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.
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