Another Chapter of book 2
Beginning of the End
“Would you want to fly to Tallinn?” William asked me.
“Oh my God, yes!” I answered. I thought for a moment. “Where is it?”
“Estonia,” he answered, laughing because I had agreed to go before I knew where it was.
There are not many places on the planet where I wouldn’t want to go. I want to experience everywhere. I love traveling.
A few weeks after he asked me, we were in the airport meeting William’s friends from work. It was the same group of friends we holidayed with in Germany. One of them was from Tallinn, so she was going to be our tour guide on this spectacular weekend break.
Unfortunately, I came down with a severe cold a couple of days prior to the getaway. If you don’t know what it’s like to have a cold AND multiple sclerosis, well let’s just say each problem makes the other problem worse. I almost cancelled the trip, but the thought of ruining it for William made me pull myself together. Actually, the thought of ruining it for me played a part as well. It was spring of 2008, and I felt ill for much of the beginning of the year. I was tired of multiple sclerosis trying to deter me from doing what I wanted to do.
At the airport, we stopped in a pub for lunch. Everyone was drinking beer or shandies.
“Do you want a coke?” William asked me.
“I think I should have a stiff drink,” I answered.
William chuckled. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” I answered quickly. “I need to kill this sickness. I feel like shit.”
“Well if you feel like shit, I don’t think you should be drinking.”
“Yes, I should. It’s a remedy,” I told him. “Please get me a vodka—Neat.”
“Really? Who’s remedy?”
“Yes, really.” I retorted. “It’s like a Russian remedy. Or no, it’s Croatian— I think. Whatever. Someone uses it as a remedy.”
I was already sweating and had the chills. I thought if I drank, I could survive the flight, and kill the illness at the same time.
William came back with a vodka straight up.
His friends looked either impressed or worried. They seemed to think that I must like to start partying with the hard stuff early, so I just went with it.
I knocked back the vodka, laughing and chatting all the time. It numbed my throat, and made me sufficiently jolly.
By the time we landed in Tallinn, I felt horrible. The vodka was one of my dumber ideas. I had a fever and my MS was flaring up full throttle. I could feel pressure on my eyeballs when I turned them and my vision was blurry.
“I feel really sick,” I told William as we got in our hotel room.
“You don’t look well,” he answered. He sat me on the bed and hugged me.
The thought of Germany entered my mind; not leaving our room, whilst William went off with his friends. I suddenly became almost violent with grief.
“Get away from me!” I blurted, pushing him away.
“Marlo, calm down,” he said, looking hurt. “Maybe take a shower and you will feel better.”
He tried to walk me to the bathroom, but I would not let him. The pain in my eyes was rapidly escalating to an intolerable level. I also had a terrible headache, and chills.
I stepped into a scalding hot shower and fiddled with the knobs trying to make it hotter. Nothing was hot enough as I shivered with cold. I could not see my feet through all the steam.
My eyesight became more blurry and the pains continued. I could no longer differentiate between what was steam and what was blurry vision. I bent down to the floor in horrific pain. Every joint was now aching as well. I started crying out of control.
I heard William’s voice as he entered the room.
“Are you okay, Imo?”
“Am I okay?” I screamed. “Do I look okay?”
“Marlo,” he started saying.
I cut him off. “I am so tired of stupid shit happening to me! Every time I get sick, my MS turns into a mother fucker! Why can’t I be like everyone else? Why can’t I get a cold and take over-the-counter medicine like everyone else and just get better like everyone else? No! Instead, I have to go blind and get pains in my eyes like someone is carving them out of my head!”
“I am so sorry, Marlo,” William continued. “But getting yourself upset is only going to make things worse.”
“Get out!” I screamed. “Get the hell out and leave me alone! You have no idea what this feels like! You have no idea what this pain is like! I want to die!”
I continued sobbing uncontrollably as I shivered on my knees in the shower. I kneeled there for I don’t know how long.
I got out of the shower and threw up in the toilet. Vomiting made me feel slightly better.
When I came out of the bathroom, William was dressed and ready to meet his friends for dinner.
“Sorry,” I said solemnly, as I sat on the bed. “I feel so sick.”
William looked bewildered. I started to wonder what I must look like from his point of view.
“You must get tired of this,” I said.
“I am just sorry that you always feel sick when we are on nice trips.”
“I know,” I said. “I am so sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” he said, sitting next to me. “It is not your fault.”
I felt tears welling up in my eyes again. This worsened the pain.
“I will tell everyone that you went to bed early,” he suggested.
“No, no,” I protested. “You go down and I will meet you in a few minutes.”
The second William left the room I burst out crying again. I believe that it was only anger and spite that got me up from that bed. I opened the mini bar and contemplated how much dumber I could get. I closed it and instead took triple the dose of cold tablets.
I applied tons of makeup and got dressed. My eyes were red and glazed, but I decided I would just tell people it was from my cold; although half the hotel probably heard my mental breakdown in the shower.
And so for the next three days, we explored Tallinn. I refused to give in to the suffering that multiple sclerosis seemed to have in store for me on yet another trip, so in an effort to numb the pain in my eyes, I drank alcohol from morning until night. It was the only way I could enjoy the beauty of a city with eight hundred years of history. The medieval Old Town was my favourite, with tiny cobblestone roads, towers and gothic spires. There were beautiful churches and museums to explore. It made me feel like I was in a story-book. It is a city that I promised myself I would return to one day—without eye pain.
Shortly after the break to Tallinn, William contacted a couple of well-known producers who were interested in a new song William wrote. The song was called Keep up the Fight. It was short, catchy, and I loved singing it.
On the night that we met one of the producers, something else monumental happened. I believe I remember the exact moment that William and I started to let go of our marriage. Shocking as that may seem, somehow, the beginning of the end was upon us. This man who was my rock; my comfort; my hand through the glass; was somehow becoming someone else—someone not my husband.
The evening began with us in our usual rehearsal room, waiting for one of the producers to meet us and listen to Keep up the Fight live. He was the same guy who produced music for Simon Webb, if you know who that is. He was coming to see if he would take on the project or not.
He came in, along with a talent agent, holding a bag of beers. William and I looked at each other and winked, as we never drank during rehearsals. We were not that type of band. We always drank tea during rehearsals. But we both felt that we should probably say yes to the beers out of politeness, so we each took one.
We played the song for him several times, each time changing it slightly, as per his suggestions. After some time, he told us that he loved the song and would take on the project.
We felt elated, but didn’t want to look desperate, so we thanked him calmly. There were lots of “cool, man!” phrases flying around the room.
“Shall we go out for drinks?” the producer asked us after the rehearsal. “Let’s celebrate.”
I was dead tired. My eyes were still hurting since the trip to Tallinn, and I wanted nothing more than to go home and snuggle under a duvet.
“Yeah, man,” William nodded, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Ab-su-fucking-lutely!” I agreed.
Oh god, Marlo. I thought. How are you going to get through this?
Once I got to the bar, I was fine. I sat down drinking Guinness and getting excited about the project we were about to embark upon. This was what William and I wanted. This was exactly where we wanted to be. We wanted to be in London working with top producers, and that was what lay before us.
We had worked hard for so many years. It seemed like perhaps all that work could now pay off. We felt like the sky was the limit. I certainly felt that my MS was not going to slow me down anymore. I would happily run myself into the ground. I would compromise my health in order to find success in the music business, if that is what it took.
Walking home that night, with our equipment in tow, William and I talked about the future. And that is when the moment came; a tiny moment where the fate of our marriage seemed to rest on the edge of a knife.
A thought popped in my head.
“William,” I whispered, stopping on the pavement.
“If you had to choose between the band making it, or our marriage making it, which would you choose?”
He paused for a moment and looked down. That pause told me everything I needed to know. I knew right then and there that he felt the same as I did.
“Because I choose the music,” I stated.
“So do I,” he agreed.
We stared at each other for a moment. It was just approaching midnight, and a proverbial earthquake split the ground in Balham—the ground between us. We divided at that very moment.
“But we won’t ever have to choose,” William declared, and we continued walking.
“No, never,” I answered, wishing to believe my words. “Never.”
