The Reason

I want to be mad. I've tried to be mad. I can't though. I understand why she left. I would have too if I were her. The truth of the matter is it's my fault. I'm simply a broken person.


I've battled depression off and on as long as I can remember. I'd try to be happy, fail miserably and get more depressed than I had been before. At some point, before I met her, I decided to stop trying so hard and accept the "fact" I wasn't a happy person. And mostly it worked, for years. Sure it took out the lowest of the lows, but it also took out the reaching for something more. It's a survival tactic. One I failed to stop myself from doing, once I found what I was looking for.


I shut myself off from the world. I shut myself off from my wife. I struggled to have even the most basic conversations with her. After much trial and error, my wife discovered the best way to get me to talk with her was to get angry with me. Yelling and screaming until I snapped and the flood gates opened. Even then, my conversations were simple and basic. Here's the problem, here's the solution, the end. What I didn't see until recently was that finding the solution, finding it together, was often more important than the actual solution. Like a kids connect the dots puzzle, I'd connect the first dot to the last dot, and skip all the numbers in between. The goal of the puzzle is to get to the last dot, but if you skip out on all the steps in between you don't get the picture, and getting to the end isn't the point, the picture is. Every time she'd ask me to be more open with her or talk and communicate more, I'd try. I knew it was the right thing to do. I just didn't understand why, I didn't go through the experience. So inevitably I'd fail, and things would go back the way they were.


Of course the more often she yelled the more I'd retreat inside of my own head. The more I'd withdraw, the more she'd get angry. After years of this, my default was silence, hers was anger. She became someone she didn't like just trying to reach me, trying to show me how much she loved me. Of course I noticed the change in her, I didn't understand it though. Now that she's gone, I get it. I get how much she loved me, unselfishly and faithfully. I see how selfish I was to not share myself with her. To not put her first, the way she put me first. She loved me more than I realized. I not only took that for granted, I ignored it and did everything I could to undo it.


Why did it take her leaving for me to see this? Why was I so blind? Why was I so selfish? So here I am, alone and unemployed, spending every day in this house, that's more of a tomb to our relationship. I'm trying to make myself into a better person. I've barely scratched the surface though. I am going through the process and that takes time. It'd be easier to evolve as a human being if I had human contact on a regular basis. Job, friends, anything. I talk to people online, but the reality is, I have no idea anymore how to relate to people in any other manner than shared pain. I think that's part of the reason I became so shut off from my wife. For a time, I had everything I wanted, a wife, kid, a house and a job I loved and was happier than I ever had been in my life. I didn't know how to share happiness. So I guess I got what I deserved then ... I lost it all and now I'm miserable and alone.


Even if I wanted to talk to someone ... anyone, share a moment, have a conversation, anything ... those people have long since stopped calling. Every day I pray my phone will ring and someone will be calling to just say "Hi" and check on me, but no one does. I couldn't talk to them, and they must have thought I didn't care or didn't like them. The truth is that I don’t know how to make small talk, I don't how to relate to the rest of humanity, although I desperately want to. She used to yell at me for buying trinkets, novelties and oddities that I couldn't even explain to her why I had the compulsion to buy. But I know why now, in some weird round about way, if I had interesting things, then maybe I'd be interesting, maybe then I'd have something to talk about ... someday. Maybe then I'd have a chance at relating to another human being, if only for a moment. If there were a class, I'd take it. I don't know how someone goes about learning to do this. Especially in a situation as isolated and alone as I am now. My contact with the outside world is more or less limited to the internet. No eye contact, no body language, just the ability to walk a way at a moments notice without the slightest ping of guilt.


I still love her. Life would be so much easier if I didn't. Having realized how much she sacrificed, how much she tried to make us work, I almost feel like I love her more now than I did when she was here. She has no reason to be with me. I've been a terrible husband, and despite my desire to change, I'm still fundamentally the same person. She's the strongest person I know by miles, and yet her only weakness is that she cared for me. She battled for me for years out of love. How do I convince her that this time I really mean it when I say I'm going to change? How do I convince her we can feel about each other the way we once did again, while at the same time show her I'm a different person? I don't. I can't. I make the changes and hope she sees it, then hope she remembers. I know what the odds are, I know what she says, but I love her. It's that simple. I know I need to be a better person, with or without her, so what I need to do to move forward is the same either way.


I also believe in our wedding vows. Not so much in the biblical sense, that it's God's will. In that it's a promise you make to each other, to love each other and to never give up. A promise you make, and invite your family and friends and co-workers to witness because it’s that important. A promise you throw a party to celebrate making. I can't help feeling like I've disappointed every person who attended my wedding. Our friends, my family, even her family.


A family friend brought his horses and buggy for us to use in place of a limo at our wedding. He lost his wife of fifty plus years around the same time my wife left. I saw him for the first time since the wedding several months later and I had the kids with me. He was so damn proud of my kids ... he was proud ... of my kids and the role he had in everything, and I couldn't even look him in the eye, let alone tell him she left.

At my grandfather's funeral, they had a slide show of pictures. I felt like every picture of him at our wedding was somehow a lie. I was upset that one of the last conversations I had with him was about her. I was mad because my goal, was to be married as long as my grandparents were, 67 years. I was disappointed with myself for thinking these things instead of mourning my grandfather.


I've heard they're tearing down the building we had our wedding reception in. It's like someone has a sick sense of humor and decided to erase the physical reminders of our wedding day.


I want to be mad at her. Mad at her for giving up on our vows. But I can’t. She tried harder and longer than she should have had to help me, to fix me, to get me to show her the love she showed me. She tried and tried until she broke. Until she didn't like who she became and then she left. I admire and respect her strength. I wish I could be more like her. I know she did everything she could to keep our vows, but I also know her leaving was the only way I was ever going to see the error of my ways, and how fucking stupid I've been. But god knows how much I miss her and that I’d do anything to be with her.


This is my life now.

Yule Be Sorry

I should be happy. I have the kids for Christmas, didn't even have to fight about it. For some reason my offered to let me have the kids for Christmas and Thanksgiving if she could have them for Halloween. I don't understand how that's even close to a fair trade or compromise but how could I not accept? I should be happy about this. But I'm not.


Every Christmas since my daughter was born my wife and I would have the same argument. She'd want to spend the night before Christmas at her parents or mine. I insisted that we be home, at our house, for Santa. Christmas morning I just wanted to be us, as a family. I always won the argument. She told me that because this was always so important to me, that's why she let me have the kids.


Yet, I'm not at home this year. I took the kids to my parents. I couldn't bare the thought of of being at what once was our house, sitting around what was our tree, without us being ... us. An incomplete family. I didn't even get the tree out this year.


Not to mention with my current financial situation I wasn't even sure that that Santa could come to our house. Grandma bailed me out again, without me even mentioning I needed help. What kind of father can't even provide presents for his kids on Christmas?


That's not even the worst of it. I know the holidays aren't about gifts or presents. It's about family and spending time with the ones you love. I'm spending Christmas at my parents for the first time in years. My kids are here with me and they will be spending their first Christmas without both their parents. That absolutely breaks my heart.


I know she choose this, both the separation and not having the kids tomorrow. But I still feel like I should be doing something grand and slightly stupid to try to bring us together. I'm tempted to load the kids up at midnight, and drive for hours just for a few moments of "family" time. I know that's a bad idea. She would think I was doing it to try to get her back, which wouldn't be entirely untrue.


It'd be mostly for the kids. I don't ever want them to know a moment of pain, or loss. I know it's too late for that.


This is my life now.

Break The Chain

We sit down in the living room to talk. Her in the recliner, and me on the couch. I can feel the distance between us and not just physically. This has been coming for a while but ... I still know how hard it will be. I know I need help. I know I can't do it alone. I know before that can happen I have to tell her exactly how depressed I am. I have to actually admit to her that I'm depressed at all.


I stare at my shoes, trying to form the words. Trying to admit my guilt, trying to admit my pain, trying to admit my condition. I manage a few half words, more grunts than syllables. My eyes fill with liquid, and I turn and lay on the couch and just sob, waiting for a comforting touch that I know isn't coming.


I hear a frustrated sigh and I just cry harder. After a few minutes, maybe hours, maybe days, I finally force out the words, muffled and deadened by the couch cushion my head's buried into "I am so depressed." I'd like to say it was a relief to finally say it, but it wasn't. It felt more like the last link to reality was slipping away. I fell into a primal painful cry. Waiting ... wanting that kind word, that comforting touch. Wanting my wife to cry with me, wanting her to take pity on me, wanting her to just lie to me and tell me everything would be all right. Just some acknowledgement she's even still in the room.


"I couldn't understand what you said."


I try to catch my breath, I try to suppress my sobbing and gasping. I try to find those words again. I can't even catch my breath to say them if I could find them. I'm so exhausted I'm barely conscious. I have no idea how long I've been in this state. I roll onto my back, I open my mouth to speak and am interrupted.

She's saying something, I hear her but I can't process it. I freeze her words in my mind for later. I force the words out of my mouth like vomit. They make me sick to hear them. "I am so very depressed!"


I tell her I need help. I tell her how most days I can barely muster up the energy to move, let alone take care of the kids while she's at work. I confess my sins, seeking absolution. I tell her how last week I struggled to feed the kids breakfast. I'd hand my three year old a box of cereal and let her feed herself. I told her how I'd feed my eleven month old son. He'd follow me into the kitchen crawling and I'd toss him a dinner roll from the food pantry, right there on the floor. Like he was a dog at the table begging for scraps. I tell her that my son tried to drink pine-sol and of my failure to realize he'd even gotten into the cabinet this immediately because I couldn't force myself to move from the couch. I tell her how embarrassed and humiliated I am. I tell her how I don't want to be like this. I ask her, I beg her for help.


I can't look her in the eye, I can't even look in her general direction. I'm ashamed. I think I'm broken. Quietly and calmly she tells me that she doesn't know if I really want help with my depression, or if I'm just trying to keep her from leaving. Her words I froze fall and shatter. I can hear them echoing in my brain. That's what she told me. She's leaving. She's taking the kids. I thought I was broken, now I know I am. I'm already in so much pain, I'm not sure I felt anything. But I knew nothing would ever be the same again.


I tell her I am serious, I do want help. I know it won't make a difference to her though. She tells me if that if I want help, I have to find it. If I can't take care of the kids, then I shouldn't be around the kids. She's right of course, it's my lack of ability to care for the kids that made me realize how far gone I was. I'm told I have to keep it together for a week so she can make arrangements. I offer her the house, of course she doesn't want it. I ask her for the slightest bit of help, she tells me to call my doctor and get medication. I tell her I don't want her to leave but there is no debate, there is no discussion. I know that at that moment, I am not a good parent, I am not a good husband, I'm not even sure I'm a good person.


I struggle through the next week. I see my doctor, he writes me a prescription. He warns me that with any anti-depressant there's certain side effects. The most common is increased risk of suicidal behavior. The pharmacist also mentions this. I try to tell my wife this, she mistakes it for a threat to kill myself if she leaves. I don't want her to feel that way. That's not what I meant at all. I tell her at the end of the week, I'm going to my parents for a while. I tell her she can leave or stay, I'll honor her request.


I left on Saturday. She left the house on Sunday. That was March, it's the week before Christmas now, and still the pain is unbearable.


This is my life now.