It didn't take endless quarantine with my spouse during the COVID-19 pandemic to end my marriage of more than two decades. By the summer of 2019, menopause (and the added “bonus” of awakening frontal fibrosing alopecia) was physically and mentally beating me to the point that I no longer had the ability to function within the dysfunction of my life.
The relief that came with the decision to finally let go was completely overshadowed by the immense pain of splitting a family in two. I cried while packing my bags. I cried while unpacking. I was rolling endlessly in a dark wave that didn't stop; My feet couldn't distinguish sand from sky. Once I managed to surface, I reached out.
I called Tish, Diane, and Michelle, three smart, strong, loving women who had been through a divorce and survived. I also called my brother Dan and my friends Doug and Steve, three kind, creative, fun men who always got me.
As for Steve, we met in the spring of 1984, when he auditioned to be the drummer for Secrets, the band that Dan, Doug and I had founded the year before. At our small-town high school of less than 400 students, he had completely flown under the radar, being two years younger, joining the marching band the year after I abandoned my baritone horn for a microphone and Pat Benatar tights. Steve aced the audition and the four of us immediately agreed on our shared love of the Pretenders and all things Monty Python. In mid-June, the Secrets were playing local bars and biker parties in the middle of nowhere, and I was head over heels in love with the drummer.
It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I wasn't supposed to fall in love with a boy from my hometown.
I had spent my entire life dying to get out of Middlebourne, West Virginia, and had been looking forward to going away to college, but by the end of August that no longer meant freedom; It meant he would have to leave Steve behind. I told myself we would defy the odds and make it work. He was my soulmate. But we were just kids and there was no Internet, no cell phones with unlimited messages and calls. In February 1985, the division was too great. In a moment of loneliness, I cheated on him. It was over and I was firmly told to take my place in the friend zone.
I spent the next year faltering and failing in college before making the bold, half-hearted decision to drop out of West Virginia University's theater program and move to Los Angeles, a place I had never been, to pursue a singing career. When Steve found out I was moving across the country, he softened his friend zone stance and told me he loved me. On July 13, 1986, he went with my parents to the Pittsburgh International Airport to say goodbye.
Over the next 33 years, we came together and drifted apart, sometimes as lovers but mostly as friends. During a visit to my Hollywood apartment in 1988, when he was still in college and the timing was not yet right, I told him, “Who knows. Maybe in 30 years I'll come back to look for you.”
In November 2019, Steve came to visit me for a long weekend.
I picked him up at Los Angeles International Airport and took him straight to Zuma Beach for a picnic, where we watched dolphins jumping in the waves while seagulls stole our fries. The next day, we settled in for an afternoon of wine and cheese at Cornell Wine Co. in Old Agoura, then headed across Topanga Canyon for dinner at Canyon Bistro & Wine Bar.
The night before we flew home, we watched the sunset from our lakeside table at Zin Bistro Americana in Westlake Village. I felt giddy, excited, seen, understood and appreciated in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. While it was tempting to jump in with both feet, we decided to date long distance and take things slow.
On March 26, 2020, while Steve was still recovering from his severe COVID illness, I arrived at his door at 6 a.m. and proclaimed, “I'm not leaving here without you.”
Two weeks later, after packing most of his belongings into U-Haul shipping boxes, we left Parkersburg, West Virginia, in Steve's red Volkswagen Golf with two suitcases, a Treeing Walker Coonhound, and an Aussie/Chow mix. I-40 West was practically empty; just us and the occasional car or truck from Amazon.
We arrived in California on Easter Sunday and joined the rest of the world in quarantine, not knowing how it would affect our work and financial future. We took a lot of long walks to help us deal with the stress of not knowing, but the magic bullet for me came the day Steve's Harley-Davidson arrived in one of the boxes.
We drove up and down PCH and up and down Mulholland Highway, Stunt Road, Malibu Canyon, and Decker Canyon, stopping along the way to stretch our legs, feel the sea spray on our faces, and enjoy the views from the valleys to the coast. We were surrounded by so much beauty; It was almost impossible to let restlessness win.
On one particularly memorable trip down Mulholland Highway between Kanan Road and SR 23 near Saddle Rock, we came to a curve and bam! — right in front of me was the greenest mountain range I had ever seen in California, shining spectacularly in the sunlight. As I inhaled her beauty and exhaled my stress, I thought, “I can't believe I get to see this. I can't believe I get to do this. I can't believe I get to be with Steve.”
In September 2024, I married Steve.
As my brother Dan said at the reception, “What a long, strange journey it's been.”
The author lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles with her husband, Steve, and their dogs, Coco Puff and Kira.
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