Two Months Later

Two Months after The Conversation.

We talked, if that’s what I should call it.  I recited my lines anyway.

 

It took me five days to work up the courage, to find the right words.  I played the conversation out in my head a thousand times leading up to it.  I was awake for more sunrises during this time then anytime previously in my life.  Sleep and food had gone off somewhere together and left me behind to sit there and stare off.

 

I wasn’t sure how it would go, so I had a bag packed.

 

It was about as painful as I expected it to be, but by the time it happened I had played the dress rehearsal out in my head so many times that this was just a formality.  I was numb; I didn’t really feel any pain, so when I say that it was as painful as I expected it to be, I’m not really saying much.  I said my lines, she said things in response.  I’m not sure her words had any impact on me; my mind was made up at that point.  She cried, but I was numb to that to.  I had been on her side of the table already, with her being the one to tell me that she didn’t love me anymore and she wanted me to leave.  I was the one that fighting for our marriage then, she was the one fight for it now.  Our timing is off; we both want the same thing at different times.

 

I asked her: how long has it been?  How long as it been that every small fight, every little disagreement has her throwing out something to the effect of; “Just leave then.  Go. There is the door, go.”  After hearing that time and time again, those tears of hers mean very little to me now.  I’ve never cried them myself, but I’ve felt the same pain that causes them, and I’d become desensitized to them.  I’ve already felt the pain of living days and weeks at a time, over and over again, with the feeling that I am a stranger in my own home and that I am not welcome here.

 

Over the next few days, the logistics really set in and for all the planning I had done ahead of time, I really had no idea what to do next.  The reality is this: leaving her meant leaving my kids.  I’m just not ready for that, when it came down to it, I didn’t want to be that guy.  I could be a good father to them if I lived somewhere else, but the there is a price to be paid for doing that, and I’m not so foolish to think that it is a burden that I would be able to bare alone, it would effect them, probably worse then me.

 

Well before all this she would call me selfish, a label I’ve never deserved and one that enraged me with words that do not exist to explain how much I detest. (How dare she! I provide her a house, car, money in the bank, food on the table, and a life that allows her to stay home with the kids) but now, I feel guilt.  Perhaps I am.  Over the course of a few short hours in one night, my selfishness led me to all this.  Yes, it was a long time coming, but here we are, and selfishness is as good a definition as any I suppose.

 

I worked up an idea that I would perhaps move into the garage, or perhaps we would all move to a house that was more accommodating to our situation.  Perhaps these are still options, but for now my life is this: I sleep on the couch, or if I do sleep in the bedroom it’s only because one of us gets there first and falls asleep before the other one comes upstairs.

 

Publicly we go out as a family as we have always done.  To dinner, or to take the kids somewhere.  For a while I continued to wear my wedding ring, but it’s in a drawer now.

 

I ran into the other woman weeks later, and as I suspected nothing will come from that.  I had reached out to her in the days following our first meeting, and she never responded.  Then, when we ran into each other this second time she left pretty quickly.  It was due to an “emergency” as the group was told, but I suspect (I know) otherwise.  I completely understand.  I wish I could tell her that I understand, and if we find ourselves at common events again she doesn’t need to worry about me attempting to pursue anything.  Now that I am well aware of her position on the matter, I’ll just act like nothing ever happened. I hate to think that my presence creates any unpleasantness for her.  I gave it a shot, my advances were not returned, so that is that.

 

Having said all that, I’m not minimizing the importance that she had on my life.  It isn’t because of her that I find myself where I do today, but something was going to be the tipping point, and as life would have it, it turned out to be her.