Something Is Always on Fire

by Measha Brueggergosman

  If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?

  A predatory animal.

  Who are your favourite writers?

  Alice Munro, Jonathan Coe.

  What is your motto?

  It’s a horrible idea. Let’s do it.

  Could my life have been any sweeter? I felt like I was swimming with the current. Everything was falling into place.

  And then, on June 8, 2009, my aorta exploded.

  And then, in the summer of 2009, I failed my marriage . . .

  In the fall of 2009, my husband moved out of our Parkdale home and I took off around the world with a guy I thought I loved, but barely knew.

  Two thousand nine was not the first time I stepped out on my marriage. I was less than a year into being a wife when I had my first affair. I had gotten married to the love of my life, but I didn’t really know what came after that. I had unlocked the floodgates of my sexuality, and it never occurred to me not to take it for a test drive, because for my whole life I’d been on a solitary journey of discipline and reward. I had waited until my wedding night to have sex, and now that I’d given my virginity to the most worthwhile candidate I had ever met, I was free to explore. I know how twisted it sounds, but let me try to explain: I am a soloist in a niche profession; I enjoy a certain level of fame, a broad level of access; and when it comes right down to it, the end of my work day ends in thunderous applause. I believed the rules didn’t apply to me. Fidelity in my marriage felt optional because no one was watching and I usually got what I wanted if I worked hard enough for it.

  Do you know how much lying, cheating and compromising need to be done to sustain an extramarital affair? It’s a lot, and I don’t have any excuses because I excelled at it for more than a decade. What I wasn’t prepared for was how un-conflicted I would feel about it at the time. I honestly didn’t feel any sense of moral accountability. That’s not to say I trumpeted my infidelity from the rooftops and told everyone I knew. No. I knew enough to keep it a secret. But I framed my life in such a way that I could always allow my lies to somehow weave into my everyday life, experiences, travel and work. And it’s not like I didn’t have a moral compass! I was raised in a Christian home, lived my life as a Christian and had waited until I was married to have sex. Some Christians will judge me. They’ll say I was never really a Christian at all. I mean, how could I be living my life for Christ and act that way? The non-Christians will claim that I married too early (twenty-one) and that waiting to have sex so late led to an opening of the floodgates, to which the only logical conclusion could be infidelity. I’d argue that it’s like a mixture of both. But also neither.

  Though no Believer has ever walked up to me and proclaimed, “Hey! I have never been faithful to my husband, either,” again I can’t believe I’m the only one. I’m not saying that makes it okay. I’m just saying that it has taken me my entire adult life to even voice the words “I cheated on my husband” without the weight of shame bearing down on my chest and crushing my heart from the inside out. I can only hope that a brother or a sister out there will read this and know that with time and transparency, you can move forward, be forgiven and, perhaps the hardest part, forgive yourself. And encourage others to do the same. Marriage isn’t for all of us. But I took a vow and I broke it.

  I always felt like it was someone else engaging in those relationships. Not in a schizophrenic or bipolar way—I would never trivialize people with mental illness by using it as my excuse. I will say, however, that I’d appointed for myself a sort of “movable do” of morality. Movable do is a term in solfège (the do-re-mi system of identifying music notes) where the tonic—do—moves around the scale, and in response, all the other notes contextually organize themselves around this tonic, or this root. As opposed to the “fixed do” system, where, as you can likely guess, the tonic stays the same, regardless of the musical context or key signature. I told myself that because I lived in a different context—child prodigy, opera singer, artist, traveller, whatever—morality could organize itself around me. Whatever I wanted was relative to myself as do. Everything—my faith, my marriage, my finances—could morph to my needs and not the other way around. If I was reading this about someone else, I’d be all, Tsk, tsk, Delusional One. This will only end in total destruction. And it has. I’m talking to a book.

  For all of you out there whose lives are also rooted in and guided by religion—Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim—one of the decisions most influenced by your faith, followed by the influence of your family, is when and with whom you will spend the rest of your earthly life. I can only speak for myself as a young Christian woman from a small town. Despite having never seen anything close to dreams of “marital bliss,” I didn’t see a reason not to marry young. I still don’t. And marrying a Christian had been programmed into my DNA. Plus, I loved him deeply. He was supportive, kind, gentle and fair. He didn’t hold me prisoner or yell at me. He didn’t insult me or wake me up in the middle of the night to fight with me. I felt no contempt for him. He didn’t try my patience and I didn’t tolerate him or feel like I had to compromise any part of myself to be with him. He didn’t hold me back or pressure me to do things I didn’t want to do. He didn’t like the taste of alcohol and I didn’t drink (at the time). Neither of us wanted to have children (at the time). We chose each other not as some act of rebellion but because we had found our truest match. Essentially, he was my unicorn and we were madly in love. The only thing left for us to do after dating for four years was get married so that we could have sex.

  Given my schedule, there was no time for premarital counselling (huge mistake), so I went into my marriage placing one logical foot in front of the other, without really knowing what marriage was supposed to actually be. What I did know was that my relationship wasn’t like my parents’ and that was good enough for me.

  To this day, I’m not entirely sure how I was supposed to feel. The wedding day itself went off without a hitch. A joyous occasion that could not have gone any better. But, as I’ve said, I don’t like crowds or strangers (ironic, I know) and by that point I was used to people assembling in my honour for my job. As a result, my wedding day felt a bit like going to work. But I know God was there and I know He blessed us and our families and friends that day. We were pretty much set for life until I effed it up.

  And to those of you not guided by religion, spirituality or any labelled belief system, I would offer that my active interior life, cultivated through early soloistic musical development and success, was very isolating. I have always talked to myself in full sentences. Not just the odd thought here and there. Full-on conversations, with debate and the weighing of options and, inevitably, conclusions that I believe to be quite insightful (she pats herself on the back). These conversations, thankfully, are not held in a vacuum. They are informed and guided by outside sources like my family, mentors, friends and my own history. But I’ve spent a lot of time inside my head, and any artist out there will know exactly how intimate a space that is. There is barely room for your own desires and goals, let alone anyone else’s. And the same self-centred voice that leads me to incredible professional success is the same voice that guides me in my personal choices. Why wouldn’t I trust it?

  All the evidence presented led me to believe that marriage was the only logical conclusion to a long courtship that had nothing wrong with it. There was no better choice for me. But should I have gotten married? Maybe not. Except, the point is moot. I did get married, and it’s only recently that I started calling my actions “infidelity,” because I had so greatly distanced myself from any of its personal implications.

  Beyond that, we are all of us the sums of our histories. No, I didn’t attend a cathedral with an abusive priest, and I wasn’t a victim of a residential school or a violent sexual assault. But I was molested by my cousin. Honestly, I don’t think he knew what he was doing. That doesn’t excuse him, but it helps me put into context what happened to me and why I feel how I feel about my body. I
was exposed to these tingly sensations at an early age. I didn’t know the feelings were sexual until later. And I wasn’t afraid when it happened. But I was undeniably coerced and what happened to me was wrong. Period.

  So, what do I do with that? It wasn’t my fault. I bear no responsibility in what happened to me. But I know I have to do something with the experiences that form who I am. Acknowledge and use them, instead of them enslaving and shaming me. In the subjective context of “self-discovery,” my molestation fell right in step with my musical discovery, because there IS a reason for everything. I say that only because I have to believe God can turn around and use anything for His glory. And I do mean anything. He has shown me over and over that I don’t have to mourn whatever innocence I lost, because He will never use what I don’t have.

  Singing is a full-bodied experience and I choose to believe that the early awareness cultivated in me through a depraved act has led to an awareness of my physical self. To go beyond that, I also know how I can be made weak or my judgment can be clouded by sexual desire. And I understand the power I possess to incite that in other people. I recognize that this may not be how I’m supposed to feel or how society tells me I’m supposed to feel about being molested. But after therapy and journaling and counting the abundance of my blessings, it’s the conclusion to which I’ve come.

  I’m truly grateful that, as an adult, I love sex. I don’t see it as immoral or indecent or tainted by premature exposure. I think it is a beautiful union between two people who have consented to make each other the focus of their pleasure. I’ll also qualify that by saying it’s not necessarily the act that interests me. It’s always such a letdown when some hot guy you’ve been sussing out and investing in comes at you with monster tongue. Or busy hands. Like, zero game. I’m sorry, but no woman likes it when she can’t tell whether she’s making out with someone or being frisked. Nah, it’s the prospect of the journey of attraction leading to the destination of coupling that interests me. Some would call it “the chase,” but it’s also a kind of exploration, because if I take the time to truly understand someone, falling in love with him isn’t far behind.

  I’ve never been successful at curbing my curiosity. I don’t think I’ve ever really tried. But I’ve had to work to identify it to keep myself from jumping off a cliff in total despair over my inability to conform.

  None of these explanations, clarifications or elaborations are meant to serve as anything remotely resembling an excuse for any of the choices I’ve made. The only reason I would ever contemplate suicide is to rid my partner of all the pain that I caused him with my constant selfishness and infidelity. I would often think of how I had won the lottery by meeting this guy so young, before “everything,” and if he had just ended up somewhere else, on another day, in another year, under different circumstances, or the butterfly had just flapped its wings one more time, he wouldn’t have been made to suffer as much as I’ve made him suffer. Wouldn’t it ultimately be the best thing if I just died and spared him any more misery? He could move on, the stoic widower, and, after a respectful period of grieving for his lecherous, cheating whore of a wife, he could remarry and get the relationship he had deserved from the beginning . . .

  After much of that therapy I mentioned, plus meditation, yoga, alcohol, weed, self-destruction, self-reconstruction and analysis, I now have a clear idea of how massive a betrayal I repeatedly committed in my marriage. I may not deserve to have my marriage saved, but I certainly won’t be destroying myself as some martyr-like self-sacrifice on the altar of morality while I define and deepen my own sense of accountability.

  I have to believe that there are souls who will read this and know that whatever their system of belief or the voice in their ear, they, too, are worth saving and celebrating. This can’t be the end. I hope someday to be able to fully forgive myself, because I know there is such joy in the redemption of forgiveness. And if I allowed my indiscretions and flaws to hold me back indefinitely, my flame would be extinguished forever. I don’t want to live in the shadows, ashamed and afraid, because that’s not life. And if being the one who writes down all my inequities—and how I’ve made the choice to not have them rule me—brings you closer to living your life with pride and conviction, then I may have several more books in me!

  Everyone has a type, and over the years I’ve come to notice a pattern in the type of man I’m attracted to, and, depending on the season of life in which I find myself, the type of man who is attracted to me. I’ve decided, in the interest of protecting the innocent, to create a composite of all my lovers. (And yes, I hate the term lover. Yick.) Conjuring this composite was an exercise in accountability, as well as a platform to vent. Throughout the journey of this book, there has been an undercurrent of unease for me about how best to broach this touchy subject with some level of insight and humour. I felt ready to ruminate without griping, because I sensed myself opening up as I teeter on the brink of taking a vow of celibacy; I knew I’d likely never be this objective again.

  So I have named my composite Jacob.

  Jacob is a loner, even though he has friends. He is seemingly social, but it takes time to get beneath the surface, and although he is well-liked and respected, most people do not know him the way I do. He is very opinionated but happy to sit back and allow others to speak. However, he will very rarely acquiesce in an argument. Despite making you feel like he sees your point of view, he will very rarely change his mind, because he truly believes that he is right.

  He has a strong character and a well-defined aesthetic. I am a breath of fresh air to him, and the only person to have really challenged him consistently, intelligently and with a sassiness he truly enjoys. Until I came along, his circle of friends believed him to be an infallible, impenetrable force. It makes perfect sense that he is with me because they knew Jacob would eventually find a woman worthy of his calibre. Jacob enjoys a close, if qualified, relationship with his mother. (Yep. I went there.) He is accountable to her in the sense that he is loyal to her and her opinion matters to him, but there is something about her that keeps him from truly trusting that she has his best interests at heart. She also occupies a large stake in his “livelihood,” if you will. Whether it’s her say over his life choices or her influence on or oversight of his finances, she is referenced and considered. Jacob’s father is present in his scope of influence, but, as is the case with most man-boys, Jacob’s father does not take up as much space in Jacob’s world as his mother. I am like his mother insofar as I am a strong personality who has persevered in forging my way into his life, but Jacob doesn’t know that by being with me he’s mirroring the relationship of his parents. He is proud to bring me home, happy to show me off. Chances are his parents have been to one of my concerts—or will go eventually.

  I am a good listener and allow Jacob to express his truest self, eat what he wants, enjoy his vices, whisper in my ear what he truly thinks in any given situation. I go so far as to facilitate Jacob living out his dreams, no matter how out-of-reach or un-lucrative they prove to be. Travelling together, meeting a mentor, turning a hobby into a career: chances are, I know someone or some way to make it happen, and I am happy to do it because Jacob is very gifted . . . but in a very specific way. He has one or two niche “callings” (as might be his moniker for his aversion to the nine-to-five grind) and he makes money in an unconventional way. I am deeply fascinated by Jacob’s chosen profession and seek to find out as much as I possibly can, because to me information is intimacy. My consumption of him and his life forms the substance of our relationship.

  The sex is good . . . but Jacob doesn’t necessarily need sex, in the traditional sense. That’s not to say he isn’t a sexual being. Sex doesn’t exist as a hunger, more a happy consequence rife with conflicting intangibles I can’t quite put my finger on. He isn’t entirely free, but I wouldn’t describe him as inhibited, either. At times reactionary, at times intuitive. Open to the hint of suggestion, but sensitive like a ripe peach. For me, sex is more of a
n intimacy barometer to see how into me he is (pun intended). His reactions couldn’t be confused with those associated with “simpler” men. Jacob’s brain never turns off. My satisfaction is rooted in inviting him to be more present with me than he has ever been with anyone else.

  I don’t want to be indelicate, so I’ll say that Jacob can have a hard time reaching his destination and doing the same for me—though he would never know it . . . Our relationship between the sheets gets progressively better as I delve deeper into his life. There is a crucial connection for Jacob between my acceptance of him—my seeing him as a dominant male—and how ready he is to abandon himself to the moment. That isn’t to say he can’t get there . . . because (and yes, I’m tooting my own horn here) I don’t leave any job half done.

  He finds me beguiling, exotic. It is my absolute pleasure to expose him to things, because he has less money, fewer professional prospects, less life experience (which is not to say he’s younger, necessarily); he’s just not established yet.

  Sometimes, I get the impression that Jacob feels like he’s owed something—like, maybe, while he was growing up, his mother praised him for, well, nothing. So, as a result, Jacob is expecting that the fates will eventually smile on him and manna will fall from heaven. I mean, he has landed me, hasn’t he? While the relationship is working, I am like a shiny, lucky penny. And I will absolutely bestow on Jacob characteristics and talents whether he deserves them or not.

  Jacob’s memory is miraculous, and though he says he forgives, he holds a grudge. He can be vindictive—though he’d be the last to admit it. At first you consider this a sign of uncompromising strength, but in the end—like most things—it is used against you.

  As our relationship spirals deeper, I stop the emotional hemorrhaging by showering him with newness and dinners and personalities to fawn over and learn from. He meets his heroes and his favourite drink is always within reach. His universe and scope of experience expands and Jacob gives me the credit, while secretly growing more and more resentful that his woman is doing everything for him. He feeds a mounting fear that he’s getting man-candy side-eye from the very people from whom he wants respect (or a job). When we fight about it later, I’m dismissive and frigidly ask him how any of this is my problem—I mean, maybe he should be doing more with his life.