New York City fascinates me…for all the obvious reasons…the flash and theater and amazing eateries and Wall Street and Central Park and Prospect Park and Bryant Park and coffee shops…oh…the coffee shops…
But more than all that and the other thousand things I could list, I am fascinated with the life underground.
I am fascinated that the subway stations are such a part of the fabric of the streetscape that sometimes they are hard to see. I’m fascinated that people, young and old, fat and skinny, employed and homeless, move at a (relative) uniform (fast) pace and don’t see 20 stairs as a barrier to use (unlike much of the rest of the US). I’m fascinated that no one ever seems to glance at a schedule, or look at a map, but they get everywhere they are going. I’m fascinated that people bring their groceries on the subway, go to prom on the subway, go to work and school and dates and doctor’s appointments and meetings with their architects and, now that I know what I know, meetings with their whores. On the subway.
I’m fascinated that there is a whole life underneath the ground. A life that includes shops and restaurants and advertising and crime and cops and rats and music and people. There is New York City on top, in the light. And New York City underneath, in the dark. And they are both filled with drama and death and life. The underneath knows about what’s above, but all of what’s above doesn’t know about underneath.
My life had an underneath too.
There was a little bit of underneath that I knew about, but lots that I didn’t. It knew…my underneath knew what was above and outside, but only let little snippets of itself be known. Until it had to.
My marriage had an underneath too.
There was almost nothing of the underneath in my marriage that I knew about…except little snippets that HUSBAND shared…little little snippets…until a big snippet came out and all the other snippets eventually appeared from underneath.
I’m not willing to live with any underneaths in my personhood or personal life anymore. Truth is, they all are one anyway, they just like to keep the lines of demarcation and pretend they each have their own territory in my soul. But they were at war, battling…the underneath and the above.
They were at war. And I won.
savingshards 
Great one to wake up to.
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Thanks, SD!
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Where did you find a picture of Loser, that WTC and me sitting on a park bench? LOL
New York must be fascinating….I would go insane. And, boy! Do I understand the “underneath” thing…they were underneath….we were above board. Never works that way….sigh.
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Haha!!!
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thanks…can’t wait to go back. Recommend the Big Apple bicycle tour of 7 hours!
So many great places to visit, bridges to cross and mountains to conquer….life is too short to be miserable. You owe it to yourself, you kids and the challenge of what life is all about to delve into it….
Your husband had a life underneath….you did not….his s…, to deal with. Your gift to yourself and your kids to stay who you are and who you are meant to be….
x
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Thank you for this! And yes…love love love the City!
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Underneath… I like the perspective. I love the post, although the mention of New York and ‘underneath’ was a massive trigger for me: my husband went to whorehouses while in business trips there, and, wait for it, wait for it, he put those charges on our joint credit card… This is how unsuspecting I was, I would never have checked stuff. The West Garden. I highly doubt he’d taken the subway, he is too good for it – but I guess you never know. Sigh. The West Garden. The city where even whores take credit cards. Sad sad world, underneath and all around.
I used to love New York and it is on my list to reclaim it.
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So sorry that it triggered you, MWS. I really am. And on the one hand I’m overwhelmingly shocked that they take credit cards for illicit activities…and yet…the culture and tacit support continues on… RECLAIM IT!
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Reclaim I will! Oh New York, I’m not giving up on you.
Yeah, tacit support – how is it possible I’ll ask that this place is on the internet with ratings and recommendations from other scumbag customers, they take credit cards (of course the bill shows ‘massage’, not ‘sexual services’ – even though my hubby got a four hand massage cum oral sex combo – that at NY prices, ugh! at least in Asia his mental illness was cheaper, snark), and yet the police doesn’t bust them. I mean – there’s definitely a web of shit that we don’t see, that enables these places to exist, on top of there being crazy crazy demand.
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It’s so true. Why do we take it, as a people? Consistently, 85%-90% of people respond in surveys across the US (haven’t seen international numbers) that they believe marriage should be monogamous, yet on those same surveys upward of 50% admit having cheated in some form. What is that? There is an incredible gap between what we say we want and what we are actually doing. The cultural acceptance of infidelity…I see it everywhere now. I honestly breezed right past it before I knew it was my world, my story.
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I was always shaken by hearing of infidelity but I let it pass without toughing me deeper than one shake, with this logic: it can never happen to me or people around me. And BAM – when it hits you in the face so harsh, you do realise it’s all over the place – and yet people keep quiet and suffer in silence (which is what you said in a comment of yours a day ago!). Yeah, I am also not standing on the rooftops yelling that my husband cheated on me – that would probably not be the best way to go about this -, but there should be an avenue (other than anonymous blogs and the rare support groups) where you can openly discuss and address this, so people know what it is like, what is causes, how incredibly big strain it puts on people – everyone involved.
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This really is a great description of how I feel. It’s like my life has two stories going on simultaneously. One story is the life I knew, the other story is the “underneath” stuff as you call it, that was going on and that I didn’t know about. I sometimes feel like my life story, what I thought it was, has been robbed. I don’t know how to recover from that.
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That has been such hard work for me as well. I’m not sure I’ll ever recover…but I am slowly making sense (not all good sense) of the two lives…and definitely making sure the new history is authentic and real and present. One moment…one hour…one day…
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