed, as hard as it is to accept it, there are times where it really does not make sense anymore. I do not mean to say that there will not be a day where we embrace again, or that our love is dead. But, I am afraid that the days where "we were two children that just wanted to play together", the days where "we were little buddies exploring and resolving the labyrinth of life together", the days of our innocence.. All those days, as sad and difficult as it is to accept it, are now part of the past. That does not mean that I am ready to give up on Monkey and Bunny. They were always imaginary beings and spirits never die; they only fall asleep, but then they can always wake back up. As much as I have been told to do so, I would lie if I say that I have given up on our love. I have good reasons to believe that, if we are able to overcome this nightmare, there is a good chance that our love will be able to grow even stronger than ever before; but, without a doubt, it will not be the same as it once was. The days, where there were only dreams ahead of us, are gone; now there is some past time behind us as well. It will certainly still be up to us whether we allow our past to further handicap our relationship, or know instead how to use it to strengthen it. However, whether I liked it or not, the time had come where that chapter of our lives needed to be closed. Indeed, I had reached a dead end. It laid bare that, for the time being, there was nothing that I could do; whatever I might have tried, would have only made matters worse. 

When I first met Alia, she asked me to promise her, that I would give her at least 50 years of marriage. In order to fulfill such an oath, I was going to have to live until almost 90 years old, which was certainly no minor deed. However, I have always enjoyed some pretty good health, and I felt confident that I was going to be able to pull it off. Hence, I made my promise to her. It is then now so very distressing and disappointing to see, that we are allowing 5 - 10 years to pass by into oblivion. We have lost some truly precious years, which we will never be able to recover. Even if I am able to reach 100 years old, I will not be much fun to be around on that last additional decade.